As depicted:-

I knew what this was because something similar had been handed down in my own family.

It seems to have been a practice among nurses or others caring for the wounded of the Great War to keep a souvenir autograph book or scrap book for the purposes of engaging (or even diverting) their patients. In one sense we might call it Occupational Therapy nowadays, but there is rather more to this item in the historic social document, which results.

This one was kept by one Ethel Smith. The entries and sketches are variously talented, humourous, flirtatious, basic and topical and they reflect the manners, skills and mindset of a generation with whom most of us are no longer directly acquainted - for example, the vignette of a Tommy signing off a badly punctuated letter "...... may God preserve you from your everloving husband.........". 

Some entries are mildly cheeky but they retain a certain innocence and courtliness, as befitted the last children of the victorian era - a style which I don't believe wholly outlived the Great War.

The album comprises roughly 60 made-up pages with over 20 sketches drawings and paintings, poetry/doggerel, gimmicks and maybe half a dozen attributions, which may be researchable, which I have never pursued. A couple of entries specify name date and place of the man's wounding in 1915 or 1916. An unrepresentative selection of the entries is shown in the pics and they do vary in interest and quality. 

Several of these entries are connected with 2/12th London Regiment and in one case the name, Harry, appears repeatedly, as does another, Terry. As it came to me, a wedding photograph is tucked into the back of the album, which gives me the notion that the original owner of the album may have married one of these men.

The condition is quite good for the age but the album is well handled, shelf-worn and the binding is becoming loose. A child's hand has defaced one page in pencil.

An absorbing thing to spend half an hour with, with echoes of the men who passed this way.

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