The Jersey James Bond

Join Mel and Perry as they talk to Harry Le Feuvre, Digital Access Manager at Jersey Archive.  Harry will be sharing his research into the fascinating lives into Kenneth and Kathleen Le Sueur  their collection of letters and photographs encompass their tales of distance travel, romance and possible espionage!

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Transcript

Perry (00:02):

Welcome to the Jersey Heritage Podcast,

Mel (00:05):

The Small Island Big Story Sessions.

Perry (00:08):

You are listening to Melon Perry.

Mel (00:10):

In today's episode, we are going to be talking to Harry Le Feuvre, our digital access manager at the archive. Harry will be sharing his research into the fascinating lives of Kenneth and Kathleen Le Sueur.

Perry (00:22):

A collections of letters and photographs encompass their tales of distant travel, romance, and possible espionage.

Mel (00:28):

Today we're gonna be talking about two really interesting people, and I believe, not knowing very much about it, that we have received a collection of some of their documents and photographs. So I was just wondering if you could tell us what makes Ken and Kath so interesting as a couple?

Harry (00:44):

That's right. Yeah. So, well, quite a few years ago the collection came into our sessions, but it's just one of those where back in the day we didn't have that many staff resources. We didn't know, you know, it was one of those that was just there and we didn't really know how great the collection was. And it came up in one of the staff, one of the conservators here was going through and auditing the collections, and she came across this collection that had loads of photographs, letters, diaries, and she was like, this looks like a really interesting collection. So she was the one that originally highlighted it as one that we should probably start working on. And then I was the lucky person to have to sort through this 50 boxes full of unsorted material. Wow. It's one of those things, it was one of my first big cataloging projects.

Harry (01:31):

I'd, you know, done various things before that point, but it was the first one I was allowed to get my teeth stuck into. And as soon as I like opened the first box, I just, she knew it was gonna be amazing. It was just like all of these letters between the two of them from friends and family, thousands of slides and, you know, negatives, photographic prints, albums, and I, I just, at this point, it was, it just seemed like this hidden gem that we'd just un discovered and uncovered in the archive. So at that point, I knew nothing about the couple. So search on the catalog for both of them. 'cause We, we always do a bit of research into, into them before we start. And one thing came up and that was their marriage register entry to each other in 1931. And that's all, all we had about them that had been indexed or looked into.

Harry (02:22):

So I was like, okay, not much to go on, but let's see what we've got here. And then just started working through, sorting the letters into, you know, the various bits. So sending in by groups of who sent what to who and getting them in the right chronological order. That took a big while. 'cause As I said, there are tons of boxes, so you gotta look through all of these things first. And then slowly but surely I was working through and started to unpick this story of their lives. And it was amazing having to go, gone from nothing to knowing enough to write. I could probably write a book on them. Wow. Going from that to, you know, from nothing to all of this. And we've only got small amount of their story, but there's enough there to, to tell you so much about their lives.

Mel (03:12):

Wow. So interesting. And how did we, how did we acquire this collection? Like, was it, it was obviously donated to Jersey Heritage, but who? Buy,

Harry (03:20):

See, I, I'm confused by the origins of that. 'cause It's like they, it says it came from this address that I don't think any, any of them were connected to, but it was just found, I think in a house clearance. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And it was just brought in and the person who brought it in was like, this is too valuable to, to just get rid of and I don't want to get rid of it. But that's lucky.

Mel (03:41):

There's and that's how and that's how it came to Yeah, yeah. Into our possession.

Perry (03:45):

So why did these letters start? Why did they start writing these letters if they were, they were married

Harry (03:50):

So they span a, a fair period. So they, the early ones starting in about the twenties, but the earliest ones are more about when Ken was training. So he trained to be an engineer. So he was educated at Vic Vic College in the 1910s. And then he trained to be an engineer engineer. And to do so, he had to go to London and he trained with what was then called the Eastern Telegraph Company and also the Western Telegraph Company. They many iterations on are now called cable and wireless. But he went over to train as an engineer. And it was during this time that he started writing to Kathleen. I know that they knew each other from a young age. They are distantly related. There's like, I think great-grandmother and grandmother and grandfather were brother and sister. So they are cousins of sorts, which is no surprise when you are cataloguing a jersey collection. Absolutely,

Mel (04:47):

Yeah. We all know that to be true.

