Sepia Saturday 177: Let the Children Kodak, the beloved Brownie camera

Among a group of old photographs given to me a few years ago by a friend, collected by her father in New Hampshire, are several mounted prints of identical size which, judging by the clothing worn by the subjects, appear to have been taken in the first few years of the twentieth century. The prints measure roughly 2¼" x 3¼" (58 x 80mm) and are mounted on card about 4" x 5" (100 x 125mm) in a variety of colours, including white, cream, grey and green. Sadly none of these four photographs have the subjects identified, and the provenance has long been lost, so all I have been able to deduce is that they are probably from New Hampshire or Massachusetts, and that the last two are of the same person.


Unidentified mother and daughter, undated estd. c.1900-1905
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The first, rather charming glossy print is in what we would now refer to as landscape format, and is pasted on a gray and white coloured card with an embossed pattern of wavy lines and two series of loops, and with a bevelled edge. The young girl and an older woman, who look alike enough to be mother and child, are kneeling/crouching on a leaf-strewn lawn adjacent to a narrow path which curves along a hedge and behind them under the shade of a tree, and then disappears around a corner. The narrowness of the path suggests a private garden, and the fallen leaves presumably imply that it is autumn. The woman's long skirt, light-coloured blouse with slightly puffy sleeves narrowing at the elbow and pompadour hairstyle, together the girl's large-sleeved jacket and a bow at the top of her head all point to a date in the early 1900s, say between 1900 and 1905.

It's worth noting that there appears to have been some light leakage, either in the camera or during film removal, causing a wavy band of over-exposure - or fogging - along the top edge of the print. The photographer has chosen a good viewing angle so that the sun, to the right of and slightly behind the camera, and already fairly high in the sky (so probably taken in the late morning or early afternoon), casts some shadows on the subjects's faces and clothing, illuminating them with relief rather than flattening the tonal variation.


Unidentified girl with dog, Undated, estd. c.1905-1915
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The second photo, in portrait format, is also marred with a little over-exposure along the upper left-hand edge and in the lower half of the image, although the fact that it is not just confined to the edges suggests that it may be due to a poor choice of lighting angle, rather than careless handling of the rollfilm. The mount is dark greenish-grey coloured card (it looks greener in the scan than in reality, due to my enhancing the rather faded image) with a neatly printed white rectangle framing and drawing attention to the print.

This teenaged girl wears a long skirt and a pouch-fronted top with a sailor-style collar, the broad lapels tied at the front, and a large bow at the back of her head. Although still from the first decade or two of the twentieth century, I suspect this dates from a little later than the first photo, say between 1905 and 1915. She is standing by a staircase leading up to a clapboard house with wooden shutters. A creeper growing up the side of a pillar on the edge of a verandah has very few leaves, so perhaps this is was also taken in autumn. The dog appears to have been caught in mid-scratch, but it's in the middle of the over-exposed bit, so even if I did know more about dogs I probably wouldn't be able to identify the breed.


Unidentified woman and shrubbery, Undated, estd. c.1905-1910
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
The next two portraits show the same young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties to early thirties, posing amongst palms, ferns and succulents, probably originating from a much warmer climate. Despite the external view of a series of second-storey windows in the background, I have come to the conclusion that both snapshots were taken in a conservatory or glass-roofed courtyard, as there is plenty of light coming down from directly above, but it looks too well manicured (one of the potted plants even has a label) to be outdoors. Besides, she appears to be dressed for winter weather, rather than the warm conditions necessary for the cultivation of such fauna. Perhaps this accounts for her slightly unhappy demeanour - the humidity in there is causing some discomfort.


Unidentified woman and shrubbery, by undated estd. c.1905-1910
Silver gelatin print (83 x 56mm) mounted on card (128 x 102mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne Some Rights Reserved
Both are mounted on greyish card with bevelled edges, although of slightly different shades and ornamentation - one has a fancy patterned white border around the print, the other a simple embossed, grey rectangular border. The woman's clothing consists of a high-necked blouse, a double-breasted full length coat with velvet collar and sleeves which are wide at the shoulder but tapering towards the elbow. She is wearing leather gloves, a large corsage of roses, and a wide-brimmed hat with substantial floral-style decoration on the top to match the flowers. All of these combine to suggest to me an approximate date of between 1905 and 1910.

Neither photo looks over-exposed, the fuzzy patches of light in the second image probably being due to the dappled sunlight. Both prints have a matt finish, with the slight silvery sheen in darker areas characteristic of many silver gelatin prints from this era, produced by degradation of the emulsion.


