My grandfather’s secrets
Margurite Mumford, and my Grandfather Albert Scott, Ooty & Bombay. 1930s Image & Narrative contributed by Jason Scott Tilly, United Kingdom I will never be sure if my grandfather Bert Scott, would have wanted me or anyone else to find these negatives; They were his secrets for all of his adult life. He had after all kept them very safe, hidden from the moment he left India. Bert Scott, (lower right) was my grandfather, and he was born in Bangalore in 1915. He was educated at Bishop Cottons school and he joined the Times of India in 1936 as a press photographer, where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. With trouble brewing during Indo-Pak Partition, he and his family fled and he left his whole life behind; his country of birth, India, his friends and home. Travelling with minimum luggage would have been conditional so he chose to take only the necessary in just a few metal trunks. Inside one of those trunks were several photo albums and pocket-sized blue negative holders that I came across many years later in my grandparent's cupboard in 2006, a few years after Bert, my grandfather passed away. The little blue pocket-books held as many memories as it did negatives, about 100 precious moments of reflected light captured on film of our family and of some places where they had lived, but inside one particular folded grease proof sleeve were four negatives that were cut up into single frames and they were of one particular young lady; of a Margurite Mumford, a beautiful young Anglo Indian girl. I remember one Sunday when he was alive, sitting with his photograph albums on my lap, my grandmother…