Harry (04:48):

But they obviously knew each other from a young age. 'cause There's a photograph of Kathleen when, I think she must have been nine or 10 on a horse in what I learned to discover was Ken's like massive photograph collection. So he's obviously taken loads of photographs. She's in that, so they knew each other from a young age, not sure when their relationship started, but certainly by like early twenties they were in a relationship sort. So he is right into her. But the main bulk of the collection is from like the t late 1927 onwards. So the couple got engaged in the summer of that year and then he went off having trained as an engineer. He went off across the Atlantic and went to work in originally Argentina. And then shortly after that he moved across to the Cape Verde Islands just off the coast of Africa.

Harry (05:42):

And the letters literally start from the moment at Tilbury Docks when she has just waved him off. She talks about having waved him off at the docks and it's, it's really emotional actually. Like they're like, she's really, you can, you can tell there's like raw emotion in that she's just waved him off. I dunno at this point whether she knows that she wouldn't see him for three years. But basically the letters cover the whole period of their engagement, which was three years until the point that he returned to be back in the uk. And then they met up with each other again in 1930. So there are about 300 letters exchanged between the pair of them. And they cover that, that time period. That time, yeah. That they were engaged but were separated by thousands of miles. Well

Mel (06:28):

That is obviously in itself so lovely that we have those emotive pieces in our collection. But do, do we have an idea as to why he left, why he went off to these countries?

Harry (06:39):

Yeah, so as an engineer with this western telegraph company, part of I think the condition of that, from what I've read into it, it was that you had to be posted at various points all over the world, given the nature of telecommunications at that point, it wasn't, you know, a case of you could be based there. They literally had to set up the infrastructure in order to send these telegraphic communications all around the world. So he would've been one of the people that helped set up and manage the, and oversee the administration of these telegraphic companies in these various outposts all over the world. So there were loads in South America and Asia, few in Central America as well. And he dots around many of these countries, especially around South America. And also, yeah, Cape Verde Islands where he spends most of this period in which he's writing the letters to Kathleen.

Perry (07:31):

And how old is he at this point? Because obviously we, world War I has just happened, if I'm correct, you said it was around 1918.

Harry (07:38):

So he would've been, Ken would've been 25 when he moved across to what were originally Argentina. But when he first got separated from Kathleen over this period, he did have like various placements before then. 'cause You can see he, there are like various albums and other series of negatives in his collection where they're labelled from these various places that he did. So he obviously had some postings before, but this is like the first sustained one where he is away for a long time. But yeah, he would've been in his mid twenties. He was two years younger than Kathleen, so. Oh,

Mel (08:14):

He was younger than her.

Harry (08:15):

Yeah. So, so he was born in 1902. She was born in 1900. Wow. So but had both been in their, yeah, mid, mid to late twenties when they had this sort of critical time away from each other.

Mel (08:27):

And did they have any children?

Harry (08:30):

They didn't, no. That was one of the things. So one of, when you're working with collections, especially photographic collections, there's obviously a big issue around copyright. So we were trying to establish obviously at that point, at that point and it goes normally goes down to children, but at that point we discovered that they didn't have any children. There are references to this fact that I think they would have liked children. 'cause Certainly in her Kathleen's letters to Ken, she does talk about her friends having had children. She herself was a school teacher as well. So she trained to, at the time that Ken was in South America in Cape Verde, she was trained to be a music teacher. So she grew up with clearly a passion for music. There's various like certificates in the collection of her passing various music exams. It seems to be piano. That was her, yeah, her thing, her forte piano forte. Wow. Nice. Yeah, if you don't mind the pun. Yeah. <Laugh>. And she, yeah, so she was traveling and so she was a teacher and worked in, in York not quite as exotic as what Ken <laugh> ended up doing, but she was working in Yorkshire, she worked in Somerset and in Plymouth as well during this period. And so, yeah, she was close with children. She's always referring to this fact. As far as I'm aware he didn't have children.

Mel (09:53):

Is there anything, and I mean this might be a very personal question, but is there anything in the letters that describes them having a desire to have any children?

Harry (10:04):

Certainly Kathleen brings it up. Like she, yeah, as I say, talks about her friends having had children recently and references to an ideal future where maybe one day we will have kids together when you return. But unfortunately that that was not the case for one reason or the other.

