Sepia Saturday 136: A Sporting Interlude

If the image prompt is anything to go by Sepia Saturday will be packed full of sporty antics this week. Not being much of a cricket or baseball player, or follower, I was contemplating that I might have to resort to including several quotes from my dusty copy of The British Academy of Cricket Manual for Gentlemen and Players. However, I came across a couple of postcard images which just fit the bill, and can therefore be a theme-follower as usual.

Unidentified group of hockey players, undated
Black and white postcard by W.W. Winter of Derby
This postcard-sized photograph is a silver gelatin print, with that characteristic partly reflective surface that does not scan well. It shows a group of 32 men and women, actually 15 males and 17 females. They appear to be members of a men's and a women's hockey team - nine of the men wear distinctive uniforms - with a few extras in suits who are possibly team coaches, managers, etc. I can only count nine hockey sticks, but presumably the rest are lying on the grass somewhere.

The reverse of the postcard is no help in dating whatsoever, as it is completely generic, with no printed words at all. The only clue to where it is from is W.W.Winter's usual signature blind stamp in the lower right hand corner (left on this image of the reverse).

The brow band, sported by one young slightly disheveled woman seated at far right, and really not much more than a ribbon, first appeared immediately after the end of the Great War and remained a distinctive feature of post-War fashion until about 1924. Many of the women in this image have hair styles similar to those described by Geoff Caulton on his British Photodetective web pages as the Great War Look. The white blouses and plain skirts worn by the women also fit that era.

It seems likely to me, therefore that this group portrait was taken shortly after the War, say between 1918 and 1922. Many of the young men pictured would not have been long back from the trenches, and such leisure time activities no doubt provided welcome distractions from the horrors of what they had experienced.

Unidentified group of female hockey players, undated
Black and white postcard by W.W. Winter of Derby
A second postcard depicting a group of 13 hockey players, this time all young women, is on postcard stock that is a variant of a a style that I have classified as Type B in my study of W.W. Winter's Derby studio, used in the 1910s and 1920s.

Reverse of Type B (variant) postcard by W.W. Winter of Derby
The fact that it has Winter's name printed on the reverse, and has no blind stamp, makes me think that it is earlier rather than later, and possibly before he sold the studio to W.H. King and H.B. Sheppard in 1910. The negative number (126214B), written in black pen on the negative and therefore appearing white on the print, by comparison with others from this studio, suggests to me that the group portrait was taken somewhat earlier than the previous one, say between 1905 and 1910.

Low pompadour, Side-swirl and Transitional hair styles
The hair styles and clothing, too, are more typical of the pre-War era. Geoff Caulton again has some good photos of the "low pompadour," "side swirl" and "transitional" hair styles which were popular amongst young women between 1905 and 1915, and examples of all three types are sported by the members of this fashionable hockey team.

Unfortunately the image is not quite clear enough to make out the letters on the uniform badge, although I can vaguely make out a possible T, D and C - perhaps it is something like Trent & Derwent (Hockey) Club? According to Wikipedia, the Derwent Hockey Club, established in 1897, was the oldest hockey club in Derbyshire.

Sepia Saturday 135: Dame Hannah and Ruddigore

A return this week to thespian themes on Sepia Saturday, and to a cabinet card portrait by Jacob Schmidt of Belper which I featured on Photo-Sleuth ten months ago.

Elizabeth Adshead of Belper, estd. c.1883-1886
Cabinet card by J. Schmidt of Belper
Image © and courtesy of Robert Silverwood
When I wrote about this portrait previously - Fancy dress or the height of fashion? - I was in two minds about whether or not the subject was wearing a costume for an amateur dramatic production, as suggested by relative Robert Silverwood. The general consensus amongst readers was in agreement with Robert, that is that it had to be a costume.

Unidentified woman in costume, estd. c.1883-1888
Cabinet card by J. Brennen of Derby
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised then, to come across this cabinet portrait by Derby photographer James Brennen a few months later, but I found it remarkable how similar the two costumes, and poses, are to each other. To me, this makes the case for them being costumes in an amateur theatrical production even stronger.

Richard, Rose (Maybud) and Robin in Ruddigore
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
With the research for a recent Photo-Sleuth article on The Mikado still fresh in my mind, I wondered whether this could have been another Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Ruddigore seems to provide the most appropriate cast of characters, even though the first date of production by D'Oyly Carte (22nd January 1887) lies towards the end of my date estimates for these two portraits.

Rosina Brandram as Dame Hannah in Ruddigore
Courtesy of Memories of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
This photograph of Rosina Brandram playing the role of Dame Hannah shows a very similar outfit to that depicted in the Schmidt and Brennen cabinets. I also found an 1892 reference to Dame Hannah being portrayed in "Quaker garb." Perhaps a reader more familiar with late Victorian musicals can suggest which other female theatrical roles might have employed such a costume?

