Two months ago I wrote a post on the use of online image, sound and film archives for family history research (see The gifts of sound and vision, published 6 May 2016). In it I described how I’d found a number of photographs of my great-great-grandmother Emma Sillers’s pram and mail carts shops using websites like Leodis and The Card Index, and how these in turn led to the discovery of a piece of film footage showing one of them in 1898.
In response to this, a few weeks later I received a message from someone who’d come across my blog while researching an Edwardian wheelchair he’d rescued from a care home two years ago. The chair, he claimed, appeared to bear the name ‘Sillers’ on the side, and although my blog hadn’t mentioned anything about my ancestor’s firm manufacturing wheelchairs he’d wondered whether whether this could have been a sideline of theirs. After exchanging a few more messages he sent me the two photographs below, which left little doubt as to its maker.
The second photograph quite clearly shows the Sillers name, as well as (rather less clearly) their trading address at Vicar Lane in Leeds. I’d previously had no idea Sillers made wheelchairs in addition to mail carts and prams, which was an interesting enough revelation in itself, but it was also a treat to be able to examine my ancestors’ handiwork so close up. In addition, I know another of my great-great-grandparents, Hollan Horsfall, had used an ‘invalid chair’ since he was about forty, and I’m now wondering whether this could explain how his family came into contact with the Sillers clan (his daughter Dorothy had married Emma’s son Clarence in 1919). Hopefully I’ll know more by the time I get around to telling their story.
Rob's Family History Blog 