WILDE: Reconstructing a deconstructed family album

 

I 'got into' all this genealogy and picture-identifying through my books. Trying to track down stories and pictures about the actors, actresses, singers and other theatre folk about/of whom I was writing. And that is still my main focus. My first morning dip into ebay is always a search for the latest theatrical photos and folk. And it doesn't always lead me where expected!

Today this fellow responded to my call for 'cdv actor'

Well, he was thus labelled by his French vendor. Fortunately, he or other had labelled the photo, front and back, will his full, flowing name, and my suspicions were quickly confirmed. No actor he. 

Reginald Pearson THACKER (b Liverpool 1852; d Leamington Spa 23 December 1901) was the second child of Robert Pearson Thacker, newspaper proprietor in Exeter and later Liverpool (Liverpool Standard) and his wife Betsey or Elizabeth Catherine née Wilde.  The vendor has hopefully suggested that mama was of the Oscar Wilde family. Robert (d Birkenhead 4 July 1895) gave up newspapering and became and oil and tallow merchant and chemical manufacturer in Litherland and Toxteth Park. There were three children of the marriage: Florence Katherine (b St Sidwell, Exeter 1848; d Bournemouth 2 October 1919) who stayed at home with mother, Reginald, who seems to have started out clerking but faded into being a 'gentleman' and fancy dress, and Ernest Robert (b 26 February 1860) who fades away as a child in France.  

Lets put the full stop to Reginald first. He actually married (1885, Emily Kate Morecroft) but things were evidently in some way not what they should have been ...

End of story? Perhaps. But not end of article. For, on my unbendable principle 'revisit the scene', I visited the French store whence came the 'actor' photo and found ... a whole dismembered photo albumn belonging to the Thacker-Wilde family ...

Here's Reginald, aged 30  

And here is sister, Florence Kate 

Here is papa the chemical manufacturer

and mamma Kate née Wilde (d Birkenhead 18 July 1900)

and, goodness, here is little Ernest. Photographed in Cannes? Perhaps he didn't come home? (Post scriptum: he didn't, he died Cannes 25 April 1873, aged 13)

So, is this the Thacker family album?  No. It is from the Wilde family. Because there are more photos still, and they are labelled, in a very shaky hand, with reference to William Gilley Wilde, his brother John, and above all, Rodney. 

Rodney was Colonel Edward Thomas Rodney WILDE (b Bloomsbury 24 July 1842; d South Kensington 15 November 1920) the son of said William Gilley Wilde (1808-1890) and, thus, a nephew of Kate Thacker ..   The 'Colonel' (VD) was of the volunteers (Tower Hamlets Rife Brigade), and this troop seems to have taken up much of his life.  One wife, no children.

And here are his sisters ... Adelaide Elizabeth (b Henrietta Street, Bloomsbury 5 January 1844; d Regunter Rd, South Kensington 8 November 1919, twice) and Helen Mary (b Bloomsbury 16 July 1849, Mrs Richard Hemming) with her husband

And here is the man himself ... WGW! With wife Elizabeth Miller née PROSSER .... who is labelled on the back 'my mother' ...

My mother. Choice of four. The Colonel, unmarried Adelaide, married Helen or the fourth (surviving) child, Eugenie Annie Catherine (b Bloomsbury 16 April 1856, d Brondesbury 26 November 1940, Mrs Hutchinson Stewart). 

So, who was William Gilley Wilde? The Nantesian vendor calls him a 'theorist'. Oh dear. I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds mumbo-jumboish!  My first sighting of him is in 1839 where he is seemingly chucking in farming in Herefordshire 

From 1828 to 1841, he is a tanner 'of Ross'. And bankrupt in 1843. And again in 1851? Then suddenly he is 'gentleman', 'proprietor of houses'.  And living in St John's Wood ...

Oh well. 

I wonder why the family album found its way to Nantes . Eugenie and her bank manager husband spent some time in Melbourne, Australia (three sons) .. but Nantes?

Just one more peep to see if there are any more leaves from the dismembered album ...

Yes! Just one.

This is Annie née Ferguson, wife to John Thomas Wilde, younger brother of WGW. 

Widow, eh. So the inscription in post 1877 ...

I shall watch for more ...

Addendum one. Thank you Gina Ambridge ...!