Ponga Pages reach out &
draw your guests
into your family stories

Sometimes when building a Ponga page or a Ponga Storyboard there might be gaps in the details, or missing pieces.  The people in the photo are never the entire story. There's always a back story.

You may know something specific about your ancestor, or maybe discovered something that no one knew, or talked about. And you want to add it in and share, show and tell.

I discovered that one of my great granduncles, Joseph Longworth, was listed as an idiot from birth on a UK census from 1871. And he ended up dying in a workhouse at the age of 34. I want to know more... 

Bring some historical facts into your Ponga Pages

The Workhouse

Workhouses were where poor people who had no job or home lived. They earned their keep by doing jobs in the workhouse. Also living in the workhouses were orphaned and abandoned children, the physically and mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly and unmarried mothers.

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The conditions were harsh and treatment was cruel with families divided, forcing children to be separated from their parents. 

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Once an individual had entered the workhouse they would be given a uniform to be worn for the entirety of their stay.

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Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates. Opportunity knocking for those seeking to exploit others.

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Reading the 1881 Census for the workhouse in Bolton, many were able bodied people with no place to live. Mill workers, spinners, weavers. Others, those suffering some kind of mental illness are listed as charwomen and washerwomen. The life there would have been less than ideal.

I created a Ponga Storyboard slide for that back story, to fill in some historical details. No one in any of these photos is family, at least not that I know of. What I was after was to draw my guests in, pull them into the story of what life must have been like in the late 19th century England. Apparently quite difficult. Especially for someone like Joseph Longworth.

One key positive about using Ponga to create an interactive family album, one that brings it out in front of the others,  is that you can update it as you go. Find something that needs updating...something that needs to be removed maybe, and it's just a simply click, flick or tick.