When’s the last time you wrote and posted a letter? If you can’t remember, the museum has a collection of beautiful letters and postcards that may inspire you to pick up a pen.
On Saturday 6 May, Subiaco Museum is hosting a free, family-friendly letter writing workshop from 10am to 12pm, where participants will have the chance to write and send a hand-written letter or postcard.
To coincide with this event, museum staff have prepared a display of a collection of postcards that were sent between James ‘Jim’ Henry and Lillian Lucy Dennis, who got married in September 1910.
Jim and Lillian lived at 58 Coolgardie Street in Subiaco. They sent postcards to each other for birthdays, anniversaries, and occasions like Easter and Christmas.
The collection includes 128 postcards. Almost every postcard includes original poetry, such as:
“It’s the same of tale but it’s always new;
I’ve kept the same in my love for you;
I say this every year that goes;
There’s no difference at all that anyone knows;
And so I’m glad I married you wife;
It will always be so to the end of my life.”
A humorous postcard from Jim reads,
“To my dear wife…from her expensive husband.”
The last of the anniversary cards was sent in 1946. Jim died in September 1947 aged 82, and Lillian passed a few years later, also aged 82.
The collection of postcards is presumed to have arrived at the museum via relatives of the couple.
If you’d like to stop by the museum to view the collection, find their opening hours here:
https://www.subiaco.wa.gov.au/museum