Maggie Victoria: Behind the Scenes
At first, there were just three scanned, scratchy old photos. My mother had emailed them to me several years before among a trove of random family photos taken by Frank Sellers, my great-grandfather and a keen amateur photographer.
One, what looked to be a formal engagement picture. In another, a seemingly young mother playing with two small children. In the third, an older woman ironing. They went unremarked upon for a long time, until I dug them up again on a quiet January day during the pandemic. I realized I knew nothing at all about this woman, who I had been told was my great-grandmother, Maggie Victoria Sellers.
I asked my mother Anne and uncle Tony (two of her grandchildren) in the UK: Do we have any more photos of her? What do we actually know about Maggie Victoria? After all, she had died before they were born, and they referred to her successor, Frank's third wife, as "grandma".
Thus began a months-long process of Anne and Tony sorting through unruly piles of photos, unearthing documents that had been left behind and all of us trying to work out when the additional images featuring Maggie Victoria dated from, and what they could tell us. There were more photos than I could have hoped for, but sadly little information beyond the birth-marriage-death bureaucracy. Maggie Victoria had rarely been spoken of since her death, Frank having remarried less than a year later. Her three children never talked about her, and shut down conversation about her when asked.
Frank was president of the local photographic society.
There were more photos than I could have hoped for — but how to make sense of them?
We found a handful of undated letters written mostly from Maggie Victoria, to her eldest daughter, Gladys, who was working away from home.
Reading them casually, and out of order, we get a picture of household comings and goings in the midst of World War II, while Maggie Victoria is battling ill health. However, I was able to use a series of clues to put dates to the letters. Reading them in order, we see her getting progressively weaker, but reluctant to give up her work in the home until she is forced to stay in bed even though it is “most annoying”. Her heart is “wobbly” and she has fluid on the lungs. The doctor gives her antibiotics that make her nauseous, and evades a prognosis.
The last letter — by her husband Frank and younger daughter Doris (my grandmother) — is sent to Gladys less than 24 hours before her mother’s death. Still Doris says there is no need for her to come home. Yet we know that the next day Maggie Victoria will take her last breath.
The letters give an increasingly hard-to-read insight into the last weeks of a woman dedicated to her family and determined to put on a brave face. Around her, everyone is doing the best they can during wartime.
Maggie Victoria writes that she will not go into town again until she is better. “It’s not worth what it takes out of me,” she writes on May 1st, 1943.
After learning of the lengths Maggie Victoria went to in caring for others, while going unacknowledged in family history, I was determined to try to restore her story.
Through this project, I wanted to recognize Maggie Victoria’s legacy. Combining archive materials with my own contemporary images, this is my attempt to share a dialogue with a woman to whom I owe my existence.
Thus began my process to sort through the photos and the documents and work out what story I was telling, what seemed "truthful", and what was just wishful thinking.
Ever the journalist, I made and remade storyboards and plans, some of which I occasionally stuck to, before deciding they were too restrictive and that I should just "respond" to the images that moved me at any given time.
Nonetheless, a story, mostly chronological, has, and continues to, emerge from the images I have made.
Enough now, to call it a series, and put it out into the world for others to learn about this ordinary, and to me, extraordinary woman.
Making Sense Of The Correspondence
How I worked out the tragic story told by eight letters.
Among the chaotic archives from Maggie Victoria’s time and beyond were eight undated letters, which had been kept by her eldest daughter Gladys.
All that we could determine from them is that she mostly wrote Wednesdays and Saturdays to Gladys, who by now was working and living away from home.
The letters Maggie Victoria wrote include references to her feeling “tired”, doctors’ visits, difficulty breathing, her heart muscle being “wobbly”, and more. In some of the letters, her husband Frank and daughter Doris add their own sections, expressing concern for Maggie Victoria’s health. Another letter is written to Gladys by “Nurse Arthur”, who has heard that Maggie Victoria is ill and has come to look after her, and reassures Gladys that the sulphonilamide tablets her mother is taking are supposed to be very good.
At first glance, it’s unclear why Gladys kept these letters and not others. We can tell that Maggie Victoria is in ill health, but not necessarily the gravity of the situation.
So I looked for clues in the letters to try to put dates to them, and put them in order.
We can tell it is springtime because of mentions of the garden, and various vegetables peeping through the soil.
There were two references by Frank to a wartime event: In one letter, Frank writes: “The news from Africa is very cheering” and expresses hope that all the German and Italian forces there will be detained.
In another letter, he says : “Well, the victory in Africa is very comforting for us and will have a tremendous effect on the rest of Europe…”
Although the North African campaign lasted for almost three years, in May 1943 Allies encircled several hundred thousand German and Italian personnel in Tunisia and forced their surrender on May 13th. This helped to narrow down the timeframe, especially since we had originally thought the letters were written in 1942, a year before Maggie Victoria’s death. Now, I realized the letters were very close to her final days.
What else could I deduce?
In most of her letters, Maggie Victoria would write out a list of “the programmes” she thought Gladys would be interested in. Some included the names of orchestras, others the composers, with the air times and “F” or “H” next to each. These were BBC radio programmes airing on the “Forces Programme” or on the Home Service. Knowing the BBC well, I hoped it might have its programme listings archived online… and I was delighted to find that they did go back as far as the 1940s!
It was then a process of trying to decipher Maggie Victoria’s notes and search for listings that would correspond. I could not find all the programmes, but I found enough to put exact dates to at least three of them. Then, knowing the dates of the victory in North Africa and also cross-referencing Frank’s mention of Nurse Arthur’s visit alongside her own letter to Gladys, I was able to work out the remainder.
This is the sequence of letters — and as we read them in order, Maggie Victoria gets progressively more sick.
April 17th, 1943: Maggie Victoria to Gladys
April 28th, 1943: Maggie Victoria to Gladys
May 1st, 1943: Maggie Victoria to Gladys
May 5th, 1943: Maggie Victoria and Doris to Gladys
May 8th and 9th, 1943: Maggie Victoria, Frank and Doris to Gladys
May 12th, 1943: Maggie Victoria and Frank to Gladys
May 15th, 1943: Nurse Arthur to Gladys
May 15th and 16th, 1943: Frank and Doris to Gladys
Maggie Victoria died on May 17th, 1943.
Having been told by letter there was no need to visit, Gladys would not get to see her mother before her death. This, then, is why these letters matter: her mother is ill and declining, and would be her last contact with her daughter before her early demise.
It is hard to read the letters in order, and know what is coming.
An extract from Maggie Victoria’s letter from May 1st, 1943, and alongside, some of the corresponding BBC listings.
Click on the image to see in greater detail.
Checking The Finished Prints
Images by Alfred Hermida.
A woman with curly red hair and white gloves is examining various printed photographs and images laid out on a wooden table. The images include portraits, nature scenes, flowers, and artistic compositions.
Printed photographs of beach scenes, flowers, and people, spread across papers on a wooden table.
Person wearing white gloves and a black watch looking at printed photographs on a table. The photographs include a sunset over water with a flower and a black-and-white picture of children at the beach.
A woman with curly red hair wearing a blue shirt and white gloves is signing a photographic print with a pen. She is focusing on the task.
A stack of plastic sleeves holding large printed photo collages, with a pair of white gloves resting on the table.