"Let the Children Kodak"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
Besides the print/mount size and the fact that they were taken in bright sunlight, there is another common feature that the sharper-spotted of readers may have noticed - all four are taken from an approximately waist-high viewing position. With regard to the print size, since by far the majority of photographs were contact printed during the pre-War years, we can assume that it equates to the film size. The 105 and 120 roll film formats produced by Eastman Kodak Ltd., both measuring 2¼" x 3¼", were introduced in 1897 and 1901, respectively, narrowing the type of camera likely to have been used to one or more of the following new models introduced around the turn of the century:

• the Folding Pocket Kodak (1897-1899) & No 1 Folding Pocket Kodak (1899-1915) both used 105 film
• the No 2 Brownie (1901-1933) & No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie (1904-1915) both used 120 film

No 2 Buster Brown box camera, 1906-1923, by Ansco
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
There were also several competing companies which produced similar models, such as Ansco's No 2 Buster Brown box camera introduced in 1906. A feature included with all of these devices was the prismatic viewfinder, which enabled a user to frame a picture by holding the camera at waist level, in either portrait or landscape orientation, and looking vertically downwards, just as the child is doing in the 1909 advertisement for a Brownie above.


"The Brownie Family"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
The first Brownie was introduced in February 1900, and was soon joined by a range of models, initially marketed very firmly towards use by children. The No 2 Brownie, ostensiby being operated by the young girl with two bows in her hair, second from right in the above advertisement, was by far the highest selling. First sold in October 1901, by the time the Model F was discontinued in 1933 several million had been manufactured.


"There's no better fun than picture taking ... The Brownie Family"
1909 Advertisement by Eastman Kodak Co.
Image © and courtesy of Duke University Libraries Digital Collections
Kodak advertisements appearing throughout the first decade of the twentieth century reinforced the message that the family of Brownie cameras belonged in your family, and that there was a Brownie for every age and pocket. The No 2 Brownie cost a mere $2.00, and the more versatile No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie just $5.00. For the first time, cameras and photography were within the reach of almost everyone.


No 2 Brownie Model F, 1924-1933, by Eastman Kodak Co
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
This No 2 Brownie from the Tauranga Heritage Collection is a Model F, manufactured a couple of decades after the four photographs displayed above were taken, but the overall design had changed little. The phenomenal success of the Brownie, originally marketed for children in a massive media campaign, meant that within a decade a huge number of American and British families owned a box camera, even if the majority of them were not actually being used by children. The claim that by 1910 a third of all Americans owned a camera (Jenkins, 2005) seems hardly credible, but certainly by 1921 over 2.5 million No 2 Brownies alone had been produced (Coe, 1978), making this by far the most popular of the models which used this film format.


View of river scene with building and boat, undated
Silver gelatin print on Velvet Velox paper (2¼" x 3¼") mounted on embossed "Brownie" brand brown card (4" x 5") with bevelled edges
Taken with No 2 Brownie camera, by an unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
These two images (above and below) show the front and reverse of another example of a mounted print from a No 2 Brownie, displayed by antique camera enthusiast Jos Erdkamp on the web site which documents his collection of early Kodaks. Jos, who very kindly took the trouble to send me detailed scans and gave me permission to reproduce these images, writes:

It is not rare, it is not expensive, it even is not pretty, but it is the camera that recorded our history during the first part of the 20th century. The No. 2 Brownie was made in large numbers: several million and at least 2,500,000 before 1921. Together with the 2A Brownie, which took a slightly larger photo and was also made in several millions, it was the camera that could be found in most families. In all the snaps these cameras have taken, the small and also not so small events of the first half of the last century are documented. For this it deserves a place of honor in camera history.

Reverse of No 2 Brownie card mount (4" x 5")
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
The printed text on the back states:

Velox print showing the size and quality of negative made with the No. 2 Brownie Ccamera and No. 2 Folding Pocket Brownie Camera - Mounted with Kodak Dry Mounting Tissue - Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, N.Y.

This, together with the text "Velvet Velox" inserted on the print itself, suggests to me that the photo may have been a commercially produced promotion sample, rather than an ordinary amateur snapshot. However, the colour and embossed frame of the mount is very similar to that of the fourth print in my own collection, and was obviously a commonly used design.


No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie, 1904-1915, by Eastman Kodak Co
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
The other camera mentioned is the No 2 Folding Pocket Brownie, the smallest of the simple folding Brownies produced by Kodak in these early years. It is shown being used by a young lad, perhaps 9 or 10 years old (fourth from right), in the 1909 advertisement above, and also took 120 format rollfilm. Along with its predecessor the No 2 Folding Brownie, only 250,000 were produced between 1904 and 1915.


Bullock cart, Philippines, 1898
Silver gelatin print (2¼" x 3¼") on glossy embossed card mount (4" x 5")
Taken with Folding Pocket Kodak camera, photographer unidentified
Image © and courtesy of Jos Erdkamp
Another possibility for the 2¼" x 3¼" format print are the Folding Pocket Kodak (1897-1899) and its successor the No 1 Folding Pocket Kodak (1899-1915), both of which used 105 rollfilm and sold for $10, some 200,000 of which were produced. Jos Erdkamp has a very nice example of such a photograph, taken in the Philippines in 1898, which is mounted on glossy white card conveniently embossed with the words, "Folding Pocket Kodak." The style of mount, using glossy pale grey card embossed with a zig-zag pattern, is similar to that used for the first of my examples above.

