I have a photo of my great grandmother, Bertha (Damerell) Ball, about as close to home as she could be...in the doorway!
Bertha was born in the nearby village of Charleton, in Devon, England, the eldest of six children. At the time of her marriage, she and her family were in Southampton, Hampshire, where her father was a 'marine store dealer'. Her first three children were born there (she had 10 in total).
Bertha lived through several inventions and discoveries: the telephone, the phonograph, the electric lamp, the car, the gramophone, the electric oven, the zip, the motor-driven vacuum cleaner, aspirin, the aeroplane, teabags, cornflakes, and colour photography (although the one I have is in black and white). I wonder how many of these she had in her house and life?
She also lived through the Boer Wars (two of her sons died in WWI in France), but doutbless enjoyed Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, when she was 40.
Bertha died in 1909, aged 52, of acute lobar pneumonia.