What happened to Patience?

This cabinet card by the Wellington (New Zealand) studio of Connolly and Herrmann shows a young woman, perhaps looking slightly unhappy, in a typical late 1880s dress with high collar, tight boddice, rounded shoulders and bustle.


The studio set up is fairly rudimentary, showing a two-panel backdrop crudely painted with wood panelling, ornamented column and an open window, showing some vaguely tropical plants outisde. The centrepiece is an extraordinary home-made contraption, looking like something between a tree trunk and a bird's nest, the latter acting as a receptacle for a fern of some kind. To complete the furnishings, two rectangular fur rugs - one looks like sheepskin, while the other may be possum fur - have been placed on an unpatterned floor.

James Connolly and Richard Hermann (also spelled Herrmann) both worked as photographers in Wellington in the 1880s. Connolly was in partnership with Pierce Mott Casneau on Lambton Quay from c.1882 until 1885. He then collaborated with Richard Hermann, the studio being referred to as either Connolly & Co. or Connolly & Herrmann, until that partnership was dissolved in 1889. Wise's New Zealand Directory for 1890/1891 lists the firm of Connolly, Beauchamp and Price with a studio on Lambton Quay, but this was probably also fairly short-lived, since it was reported to have been taken over by William Henry Scott Kinsey in 1892. Richard Hermann and his wife Louisa arrived in New Zealand (from Birmingham, England) in 1880. After 1889, they established their own studio in Cuba Street. Richard died in 1892; his widow Louisa M. Hermann took over and continued to run the business until at least 1902.


The reverse of the card mount is a fairly typical mid-1880s design, with diagonal "signature," coat of arms, the use of several fonts and ornate scrollwork. An inscription in ink pen on the reverse, apparently contemporary with the photograph itself, identifies the subject as, "Patience Amanda Pinhey" and states that the portrait was "taken in N.Z. aged 22 yrs 1889."

I eventually managed to track down Patience Amanda Pinhey through the indexed census records at Ancestry. She was born in late 1867 in the village of Loddiswell, South Hams, Devon, England, the eighth of ten children of farmer William Henry Pinhey (or Pinhay) and his wife Susan. In 1881, the census shows Patience working as a domestic servant in the household of farmer Richard Pinhey and his wife Betsey, presumably relations of some sort, in the nearby village of South Brent. Her parents had moved to Middle Bradleigh Farm, where her father was working as an agricultural labourer.

Some time between April 1881 and 1891, the family appear to have emigrated, as I can find no evidence of them on the UK Census. From information provided by Graeme Ardern, who is distantly related to the family, it appears that Patience's eldest brother Nelson Albert Pinhey (1858-1926) was married at Ippleton in Devonshire and emigrated shortly after, arriving in Wellington on board the early steamship SS Aorangi on 15 September 1884, after a journey of six and a half weeks. After a few weeks "they settled on a farm called Fernridge, at Wangaehu, Masterton."

I presume that the remainder of the family also went to New Zealand at about this time, from the existence of this portrait, taken in Wellington. It seems quite possible that Patience was married not long after the date of the portrait, and her surname would have changed, but what happened to the rest of the Pinheys? It was a big family, so there must be some sign of them somewhere.

William Henry (or John) PINHEY b. c.1825 Diptford DEV m: Susan (surname unknown) b. c.1830 Stockingham DEV
- Nelson Albert PINHEY b. 1857 Diptford DEV
- Dora Anne/Anna PINHEY b. 1859 Diptford DEV
- Alice PINHEY b. 1860 Loddisham DEV
- Valentine PINHEY b. 1862 Loddisham DEV
- John Southwood PINHEY b. 1863 Loddisham DEV
- Stanley & William Oscar PINHEY (twins) b. 1865 Loddisham DEV
- Patience Amanda PINHEY b. 1867 Loddisham DEV
- Reginald PINHEY b. 1869 Loddisham DEV
- Susan Southwood PINHEY b. 1871 Loddisham DEV
- Matilda PINHEY b. 1873 Loddisham DEV

It is possible that the parents later returned to England, as I found some potential death index entries on FreeBMD, as follows:
Deaths Dec 1900 - Pinhey William Henry, aged 74, Kingsbridge R.D., Vol 5b Fol 127
Deaths Mar 1908 - PINHEY Susan, aged 77, Totnes R.D., Vol 5b Fol 131

If any readers out there are able to find this family after 1881, I would be most grateful to hear from you (Email).

References

Auckland City Libraries Photographers Database
Knight, Hardwicke (1971) Photography in New Zealand, A Social and Technical History, John McIndoe, Dunedin
Knight, Hardwicke (1981) New Zealand Photographers, A Selection, Allied Press Ltd., Auckland.
Roger Vaughan's Date an old UK Photograph
Transcribed Indexes to the GRO Birth, Marriage & Death Records from FreeBMD
Indexed 1841-1901 Census Records & Images from Ancestry

Back from a month's break

After a month's break from blogging on Photo-Sleuth I've returned, having completed several other long outstanding jobs, as well as having started several more projects, and hopefully with some fresh ideas. One of the things that happened during my absence is that Blogger have made some changes to reduce the number of spam blogs, and for some reason, the robot that does the checking of blogs has decided it doesn't like this one. Anyway, I've asked for a review, and hopefully they'll get me back up and running, and able to make blog postings, very quickly.