During and after the Great War (1914-1918) the range of camera models which used 120 format film expanded dramatically, although the No 2 Brownie continued to enjoy great popularity for many years. At the same time, the fashion for mounting prints appears to have changed somewhat, and it became far more common to supply the customer with loose unmounted prints, which were of course a lot cheaper. However, if you have similar mounted prints dating from before the war, it may also be possible to identify the camera with which they were produced. I welcome contributions, so if you find any in your own family collection, please do get in touch - they may provide interesting material for a follow up article.

I hope to feature more film/print formats in the future, as I feel the matching of prints to cameras is a poorly studied field in photohistory. In the mean time, I expect a visit to Sepia Saturday's other contributers this week will reveal a few more child-oriented themes.

References

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers, p 89-91, 99-102.

Erdkamp, Jos (nd) No 2 Brownie (1901) and Folding Pocket Kodak, on Antique Kodak Cameras from the Collection of Kodaksefke.

Frost, Lenore (1991) Dating Family Photos 1850-1920, Victoria, Australia: Lenore Frost, 127pp.

Gustavson, Todd (2009) Camera, A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital, New York: Sterling, 360pp.

Jenkins, Karen (2005) Brownie, in Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography, Warre, Lynn (ed.), London: Routledge.

West, Nancy Martha (2000) Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia, University Press of Virginia.

Sepia Saturday 176: Erasmus Bostock, Photographer of Schools &c.

A wealth of topics are suggested by this week's Sepia Saturday image prompt depicting a scene very familiar to me from my school and university days, although I must admit that my efforts in the chemistry laboratory were never very successful. The plethora of bunsen burners, tripods, glass beakers and a shelf of bottles containing reagents are almost enough to overwhelm the class of teenage boys and their teacher, but it is school children to which I'll direct my attention in this post.

Vintage school photos have long intrigued me, and I must confess to a degree of sympathy for the nineteenth century photographer who was called to his neighbourhood school for the annual class portrait sessions. Anyone who has tried to photograph a group of school children will appreciate how tricky it is to capture the attention of all individuals simultaneously, and to prevent any of the more unruly in the class from pulling funny faces just as the shutter is released.


Unidentified class portrait by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Large format print (157 x 100mm) mounted on card (166 x 108mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This class of 55 children - I make it 22 girls and 33 boys, but am unsure of the gender of a few of them - are being very capably supervised by a severe looking older woman at far right, who has one little miscreant firmly in her grasp, and her eagle eye on a troublesome group of boys in the centre. The younger teacher on the left, perhaps an assistant, also has her hand on a young girl's shoulder. The photographer's "hold still" command or some other attention grabbing signal (he's very unlikely to have asked them to "smile for the camera" as smiling wasn't part of the portrait convention for the Victorians) has produced a very successful response. Only two of the children were moving when he eventually exposed the glass plate.

And that is before the complicated processes involved in collodion or wet-plate photography are taken into account [1]. There is evidence suggesting that Erasmus Bostock started his career as a scholastic photographer in the mid-1870s, apprenticed at the Derby studio of William Pearson [2], when wet-plate photography was still very much the norm. Although the gelatin dry-plate procedure was first described by Maddox in print in 1871, it wasn't until March 1878 that an improved technique was published by Charles Bennett in the British Journal of Photography. The new dry plates could be prepared in advance of the sitting, and then processed later, but an additional benefit was that the new gelatin emulsion were considerably "faster," reducing exposure times to as little as a tenth of a second. [3]


Unidentified class portrait by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Large format print (162 x 104mm) mounted on card (166 x 107mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The second portrait, the pair having been purchased together on eBay, was probably taken on the same day, and appears to be a class of 49 slightly younger boys (24) and girls (25). This time there is only one smartly dressed and coiffured school mistress, who is looking after a rather fidgety boy, but the remainder of the class seem pretty well behaved, if a little glum (apart from a talkative girl who moved her head sharply just as the exposure took place). My guess is that somewhere in the two group portraits are two siblings, although there is no indication which school this was and all provenance has sadly been lost.


Thornton-Pickard Triple Imperial Extension camera, c.1903-1910s
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
Photographic manufacturers began to produce dry-plates over the next few months from March 1978, and within a few years, the wet-plate process had by and large been abandoned. By the time Bostock took these two portraits around 1890, he would almost certainly have used a dry-plate camera. The dimensions of these prints (roughly 6¼" x 4") suggests that he may have taken two exposures side-by-side on a full-plate (6½" x 8½") device, perhaps something similar to the slightly later Thornton-Pickard Triple Imperial Extension folding bellows camera, shown below, that I recently photographed in the Tauranga Heritage Collection. Many models of folding stand cameras were produced in Great Britain from the 1870s to the 1890s [4], and the excellent Early Photography web site has a wide selection of such field cameras on display [5].


