Early Travels?

Perhaps one of Constance's first memories of travelling away from home was during the Second World War...

The earliest information about the family comes from a group of letters written by Constance Davis's mother Esther to her sister Rose during the Second World War, beginning in early 1941 and ending in 1943.  Constance and her mother, with Harry and his wife Lilian, have moved out of Birmingham to Hereford, leaving Rose in Birmingham.  Esther describes their search for accommodation in Hereford, mentions that Connie is working in munitions, and confides in Rose about her distress at not being able to cook Yiddish food.

Travel Companions

In 1951, she visited Paris; this was the first of many trips abroad, and the large collection of holiday photographs in the archive include trips to India, Thailand, Tenerife, Israel, and Switzerland, often with her close friend Frances Cohen.

As well as the holiday photographs, Constance’s archive includes a large collection of pictures of family and friends, some dating from the nineteenth century.  Apart from Frances Cohen, who was like a sister, other close friends included Ben Tossman, some ten years her senior, and her cousin Dorothy Gillman, whose papers are catalogued as MS 2525.

Paris in the Summer

Constance kept several travel journals, her trip to France was her first time abroad:

"Arrived in Paris 6pm, feeling rather tired!..."

Constance in Pisa

Here we see Constance in front of the leaning tower of Pisa. Today Pisa is a cheap flight away, but we must remember to keep her travels in context, and travel would have been both more difficult and more expensive.

Which makes her wide travels all the more fascinating and adventurous.

Constance In India

Again getting to India is no easy feat; how many women of her age and of her era can boast such broad travel experience? Constance is right in the centre of this photograph, on her left is close friend Frances Cohen.