A mysterious box containing a collection of 100-year-old family photos has gone viral on Twitter.
Greg Pack, a retired graphics artist, bought an old box at Marks Tey car boot sale in Chelmsford, Essex, on August 15 for just £4, and in it found a wealth of old photos.
Greg’s son Scott posted the tale of the box and its contents on Twitter, saying: “Boxes are made to be opened, so he [Greg] did what most of us would do and peeked inside.”
My dad was at a boot sale recently and saw this battered old box. He is a fan of boxes, and boxes are made to be opened, so he did what most of us would do and peeked inside. pic.twitter.com/9pg3revsLF
— Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) August 20, 2018
The battered box contained old glass photographic plates, in “various states of disrepair” – the plates were negatives, meaning faces were hard to discern.
Greg told the Press Association: “The seller wanted £5 for them, but you always have to pay less than is being asked, so I got them for £4, silly money.”
This is what he found… pic.twitter.com/N0LGFVYCtg
— Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) August 20, 2018
Greg took photos of the negatives with his phone, then reversed the colours in Photoshop so that the original image could be seen.
When the colours were reversed, what looks like several family images were found, including a photo of a man in a soldier’s uniform.
Greg said: “I used to work in graphic reproduction so I knew what to do with them, as they are negatives I held each one up to the sky and took a photo with my iPhone. I then sent them to my laptop and in Photoshop I turned then to a positive image.
“When I saw the images I was amazed at the quality and the fact that they were over 100 years old is quite moving, to think that I was the first person to see them for around 100 years, awesome.”
Scott posted the photos to Twitter, where several users have been trying to guess the identities of the people spotted.
There have been guesses that the soldier’s uniform, pictured below, is from early in the 20th century.
As well as the photographic negatives, a list with location names – nearly all around Normandy in France – was found pasted into the lid of the box.
These do not seem to correspond to the actual plates, however, and Greg and Scott believe they might refer to images not included in the box.
Here is the list that was pasted into the lid of the box. All in English but with some French place names mentioned, we think. Could have been holiday photographs? Presumably a reasonably well-off family if so? Would love to find out more about them. Or even just date them. pic.twitter.com/sQzw4RhHtH
— Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) August 20, 2018
The thread now has over 28,000 retweets, and plenty of Twitter users have been using their detective skills to try to figure out the location and subjects of the photos.
Users have guessed that the soldier’s uniform isn’t from any earlier than 1903, but that some of the dress styles seem later.
"Henri Mabile" is perhaps a square in Rennes, France, which is just outside Normandy (@Google) It seems to me the list on the lid of the box doesn't really match the plates you found inside. It seems to describe various scenes vs the more intimate family photos.
— Tony Aiello (@AielloTV) August 20, 2018
Honfleur is in the Calvados region of Normandy. The family must have travelled across La Manche to holiday there. Honfleur is especially known for its old, beautiful port, characterized by houses with slate-covered frontages & painted many times by painters including Claude Monet
— Adrian Luty (@HailLuty) August 20, 2018
Greg and Scott have posted updates on the photos, stating that they believe they were taken in England of an English family.
Greg said: “I am hoping that the mass publication of them will lead to some identification of the army uniform. Already someone has said that it dates from around 1901 to 1909.”