Reverse of card mount by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Derby had several photographers who were prepared to visit schools - I have seen examples from George Holden, Thomas Lewis, R.K. Peacock, Gervase Gibson & Sons and George Bower [6-9] - but Erasmus Foster Bostock appears to have been the only practitioner to have specialised in scholastic portraits. As evidenced by a class photo taken c.1881-1882 [7], Bostock used a hand stamp rather than cardstock pre-printed with his name for at least a decade. Although this was slightly unusual for a photographer who remained in business in one location for more than a couple of years, it would have been slightly cheaper and would have given him the added flexibility of being able to trim card mounts to suit particular photographs.


Unidentified class portrait by E.F. Bostock of Nottingham, c.1900-1902
Large format print (209 x 155mm) mounted on decorated card (261 x 209mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Between 1891 and 1894 Bostock moved with his family to the nearby town of Nottingham, where he again set up a practice as a schools photographer, operating out of his home at 76 Burford Road (1894-1901) and 32 Maples Street (1901-c.1902) [10-14]. It is during the latter period that I estimate he took this very competent, albeit now somewhat damaged, class photograph of 36 children (28 boys and 8 girls). While the card stock now has a printed design surround the photograph, he was still printing his name and location on the mount.

The imbalance between numbers of boys and girls, the wide range in apparent ages (from 7 or 8 to early teens), and the shape of the door in the background all suggest to me that it was perhaps a Sunday School class. A somewhat hirsute male teacher this time casts a stern eye over his well-behaved charges. I note that several of the pupils have medals pinned to their lapels or, in the case of the girls, bodices - one surprised looking boy has three of them! I hope this was the "Gregory" whose name is pencilled on the back. Apart from this, there are no clues as to location or identity of the subjects.


Samuel Collison (b. 1886), aged 17 or 18, taken c.1903-1904
Cabinet card portrait by E.F. Bostock of 24 Moorgate Street, Nottingham
Image © and courtesy of Simon Collison, Some rights reserved
Between 1902 and 1903, judging by entries in trade directories of the period, Bostock started operating a portrait studio with premises at 24 Moorgate Street, Radford (now a suburb of Nottingham) [15,16]. This appears to be the same premises occupied by well known Radford photographer Edward Carnell from 1879 until 1901 [14], and I suspect that Bostock took over the business from Carnell on the latter's retirement. That he already had some experience of studio portraiture is clear from the early 1880s portrait in my profile of Bostock. Perhaps he found that catering to schools alone was not bringing in sufficient business, or it may simply have been that he was weary of the seasonal and peripatetic nature of that work, but it seems that from 1903 onwards he concentrated on studio portraiture.

In 1915, he moved again to a studio at 44 Clarendon Street and in 1919, at the age of 61, Erasmus Bostock died after three and a half decades in the photographic business. [18,19] The studio was probably taken over by his son Erasmus James Bostock (1885-1970), who was working as a photographic assistant in 1911 and still described himself as a photographer when he emigrated with his wife and young son to Australia in October 1928. [20-23]

References

[1] Hirsch, Robert (2009) Pictures on Glass: The Wet-Plate Process, Chapter 4 in Seizing The Light (2nd edition), available online on Luminous Lint.

[2] Payne, Brett (2009) All lined up in the school playground in their Sunday best, Photo-Sleuth, 17 October 2009.

[3] Coe, Brian (1976) The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900, Great Britain: Ash & Grant, p 38-39.

[4] Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers, p 29-40.

[5] Field Cameras, on the Early Photography web site.

[6] Payne, Brett (2011) Sepia Saturday 97: Geo W Holden, Brother of the more famous Jack, on Photo-Sleuth, 20 October 2011.

[7] Payne, Brett (2008) More photos from St James' Board School, on Photo-Sleuth, 14 September 2008.

[8] Payne, Brett (2008) St. Chad's Church Schools, Derby, 1895, on Photo-Sleuth, 10 May 2008.

[9] Payne, Brett (2007) A Derbyshire photographer working afield, on Photo-Sleuth, 15 August 2007.

[10] 1891 Census for 102 Drewry Lane, Derby St Werburgh, Derbyshire Ref. RG12/2731/102/15/95, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[11] Anon (1891) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland, and Nottinghamshire, Seventh Edition, 1891, London: Kelly & Co., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[12] Wright, C.N. (1895) Directory of Nottingham and Twelve Miles Round, Seventeenth Edition, 1894-1895, courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[13] Wright, C.N. (1899) Directory of the City of Nottingham, Nineteenth Edition, 1898-1899, courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[14] Heathcote, Bernard V. & Heathcote, Pauline F. (1982) Leicester Photographic Studios in Victorian & Edwardian Times, publ. Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society.

