Sepia Saturday 218: Portraits in the Backyard

Reverse of cabinet card by E. Bosotock, Photographer of Schools, & etc.
Erasmus Bostock worked as a photographer in Derby from the mid-1870s, when he was probably apprenticed to William Pearson, one of the town's earliest practitioners, then operating from a studio in St. Peter's Street. [1] In the late 1870s and early 1880s he had a brief partnership with a photographer named Carr, during which time they worked from a studio at number 8 Macklin Street. [2] He established then established an itinerant trade as a "photographer of schools" from c.1882, not the only local to visit schools, but apparently the only one in Derby who advertised it as a speciality. [3]

Over the following decade, he appears to have concentrated on this type of work: of the dozen or so examples of his work from this period that I have hitherto come across, only one is a conventional studio portrait. Between 1891 and 1894 Bostock moved with his family to nearby Nottingham, where he probably took over a studio from Edward Carnell and continued in business until his death in 1919. [4]


Informal cabinet card portrait of unidentified group
Taken by Erasmus Bosotock of Derby, c. mid-1880s
This informal portrait of what is assumed to be a family group taken by Bostock in a suburban backyard therefore departs a little from his usual fare, and is an important clue to how photographers coped with lean times. I have written previously [5,6] of opportunistic photographers who toured residential suburbs, probably during winter months when business was quiet, looking for potential customers who wanted their photos taken in front of their houses or in their gardens. Some of these professionals worked out of established studios, but many left no mark on their card mounts or, if they did, are not traceable through trade directories.

It is interesting, then, to find such a portrait taken by a photographer who, it has already been established, travelled into the residential suburbs and, we now know, was a "door knocker" when the occasion arose. A small tidbit of information about one of Derby's minor photographers it is, but it adds to the developing picture of the common practices in Victorian Britain.


For more backyard beauties visit the rest of this week's Sepia Saturday contributers.

References

[1] Payne, Brett (2009) All lined up in the school playground in their Sunday best, Photo-Sleuth, 18 October 2009.

[2] Payne, Brett (2006) Erasmus Foster Bostock of Macklin Street, Derby & Nottingham, Derbyshire Photographers' Profiles.

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

[4] Payne, Brett (2013) Sepia Saturday 176: Erasmus Bostock, Photographer of Schools &c., Photo-Sleuth, 11 May 2013.

[5] Payne, Brett (2008) The story behind the picture, Photo-Sleuth, 8 April 2008.

[6] Payne, Brett (2013) Sepia Saturday 163: A photographer at the front door, Photo-Sleuth, 7 February 2013.

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.

All lined up in the school playground in their Sunday best

I have wondered, when looking at old school photographs from the Victorian period, whether the children are wearing their ordinary everyday school clothes, or if an impending visit from the photographer was enough of an occasion for their parents to dress them in their Sunday best. I found mention of poor attendance on school photos day in 1881 recorded in a school log book from the Talgarth district of Powys, Wales (Victorian Powys), ascribing the childrens' absence to their not possessing decent clothes for the special day:

At 11 a Photographer came to take a view of the buildings. A very thin attendance, for some of the children did not come because of this. The Worths & Jones, Trebarried all stayed away at 11, so we stood in the playground that the view might have a lively appearance. The children who were away yesterday came today. I asked them why they were so silly yesterday & it appears it was their clothes that was the drawback.

Unidentified group of school boys & master, c.1873-1876
Carte de visite by William Pearson of St Peter's, Derby
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This carte de visite portrait of a group of 26 boys aged from about 5 up to around 10 or 11 with their master is from my own collection. It was a recent eBay purchase and, as is the case with most such purchases, has sadly lost its provenance. The group is a motley one, and there is clearly no uniform in use, although the appearance of a couple of striped scarves hints at possible school colours. Due to the large range in ages, it seems likely that this was either a small school or even a Sunday School.

