Jack Gilruth's Moustache

Disclaimer: This photograph has been digitally repaired, somewhat roughly, to remove silverfish damage. 

No moustache extension or enhancement occurred during that process.

November is really Movember, the month of the year when we pull out photographs of our Hairy Mancestors, and post them to facebook in order to raise cash for men's health projects. We have been having a ball! Here is Jack Gilruth Gilruth (we know not why his second given name and surname are the same), who at the time of the photograph above, was writing to Mrs Cahill in Dargo to announce that her daughter Maude had accepted his proposal, so he was about to become her son-in-law.

And, until today, apart from that they married in 1911, that was all we knew of them.

But wait!

A further exmination of the catalogue has found that the moustache (still attached to Jack), has crossed the Tasman, and continued to flourish. (We can see it in the photo below, under strong magnification).

This photograph, from Tosca Studio, in Wellington, New Zealand, bears an inscription on the reverse "Twelve Months married Today, Jan 30th, 1912."  So once Maude accepted his proposal, they were married two months later, and moved across to New Zealand.

There is another of them in the collection, undated but older, also from Tosca Studio in Wellington. 

The moustche is surviving quite well:

After that we know not what happened to them.

Or how long the moustache continued to flourish.

But we shall think of them often.