Perry (10:26):

These photograph collections, what, what are these, what are they, what's he photographing? What's he interested in?

Harry (10:32):

There's a lot of things. So I think the photographic collection is like a microcosm basically of his life and his interests. So was obviously interested in botany and geology 'cause there's lots of photographs of flowers and rock formations and all sorts of things that, to be honest, I didn't know what I was looking at when I was looking through these things. But thanks to Ken, his record keeping is unbelievable. Like each, he had his own reference system for all the photographs. So each one was like labeled by the year and the, the series that you'd take in the photographs. And then each of those was numbered and they all matched up to a notebook that had notes about every single slide, a negative that you'd taken. It's the most detailed collection. Like normally when we get collections like this, you just get a box of like, you know, thousand, 2000 prints and it's just nothing.

Harry (11:27):

There's no information. But his record keeping was, was crazy. So there's lots, there's lots of photographs of, yeah, botany and geology and all this, obviously these interests and passions that they had. There's occasionally like photographs of buildings that are just unidentifiable, but there's some cryptic acronyms next to them and I didn't really know what those were. But as I started to work through the collection more, I found out a few more things about Ken that I did take me by surprise. And it really opened my eyes to what an interesting character he must have been.

Mel (12:03):

What is, what do you think? So what do you think that he was up to?

Harry (12:07):

There were some photographs that have these, these initials of buildings that are clearly taken in London. So at some point in the fifties he moves back to London having had various posts after his work as an engineer in the Western Telegraph company. He works for the foreign office in various placements, including during the war. He, he's based in the Caribbean working on like the decoding of messages from what it looks like. And so he's moved back to the UK and he's taken photographs of buildings that are some of those that you, you look at and you think like, that's vaguely familiar to me at some point that you've seen in some film or, or something along the way or some sort of news story. And then I was looking at the, what the letters could possibly stand for and I finally, I was like, put tapping into Google, you know, what the, the letters stood for.

Harry (12:59):

And, and eventually I came across the building. I was like, that's the building. And I looked at the building and that was basically the headquarters of the Secret Service for a very short period of time. Wow. That's very, and and at this point I'm like, why is he taking photographs or how would he have known about this building? And it, it started to make me think about what he was up to and given his, you know, experience working all around the world, building up these networks and connections with people all over the world and his interest in telecommunications and telegraphy. And then moving on to, you know, the second World war period where he's clearly based in Caribbean doing something with codes and telegraphs and decoding messages that came to me that he might possibly be in that world. That this secret world

Mel (13:51):

Well his, well by the sounds of how he keeps records of things, he's obviously a very skilled man who knows exactly how to keep records. So that already indicates that he could be dealing with something that's pretty top secret.

Harry (14:05):

Yeah, absolutely. Like he was completely meticulous with everything that he went went about. And if you just look at a photograph of him, you'll see he looks like the kind of guy Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Mel (14:17):

Yeah. That sure.

Harry (14:18):

You know, might be involved in these things. He's very prim and proper, very stiff upper lip. Yeah, very smartly dressed. He's got his pocket square in his, in his suit. He looks the obviously

Mel (14:31):

Very presentable.

Harry (14:31):

Yeah, yeah. Very, very, very presentable.

Perry (14:35):

Research your family history at the Jersey Archive. Dive into our vast online catalogue or visit in person. Our expert staff await to guide you on your journey. We are open Monday to Thursday, nine to one and then two to five subscribe today. So you said we don't have much that might necessarily imply he is involved in this, but is there anything in the archive or in the collection that might hint towards this

Harry (15:03):

As you might expect someone who works in this world, there's not, he didn't leave much behind other than these clues that we have talked about just now. There is, however, in his set of papers, there are some papers writing to his time at the foreign office that, so these include like some Christmas cards for example, that were sent from colleagues within the foreigner at foreign office. So you, we know that certainly he was in the foreign office. But within these set of papers I found a copy of a letter that he is in his hand. So it's in his writing and it sets out the dates and details of his government service between October, 1939 and September, 1942 prior to his transfer to SIS. So I didn't know what SIS stood for necessarily. It sort of rang a bell. You do a quick search of it and it comes up with a special intelligence service, which is basically what MI 6 become. So he is certainly within that James Bond world.