[15] Anon (1903) Wright's Directory of the City of Nottingham including the Immediate Neighbourhoods, Twenty-First Edition, 1902-1903, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[16] Anon (1904) Kelly's Directory of Nottinghamshire, 1904, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[17] Portrait of Simon Collison, Image © and courtesy of Simon Collison's Flickr photostream.

[18] Anon (1916) Wright's Directory of Nottingham and Neighbourhood, Twenty-Sixth Edition, 1915-1916, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[19] UK General Register Office Death Index entry for Erasmus F Bostock, aged 61, Dec Qtr 1919, Nottingham Registration District, Vol 7b Pg 356, courtesy of FreeBMD.

[20] 1911 Census for 32 Maples St, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[21] Anon (1920) Wright's Directory of Nottingham and Neighbourhood, Twenty-Seventh Edition, 1920, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[22] Passenger Manifest for ship Hobson's Bay, London (England) to Sydney (Australia), 30 October 1928, in UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 database, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[23] NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages Index entry for James Bostock, 1970, Hornby, Reg No 14672/1970, courtesy of the NSW Government web site.

Sepia Saturday 173: Tauranga's waterfront a century ago

Sepia Saturday invites us this week to post those odd photographs in our collections which we've found difficult to identify, categorize or even understand. While not denying that I have several oddities in my own collection worthy of inclusion in my What were they thinking? category, I've chosen to use an image from the Tauranga Heritage Collection, where I've spent much of the last three weeks helping to photograph, research and document a large but jumbled collection of old cameras.


Dogs at The Strand, Tauranga, Undated
Loose print by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
The pile of logs seemingly jettisoned on The Strand, more or less in the middle of town, had probably been offloaded from a boat at the wharf, just off to the left the photograph. Devonport Road is to the right, disappearing behind the double storey building which houses Cart & Co's clothing and footwear store. The dogs are doing what dogs always do, but quite why the photographer saw fit to save this snapshot from the dustbin, I can't really understand.


View Larger Map
Google's Streetview (above) shows a landscape superficially different, although it's worth noting that general layout, at least in this view, is still much the same. None of the original stores are there. Telegraph poles have been replaced by nautically flavoured lamp posts (although I don't think many have swung from these yardarms in the recent past) and the roads and pavements have been sealed, concreted or bricked over. That particular palm tree is long gone, but there are many more in the vicinity, as panning to the left in the Streetview image above will reveal.

A short post from me this week, as I've been a little busy on other projects, but if you're hankering after more sepian oddballs, I'm sure the other participants will happily oblige.

Sepia Saturday 166: Henrietta goes to Blackpool

My submission for this week's issue of Sepia Saturday has little to do with the themes suggested by the image prompt, I'm afraid, although I imagine it was taken at around the same time (and it does involve a dangerously long skirt). The caption for Lewis S. Hine's Paper Boxes, Binding Covers gives a rather broad date range of "ca. 1906-1938" but, judging from the frilled blouses and early bobbed hair styles, by my estimation it was taken during the Great War. I suspect it was part of Hine's documentation of the American Red Cross's relief work in Europe.


Henrietta Christina Payne, 19 August 1910
Postcard portrait by Y. Burns, The Studio, Victoria Pier, Blackpool
Image © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
This is one of three surviving portraits of my great-great-grandmother Henrietta Christina, and the only one to show her alone. It was taken in the summer of 1910 at the studio of Young Burns on Victoria Pier, Blackpool, presumably during a visit there with friends or family. I have written previously about her son and daughter-in-law Hallam and Sarah Payne's regular visits to Blackpool and other seaside resort towns such as Swanage, Bournemouth and Great Yarmouth, and it is quite possible that they took her there for a short holiday.


The back of the photograph is a regular postcard format, with the photographer and studio location printed up the left hand edge. Young Burns (1863-1931) was the son of a Lancashire machine ganger who started off working as a solicitor's clerk in Oldham, but by 1901 had married and settled in his wife's home town of Blackpool, where he was working as an artist.


Unidentified woman, c.1904-1909
Small format print by Burns & Ashton, Victoria Pier, Blackpool
Image © and courtesy of James Morley & whatsthatpicture
Jones (2004) shows Burns in partnership with Benjamin Ashton (formerly of 27 Keswick Road, Blackpool in 1901) as photographers with a studio on Victoria Pier, South Shore from 1904 until 1909. The following excerpt from a history of the southernmost of Blackpool's three piers, opened in 1893, in Wikipedia is illuminating:

Victoria Pier was considered to be more "upmarket" than North and Central piers, and at first provided little entertainment. Holidaymakers started visiting the South Shore in 1896 when a carousel was installed on the sand dunes. In 1902 the south entrance of the promenade was widened with the construction of the present promenade, and the pier entrance had to be moved back. In 1930 the pier was renamed South Pier.

