A Scottish family in Staffordshire

Robert William Melbourne, September 1896
Cabinet card portrait by George Renwick of Burton-on-Trent, Negative #16601
Image © and courtesy of James Morley & What's That Picture

James Morley recently sent me scans of a group of cabinet cards by Burton-on-Trent photographers George Renwick and Richard Keene Junior which he purchased at an auction. Quite apart from my interest in Burton studios, this group includes some fine identified and dated portraits, which enabled me to do some background research on the subjects. The first four in the series were clearly taken at the same sitting - the negative numbers appear to have been 16599-16602, although one of them is not legible.

Negative #16602

The birth of Robert William Melbourne was registered in the September quarter of 1892 at the Burton register office. He was born in Burton-on-Trent, the only child of Charles James Melbourne (1858-1935) and Elizabeth Janet Smith (1860-1925), who were married in 1891. At the time of these portraits he would have been about four years old, plus or minus a couple of months. It's even possible that the visit to the photographer was a celebration of his fourth birthday.

Negative #16599

Robert's father was a commercial clerk who, by the time of the 1901 Census, had become manager of a brewery. I have been unable to discover which of the nineteen Burton breweries mentioned by Kelly's 1900 trade directory for which he worked. The largest, controlled by the firm of Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, covered an area of 160 acres, but there were many smaller ones, and the area had become famous for the quality of its ales.

Negative # not legible

Robert William Melbourne continued to live in Burton until at least 1940 - I found an entry for him in a directory of that date at 128 Station street - but I'm not sure whether he married and/or had children.

Possibly Charles James Melbourne, c.1895-1900
Undated cabinet card portrait by Richard Keene Junior of Burton-on-Trent
Image © and courtesy of James Morley & What's That Picture

Charles James Melbourne was born in 1858, also at Burton, one of three children of brewer's clerk Charles James Melbourne (1826-1878) and his wife Helen Beck. Charles James senior was, in turn, born in Belper, youngest son of a nail manufacturer William Melbourne (c1783-1846) and his first wife Phebe Williams (c1786-1828). He was therefore a brother to Ann Melbourne, the wife of photographer George White (c1810-1880) of Chesterfield and Blackpool.

Probably Robert W. Melbourne and his mother Elizabeth Janet née Smith, c.1893-4
Undated cabinet card portrait by George Renwick of Burton-on-Trent, Negative #14693
Image © and courtesy of James Morley & What's That Picture

Robert William's mother Elizabeth Janet Smith was born at Tutbury in 1860, one of eight children of an engine smith James Smith and his wife Janet Mackie, both of Scottish origin. Although they lived first in Tutbury and later in Hatton, William Smith worked as a brewer's engineer, presumably in Burton. He had emigrated from Renfrewshire, Scotland to Staffordshire around 1852. Although the Melbourne family had lived in Belper for several generations, the other three of Robert's grandparents were born in Scotland. This strong Scottish heritage obviously influenced his parents' choice of the "Bonnie Prince Charlie" style of clothing worn for the two portraits by George Renwick.

Card mount designs from George Renwick's Burton-on-Trent artisitic & photographic studio, c.1876-c.1916

George Renwick (1849-1919) operated a studio in the Staffordshire town of Burton-on-Trent from around 1876 until at least 1916. Initially, he appears to have operated form his parents' home at 105 Station Street, but by 1880 he had moved into premises at 20 Station Street and remained there until 1905. Between 1905 and 1912 he moved to Bank Square.

One of the cabinet cards has a rather crumpled tissue protector depicting a rural scene with pond, tree and windmill. These tissue protectors, although very commonly used at the time, have often not survived. Many, like this one, were generic although some had the photographer's name printed on them.

Another of the photographs in James' collection was enclosed in a translucent envelope with the studio's name and address printed in brown ink, as shown above. In my experience, even less of thes envelopes appear to have survived. Many thanks to James Morley for the opportunity to feature this collection of portraits.