Perry (16:10):

Yeah. Jersey's own James Bond,

Harry (16:11):

Secret Spy. Yeah.

Mel (16:13):

Wow. That is actually really interesting. That must have made you well excited when you'd come across that.

Harry (16:18):

Yeah. Really, really exciting. Yeah, I mean I just, I didn't know what to think really. I thought it's one of those where you, you looking at something and you just have a hunch that he must have been involved in something but there's nothing there. And then slowly by surely, as I was working through a collection, I was like, do you know what, it really could be something. And then that letter was just like,

Mel (16:37):

Wow. Wow. Yeah,

Harry (16:39):

Definitely was involved in that. In that world.

Perry (16:42):

Have you managed to find anybody that remembers this couple in Jersey? Or is, is there anyone that used to know these people?

Harry (16:51):

So if you were to search their names, there's not much that comes up. There are a couple of things that come up in the Societe bulletins where they obviously were members, but a little while ago we, when this, when I was close to finishing this collection, I did, I'd done all the letters by this point. We, we put a little article out in the, in the local media and as a result of the article I did get a phone call from someone who lived in the island and they said that they remember Ken, that Ken was a friend of their father's and it confirmed basically a lot of the stuff that I had in fragments about his time in the Caribbean during the Second World War. And none of that information was really in that article. So I know that there are people that know more about his story. The problem is he died without any children in the 1980s, so quite a long time ago now. So the number of people who would've actually remembered him,

Mel (18:00):

It's

Harry (18:00):

Not many anymore. Very few. Yeah. So someone out there will know some information. I know that someone I went to school with is actually related to his wife. So he says that he remembers vaguely his parents talking about Ken and Kathleen

Mel (18:19):

And if you are a spy back in those days Yeah. What were you spying on? Like what were they doing?

Harry (18:26):

So I mean, it would've been the Cold War period, so I mean Right. Okay. To be honest, it's like the,

Perry (18:32):

The codebreaker,

Harry (18:33):

It's the time, it's the, yeah, it's the time of the spy really. Like the whole James Bond thing is based on this period in time of course. Right. Where they've got, you know, people all around the world trying to find out information about the enemy, whatever the enemy, whoever the enemy, whoever they

Perry (18:47):

Are is. Yeah.

Harry (18:49):

Yeah. 

Perry (18:49):

You got like Soviet allied places in South America and stuff, don't you? That may be going <crosstalk>. Yeah.

Mel (18:55):

'Cause they always end up being, this is a little bit off on the tangent here, but I just recently watched a thing on Netflix about my grandparents war. I dunno if any of you guys have seen that. Right. Basically Kira Knightley and John Snow Kit Ha Harrington. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, they go on this program and basically Kit Harrington finds out that his granddad was a spy and was in the Caribbean in Barbados. So when you just said that to me, I was like, well they all working together. Yeah, yeah. Well was there a Jersey guy out there as well? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, that's is,

Perry (19:26):

Is information about spies like ever released by the UK government

Harry (19:31):

Or anything? I don't know. I'm really not sure on this one. No. Like even if like, if it, if there was more in the collection, I would've had to like <laugh> ask someone before I started catalogue it. Whether we, it's yeah, like release it or it'd be closed records, but there's nothing in it that is, you know, incriminating or gonna Right. You know,

Perry (19:51):

<Laugh>, it'd be interesting, we could actually like, you know, look in released exactly

Harry (19:56):

That classified document. There probably is stuff in the national archives that has more about his service and there are, there are records. So there are records within like the cable and wireless archive that show that he was certainly like a member of staff there that we know that for sure if the records that we had didn't confirm that. So he obviously is working within that world. And you know, various records in the collection showed that he worked for the foreign office in one capacity or the other. So he is working in this diploma environ or overseas sort of environment. 'cause He, he was the second ambassador to Mexico City for the, for the British government. So he's, wow. He's, yeah, he's quite a high level guy, but he's, he's one of these people that will go, you know, spend their lives doing these really high profile important jobs but you just wouldn't know about them and who they are. Well maybe that's why, you know, if

Mel (20:56):

He was

Harry (20:57):

Involved in that. Exactly. I think if you knew more about him. So he

Mel (20:59):

Wasn't doing his job very well if we all knew exactly what he Yeah. Up to.