"Your King & Country Need You" - Scarratt's Call to Arms

The Barracks, Derby, No. 993, publ. 1915
Albumen Glass Negative, by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
Image © and collection Brett Payne
This is the second of the two glass plate negatives purchased recently on eBay, both of which turned out to be originals from Derbyshire's first locally based picture postcard publisher, Frank W. Scarratt. It is not over-exposed, as the previous one was, and therefore required little in the way of digital manipulation to produce the image above, apart from inversion and desaturation of the original 24-bit colour scan. It depicts a group of young men waiting in line at the gates of Normanton Barracks, Derby, attended by a single soldier standing to attention, and with several onlookers - among them women and children - to the left of the entrance.

Gateway and Entrance, Normanton Barracks, 1915
Image © and courtesy of Picture the Past Ref. DRBY000681
This particular postcard is not listed in Rod Jewell's Yesterday's Derby and its Districts, the authority on Scarratt's work, so presumably not many examples of the postcard print have survived intact. I did find a rather inferior, unattributed version of the image on Picture the Past (Ref. DRBY000681). The barracks were built between 1874 and 1877, and became the headquarters of the Sherwood Foresters in Derby until 1963; they were demolished in 1981-1982.

Detailed examination of the posters pasted to the columns of the gateway reveals the announcement of the Embodiment of the Territorial Force and the General Mobilization of the Army Reserve, these having taken place in August 1914. I can't claim to have read all that from the indistinct scanned image, but there was enough to make out the general form of the poster and the Yanks, naturally, came to the rescue once again for the rest. I found exact facsimiles of three, and one similar to the fourth, in the fine digitized collection of war posters and postcards from the University of Minnesota Media Archive.

Territorial Force, poster 43x34cm, 3 Jun 1914
General Mobilization Army Reserve, Poster 54x41cm, 11 Aug 1914
Images © and courtesy of University of Minnesota Media Archive
Scarratt had maintained his prolific output during 1914 (139 views), somewhat reduced to 79 views published in 1915, but this was his first postcard which betrayed any sign that there was a war on. Judging from the dates of publication of the posters and the postcard's series number, it could have been taken any time from late 1914 until mid-1915.

Your King & Country Needs You
Another 100,000 Men Wanted, poster 76x51cm, Aug 1914
A Call To Arms, poster 152x102cm, 24 Aug 1914
Images © and courtesy of University of Minnesota Media Archive

Great War recruiting posters
Images © and courtesy of Library of Congress
There is another poster or signboard at the right hand edge of the postcard view. Sadly, it's not clear enough to make out anything much, but it might well be a recruiting poster along the lines of the two displayed above, of which there were a huge variety produced during the course of the war.

Initially I wondered if the glass plate was a copy negative made from a postcard, since an artifact on the image appeared as if it had resulted from a fold or crease. However, closer examination of the emulsion side of the glass negative shows a slightly darker stain over the bottom quarter.

Donington Hall and Entanglements, No. 1020, publ. 1915
Postcard by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
Scarratt produced very few views with subjects readily identifiable as having been taken during the Great War. Soon after the Normanton Barracks shot in 1915 he visited Donington Hall, Leicestershire, where the conversion of the grand building and estate into a German Prisoner of War camp, complete with barbed wire entanglements and sentry boxes, resulted in several published postcards (1006/1020/1021). Apart from these few examples, he appears to have left the coverage of wartime and military subjects to other local photographers such as W.W. Winter, Frederick K. Boyes, Pollard Graham of Derby, Albert Heath of Clay Cross, Henry Hinge and H.P. Hansen of Ashbourne, Fred Holbrook of Belper, Alfred Rippon of Chesterfield.

Sentry Box & Entanglements, Donington Hall, No. 1020, publ. 1915
Postcard by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
His production then dwindled considerably; 35 views in 1916, 33 in 1917, and a single view in 1918, and none in 1919, probably due to a combination of shortage of materials and a reduced market. When he resumed publishing in 1920, one of his first photographs was of the War Memorial in his home town, Barton-under-Needwood (1130).

Sepia Saturday 134: Normanton "Rec"

The photo prompt for Sepia Saturday this week titled, "Autriche Vienne," is a glass negative under the by-line of pioneer French photojournalist and press agent Charles Chusseau-Flaviens, borrowed from the George Eastman House collection on Flickr, a resource that I've often referred to myself. It was chosen by Marilyn aka Little Nell who has been very capably caretaking Sepia Saturday for the last few weeks while our usual host Alan was away.

