Photograph album containing pictures of Jean Elisabeth Brill as an infant, 1937-1939. Photographs probably by 'Minie'

Photograph album, brown embossed paper-covered card cover, with 'SNAPSHOTS' embossed in gold. The black and white photographs inside consist of: seventy 8.5 x 5.8cm photographs, held in windows; six 7.2 x 4.6cm photographs stuck inside the front and back covers (three apiece); and two others loosely inserted into windows on the sixteenth and seventeenth pages. The images show Jean Brill as an infant, either as the sole subject or posed with family and acquaintances, including the likely photographer: a nurse known as 'Minie'. On the backs of the photographs the date of capture and the subjects of the image are written in ink.

Given by Anne Phillips

Given to the V&A in 2016 by Jean Brill's school friend, Anne Phillips [2016/946].

Jean Elisabeth Brill was born on 24th June 1937, in Leeds, Yorkshire. Her parents were Percy Francis Edward ‘Phil’ Brill (1896-1967), a civil servant, and Winifred Mary Brill née Hewlitt (1900-1969). As a child, Jean enjoyed reading, writing and swimming. Influenced by contemporary film and literature, she produced several manuscript stories with illustrations. She also wrote journals, producing an autobiographical work and a day-by-day account of her holidays in consecutive years. Jean attended a private school in Headingley, Leeds (which she called “Miss Davies’s School in her work) and then grammar school at Lawnswood High School. Jean did not marry, she spent her career working as a primary school teacher. Jean Brill died in June 2015.

The photographs were probably taken by 'Minie', the nurse who looked after Jean Brill when she was a child.

Jean Brill (1937-2015) was born in Leeds to middle-class parents. This album contains seventy-eight photographs of her infancy, they were probably taken by an unknown woman nicknamed 'Minie' (pronounced to rhyme with 'tiny'), the nurse whom Jean wrote about in her autobiograpy, 'My Journal' (see B.27-2016).

B.32-2016