Harry (21:03):

Exactly. I think that's

Mel (21:04):

It. So that is, but that's cool how like, there's like almost this intuitive process when you get a collection that, you know, there's something really cool and interesting within it, but it's just finding those nuggets when you're just like, oh wow. Like my gut instinct was right on it. So that must be really interesting. So Harry, you mentioned that you had written an article for Bailiwick Express about Ken and Kathleen. So can you just expand a little bit on that?

Harry (21:29):

Yeah, sure. So among the many letters in the collection, so in addition to the ones that they wrote to each other, there was one letter that was written from ne who it turns out was Nelly Mossop. So this one was written in December, 1932 and she received a letter and it was quite apologetic in tone because it obviously had taken a while for this letter to be responded to. And in it she thanks Kathleen for the very good snaps that were sent to them by Ken, Kathleen and writes, Edward especially was very interested in pictures of the DOX. I think you knew that the captain was the man who shot Edward down in the North Sea during the war. That is all the information I have at that point, Chris. I'm like, what's a DOX? What does this mean? Yeah, who's Edward? 'cause At this point, I wasn't even sure who Nell was.

Harry (22:28):

It just had this letter from Nell, loads of letters in the collection like that it just says Nell or a nickname like tick some or like, who is this person <laugh>. Like I've never like, and it took so much research to realize that was actually like Kathleen's aunt and then other people were going by their middle names. And some people only went by abbreviations other names. But that's another story entirely. So at this point, yeah, I dunno anything about, I dunno what a DOX is, this cryptic allusion to a, the captain who shot down Edward during the war, like is, did Edward survive? I don't know. But he says that he was thankful for receiving the, the images. I thought, what is going on here <laugh>? So I started looking into it and Edward Mossop was Nell's husband and he had served in the RAF during the First World War.

Harry (23:18):

And on the 31st of July, 1918, he and his crew were conducting a routine, a routine patrol off of the UK when they were attacked by five German sea planes. And it forced them to land airplanes into the North Sea. And it's the reference to the North Sea. So right at this point, I think we we're getting somewhere here. Yeah. So two of the crew died, but Edward and two others, ma miraculously survived. Despite more fire allegedly coming from the, the German plains whilst they were in the water. And it turns out that the pilot who was responsible for the attack was this chap called Fredrich Christiansen. Friedrich Christiansen was one of the most prolific flying ACEs for the German Germans during the First World War. And he has like a number of records associated with him in terms of the number of planes that he, British planes that he shot down during the war.

Harry (24:17):

And so it turns out basically that Edward had been shot down by this guy. At this point I'm still non the wiser as to what he has got to do with this picture of this plane or this picture of this DOX rather. 'cause I don't know at this point what A DOX is at this point. I start going off to a tangent, so I'll go what's a DOX? I'm googling all sorts and trying to search and find what this was. Turns out a DOX is a Donia DOX and this was allegedly meant to be like the next big thing in air travel. And there was this whole massively promoted journey that was captained by breed at Christiansen. Wow. Who after his service during the war then moved into the Claude Dornier company and he was chosen as the pilot to lead this maiden transatlantic voyage from Germany to New York, which began in the November of 1930.

Harry (25:19):

So Christiansen, this highly decorated flying ace then becomes this captain of this big flying boat that's got, you know, really luxurious. There's reports of it having these highly furnished cabins and t typewriter in every cabin. Wow. It was meant to be like really luxurious experience. He becomes this captain and just so happens to be the captain that flies across the Atlantic and they stop at various points before landing in New York. And one of these stops was in Rio where having heard that the plane was arriving and having an interest in planes, Kathleen and Ken go down to go and see the arrival of this plane and clearly take these snaps and these are the snaps that Nell refers to and thanks them for in her letter. Wow. So, and then she says, thank you for the plane. Did you know that basically the guy who captained that was the one that shot Edward down?

Harry (26:17):

Well, did we find out who Edward was? So Edward was Nell's husband and he was ed, his name was Edward Mossop. He's, his story is actually quite tragic in the sense that he was, this incident with him being shot down happens on the 31st of July, 1918. Just two weeks later, his younger brother, Stanley, who was also in the RF, he died near Sheba when his sea plane crashed. After the tail came, colla tail plane collapsed. So in the space of two weeks, you've got two brothers who are both shot down. One survives, one dies. And somehow you've got this connection in this letter that's written some 13 years later talking about the arrival of this plane. There's this connection between the, the two people. Stanley himself, the, the brother who died, he, he had become just three days before he was shot down. He had become the first Jersey man to land a plane in Jersey. So he had been making a flying visit to see his parents and his brother Edward, who was on leave in the island having been shot down by Christiansen less than two weeks earlier.