The photographer obviously had some difficulty keeping the children still. I estimate from the card mount design and clothing that it was taken in the mid-1870s, say between c.1873 and 1876, when exposure times were still fairly lengthy, measured in terms of seconds rather than fractions of a second. It would not have been an easy task for the master to keep his young subjects' attention on the camera and stop them from fidgeting. He has two boys, probably the most troublesome ones, right by his side where he can keep them out of trouble. Several boys have moved during the exposure. None look particularly pleased with the experience, save perhaps the lad seated at the far right, who seems particularly anxious to demonstrate a devoted attention to his studies.

The brick wall forming the backdrop to the school group portrait is probably a school building but it has not been identified. The window shows a good reflection of another brick wall opposite, and some distance behind the photographer, judging by the apparent brick size.


Reverse of carte de visite by William Pearson of St Peter's, Derby
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
William Pearson (1827-1885) was one of Derby's earliest photographers, graduating to that occupation from being a chimney sweep. In fact, he is listed with both professions in several sources through to the early 1860s. He opened his first studio around 1858 and continued to operate in St Peter's, Derby until at least 1881. Although his output does not appear to have been as prolific as the studios of Derby's other early practitioners, such as that of James Brennen, the quality of his portraits was quite acceptable. Pearson is recorded as taking mug shots of prisoners at Derby Gaol in April 1863, and perhaps the venture into school portraiture was another attempt to expand his clientele and drum up new business.


Detail from reverse of carte de visite
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The most interesting feature of this carte de visite only emerged after I had sent scanned images of the front and reverse to friend and photo-sleuthing collaborator Nigel Aspdin. The sharp-eyed Nigel noticed there appeared to be something hand written on the reverse of the card mount. Although it wasn't clear from the detailed scan, I took out the original photograph and, by holding it at an angle to the sunlight, I was able to make it out as:

E. Bostock
Kensington Street
Uttoxeter Road

The natural assumption is, of course, that E. Bostock was one of the subjects of this group portrait. However, I was already aware that one Erasmus F. Bostock operated as a photographer in Derby in the latter part of the 19th Century, so I checked my notes. Indeed, Erasmus was living with his parents at 12 Kensington Street, off Uttoxeter Road, in the parish of St Werburgh, Derby, at the time of both the 1871 and 1881 Census.

An 1881 trade directory entry and the census enumeration of that year are the first records I have found of Bostock working as a photographer, at which time he appears to have been in partnership with a Mr. Carr, with premises at 8 Macklin Street. I also know that Bostock specialised in school portraits, from the existence of several cabinet cards from the late 1880s and early 1890s marked, "E. Bostock, Photographer of Schools, &c. Derby." It now seems likely to me that Bostock initially trained as a photographer in the studio of William Pearson, familiarising himself with the trade before opening his own business. Photographers had to learn their trade somewhere, and where better than as an assistant, and employee, in an established operation.

Much less information survives about the early careers of photographers, when they were usually training as photographic assistants. While census records might give their professions, they hardly ever show who they worked for, and trade directory entries provide the names of the proprietors, very rarely those of their employees. Anecdotal evidence is sometimes available. For example, the career of well known Derby portraitist W.W. Winter started with him being an assistant in the studio of E.N. Charles. After Charles died in 1863 his widow ran the studio briefly with Winter's help; she married him in 1864, and he took over the studio thereafter. Sadly, little detailed knowledge of studio history such as that preserved for W.W. Winter Ltd. exists for other Derby studios, so information such as this snippet from Bostock's early career are important.


Boys from Chelmsford Charity School, 1862
Image © and courtesy of Stuart Axe
I've had some difficulty in determining when school photography became commonplace, and I would appreciate hearing from readers who have or know of such portraits from the 1860s or earlier. The rather nice portrait included above, from Stuart Axe's Flickr photostream, shows a uniformed group of boys at Chelmsford Charity School in 1862. All of those in my collection, however, are from the 1870s or later.

Apart from Bostock, there do not appear to have been any other Derby photographers who specialised in school photography. George W. Holden was a wide-ranging scholastic specialist from Windsor who is known to have plied his trade in Derby around 1877. Benjamin Brough from Chesterfield advertised his services as a "Lanternist and Photographer, Schools & Gentlemen's residences, &c." in the 1880s, but is unlikely to have ventured as far south as Derby. R.K. Peacock, Gibson & Sons and W.W. Winter - and possibly others - took school photos on occasion during the 1890s and later, but did not specifically advertise this service.

