Sepia Saturday 127: Everyday life in Victorian photos

I haven't got off to a very good start with my return to Sepia Saturday, having missed last week's edition, but hopefully I'll manage to submit this week's in time. Alan's choice of image prompt depicts a vibrant, busy market scene at Ballybricken Green in Waterford. The photograph was taken by A.H. Poole in 1910, and is full of people, animals and character.


My own contributions this week are a carte de visite and two other mounted photos of similar size, but trimmed. All three are from an album that I purchased a few years ago on eBay. The carte de visite shows a man in working clothes, sturdy leather shoes and peaked cap in the act of filling a metal bucket with water from what appears to be a hand pump encased in wood, set against a brick wall. The pump looks to be fairly new - at least the casing's been freshly painted. The man's clothing is obviously not his Sunday best, and the brick wall looks somewhat decrepit.

With no photographer's details or an inscription to identify the subject, it's a little difficult to date, but I estimate it was probably taken in the late 1890s or early 1900s, a decade or so prior to Waterford market scene. I've chosen it for today's post because, even if posed, it represents something not often seen in family photos from this period, an accurate, natural and matter of fact depiction of everyday life.


The other two photographs have been trimmed to roughly CDV size, presumably to fit in the album slots. One shows a young man, again in trousers, shirtsleeves, waistcoat, leather shoes and flat cap, standing outside a stable, with a horse poking its head out. The walls of the very high-ceilinged stable look in substantially better trim than the wall seen in the first photo. There is a water trough made from a wooden barrel at lower left, with a tap for refilling it, and a cast iron grating - presumably a drain cover - can be seen at lower right.

Again there are no identifying marks to indicate the location or the name of either the photographer, the young man - or the horse, for that matter.


The third photograph is a silver gelatin print mounted on grey card with a slight fabric "grain" on the reverse, and was possibly taken some years later, although it is difficult to be more specific. It depicts a man, perhaps middle-aged, with a rather splendid white moustache, apparently interrupted while gathering in the hay. He is dressed, once again, in working clothes, but this time wearing a wide-brimmed fedora-style felt hat and carring a two-tined pitchfork.


The man stands in a field bordered by stone walls, and in the background a rural scene and collection of houses can be seen.


At the time I purchased the album, the only clue to its contents was an inscription in the front. There was not a single inscription on the photos themselves, or any annotations on the album pages. However, a good proportion of the portraits in the album were by Derbyshire studio photographers - indeed, that is what attracted me to the album in the first place.

Allestree
August 25th 1894
In Rememberance of past Kindness,
With Best Wishes from
Henry Mitchell

I had little success in tracing Henry Mitchell - it was just too common a name to be sure I had the right one. However, in February 2007 I posted images of several of the portraits by Derbyshire studios in the respective profiles on my Derbyshire photographers web site, including a CDV and cabinet card by W.N. Statham of Matlock Bridge. Some time later, I was very excited to hear from Marilyn McMillan and Betty Jane Rotteau, from Ontario and British Columbia respectively, who had identified some of the individuals in these portraits.


Henry and Ann Jane Statham
Image © & courtesy of Marilyn McMillan
Actually, an enlarged, coloured and framed version of one of the portraits, depicting her great-grandparents Henry and Ann Jane Statham, hangs on the wall of Marilyn's home, so there could be no doubt whatsoever about the identification.


Henry and Ann Jane Statham
I wrote an article about this exciting discovery here on Photo-Sleuth in February 2008. Apart from the information sent to me by Marilyn, I had done some of my own research into the family, because it turned out that not only were they closely related to the photographer W.N. Statham, but there was also a distant connection with my own family - one of the Statham photographers married my grandfather's sister-in-law, Jessie Louisa Hogg. However, I still had been unable to discover any links to a "Henry Mitchell."


Statham family of Matlock
Click image for a larger version
Then, in January last year (2011) Betty Jane Rotteau emailed me with details of a break through:

Just to give you a bit of our Statham ancestry to help make sense of this. Isaac Statham married Sarah Carline and they had 6 children who lived to adulthood. Isaac married in 1873, Henry was our gr-grandfather who you know about, Louisa and Caroline never married but lived together their whole lives, William was with Louisa & Caroline until 1911. I am still looking for a marriage and/or death for him. Then there was Clarissa. She married Henry Mitchell in 1882 and they had 3 children. I think this is the Henry who wrote the above message. From what I can figure Allestree was near Derby at that time, whether this is where Henry & Clarissa were living I don't know for sure. During the 1891 and 1901 census Henry, Clarissa and family were living in Derby area, Quarn Street and Elm Street. Their children's birth were all registered in Derby.

View Larger Map
Both Quarn Street and Elms Street are just off Kedleston Road, in a north-western suburb of Derby. In fact, both addresses are now shown as part of the same cul-de-sac, the road system having been modified somewhat over the last century or so. It is not too far from present day Allestree, which nowadays is really just another suburb of Greater Derby, although separated from it by the A38 motorway.


Masson Farm, near Matlock, Derbyshire
from Ordnance Survey One-Inch Map, Buxton and Matlock, 1947
My immediate thought was that Henry Mitchell could have been giving the album to his parents-in-law, but of course Sarah Statham was dead by that time. Isaac Statham died at Masson Farm, Matlock on 13 November 1894, less than three months after the inscription was made, and by 1901 the three remaining single children were all living at Masson Farm. Betty had an idea:

This just raises more questions. I wonder who Henry was referring to when he wrote his message. Could it have been a message to his sister-in-laws, Louisa and Caroline who took care of their father until he passed away in November, 1894.

I think it's quite possible that Henry gave the album to either Isaac Statham senior or Caroline and Louise, but most likely to his sisters-in-law. When Caroline died in 1931, the executors of her will were Frederick Lewis Mitchell and Edward Mitchell, the two sons of Henry and Clarissa. It seems very likely that either they or their sister Clarissa Zenobia, by then married to Thomas Hayes, inherited the album, perhaps along with other family effects.

That is, of course, just a wild theory. However, it would explain how photographs from Loughborough and Leicester found their way into the album, since I note that in the census records Henry Mitchell states that he was born in Loughborough. Most of the photographs are from Matlock, Matlock Bath, Chesterfield and Derby. It is important to note that there are many portraits which were taken well before the album was purchased and inscribed in 1894, so they must have been inserted afterwards. It is tempting to theorise that many of the older Derbyshire portraits could be of other members of the Statham family.


View from Salter's Lane, Masson Farm, near Matlock
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth Streetview
I am also intrigued by the possibility that the portraits of the man by the water pump, the horse hand, and the haymaker could all have been taken at or near Masson Farm. It's possible that all three may be the same man, Henry Mitchell's brother-in-law William Statham (1864-1944).


William Nathan Statham (1863-1940)
Image © and courtesy of Chris Statham
In May last year Chris Statham, grandson and great-grandson respectively of photographers Percival "Percy" Joseph Statham (1894-1977) and William Nathan Statham (1863-1940), was in touch with me. Subsequent emails have revealed that he has in his possession the family photo album of Abanathan "Nathan" Daffin Statham (1823-1874). Among other interesting items of information about W.N. Statham's career, Chris also sent this imposing portrait of the photographer in his Freemason's regalia. I am most intrigued, and the next step will be to ascertain whether any of the people who appear in the "Mitchell/Allestree" album also appear in the "Abanathan" album. In particular, my primary task will be to identify the man/men in the three farm portraits.

The other contributions for Sepia Saturday this week may not have chosen a similar theme to mine, but you can sure they will be well worth a visit.