When I turned to R/Genealogy all I had was the name Ophelia RHS Stuart and a google search that had turned up a ‘Ophelia R Stuart’ who had died in Lanchester in 1915. It seemed like it must be her. I’d guessed that Ophelia must have been born between 1880 and 1900 from looking at the dates in the collaged pages, even back then the name failed to appear in the top 200 names for these decades.
Shortly after posting to Reddit I had a reply, someone with significantly better internet detective skills than me had found Ophelia RHS Stuart born in Scotland in 1896 in St.Nicholas, Aberdeen. Not only this but they had discovered a second Eccentric Scrapbook had been sold on Ebay.
The other book
The other book had sold roughly around the same time I had bought mine. I wondered if the seller had been at the same antique event. This second book had sold well over the bargainous price I had bought my book for. I emailed the seller a few times to ask if they could share my details with the buyer of the second book, I was sure that someone willing to pay over £100 for a scrapbook would have loved to know more about the creator as well. Sadly I haven’t heard back. This is partly why I have started this blog, if you are reading this and you too are the owner of an Eccentric Scrapbook then please get in touch! I’d love to exchange images of the pages.
Thankfully the listing contained a generous collection of photographs, showing the same, patiently clipped, carefully arranged mixture of branding and medical related scraps as my own copy. This book however appears to have more war related images, I imagine it might therefore be the later of the two books.
I wondered just how many books Ophelia had created, and where the others were – had they survived as well preserved as these two books had?
A few pages from my copy of the Eccentric Scrapbook. Some of the brands appear multiple times though out the book. The owl logo in particular appears to be a favourite of Ophelia’s. It appears that Ophelia was interested in the illustration and design of the logos and would often cut out the brand name to create a negative space which she filled with coloured paper. Tartan shows up frequently in the compositions, perhaps showing a homesickness for her hometown of Aberdeen, or perhaps because her relatives still living in Scotland would send her scraps for her collection.
The book is crammed full of interesting scraps, far more than one girl could have possibly collected by herself, Ophelia must have had quite a collective of relatives and friends sending her clippings. It seems that a vast majority of the imagery comes from medical related products, presumably from her father.
One of the things I was most intrigued to find out was what the RHS stood for. Having found Ophelia’s birth record, it was still not entirely clear, the H had me stumped. Through asking online forums I had a whole lot of guesses to go with, but personally, although it’s maybe the stranger of the options I believe that her name was Ophelia Rosalind Harryann Stephenson Stuart.
Born February 16th 1896 in Aberdeen. I imagine it was a pretty unusual name for the time and location. It appeared that Ophelia was an only child of a doctor and a dressmaker. All of the medical related scraps were making sense now.
Now I had a thread to pull and suddenly I find I’ve lost an entire Sunday to trawling archives, squinting over aged cursive handwriting and buying copies of historical documents. The more information I found the quicker I found the next source, it was addictive, but sadly it wasn’t painting a happy picture.
As I stared at my laptop screen, the image I had built in my mind of an introverted but eccentric victorian/ turn-of-the-century lady who studied medicine and was a prolific painter and sketchbook keeper fell apart. Ophelia had died in 1915, aged only 19.
Saddened to learn of Ophelia’s shortened existence, I realised how lucky I was to have picked up her book. It surely was at least a couple of year’s work to create and she couldn’t have had time to make many.
It seemed that Ophelia had left Aberdeen and relocated to Lanchester by the time of the 1911 census, where she was recorded as a ‘student’ aged 15. She was also registered as Rosalind rather than Ophelia. I wondered if the embossed Eccentric Scrapbooks were a gift from a relative who chose to use her full name and if she herself preferred Rosalind.
Only a few years later Ophelia R. Stuart was listed among the dead of October -November 1915, followed shortly after by her father John in January 1916.
Her mother Sarah died many decades later in 1956 in Edinburgh, which explained the book ending up at an antique fair in the Capital. I thought about how precious these scrapbooks must have been to Sarah after Ophelia passed. Ophelia must have spent hours selecting and curating the cuttings for each page. Looking at the pages, you can see her eye for detail, for layout and composition and the the creative personality of the Eccentric Scrapbooker.
