Annie Blanche Thompson and Amanda

A cabinet card portrait of a Barbadian ayah and her white charge.

An inked inscription verso in a period hand identifies the child as Annie Blanche Thompson, born on 23 November 1904. The Barbadian woman, identified only as Amanda, is presumably the child's ayah.

According to the inscription, the photograph was taken in Barbados on 14 March 1905.

Annie Blanche Thompson was the daughter of Herbert Edwin Thompson, who enlisted in the Worcestershire Regiment in Birmingham on 23 November 1891, having previously served in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, even though he was only 19 years old. He was promoted to the rank of Corporal in 1895 and attained the rank of Sergeant the following year. He eventually attained the rank of Quartermaster Sergeant in 1909. Prior to serving in the Army, he had been a labourer.

While serving in Barbados he married a widow by the name of Annie Blanche Chadwick on 13 February 1904. Their first child, named Annie Blanche after her mother, was born nine months and ten days later. A son followed in January 1906, though he did not survive childhood. Two more boys followed, one born in Malta in 1907 and the other born at Bareilly in India in 1909, then finally another daughter, also born at Bareilly, though she only survived for a month. Herbert retired from the Army in 1912. 1n 1921 the family, including Annie, were living at Merton in south-west London. On 28 June 1930 at Raynes Park in south-west London she married a clerk by the name of Henry James Cleave. The couple emigrated to North America. Annie B. Thompson, known as 'Bea,' died in Toronto in 1962. The website Find a Grave has a photograph of her headstone in York Cemetery, Toronto. Her husband was buried with her when he died in 1971. Their son John is in the same grave; he only died in 2013.

Photographed by W.C. Harrison of Barbados.