When researching I come across some lovely old photographs and sometimes those pictures have a story behind them.
These photographs were taken by a local photographer called Albert Azulay Wallace, who lived in Sidmouth and documented the people around him. I have accumulated quite a few of his local scenes and characters taken in the early 1900s. Ann Knight shared these with me a few years ago. They show wonderful scenes of the Signalman and his family at Tipton St John station .
They are the Richards family who lived at Stanley Cottages. John was the railway signal man for the London and South Western Railway and he and his wife Ellen had 3 girls Joan, Phyllis and Marjorie. The charming photographs show a proud father with daughters dressed in white pinafores, wearing laced up leathers boots and carrying wicker baskets. It appears such a happy scene yet shortly before it was taken the family were devestated by the death of their middle daughter Phyllis, when she was just 3 years old. She died from diptheria contraccted from her older sister Joan. She is buried in Tipton churchyard halfway up the hill beside the path. There were many cases of Diptheria in Tipton and Metcombe reported in 1910 with the Medical Officer closing the school so that all the classrooms could be disinfected .
"All possible precautions were taken to prevent the spread of the disease, but the conditions of home life had rendered isolation impossible....The Tipton district generally was inspected and attention paid to the removal of manure and refuse heaps, and sanitary improvements and better drainage had been suggested"
A report from Ottery Council Meeting, Western Times newspaper 1910
But these measures came to late for Phyllis, she had died just days before the council meeting.
Thank goodness today we have vaccines and better sanitation
Next time you walk up the churchyard path pay your respects to little Phyllis, who never got to attend the school like her sisters or grow up in our lovely village.
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