“My grandmother is the young girl in the nurse’s uniform. Her family were shopkeepers in Bradford. She trained as a teacher and married a young man - my grandfather - who had come from a similar background but who had trained as an industrial chemist.
“In 1922, when they were first married, my grandfather got a job running a chemical factory in County Wicklow, Ireland. An IRA man was reputed to have died on their kitchen table of his bullet wounds - but that might be just a family myth…
“Their daughter - my mother - was born and lived over half her life in Ireland. She got married and had four sons before divorcing and moving to England, and spent the last part of her life in a small Dales town close to Bradford. Full circle, eh?
She never showed any sign of wanting to dress up in soldiers clothes though…”
- Donald Lush
Has the face of the chap on the steps been enhanced ? He looks positively spooky!
No the picture is as scanned, not much adjustment, from the print in my possession. Remember that film emulsions (this was more likely a glass plate) recorded skin tones differently in those days and were not sensitive to some colours. My problem with the guy at the back with the moustache is that he looks a lot like Gordon Brown and I am afraid I might be related!
It was quite common to do this kind of gender-changing photos for fun around ww1