Mel (27:40):

But that's amazing how a few sentences in a letter then leads you to this amazing story that then gives you a complete picture to all the people involved from like the word Snell. A DOX. Yeah, yeah. <Laugh> the North Sea and then

Harry (27:57):

Maybe, maybe you should be a spy. I was just

Mel (27:59):

About to say Harry should be a spy.

Harry (28:02):

Yeah. I wouldn't be able to tell you if I would <laugh> <laugh>

Speaker 5 (28:07):

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Mel (28:26):

Is there, what else is there in there about Kath? Because is it just the letters between the two of them that, that she has kind of like

Harry (28:34):

Hers, not just the letter? So, so most the the letters were yeah, are between the two of them, but then most of the other letters in the collection are letters that she received from her friends and family. So there's a big set of letters in there and you find out more from her in that about how she was as a character as well. So whereas she is quite, I'd say open in how she talks to Ken. Like you do see his softer side, but you still see, you can see their personalities in the letters between them. That's so cool. Like he's still quite pri and proper in how he writes, but she is very much, you know, very own heart on exactly heart on her sleeve. Yeah.

Mel (29:15):

My kind of woman.

Harry (29:16):

Yeah. Yeah.

Mel (29:17):

That's so nice that we have that story between them and that you can actually work out what someone's like from, from a, a piece of paper and a letter, but yeah.

Harry (29:28):

Yeah, she, yeah. So Kathy was a, yeah, she was a teacher. But she with Ken had like this massive interest in natural sciences and natural history and geology and botany as well. So they, when they were in London, they were part of the London Natural History society. So they went on trips all over the UK and there's loads of photographs of their various trips. They even went to the Doman that was taken from Jersey to

Mel (30:00):

Now James

Harry (30:01):

Gordon's Heley on Thas James's

Mel (30:03):

House's house. Indeed.

Harry (30:04):

Yeah. So they went there and there's some really great photographs of them sort of up, up and on the, the Dolmans and looking around Oh that's amazing. With Dr. Arthur Moore who was, you know, quite a big name in the sausage jersey jerseys as well. So they, they ghost to these various strips including to that one.

Mel (30:22):

Wow, that's so interesting. We'll be releasing a podcast on the Henley on Thames Dalman. Oh. So it's a nice little nugget everyone A little exciting nugget for next episodes. Sorry. Carry on. Right. Yeah.

Harry (30:33):

And she was a, yeah, they were both like lifelong members as well. So they, when they retired they would spend some time in in London after they returned to the uk. So they lived in Upper Norwood, which is quite a posh area of London. They quite ea quite obviously were well to do so. Ken does obviously come from money. It's quite clear from the outset. I mean he is taking photographs from a really young age on equipment that wouldn't have been readily available to people. Yeah. Especially on the scale that he is taking photographs from a young age. So he develops his interest in photography in a young age and you can see like he's in the photographs was portraits of him and his family. They're all very smart well to do people. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I've since looked on the property registry. There are tons of contracts exchanged between where, you know, he owned property and there's people paying him rent rents and all sorts.

Harry (31:29):

So they're obviously really well to do. So they were in living in London and then they returned to Jersey for their retirement in 1969. And they moved to Moreno was the name of the property on old, old Beaumont Hill. It's actually a really nice letter in the collection where they talk about why it was named Moreno. Which I, it is one of those things when we do our, what's your street story talks, we always try and find out, you know, the reasons why things are called something and it's really difficult to find out that information. Yeah. So when I found this letter, I was really excited. So they named it basically after this area in Brazil where he had works or near where he had worked when he lived in Be Brazil in the thirties. So they named their property in like as a little nod to this his

Mel (32:20):

Time. Yeah,

Harry (32:21):

Yeah. So they moved back in 1969. And then just seemed to have like dived straight into the so and so. They, there's so many references to the work that they did and going on trips and, and things in the collection. Did they write any, any articles on the bulletin or anything? As far as I could see, no. But which I was a shame when I found that as well. 'cause I, they, they obviously really involved members. I think Ken was the secretary of one of the sections of the, of the society for a period of time. And they were good friends with Dr. Arthur Moron and Tom Attenborough, these, these people who were really involved in the, so the society at this time. But Ken as well as, as Ken Kathleen was also really involved. So I, I don't like to always talk about Ken in that way 'cause I was, I sometimes see when I, I don't want to see Kathleen as like an add-on to his life.

