Author: Muriel J Morris

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2023-06-26

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1039159508

When Muriel Morris delved into her family genealogy, she never expected it to change her life. As it turns out, Morris’s great-great grandparents, Walter Bentley Woodbury, and his Javanese/Eurasian wife, Marie, had been erased from her family history. Not only did Morris discover that she was 1/ 32nd Indonesian but investigating her truncated family tree led her to wonder if racism was the reason Walter Woodbury’s genius as an inventor never truly came to fruition. You probably don’t know who Walter Bentley Woodbury is, but you should. He’s the reason this book is in your hands. Woodbury invented and patented the first photographic printing press so that thousands of copies could be made from a single negative—enough for a book or an illustrated magazine. But he’s unknown. In fact, he died in so much debt that a collection had to be taken for his funeral and he left his wife and eight children £246. His obscurity is due to two factors. One is Woodbury himself—his mercurial mind caromed on to the next project, whether it was an aerial observation camera for the military or a train signal that used sound for foggy weather or paper-backed film, before he had secured the business side of his existing inventions. The second was that he and his family were ostracized because Marie Woodbury, his Eurasian wife, was visibly biracial and so were most of their children. The scientific community accepted Woodbury as an inventor, but the wider community never accepted his wife and family, virtually all of whom left England after Woodbury’s tragic death. This book tells a story that needs telling in our modern world. Not White Enough is largely dedicated to Woodbury’s career and travels, but the author also sheds some light (sometimes speculative) on his wife, their eight children, and other little-known Woodbury family members in an effort to piece together the puzzle of her family’s fascinating and often tragic past.