I sat back from my screen and opened the book, browsing the pages again. How strange that I felt such a connection to a girl who had passed away over a hundred years ago, a girl who would have been ages with a great-grandmother I’d never met, a girl who despite being the end of her family line was remembered over a century later.
Even though I had so many details, her name, her parents, birth and death, I wanted to know more. Something that was concretely Ophelia not just a statistic in the census or a name in a list of the dead. I wanted something that told me who she was. The book already told me so much but I was hooked. I wondered if a photograph of her even still existed.
Ophelia’s mother passed in 1956 with no other children to leave her daughter’s books to. It appeared that her belongings must have been passed to another relative if the two books were to only surface in 2018. The antique dealer who sold me the book provided no further details of the origin of the books. Perhaps they came from a house clearance of one of Ophelia’s cousins. I feel that I’ve hit a block with my research, I’ve reached the end of all the threads I could find to pull, but I hope to find more.
For now, the book itself has much more to reveal. The logos Ophelia collected are already painting an image of her life, her father’s medical background is clearly there. Many of the logos have had the brand name cut out, making them hard to identify, but I’m sure that with further detective work I can find out more about her.
After the initial rush of information found about Ophelia, I seem to be running low on leads. A few promising trails came to nothing and frustratingly my attempts to reach out to the seller of the 2nd book have fallen on deaf ears.
However I have found out the following information…
Death and Burial
Ophelia died on the 18th October, 1915 of Pulmonary Meningitis (TB Meningitis) and was buried in Burnopfield a few days later. Her Father Dr John Stuart was buried alongside her on January 14th 1916. The location of their gravestone is unfortunately not recorded. Many thanks to the Vicar and the volunteers at the St James, Burnopfield church for checking the records. I’ll probably visit the church at somepoint to see if I can find the gravestone.
Multitalented
On her death certificate Ophelia is referred to as being a student of music, which surprised me – new mission is to find out what instrument(s) she played.
A Medical Family
Announcement of Dr Stewart’s Death
Ophelia’s father, Dr Stuart, left money to his wife’s brother, James Fowler Tocher, after his death.
£1208 in 1916 would be roughly £103,000 in today’s money
James Fowler Tocher was a celebrated chemist – another health related professional – which explains why there are so many medical products in the scrapbook. Her father was a doctor, the aunt who lived with them was a pharmacist and her other uncle, Robert, as also a chemist.
Ophelia’s Aunt Eliza, who is registered as staying at the family home in Tanfield during the 1911 census, was noted to be a ‘dispenser’ on the form and a ‘laboratory assistant’ on her death certificate (she died in 1917).
Previously to starting this project I’d been under the impression that antiques dealers were history buffs who made their interest a paying hobby/ career. Given this rather romanticised idea of the job I really thought that the two dealers involved with these books would have loved to know more about the books that had been under their care. However getting information from these sources has failed to turn up any information in one case or a response from the other (four emails and a direct message on Ebay – I think anymore might count as harassment). My initial assessment of my book was that some pages had been excised and that they had potentially been resold separately due to them perhaps containing something of higher value than the rest of the book (‘A Penny Black?’ wondered a friend). However, as I sat staring at the book as I have so many nights – looking for a hitherto overlooked clue, I noticed that the same number of pages were missing from both sides of the book. Then noticed that the remnants of the cut off pages were of much higher quality paper than the main pages. It appears that Ophelia had cut out the original pages of the book, perhaps feeling that her style had developed since this earlier book, and stitched in the pages from another book that she obviously felt warranted the leather bound cover. This made me smile – I had the complete book! There were no other pages to trace, what a relief. It also fits the image I have in mind of Ophelia – a very meticulous, precise kind of person, such a perfectionist that she would cut the cover off of a lesser book to house something she thought represented her work better. It’s a familiar feeling, as the tower of half started sketchbooks in my study will testify to.
New Lines of Enquiry
A few items on my to-do list
A reddit user suggested looking into the man in the photograph featured on ‘The Other Book’ – surrounded by stamps, as this might be a penpal or romantic connection.
The book features many references to global exhibitions – perhaps her father was a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company.
Researching individual brands featured in the scrap.
If anyone has any suggestions for new lines of enquiry or has any questions regarding Ophelia or the book, please feel free to get in touch via the comments.
Who Was Ophelia RHS Stuart? 