PEGGY NAINBY
Do-It-Yourself
by Raffele Caputo
Marjorie Nainby, affectionately known as Peggy, was the sole offspring of Amanda Carne, a dressmaker, and Frank Nainby, an engineer. She was born on 28 December 1898, [1] in the family home at 7 Crown Street in Millom, a village in Cumberland, England.
Marjorie’s journey into a career in photography commenced in the latter part of the teens or early 1920s in Walsall in England’s West Midlands, where she and her parents had relocated. At the beginning of 1920, a Walsall studio, Kindler & Co., advertised for a young lady to learn the trade,[2] and it is quite plausible that this marked Marjorie’s inauguration into photography.[3]
However, the course of events took a turn in 1921 when the family applied for sponsored immigration to Australia, drawn by the presence of a maternal aunt who had earlier immigrated to Tasmania. With a job lined up at the Cadbury factory in Claremont, they arrived in November 1922, and established their new home in Glenorchy, a suburb south of Claremont. [4]
The family’s immigration papers[5] reveal the challenges that beset Marjorie in securing employment within a photographic studio. By approximately 1926, during a period when her father was between jobs, the pair embarked on a venture by setting up a studio in their Glenorchy residence.[6] Within a few years their work, covering local events, began to be published in Tasmania’s main daily newspaper, The Mercury.[7]
Marjorie worked alongside her father until her wedding on 22 January 1929,[8] though it is likely that she provided assistance whenever the need arose. Her father continued the business until around 1949.
ENDNOTES
[1] Birth Certificate, 1899/194 in the Sub-District of Bootle in the County of Cumberland, England.
[2] The Observer South Staffordshire Chronicle, 28 February 1920, pg 12.
[3] The 1921 Census of England and Wales, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). Accessed via Find My Past, 7 March 2023. The 1921 UK Census was taken on 19 June 1921 and lists Nainby as working at Kindler and Co.
[4] Nainby, Frank and family-M9/221. SWD4-1-230
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “A Heavy Oat Crop”, The Mercury, 8 October 1929, pg 10; “A Veteran Working Mare”, The Mercury, 9 January 1930, pg 3; “Homing Scoieties’ Record Race in Tasmania: Pigeons Take the Air”, The Mercury, 20 October 1931, pg 12; “Junior Amateur Cyclists”, The Mercury, 8 October 1934, pg 10; Removing Dangerous Level-Crossings On Main Road”, The Mercury, 27 January 1934, pg 12.
[8] Name Indexes, Marriages, Libraries Tasmania, 1929/484