Harry (33:21):

'Cause She had her own life as well and was really had her own interest. So she was a really passionate horse rider. There's so many photographs of her riding horses and she loved flower arrangements. There was all her arrangements that that she did in the various church down the island. Big church goer as well. So she was obviously important part of her life as well. And yeah, as I say, saute team members. So they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary would've been in the April, 1981. And then by this point, sadly ca Ken was quite clearly unwell. It is slightly documented in the photographs because he took a lot of the photographs. But after a certain point she's obviously takes over the photography and though she's not bad at photography, it's not quite same. It's a level, it's a different style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you'll see Ken in some of these photographs and he, he doesn't look like the, the same man, the same man. He's sort, sort of slight of a shadow or shadow of his former self, which is really sad to see. But it's also important, I think that that is recorded because it showed that like behind this exterior he was, you know, just another guy. Yeah. Like when he's just Ken. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Mel (34:36):

<Laugh>. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. enough, you know, that's great. But that's really nice that we have a full record of like their life together. Like even from like them and their youth all the way up to, I'm guessing the kind of, the images kind of stop when Ken passes away, right? They

Harry (34:59):

Do really, there are some photographs in the collection, but like, I mean the scale, the, I can't even quantify the scale up to this point that it, it covers about 70 years Wow. Of his life and the photographs he took. It's, it's an, it's enormous collection. So there's 5,000 slides, there's at least 5,000 slides. There's almost the same if not more negatives. And then the prints that come out of that as well. There's, you know,

Mel (35:25):

So have you had to digitize all of these things?

Harry (35:30):

So not all of the collection is digitized. We've, I, we took a decision that because there are lots of photographs in the collection that are taken all over the world just for a resource perspective, we just saw it pragmatic to digitize the photographs that are taken in Jersey. Yeah. Or like a real tangible link on. And even though the other ones are really important for his story. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for that. When I say that there's over 5,000 images have been digitized as a result of that and individual catalogs, they're all, they're available to see and all the other ones are catalog, but they're just, you know, as a group of photographs as opposed to each individual photograph.

Mel (36:10):

That's such a, that's even that in itself as a mammoth job, right?

Harry (36:13):

Yeah, no, it was yeah, it took, took quite a while to do. I mean I'd probably say I've worked on that collection in, among the other things that I do at, at the archive. I probably had about six, seven months on that collection. Wow. It was a really, really big one. 

Mel (36:31):

Carl, you must feel like you really know them though. I,

Harry (36:34):

I, I do. Yeah. I have this weird connection to a couple that I never could have met. So Ken died in 1981. There's a chance I may have bumped into Kathleen 'cause it's amazingly she lived until she was 99. Wow. So she died in 1999. She was born in 1900, she died in 1999. And when she died one of the, at the <inaudible>, they named an annual lecture after her. Right. In recognition of a, a service over year's. There's, there's a, actually dunno if it still happens, but certainly in the, in the notes there was, they talk about the, the annual lecture in, in memory of Kathleen.

Mel (37:12):

So that obviously goes to show how much she was involved and how respected and grateful they were for her efforts. That's really, really lovely.

Perry (37:19):

So Harry, if anyone else has got any collections that sound a bit like this collection we're talking about today do you want them to bring them in?

Harry (37:27):

Absolutely. We'd love that. So if there is anyone Yeah. That you, you feel you've listened to these stories thinking well my relative stories are interesting if not more interesting than Can, and Kathleen's, please don't hesitate to bring them along to Jersey Archive and we can ha we'd be happy to take those in and we'd be able to look into them and tell the stories like we have done of Ken and Kathleen today. Yeah.

Mel (37:51):

Well thank you very much for your time, Harry. It's a pleasure. Thank

Harry (37:54):

You for having me.

Perry (37:55):

Thank you, Harry. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to click on the subscribe button for more.