Anyone who’s ever lost a wallet on a night out will know the absolute headache which comes from fuzzily retracing your steps and cancelling all your cards.
Often the wallet, with all it’s receipts and cinema stubs, will be lost to the sands of time and you’ll carry on with your life and eventually forget.
Imagine though, if you were to be reunited with this wallet some 30 years later – a wallet which preserved a very specific time in your life, complete with faded bus tickets and banal scraps of everyday life, especially from your formative, teenage years.
During a period of refurbishment, staff at the Ritz nightclub in Manchester have unearthed a brown leather wallet from behind a radiator – it’s believed to have languished there since the mid 1980s.
The wallet’s contents reveal a snapshot into the life of a teenage girl – a photo ID showing a pretty, short haired young woman with a bright smile and a crimped silk blouse by the name of Elizabeth Sarah Dale.
Rummaging through Elizabeth’s wallet, the staff could piece together a partial picture of her life – she enjoyed reading and culture, evident through her Cheshire Libraries and Museums card and was probably a student – suggested by a University of Manchester Whitworth Park Residents’ Association card, from the academic year 1985/1986.
The wallet also contained a payslip, 12p in change and a now obsolete, Midland Bank cheque card.
The information on such documents reveal she lived at 10 Village Close in Thelwall, Warrington, Cheshire.
Elizabeth, who would have been 18 or 19 at the time, is now believed to be about 50 years of age and Ritz staff are keen to track down the former ’80s clubber down and reunite her with the time capsule wallet.
According to Chris Mann, bar manager at the Ritz:
We were clearing out the other day because we’re having a refurb in the offices, and it had fallen down the back of a radiator – it must have been lodged there since god knows when.
Inside, it has a library card, an old Midland Bank cash cheque card, about 12p in change, a hand-written invoice, a payslip with the name of the company she worked for and a photographic student ID with an address in Thelwall.
She would maybe have been about 18 or 19 back then, so she might be in her early 50s now.
Chris added:
It’s coming up to our 90th birthday but this wallet has been here for about 30 years, so we just figured it might be nice to reunite it with its owner.
We want to have a chat with them to find out more about what they were doing in the Ritz and whether they actually remember it.
Does Elizabeth still like to dance the night away? Does she ever reminisce about her night at the Ritz as a teenager? Does she still live in Manchester or has she now moved further afield?
Hopefully the mystery lady in question will reveal the answers for herself – and us nosy folk!
Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.