This photo was taken not long after their mother Wilhelmina had died in child-bed at home on Lipperkerk street. On 28th May 1906 at 4.15 in the afternoon,their just born little brother Johannes Aloysius passed away and an hour later their mother died.
The months leading up to a baby's birth are usually a time for both hopes and fears. As the 1900's began, maternal mortality was appallingly high. The tragic danger of a mother's dying in the first minutes of her baby's life was real and present, as it was unfortunately in our family that time.
A mother in labour in 1900 could scarcely have dreamt of the advances this century would hold. Aspirin, produced at the very end of the 19th century by Bayer, was the hot new technology.