A Charming Original Group Of Twenty Photographs Of A Female Fruit Picking Party, Accompanied By A Manuscript Poem From The Same Source Titled "In Praise Of Picking Plums" Picking Plums 2023,Manuscripts & Documents

PICKING PLUMS. A charming original group of twenty photographs of a female fruit picking party, accompanied by a manuscript poem from the same source titled "In praise of picking plums". They are contained in a Marriott's Photo Stores, Ltd paper wallet, tear to the rear wrapper. The photographs measure 13.5cm by 8.5cm and 8.5cm by 6cm. ~ The poem, in eight verses, reveals that these date from the 1940's, and the women were most probably land-girls during the second world war. It notes "the drone of the great Stirling bombers [introduced in 1940] high up in the blue summer sky." Although the poem refers to ‘he' all the pickers in the photographs are women, with an elderly couple, possibly the farmer and his wife, and several men who load the baskets onto a horse or cart, and then a train wagon. Names on the fruit baskets are W.Green, Lewis, and Smith, and the labels on fruit boxes are for Wm. Clarke Ltd. The original photo envelope has Willingham, Cambs., written on the back. Willingham, on the southern edge of the fens, was noted for its plum orchards, the fruit mainly destined for the Chivers jam and preserving factory at Histon, but also sent to the Midlands and the north.