These photos are reproduced by kind permission of Melanie, whose grandparents John Samuel (‘Jack’) and Rosina (née MILLER) DUMBLETON were clearly game for a laugh in the name of a good cause. The uppermost is of their draper’s shop at 501 High Road, just south of Bruce Grove, next door to the ‘Swan’ public house (and now home to Vybes Records, vying for the title of running Tottenham’s longest-ever Closing Down sale), taken c.1900.

The lower two are of Jack kitted out as a highlander for the 1899 Tottenham Carnival (a real shame, I think, that this institution has died out, Tottenham could have given Notting Hill a major run for its money) and of Jack and Rosina in Chinese fig for another, undated, carnival.

According to Melanie, Jack’s Highland gear originally included a sporran constructed of an oven grill with a kipper attached. It was a hot day and the fish began to stink, so Rosina told Jack to take it off (she was not amused).

There was a Dumbleton’s shop at the Edmonton/Tottenham boundary; it’s uncertain whether the shop at 501 replaced this. Jack and Rosina also had a cake shop in Wembley from about 1912. Melanie’s website (see below) has a photo of another Dumbleton’s draper’s shop, numbered 52, location uncertain. If it was on the High Road, it must have been at the far southern end, on Stamford Hill.

Melanie hosts a website devoted to the unusual Middlesex surname BAALHAM .