Entrance to Blackpool's Victoria Pier, 1904
Still image from Mitchel & Kenyon cinematograph
Image © British Film Industry National Archive & courtesy of YouTube
Burns and Ashton appear to have opened the studio shortly after the re-design of the Victoria pier's entrance, shown in this still from Mitchell & Kenyon's ground-breaking cinematograph of Blackpool in 1904. (N.B. click on the image above to get to the full clip on YouTube.) From 1909 to 1918, Burns operated the studio alone.


Herr Blomé's Berlin Meister Orchestra, c.1911
Image © and courtesy of Michael Brubaker & TempoSenzaTempo
In my pursuit of the circumstances surrounding Henrietta's visit to Victoria Pier, I came across several more portraits from this particular studio, including no less than three postcard format photos of Herr Blomé's Berlin Meister Orchestra from fellow Sepian and photo-sleuth extraordinaire Mike Brubaker. The postcard view shown above, probably taken c.1911, has the orchestra arranged on a board floor in front of a well-windowed wooden building, which appears to be identical with that appearing immediately inside the entrance to the Victoria Pier in the Mitchell & Kenyon still.


Victoria Pier, South Shore, Blackpool, 1905
Coloured photomechanical print postcard by unidentified publisher
Having a studio situated at the entrance of the pier made good business sense for a photographer, who would be well placed to catch the tourists as they arrived and departed, and to offer a memento of their visit. The ticket booths to the left and right of the wrought iron gates offered similar opportunities to peddlers of tourist memorabilia. Postcard racks provided by Boots Cash Chemists can be seen clearly displayed in the Mitchell and Kenyon film clip.


Victoria Pier, Blackpool, 1905
Coloured photomechanical print postcard by unknown publisher
Sadly this entrance no longer exists, having been superseded by a series of large gaudy frontages, which I wont bother to reproduce here.


Victoria Pier, Blackpool, 1907
Real Photo Series No. 48 postcard by unknown publisher
I found portraits showing several varieties of postcard design from Young Burns' studio, but none of them are accurately dated, so there is not yet an opportunity to date them purely by card design.


A feature which most of Burns' portraits have in common is that the subjects are, quite understandably, dressed for an outing - the array of hats is pretty impressive. Most also have the variable silvery-grey sheen covering darker areas, characteristic of many portraits from this era, and resulting from the migration of free silver radicals within the sensitised emulsion and their deposition as metallic silver particles on the surface. This renders such photographs very difficult to scan properly.


There are also a number of postcards of bands and orchestras, which must have been a common sight on the Blackpool waterfront, entertaining the crowds of pleasure seekers. This group portrait of Jan Hurst and his group of musicians must have been taken shortly after his appointment as conductor of the Victoria Pier Orchestra in 1919, and was possibly not take by Young Burns, although it shows his presumed pier entrance photographic studio in the background.


Before you head off to check out the other Sepia Saturday entries, have a look at the full Mitchel & Kenyon cinematograph clip above. It gives an atmospheric flavour of the times, including a wonderful variety of hats.

References

South Pier, Blackpool, from Wikipedia

Jones, Gillian (2004) Lancashire Professional Photographers 1840-1940, Watford, Herts: PhotoResearch, 203pp.

Reynolds, Brian & Lee, Michael J. (nd) Jan Hurst and his Orchestra, on Masters of Melody.

Sepia Saturday 165: Sojourn in Swanage

In the past I have frequently mined my own family photograph collection for both inspiration and subjects for articles on Photo-Sleuth. Hunting for appropriate images or interesting topics often involves looking at the photographs in greater detail, or perhaps from a different point of view. Occasionally this results in the unearthing of new clues regarding the people in the photo or the events depicted, part of the process that Alan Burnett has referred to as "photographic archaeology."

The Sepia Saturday prompt this week invites us to share "unknowns" from our collections. My contribution is the result of an investigation into a series of three amateur photographs from my family collection from geographical, genealogical and photohistorical perspectives.


Charles Hallam and Sarah Payne promenading at Blackpool, c.1900-1904
Cabinet card by H. Pawson, Promenade Studio, Blackpool
Image © and collection of Barbara Ellison
My great-great-uncle Charles Hallam Payne (1870-1960) and his wife Sarah Emma Payne nee Parker (1870-1946) retired from running the Payne family grocery in June 1914, when they were in their mid-forties, moving from Normanton to Dale Cottage near Ingleby. Retiring at such a young age was probably facilitated by a substantial inheritance from Hallam's father, and perhaps precipitated by the death of his mother earlier that year.

