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The picture on the left, here, is of me (many years ago) assisting my dad, who was a magician. I just discovered the picture on the right which is of my older brother, Terry (aka Lawrence) exploring the garden with my younger brother, Kevin.
This picture of a picnic on the beach (right) is a favourite of mine. Notice that some of the women are dressed up, hats and all, and others are dressed casually for the beach while all of the men are wearing suits. It would have been taken around 1923 in Plymouth at the place where the ferry used to leave for Saltash. After a great deal of puzzling and deducing I believe I've identified most of the people in this photo. I immediately recognised the man lying on his side and the woman with the goofy expression to the right of him as my grandparents, the little boy in the middle as my father, the man on the far right as Will Painter ( identified from the photo albums that I looked at with my grandmother when I was a little girl and who I now know was the half-brother of my grandfather). A cousin once identified other photos of the woman in the wide brimmed hat closest to the rocks as Sarah Painter so she was Will's wife. The large woman behind my dad looks like the picture that my grandmother had, on the wall of her living room, which she referred to as "mother". Since this is certainly not her mother, who died before my dad was born, I've deduced that the woman in this picture was probably my grandfather's step-mother. After much comparison to the only other photo and a quick check of the dates, I realised that the older man with the white goatee must have been my great grandfather, William Henry Benoy (this pinned down the year since he died in 1924). This brought me to the young woman who is snuggled up to him. If the large woman was his 2nd wife then this woman must be his youngest daughter, Beatrice [Benoy] Harvey. The little girl beside my dad would be Beatrice's youngest daughter Phyllis who was a few months older than dad. I'd already decided that the resemblance betweenBeatrice and the woman in white beside Phyllis was strong enough for them to be sisters so that makes the woman in white Sarah [Benoy] Morrison. This leaves only the two women on the far left unidentified.
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