What Ivy Wrote on the Back Changed Everything
This is the first in an occasional series treating the
photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not illustrations of
what the family believed, but evidence that can test, confirm, or overturn
those beliefs.
Photograph 1
[T030]
For as long as anyone in the family could remember, this
photograph was labelled "Ivy and Lincoln Todman." The young woman, we
were told, was Ivy Florence Todman. The child beside her was her younger
brother Lincoln James. It seemed straightforward enough — one of those quiet
certainties that get passed down through family collections without anyone
thinking to question them.
Then someone turned the photograph over.
THE INSCRIPTION
On the back of this portrait, written in a careful hand, are
these words:
"To Mrs Bell, Wishing you
a Happy New Year from Ivy Todman. 27/12/1910."
Ivy sent this photograph herself. She signed it herself. She
dated it herself — 27 December 1910, sent as a New Year's card to a family
friend named Mrs Bell.
That date of 27 December 1910 is not a family estimate or a
best guess. It is a fact, written by the subject of the photograph, at the time
she sent it. That single fact forces us to re-examine the identification of the
second child completely.
THE ARITHMETIC PROBLEM
Lincoln James Todman was born on 20 July 1906.
On 27 December 1910, the day Ivy signed and sent this card, Lincoln
was four years and five months old.
Now look again at that child. Really look.
That is not a four-year-old. That is a composed, upright,
school-age child of seven or eight — a child who can hold a studio pose, who
sits with the stillness that only comes a few years into childhood. A
four-and-a-half-year-old has a rounder face, shorter legs, and a different quality
of presence altogether. We have a photograph of Lincoln at nine months old — a
baby held in his mother's arms.
Photograph 2
Lincoln Todman, aged nine months, May 1907, with his mother Martha and sister
Hazel.[T089]
Eighteen months after this photograph was taken, Lincoln
would have been two years old. Three years after it, he would have been four
and a half — the age he was when Ivy signed the card. He could not have looked
like the child in the previous photo. Not even close.
The Todman children — ages on 27 December 1910,
The date Ivy signed and sent photograph 1
|
Name |
Born |
Age on 27 Dec 1910 |
Fits child in Photograph 1? |
|
|
1 |
Martha[i] "Ruby" |
24 Dec
1894 |
16 years |
Adult —
confirmed absent |
|
2 |
Ivy Florence[ii] |
14 Sep
1895 |
15 years |
Confirmed by
inscription |
|
3 |
Walter Victor[iii] |
17 Oct
1897 |
13 years |
Too old,
wrong sex |
|
4 |
Hazel May[iv] |
14 May 1903 |
7 yrs 7 mths |
Fits appearance |
|
5 |
Lincoln James[v] |
20 Jul 1906 |
4 yrs 5 mths |
Too young by 3 years |
|
6 |
Charlotte
Mary[vi][vii] |
16 Aug
1908 |
d. 29 Dec
1908 |
Deceased |
|
7 |
Alma Dudley[viii] |
5 Jan 1910 |
11 months |
Infant — too
young |
THE CLOTHING CLUE
Here is where it gets interesting — because even if you set
aside the arithmetic, the clothing tells its own story.
Look at the child in the first photograph. That child is
wearing a girl's lace-trimmed dress at the collar and cuffs. It is clearly, by
any reading of the period's conventions, a girl's garment.
Now look at this.
Photograph 3 Walter
Victor Todman, aged approximately three to four years, already dressed in a
boy's striped jacket, bow tie, and trousers. [T057]
This is Walter Victor Todman — Lincoln's older brother — at
approximately three or four years of age. He is wearing a striped boy's jacket,
a dark bow tie, and trousers. Proper boy's clothes, at an age younger than
Lincoln was when Ivy sent the card.
Victorian and Edwardian families moved their sons from
dress-like garments into trousers at around four to six years of age; a
transition known as "breeching." The Todman family had already done
it with Walter Victor before he was four. There is simply no world in which the
same family would still have Lincoln in a lace-trimmed dress at four and a
half. The pattern was already set. The older brother had already shown the way.
SO WHO IS IT?
If not Lincoln — then who is the child? Meet Hazel.