The lease on Dale Cottage was signed four days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, and when war was declared against Germany six weeks later, Hallam and Sarah must have wondered if they'd made a mistake. No doubt the privations and hardships brought on by the Great War impacted on far more than just their tradition of having regular summer holidays at the seaside, such as that captured by Harold Pawson at the Promenade Studio portrait above, taken shortly after the turn of the century.


Charles Hallam Payne (far right) and friends, Swanage
Postcard print by unidentified photographer, 10 June 1929
Image © and collection of Barbara Ellison
They resumed their outings some time after the war had ended and, according to inscriptions on the backs, these three amateur prints were all taken in the summer of 1929 at Swanage on the southern coast of Dorset, England. This was after one of the most severe winters of the last three decades and a notably dry spring, but in typical English fashion they are dressed for inclement weather, quite a contrast to the German family holidaying in Sorrento which I featured on Photo-Sleuth six weeks ago.

It was also less than a fortnight after the General Election, the first in the United Kingdom in which women under 30 were allowed to vote, and therefore often referred to as the "Flapper Election." Did the young women perched not far from the edge of a cliff in this photograph vote? I like to think so, although perhaps they were a little young.


Reverse of K Ltd postcard, probably taken with a No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak or similar, using 122 roll film and processed by Kodak Ltd.
The backs of two of the postcard-sized photographs in this series display a generic "K Ltd" format which Ron Playle lists as in use from 1918 until 1936. Although he doesn't state the name of the firm who printed them, I believe these very commonly used postcards are very likely to have been produced by Kodak Ltd., like the similar "K" design from the late 1930s and early 1940s which was from Kodak, and which I wrote about last week.

This excerpt from an article by Merril Distad provides more background to Kodak's early involvement in the postcard industry:

Kodak’s greatest boost to the postcard craze really began in 1903 with the introduction of the Kodak Folding Pocket Model 3A camera. Produced until 1941, it was a small, folding bellows camera, priced from as low as $12, that yielded postcard-size negatives (3.25 x 5.5 inches / 83 x 139 mm). Kodak distributed its photo print papers, both the “Velox” and (after 1904) the cheaper “Aso” brand, precut to the same size, with the standard postcard grid format printed on the backs. Despite competition from other companies’ photo papers in postcard format, such as Ansco’s “Cyko,” Artura’s “Artura,” Burke & James’ “Rexo,” Defender’s “Argo,” and Kilburn’s “Kruxo,” Kodak papers accounted for 70 percent of such sales prior to 1914, while it sold an annual average of 45,000 Model 3A cameras during the same period.

Many of Derbyshire's commercial photographers used "K Ltd." postcard papers for their own photos in the 1920s. Some firms, such Boots Cash Chemists, which had four branches in Derby and a further 11 throughout Derbyshire, would also have provided a service which developed and printed roll film from cameras such as the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak.


Sarah (2nd from left) & Charles Hallam Payne (far right) et al, Swanage
Postcard print by unidentified photographer, 10 June 1929
Image © and collection of Barbara Ellison
Buoyed by the recent successful identification of the Sorrento coastline, I wondered whether it might be possible to pinpoint the spots where these photographs had been taken, even though I am as unfamiliar with England's southern shoreline as I am with the Italian coast.

Although not the best in terms of clarity, the first shot shows Uncle Hallam with a young man and two young women - one with a hat, one without - posing on what appears to be the edge of a cliff, overlooking a body of water with some rocks just visible at centre left.

The second has the same group, with the addition of Aunt Sarah, standing at the edge of a road bordered by an untrimmed hedge. The chimneyed roof of a cottage is visible at centre right, and a view of the sea at centre left, with a possible "notched" headland in the distance.


Sarah (2nd from right) & Charles Hallam Payne (far right) et al, Swanage
Amateur paper print by unidentified photographer, June 1929
Image © and collection of Barbara Ellison
The third shot appears to have been taken at a similar location to the first, although Aunt Sarah and Uncle Hallam, his hat now carefully placed on the ground, are now standing with two young men and one young lady. It seems likely that the young woman without a hat who appears to be wearing a man's dark jacket in the first cliff-top shot was the photographer in this third photograph.


Amateur print (60x88mm) on Velox paper by unidentified photographer
Probably taken with Folding Pocket Kodak or No. 2 Brownie, June 1929
Image © and collection of Barbara Ellison
The quality of this paper print, clearly marked with Kodak's VELOX brand, is somewhat inferior to the other two and it is a smaller format. It measures roughly 2¼" x 3¼", which equates to Kodak's 105 or 120 formats, and therefore probably taken with either a Folding Pocket Kodak or a No. 2 Brownie.


Swanage and Peveril Point
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth
Next ... the location, which I investigated, as usual, using the imagery provided by Google Earth. To the east of Swanage's town centre, at the southern end of a large bay, is a peninsular called Peveril Point, which seemed to me the most obvious place to go looking for cliff tops that tourists might visit.


