The Watford Observer is delighted to team up with Three Rivers Museum for a series that will remind readers of some of the people who, often now forgotten, made an impact on how their neighbours lived and worked. The next in the series is innkeeper and photographer Edith Price Mayo.
Museum chairman Fabian Hiscock said: "Edith Price was born near Tottenham in 1879, the older of two daughters of Thomas and Elizabeth Price, who moved in the 1890s as a newsagent and tobacconist in Station Road, Rickmansworth. By 1901 she and her sister Florence seem to have lived ‘above the shop’, with their parents’ home higher up the road.
"Like many young women of the day, she will have seemed ‘ordinary’, but she has left us with a fine photographic record of Rickmansworth between about 1900 and 1914 - and she also ran one of the best-known pubs in the town.
Edith Price at the age of about 21 in 1900
"In the spring of 1909 she married Thomas Mayo (1854-1927), the landlord of the White Bear at Batchworth who had been widowed probably in 1894.
"A member of the ‘Olde Fogies’, a group of businessmen who combined social life with supporting local good causes, he seems to have courted her for some years.
Edith and Thomas Mayo at the White Bear shortly after their marriage in 1909
"They went on to have a daughter, Kathleen, in 1911, and a son, Thomas, in 1915: when her husband died Edith continued at the White Bear up to her own death in 1944.
The White Bear being demolished in late 1914
"But it is as a photographer that Edith should be especially remembered. At a time when photography needed time and dedication she seems to have taken many of the images now, thanks to her daughter Mrs Kathleen Bowen, in the museum’s collection and featured in the book published by the museum’s founder, Eddie Parrott, in 1996.
The Coronation procession in Rickmansworth in 1902, taken by Edith Price
"And so we have a local record of the Coronations of 1902 and 1911, of the White Bear and other scenes of the town such as the laying of the sewers, which would otherwise have been lost. Local historians are in her debt – and hope that others are now following her lead."
Three Rivers Museum has now re-opened following a significant refurbishment – details are on their website trmt.org.uk
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