Frances’s Suitcase

Installation with vintage suitcase, 47 x 44 x 33 cm, Private Collection

Aunt Pollie Digital collage

Your Mam is not well at all, the bad weather is making her cough worse. Farnworth is just the same old place, wet and dirty.

Ada Lightfoot was suffering from asthma, and bronchitis was prevalent in the town whose air quality was very poor due to the local chemical industry and the coal fires used to heat the houses. The Lightfoot’s small rented house was in a poor state of repair. The weather conditions were so bad that Ada complained that the awful wind blew the pictures off the wall if the front door was opened half an inch. While Frances was staying with her Aunt Pollie, her mother’s health deteriorated and she was asked to return home. Ada first tells Frances that she is “bad in bed again,” then later that she has moved downstairs, and that her husband has had to wash her. Ada’s health continued to deteriorate and she died 10 years later.

In this work, I have imagined what items would have been in the suitcase Ada’s daughter Frances took with her when we went to stay with her Aunt Pollie.

Note: “Mam” is a Northern English word for “Mum” or “Mom.”