Family histories and the photograph

I visited the Manchester metropolitan library and found a book by Iona McGregor called Bairns “Scottish children in photographs". The book consists of photographs of children from all backgrounds captured at home, school, at play, at work. All photographs are drawn from  the Scottish ethnological archive, to which many individuals groups and organizations contributed material to document families and children.

There is a section on home and family that I thought captured families and the history well. The home and its contents give the most obvious clue to the way a family functions. Scottish wages were lower than the English average and the late 1930s unemployment reached a higher peak. A weekly bath was held sufficient and indeed had to be. To avoid the tedious boiling of kettles younger children were dumped in a "dolly barrel". 

"Fathers vanished into war"

Overall the book shows a collection of  lots of family photographs and different histories behind each family, as a photograph comes with a caption. For example " The Rennie family of Edinburgh, photographed about 1890. Mr Rennie owned a busy butchers shop in Black Friars Street. The children are Jessie, Lewie, James and Polly. Polly died while still a child."