To contact Paul
Please keep sending through your family history miscellany. The email address for ‘Dear Paul’ is dearpaul@family-tree.co.uk ‘Happy Treein’. You can follow my blog at https://chiddicksfamilytree.comand you can find me on Twitter @chiddickstree. My website is: http://oldpalaceschoolbombing.com
Winifred’s diaries
Back in June I asked if anyone has made any family history breakthroughs using unusual documents. Kathryn Baird has shared with me a rather beautiful story regarding three little diaries she found on eBay in 2017. What makes these diaries rather unique is the fact that they were all written in Pitman Shorthand. The diaries record the everyday life of a lady named Winifred Davis. They were written in 1939, 1940 and 1941 and were a primary historical source of her wartime experiences in Birmingham, but a mystery to most people because they were written in shorthand. Winifred’s shorthand was tricky to decipher and it wasn’t until 2019 that Kathryn was able to fully transcribe the diaries. Winifred wrote diary entries most days, often penning them at work, where she was employed as a teleprinter operator and shorthand typist. Housework was a recurring feature of the diaries; Winifred liked to keep track of which rooms she had cleaned and when. The diary pages also show how much she missed her husband, Arthur, after he joined the RAF in 1940. Winifred was also very matter-of-fact about the air raids and warnings, a typical example of an entry during the Birmingham Blitz in August 1940 reads:
Up 6.30. Went home, did dining room, hall, and kitchen. Went to bed 10.30. Heard plane overhead so got up 11 o’clock and went into the shelter till 3.30. Five bombs
dropped in the Hobmoor Rec Grounds by the River, one by the anti-aircraft guns in Hobmoor Road, one by the Fever Hospital.
Winifred and Arthur Davis on their wedding day in 1935
Kathryn researched Winifred, her family and other people mentioned in the diaries and created a public tree on Ancestry in the hope that one day she would be able to pass on the diaries and transcription to a member of Winifred’s family. She was thrilled to receive an email from Winifred’s son, who later sent her the above photo of his parents on their wedding day in 1935. Kathryn was overjoyed that after getting to know Winifred through her shorthand, she could finally see a picture of her and her husband, Arthur.
Winifred died in 1991, aged 82, but her words live on in those little diaries, now cherished by her family. Kathryn learnt to write shorthand 50 years ago and in 1984 bought a postcard which had the message: ‘I am writing this in shorthand because they always read what is on postcards at the post office here’. It was that very postcard which sparked Kathryn’s hobby of collecting postcards with messages written in shorthand. You will find Kathryn on Twitter @Kathryn11Baird where she regularly tweets extracts from diaries and postcards. Kathryn is the author of Fifty Mysterious Postcards: Pitman Shorthand Message from the Golden Age of the Postcard published by The History Press. Although finding a family history diary in itself is not unusual, finding one written in shorthand and being able to decipher the code and unlock its secret is rather unique and made even more special by the fact that the diaries have now been reunited with the family.