Belvedere Gardens, Wien, October 1989
Image © 1989 Brett Payne
Fellow contributer Rob from Amersfoort has confirmed what I already suspected, that it was taken in the magnificent Belvedere Gardens in Wien (Vienna), which I had the good fortune to visit in 1989 and again in 1993. The wall in the background is that of the Convent of the Salesian Sisters, the dome of which is clearly visible at the right of my photo. Apart from the conical conifers in the sunken garden which have disappeared, and some extra ivy on the wall, little has changed over the last century.

Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
Albumen on glass plate negative by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
(Image reversed) Collection of Brett Payne
Just as that image stirred memories, so did the recent purchase which I have as my contribution this week, although in a somewhat different manner. Like the photograph of a Viennese woman pushing her baby in an elaborate pram through the Belvedere gardens, mine too is an albumen on glass negative, showing children in a playground and including several prams or pushchairs. There are few clues to where it was taken - although it was accompanied by another glass slide clearly titled as being from Derby - and the view seemed very familiar. Once the purchase arrived I scanned it and started wading through the few books of Derby photographic views that I own, in particular the two volumes of WW Winter Collections, Maxwell Craven's Keene's Derby and Rod Jewell's Yesterday's Derby.

Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
Postcard No. 466 by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
Image © Rod Jewell from Yesterday's Derby
It didn't take long for me to locate the image I had remembered, and my purchase proved to be exactly the same scene as that of Normanton Recreation Ground in one of a series of four postcards (Nos. 465-468) produced by F.W. Scarratt in 1911. The playground was opened on 4 September 1909, and the photographs could been taken any time between then and their presumed 1911 publishing date. The example illustrated in Rod Jewell's book was posted on 30 August 1911, with this charming message:

Dear Daddy, Thank you for your PC, This is where I see-saw. I do so like it. With lots of love, Mary.

Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
Postcard No. 467 by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
Image © Rod Jewell from Yesterday's Derby
Postcard number 467 is a similar view of the same playground, probably taken just a few minutes before or after number 466. This image shows even more prams, including a rather small one in the foreground, presumably containing a doll, but I could find no no see-saws. Jewell notes that the boy in shorts on the right hand side must have been trespassing, as this was a "girls only" playground, and the boys' one was separate.

My grandfather Leslie Payne (1892-1975) grew up in New Normanton, but by 1909 he would have been a little old for playgrounds. His younger brother Harold Victor Payne (1898-1921) was then 11, so could easily have been in the boys' section nearby, while his cousins Harry Payne (1906-1974) and Clarence Benfield Payne (1907-1982) might well have been occupants of one of the prams, perhaps attended by one of their aunts Lily Payne (1882-1968) or Helen Payne (1883-1933). It seems likely my grandmother Ethel Brown (1894-1978) or one of her three younger brothers would also have been frequent visitors to the Normaton Rec.

Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
Postcard No. 468 by F.W. Scarratt of Derby
A third postcard in the series (I haven't yet found an image of number 466) has a more general view of the "Rec," as it was commonly termed. Young trees are widely spaced on either side of a broad path, bordered by a wide expanse of lawns, and with the park pavilion in the background. The view includes several women and children out for a stroll, the former wearing the wide-brimmed hats so fashionable in the pre-War years, and a man seated on a park bench who is either lifting is straw boater to the passing ladies or shielding his eyes from the low afternoon sun.

Detail of Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
I was a little surprised at the wide variety of perambulators seen in these images, demonstrating that the ornate versions seen in studio portraits weren't necessarily just studio props.

Detail of Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
The small pavilion at the back of the playground, looking suspiciously like a railway carriage - Midland Railways' carriage works were located not far away from Normanton Rec - is probably where the mothers are sheltering.

Detail of Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
I was also intrigued by the presence of another, slightly older, boy in this photograph. I think he's getting bored with being ordered around by those two bossy girls, and is about to poke his eye out with that large stick. Perhaps readers would like to come up with a caption or explanation of their own for this playground vignette?

Detail of Normanton Recreation Grounds, Derby, 1911
Judging by the "tab" visible at the left hand edge of this glass plate negative - probably an artefact from the camera used to take the photograph - I believe this must be one of Scarratt's originals, or possibly a roughly contemporary copy made from the original for production purposes. By 1911 Scarratt had been producing postcards for only eight years, but had built up an extensive catalogue of views to rival the much larger regional or nation-wide publishers. He was Derby's first picture postcard publisher, and was in business until 1938. How an original example of his work ended up on eBay, I've no idea, but I count myself fortunate to have chanced on this fragment of Derby's postcard history.