The temperance movement was already declining in the UK in 1925 as the US experimented with Prohibition. In the photo above, John Grantham, the Sheriff of Newcastle, doesn't look happy about attending a temperance festival -or being photographed on a carousel horse. His wife Violet, however, seems to be having a good time. She would later become the Sheriff herself, and then later became the first woman Lord Mayor of Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne.
In the grand scheme of things, 100 years is not that long ago. My grandmother was in high school, and had not yet met my grandfather, who was ten years older. In a gallery of painstakingly researched photographs, we get a glimpse into the lives of people 100 years ago. Some were, or became, famous, like John Scopes who went on trial that year for teaching evolution. Some were caught up in the events of history, like the boxer who made a living in Europe until the Nazis arrested him in 1940 for being Black and American. And many just lived their lives and left their legacy to the people who loved them.
Eleanor Chiles (standing) was crowned Princess Shenandoah at the 1925 Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia. Nine years later, after she married and had two children, she died of a short illness at the age of 28, only a few days after mother's death. Read her story, and those of a few dozen other people of 1925 at Kuriositas.