To help with keeping up the flow of new ideas, please feel free to email me and send images of your interesting photos for inclusion and discussion here!

Camping out - a Sunday family visit to a military encampment?

Birte Koch is building an interesting and useful web site Album 1900 which presents various aspects of the history of everyday life in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th Centuries. Photographs, drawings, images and text are used to illustrate the changes in fashions, trends and accoutrements of ordinary people. German and English texts are provided. I'm sure that I will be using the site in the future to help with dating photographs or identifying accessories.

Birte sent me images of the front and reverse of a cabinet card by W. & A.H. Fry of Brighton, asking if I could shed any light on the subjects and setting.

Here is a very interesting cabinet card by Fry of Hastings. I think it is the 1880s. Some kind of camp picture. I'd love to know what kind of camp this may have been. I have no idea.

David Simkin has an extensive history of the Fry family of photographers of Brighton (Walter and Allen Hastings Fry) and London (Elliot & Fry) on his excellent (and growing) Sussex PhotoHistory site, with numerous examples of their work. These include two galleries of images, one of which is a cabinet portrait of an unidentified woman with a negative number 35428, dated at approximately 1883. This is very close to the negative number on Birte's cabinet card (35192), suggesting that they were taken at around the same time.


The card mount has a very similar, although not quite identical, design to one produced for Derby photographer W.W. Winter and used from c. 1883-1886 (Type XV).


The clothing to me looks to be to from around the mid-1880s, an estimate with which Birte agrees, but I'm not sufficiently skilled to be able to provide an accurate date based on that factor alone. I note, however, that the young man seated on the ground and the young boy standing between the man and woman are wearing Scottish kilts, a Glengarry hat, and a tam-o-shanter. This suggests to me that the family is of Scottish origin. The woman seated on a chair appears to have a folded parasol on her lap.


The tent is of particular interest to me. I have seen photographs of tents of almost identical design, and white or off-white in colour, used in military encampments from the late 1800s until the First World War. Indeed I have a postcard photograph (above) from around the turn of the century showing a large number of such tents arranged in lines in fields at Shorncliffe, near Folkestone, Kent, England. This is where my grandfather trained with the Canadian Expeditionary Force before going to to France during the First World War.


I have seen images of close-up photos of these tents, showing an almost identical circular wooden floor as that which can be seen in the Fry photograph, on the right-hand side. In that image, a similar tent can be also seen in the upper right background, indicating that it was probably part of a bigger encampment. Although I am sure that these cone-shaped tents, or bell-tents as they were termed, were not exclusively used by the military, I believe it very likely that this was part of a military camp. Bill Alexander, a member of the CEF Study Group, made the following observations in this post on the CEFSG Forum:

Just a comment about the ubiquitous "bell tent". These have been around for ever, and were still in use as late as the 1970's. I remember several "sleep overs". The tents had a wood floor and the sides rolled up. I remember being at cadet camps in the late 60's early 70's, and there were rows of bell tents. If I remember correctly some of them were actually dated circa WW1.

Another CEF Study Group member, John, posted a photograph in the same thread, showing an informal group of CEF soldiers in First World War style uniforms relaxing outside a similar bell tent.


Interestingly, once I started looking for pictures of tents of this era, I found no shortage of images in my own collection of old family photographs. The first of these, shown above, is of an unidentified soldier in uniform, seated outside a white canvas bell tent, and with a similar tent in the background.


The second, from the same group, and therefore probably taken at around the same time, is of my grandfather Dirk Smit (1895-1985), standing in the entrance to a bell tent, with several other soldiers seated in various leisurely poses. This was while he was doing military service in the Dutch Army around 1914-1915.


The third photograph is of a group of recruits in "A" Company of the 36th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force including, at front left, my great-uncle Hendrik Jan "Harry" Schipper (1883-1917). It was probably taken during training at Camp Rutherford, New South Wales in the winter or early spring of 1916. While the tent behind them is of a cottage tent design, rather than the bell, it shows a very similar wooden floor, raised a few inches above the ground, and with a shallow drainage trench surrounding it.

My interepretation, therefore, is that the man with the bowler hat and cane is a soldier, but dressed in civilian clothing, perhaps on a Sunday, while receiving a visit from his family. The camp seems to be semi-permanent, as the occupant has gone to the extent of hanging some substantial decorations on the wall, two of which may even be photographic portraits. The third, central one looks more like a plate. To his left one can see what appear to be a couple of cooking pots and pans. There also may be some books on a table at the back of the tent.

While the photographer may have travelled some distance to take this photograph - even to Shorncliffe, whose use for military purposes dated right back to the Crimean War - it seems more likely that it was a camp closer to Brighton. There was a military camp located at Seaford, not too far from Brighton, during the Great War, but I don't know when it was established.