Have your ID ready, please

Identity is something we’re quite preoccupied with these days.  Identity theft and the issue of identity cards for the general population. And of course the ‘who do you think you are?’ generation.

For two of my ancestors, ID cards were a fact of life. Both carried them during periods when Britain was at war with Germany.  First, my father, Tom.

Tom, a policeman, had what was called a reserved occupation in World War II.   A Schedule of Reserved Occupations was drawn up in 1938 and included farmers and railwaymen as well as policemen. These jobs were regarded as vital to the country at home.  Nonetheless, Tom went to the recruiting offices of every armed service and tried to enlist.  He was turned down – because a stray cricket ball had punctured his eardrum when he was a boy and left him deaf in one ear.

This picture shows his ID card in 1940 and was really an expanded version of the normal police Warrant Card.  His white dress gloves are tucked into the choker-collared tunic of the day, which was made of heavy, dark blue serge. His hair is short (there was a rule about hair never to touch the collar) and, to my eyes now, he looks ridiculously young, although he was in fact 21 when this picture was taken. During the war, he worked in Kirkcaldy, which is on the Fife coast.  I don’t think they were ever in real danger from invasion or bombing there, but the threat must have seemed real enough at the time.

I only found this ID card towards the end of my father’s life, but the fact that he had kept it all those years showed that it was quite precious to him – he wasn’t, on the whole, a sentimental man.

The second person who held an ID card in my family was a generation back and it belonged to my father’s aunt – Annie.

Again this ID is issued by the local constabulary, but for quite a different reason.  Annie, who was my grandfather’s sister, had married a foreigner, one Laurent Storione.  In 1917, that was enough to require her to carry ID with her at all times.  Laurent was in fact French, who were Britain’s allies in the war against Germany, but he was still a foreigner and so by association, Annie could be a risk to national security.

Her dress and  hairstyle are more suited to 1900 (or even earlier) than 1917, but she was very poor and I would imagine that her clothes had to last for many years.  I don’t know whether this photograph was taken especially for the card – I wonder how she afforded the photographer’s fee.

Annie was the daughter of Thomas Cowan & Anne Brown.  She was the 3rd child of at least 13, born while her father was still in the Army. She looks fairly grim in this picture, doesn’t she, and well she might.  She’s 44 here and had borne 7 children.  Her husband virtually abandoned her for long periods of time and she died only seven years later, in 1924.  A cousin of mine said of her “She died of a broken heart but she was probably just worn out – she took to Hell’s Wine to help her too”.