Basic HTML Version

|  | Table of Contents |  | View Full Version

Page 39 - pp-Suter-Miscellany
P. 39

    have been renting space in the next door garden?  And
                                  was  there  a  similar  shed  in  the back  garden  of  no.10
                                  Highweek Road?  And if so, were both sheds used?

                                  Even if mounting took place entirely within the houses
                                  at no. 5 and no.10 Highweek Road, there was seldom a
                                  large number of people living there until late in Suter’s
                                  mounting career.  Daisy was still single in 1911, and
                                  did  not  marry  William  Peirce  until  1919  (William
                                  previously  lived  in  inner  London,  married  to  Daisy’s
                                  sister  Elizabeth,  who  died  in  the  “Spanish  Flu”
                                  epidemic  of  1919).  Exactly  when  they  moved  to
                                  Highweek Road is unknown: whatever the case, Suter
                                  had something like three decades’ worth of mounting
                                  time  in  a  relatively  uncrowded  house  (if  indeed  the

                                  mounting took place indoors at all).

                                  In  Microscopical  Mounts  and  Mounters,  Bracegirdle
                                  comments on Suter’s mounting activity:

                                         “If one ever saw 10 Highweek Road, it was to
                                         wonder  how  all  this  could  ever  have  been
                                         produced  and  stored,  while  he  was  living  with
                                         his sister and her family!”

                                  But for around 30 years of Suter’s mounting career, his
                                  sister Daisy had no family, there were not very many
                                  people living at Highweek Road, and in any case back
                                  garden  facilities  probably  supplemented  Suter’s

                                  mounting space.

                                  Mounting and money

                                  Helen Reed’s recollection is that there never seemed to
                                  be much money around at Highweek Road.  Richard’s
                                  mounting  business,  despite  prolific  output  over  some
                                  decades,  cannot  therefore  have  brought  riches  to  the
                                  household.  On the other hand, his father’s bookbinding
                                  activities, along with Richard junior’s school teaching,
                                  and  later  mounting,  would  not  have  left  them  in
                                  poverty:  they  never  employed  servants,  an  economy
                                  compared  to  many  households  of  the  time,  and  at
                                  various  times  one  or  other  of  Richard  junior’s  young
                                  brothers also brought income to the household.  While
                                  never affluent, no.10 Highweek Road therefore seems

| 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 |