Photograph 4 Hazel
May Todman, aged two years and nine months, photographed February 1906. [T037]
Hazel May Todman was born on 14 May 1903, the fourth child
of Walter and Martha Todman. She is known to us from photographs taken when she
was two years and nine months old, and again at four years old.
On 27 December 1910, the day Ivy sent the card to Mrs Bell, Hazel
was seven and a half years old.
Seven and a half. The child beside Ivy is seven or eight.
The dark dress with white lace trim is exactly what a Todman girl wore for a
studio portrait — we have seen it across the entire family collection, that
consistent thread of white lace at the collar marking every special occasion.
The composed, direct expression is entirely consistent with what we see from
Hazel in her other portraits.
Every piece of evidence points the same way. The child is
Hazel, not Lincoln.
WHY DID THE MISTAKE HAPPEN?
This is worth understanding — because it was an entirely
reasonable mistake to make.
Photograph 5 Martha
"Ruby" and Ivy Florence Todman as infants, c. 1896–1897, Yeoman &
Co., Prahran. Ruby is the standing child; Ivy is seated. [T028]
This is Ruby and Ivy as toddlers — photographed at the same
Prahran studio more than a decade earlier, each wearing a large detachable lace
collar that their mother had brought for the occasion. The family made a habit
of dressing their children in their finest for the camera, and that habit never
changed.
Now look at them again, ten years on.
Photograph 63 Martha
"Ruby," Walter Victor, and Ivy Florence Todman, c. 1907. Ruby is on
the left, Walter Victor centre, Ivy on the right. [T055]
The same dark eyes on Ivy. The same defined features on
Ruby. And both girls still wearing elaborate lace collars for the studio, whether
the same treasured pieces or simply the same family tradition, the impulse is
identical. Walter Victor, fair-haired between his sisters, is in a proper boy's
suit and collar — exactly as you would expect a boy of nine or ten to be
dressed in 1907. This is what the Todman children looked like. And the child in
photograph 1 — in a girl's lace-trimmed dress, at seven years old — is dressed
nothing like a boy in this family.
Somewhere down the generations, someone looked at this
portrait, knew it was Ivy, and reached for the most logical candidate for the
child beside her. Ivy and Lincoln were often grouped together in family memory.
Lincoln, when photographed a few years later, had dark hair, a round face, and
the same serious Todman expression — features he shared with the child in Photograph
1, because they were siblings and family resemblance is real.
Photograph 7 Lincoln Todman, aged approximately five to
eight years, with his mother, Martha. [T091]
You can see how the confusion arose. But there is a crucial
difference: Lincoln in this photo is wearing a striped shirt and trousers. The
child in Photograph 1 is wearing a dress. And Lincoln in Photograph 6 is
several years older than Lincoln was when the card was sent.
The inscription on the back was either never noticed or
never understood to have dating consequences. It sat there for over a century,
quietly holding the answer.
WHAT IVY'S CARD TEACHES US
There is a lesson here that applies to every old photograph
in every family collection.
Always photograph both sides.
The front of a portrait shows you faces. The back tells you
who they were, when it was taken, and who they loved enough to send their
portrait to. Ivy Todman, at fifteen years old, chose to send this photograph of
herself and her younger sister to a family friend named Mrs Bell as a New
Year's gift. She signed it with her full name. She dated it precisely. She had
no idea that a century later her signature would resolve a family argument she
never knew was coming.
But it did. And she was right all along.
The photograph is Ivy Florence Todman, aged fifteen, and
Hazel May Todman, aged seven and a half. Prahran, Victoria. December 1910.
[i] Martha
Todman, birth registration 1801/1894, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[ii] Ivy Florence Todman, birth
registration 32737/1895, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry
of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified copy).
[iii] Walter
Victor Todman, birth registration 31247/1897, parents Walter Todman and Martha
Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified
copy).
[iv]
Hazel May Todman, birth registration 13749/1903, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[v] Lincoln
James Todman, birth registration 22199/1906, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[vi] Charlotte
Mary Todman, birth registration 22796/1908, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[vii] Charlotte
Mary Todman, death registration 15394/1908, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[viii]
Alma Dudley Todman, birth
registration 6626/1909, parents Walter
Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of
Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified copy).