References

Extract from Lanfilo School Log Book, 20 Feb 1881, on Talgarth & District - Victorian School Days, on Victorian Powys

Extracts from Derby Borough Police Watch Committee Records, Derby Local Studies Library, courtesy of Mike Baker

Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, 1881, Kelly & Co., London. publ. on microfiche by the Derbyshire Family History Society.

Stuart Axe's Flickr Photostream

More photos from St James' Board School

In a previous article I featured a class photograph at St James' Board School of New Normanton, near Derby, taken between 1898 and 1900, which included my grandfather Charles Leslie Lionel Payne (1892-1975). I have since discovered another class photograph in the family collection which, although it is not marked thus, I believe must have been taken at the same school, but almost two decades earlier.


The class photo shows a group of 43 boys, aged about 9 to 13, and two masters. I believe I can identify my great-grandfather Charles Vincent Payne (1868-1951), seated in the front row, third from right, and his younger brother Charles Hallam Payne (1870-1960), in the middle row, fourth from left. They look to be aged about thirteen and eleven respectively which, if I am correct, suggests a date of around 1881-1882. I featured another class photograph of Charles Vincent in an earlier Photo-Sleuth article, taken c. 1877 at St Andrew's Middle Class School, Litchurch. The Board School was built in 1879, and the Payne family returned from an American sojourn in late 1880 or early 1881, so the 1881-1882 date fits the family circumstances well.


The reverse of the cabinet card mount bears the mark of Erasmus Bostock of Derby, a photographer who specialised in schools.

Hilary Booth recently got in touch with me after reading the article, "I have two similar photos in my possession and wondered if you would like to see them."

Francis Richard Porter (seated second from the left, in the second row from the front) was the son of Francis and Mary Porter who lived on Dale Road, Derby. Mary Porter ran a shop, converted in the front room of her house, number 66, while Francis was a waggoner at a brewery. This must have been taken just before Francis Richard died aged 6. I can't make out the reading on the board but I know it was St James Road School as my grandmother told me. Francis and Mary's Children were Harriet, Emily, Francis, Herbert and my grandmother Sarah Alice.

From my research of census records (Source: Ancestry) and the FreeBMD index of birth and death records, I was able to determine that Francis Richard Porter was born at Derby in late 1887 or early 1888, and died there 1894.


From the back stamp on the card mount, it appears that the class photo was taken by R.K. Peacock (1844-1893) of The Spot Studio, St Peter's Street, Derby. Previous research presented in my profile of this photographer shows him to have occupied these premises from c. 1889 until his death in late 1893.


Unfortunately, the text written on the slate is very indistinct. With digital enhancement I was able to decipher some of it - perhaps, "St. James' Rd. Bd. School," but the last line is illegible. However, I believe that it must have been taken just before Francis Richard Porter's death, probably in early to mid-1893. The windows and brickwork in the photograph appear very similar to those in the previously posted class photo, taken about 5-7 years later.

The second picture is of a young Herbert Porter (second from the right, in the top row), about ten years old. He was also the son of Francis and Mary, born in 1891. This picture clearly says that it was taken in 1901. Herbert died in 1932 aged 41.

My enhanced version of this slate is much clearer, showing the following text: "St James Road Board School, Stand V, July 4th 1901." Herbert Henry Porter (1890-1932) is shown aged ten in the 1901 Census, which was taken on 31 March.

Hilary's family continued to have an association with the school for many years:

My mother Vera also attended St James School, which later went on to become called Hardwick School. My sister Annette and I both attended Hardwick Junior School for girls and Hardwick Secondary School. We lived and grew up in the area and were obviously very familiar with the school and the surrounding area. Just before the school closed for demolition they had an 'open day' where old school members were allowed to go round the building and contribute to memorabilia which was posted around the school. It was a lovely trip down memory lane.

Many thanks to Hilary for her contributions of images and memories.