View of Broken Shell Limestone Reef, Durlstone Bay from Swanage Coastguard Hut, Peveril Point
Image © Al Dunn and courtesy of 360 Cities
Close to the tip of Peveril Point, not far from the Coastguard hut, and right on the cliff edge, Google Earth shows a small red icon which represents a 360 degrees panoramic view. Double-clicking on the icon takes one into the panorama, and provides the image above, apparently taken from precisely the same spot as the first cliff-edge photograph.

The rocky outcrop known in geological circles as the Broken Shell Limestone Reef is clearly visible, even at high tide, as are the the white shells or pebbles which litter the ground at the cliff top. This forms part of the geological type-section of the Purbeck Group of the Upper Jurassic, visited frequently by geologists and geological students since its first description by Thomas Webster in 1816, and well known for its reptile and early mammal fossils (West, 2012).


Coastguard cottages overlooking Swanage Bay
Image © Andy Jamieson, courtesy of Geograph.co.uk and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Despite the loss of two of the building's chimneys in the intervening eight decades, it is easily identifiable as the Coastguard Cottages which are situated immediately above the RNLI Swanage Lifeboat Station.


The Coastguard Cottages on Peveril Point, Swanage
Image © Bressons_Puddle and courtesy of Panoramio

Peveril Point Road, Swanage
Image © and courtesy of Google Streetview
Unfortunately Google's StreetView camera didn't quite make it that far along Peveril Point Road, but the cottages and their chimneys are just visible poking out to the left of the small tree in the centre of this view above (click on the image to be taken to StreetView). Very close to the blue gate set into the stone wall in front of the tree is where the group of five were standing on that summer evening.


Swanage and Peveril Point, with the two camera positions marked
Image © and courtesy of Google Earth
I write "evening" because the photographer is facing towards the north-east. The characteristic profile of the cliffs at Ballard Point and Old Harry's Wife, on the other side of Swanage Bay, are just visible - the "notched" headland to which I referred earlier. The shadows are long and pointing towards the east, and since in Dorset the sun sets around 9:20 pm in mid-June, I estimate this was perhaps between 5 and 7 pm.


The Promenade, Swanage, Postcard postmarked 1931
Although other visitors aren't visible in any of these photographs, Swanage was a popular destination between the wars, as evidenced by the number of postcards from that era boasting of its amenities, such as the view of The Promenade above, posted on 1931.


Mary and Ella Chadwick, 1927
Postcard print by H.A. Aylward of Alton, Hampshire
Image © and courtesy of Una Palmer
Lastly to the identification of Hallam and Sarah's fellow sojourners on Swanage. Hallam and Sarah didn't have any children of their own. So whose kids did they have, then (you might ask, if you're a Spike Milligan devotee)? Well, they were very fond of their nephews and nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces, including my grandfather and father.

One of the two young women was, I think, Mary (born in 1912, shown above left), a daughter of Hallam's sister Lucy Mary (aka "Maggie") Chadwick (1876-1953), probably the one wearing the sensible hat. Maggie's younger daughter Ella (aka "Bay" and born in 1916, above right) was only twelve years old at that time, so I think the other young woman - the one I suggest may have wielded a camera - is probably a friend. The Chadwicks were living at Headley Down in Hampshire at this time, which would have been two or three hours' drive from Swanage in Hallam's Citroën purchased in July 1921 (either a Type A, the first motor car mass-produced in Europe, or a Type B).


Harry and Clarence Benfield Payne, c.1919-1921
Postcard print by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of Una Palmer
As for the two young men, I feel sure they are the sons of Hallam's younger brother Fred Payne (1879-1946) and drove down with them from Derby. Henry (aka Harry and born in 1906) and Clarence Benfield (born 1907) both lived in Derby, where their parents had been running the grocer's shop/offlicence in St James' Road, Normanton ever since Hallam and Sarah's retirement. Their sister Christine was captured walking with her uncle and aunt twice by street photographers in Bournemouth four years later.

References

Gustavson, Todd (2009) Camera, A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital, New York: Sterling, 360 pp.

Distad, Merrill (nd) The postcard – a brief history, on Peel's Prairie Provinces, from University of Alberta Libraries.

Milligan, Spike (1961) Word Power, on Milligan Preserved, LP publ. EMI (NTS 114), courtesy of YouTube.

West, Ian M. (2012) Durlston Bay - Peveril Point, Durlston Formation, including Upper Purbeck Group: Geology of the Wessex Coast (Jurassic Coast, UNESCO World Heritage Site), Internet geological field guide, by Ian West, Romsey and School of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, Southampton University.

Sunrise and Sunset in Bournemouth

Historical Weather Events

Excerpt from Kelly’s Directory of Hampshire 1931, courtesy of John Owen Smith

The AA Road Book of England and Wales, publ. c.1936 London: The Automobile Association, by kind courtesy of Nigel Aspdin,