Delicately poised with a fountain pen in her hand, 18-year-old Edith Alberta Newing looked like the picture of health as she posed for her photograph - possibly to celebrate a school graduation.
Yet just two months after the picture was taken in April 1926, the Wavertree-born teenager was dead.
Her photograph was discovered nearly 100 years later by Simon Howard, 40, who plucked it from a vast collection of old pictures at a car boot sale in Denver, Norfolk, last month. He now hopes to find out more about the young woman in the hopes of reuniting her likeness with her surviving family.
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He said: "She looks like an educated woman. She has clearly gone to the studio and had her picture taken for a reason; it looks like something that has been done to mark an occasion. Her pose is quite distinctive, and her hair is quite unusual.
"But what stood out to me was that she died just two months after the picture was taken."
The photograph bears the logo of Jordan and Metcalfe, an old photography studio based on George Street, St Helens. An inscription on the back reads: "Edith Alberta Newing, aged 18 1/2 years. Taken April 1926. Died July 22 1926."
According to census data dating back to 1911, she was born in Wavertree to John Newing, a slate and glass cutter, and Caroline Amelia Elizabeth Allen in 1907. She had one older brother, John Lancelot Newing.
The family had relocated to Caernarfon, North Wales, by the time Edith was four years old, but are believed to have returned to Merseyside later on, as both Edith's photograph and her brother's records place them in St Helens.
Simon, who lives in King's Lynn, started tracing family histories through old photographs found at car boot sales and charity shops two years ago, when the Covid-19 pandemic sent the country into lockdown.
He said: "I started researching my own family history in 2012 and that's how it all started. When the pandemic hit I thought it was something I could do that would help people.
"I would like to find out more about Edith. Her death is still a mystery to me. All we know is that she died aged 18 and a half. In those days, deaths of babies and children below the age of five was not uncommon, but at 18, it was much more unusual."
Edith's death was recorded in 1926, however, it is not known how she died.
Her brother John married Edna Lewis in St Helens in 1938 and they had three children, Edith Jessica in 1939, Ian in 1943, and Barbara in 1947.
Anyone you believes they may be a distant relation of Edith, or who knows her surviving family, is asked to email Find My Family at simonhoward11@aol.com
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