Lucretia Dowson Gibson (1871-1954)

Lucretia Dowson Varley was born in Iowa in the United States of America in about 1871. Her parents, William and Mary, had been born in the East Riding of Yorkshire. William was a Clerk and Cashier who in 1891 was living with his family including Lucretia in Oak Road, Scarborough. At this time Lucretia was a dressmaker. In 1895 she married the photographer Frederick William Gibson. When he dies in 1901 she tool over his business. An advert published in 1900/1 for Gibson the photographer states that this ‘popular Northside photographer specialises in children, platio-bromide enlargements - artistically finished children portraiture see windows’.

Lucretia Gibson was left a widow after only six years of marriage. She had two young children to look after Frederick William (b.1896) and Elsie May (b.1900). In 1918 she married Joseph James Grinyer (1866-1939). Grinyer was from Middlesex and they moved there and it is Edgeware General Hospital that Lucretia died on 7 July 1954.