Donkey Derby - A scene from outside the photographer's studio

Some photographic portraits, while technically merely average or adequate, are simply irresistible, such this carte de visite by Richard Keene junior discovered in an old album by Janet Bitton. I suppose it must have been posed to a certain extent, and it would have been difficult to keep the children still for long enough, but it has much of the exuberant feel commonly captured by street and beach photographers working several decades later with vastly superior photographic equipment. The exaggerated swagger of the two boys holding the donkey and the evident joy of the child whose turn it is for a ride, to say nothing of the donkey's inevitable reluctance to move an inch, make it unusually spontaneous for a portrait from the late 1870s.


The printed design on the reverse of the card mount identifies it as having emanated from the Midland Studio of Richard Keene junior in "Derwent Street." In a previous article on Photo-Sleuth, I described how Keene opened a studio in Siddals Road, Derby in the mid-1870s, and then moved to premises in Derwent Street East in late 1876. He was fined 5s. for hanging a photographic case outside his Derwent Street shop front on 6 October 1876 [Source: Derby Mercury, 11 October 1876], providing an earliest date by which he must have moved, as well as demonstrating a street frontage to his studio, rather than being situated in one of the back yards. In June 1877, he tried to stimulate further business by offering a prize of a cabinet portrait sitting to the winner of a race of the Derby Swimming Club at the Corporation Baths [Source: Derby Mercury, 20 Jun 1877]. By January 1878, Keene was in financial trouble and, after being declared bankrupt in March, the studio and contents were sold by his creditors at the end of April [Source: Derby Mercury, 3 & 24 April 1878]. Although it is not clear exactly when he set up his next studio, but it must have been soon after the demise of his Derby business because he was certainly operating at 56 High Street, Burton by 1880.


The negative number (#714) falls neatly between the #632 of a portrait taken soon after his move from Siddals Lane and the #873 on another portrait from shortly after his move to Burton-on-Trent. However, it is the writing on the door behind the subjects which reveals a clue to its location: "Private - Laboratory." This strongly suggests to me that it was the developing and printing laboratory of Keene's Derwent Street East studio, and that the portrait may therefore have been taken in the yard behind the studio.


Portion of Ordnance Survey Map of Derby showing Derwent Street East
Surveyed 1881 Re-levelled & Revised 1913
Image © Ordnance Survey
Courtesy of the Derby Local Studies Library
Although Keene's card mounts suggest that it was situated in Derwent Street, the 1877/1878 Registers of Electors and Burgesses, nominally dated 1 October 1877, identify Richard Keene junior as actually working from premises in Derwent Street East, which is the portion of the road extending to the north-east of the Exeter Bridge, towards Nottingham Road.

Maxwell Craven, in his article on the Derby Evening Telegraph's web site Bygone Derbyshire about the history of the area originally known as Canary Island, discusses the rapid development of what became Derwent Street East in the 19th Century, particularly after the building of the more robust stone Exeter Bridge in 1852. He discusses the locations of several premises on Derwent Street East that existed at the time this photograph was taken, including the Royal Standard and White Lion public houses, established in 1862 and around 1870, respectively, and a monumental mason's workshop.

I'm working on getting a much better picture of all the houses, shops and other businesses which were contemporary with Keene's studio, to enable me to pinpoint the location more precisely. However, I'm not yet at that stage, and it will no doubt form the subject of another Photo-Sleuth article in due course. For the moment, if any readers have access to any photographs of Derwent Street East taken prior to the rebuilding of the 1930s, I would appreciate your getting in touch. I am particularly interested in the north-west side of the road between Stuart and Phoenix Streets, where the Art Deco building currently occupied by NatWest Bank now stands, and the opposite side of the road, between the old Royal Standard public house and the Congregational Chapel, now demolished.

I'm very grateful to Janet for finding this wonderful photograph for me, and also to Nigel Aspdin who has endured repeated requests to return to the Derby Local Studies Library for that extra snippet of information which just might enable me to find and fit the final piece of the Derwent Street jigsaw puzzle.

References

Anon (1852) Map of the Borough of Derby with Portions of Darley, Litchurch and Little Chester, Surveyed by the Board of Ordnance for the Local Board of Health, Facsimile Edition, ed. D.V. Fowkes, publ. Derbyshire Archaeological Society, 1980.
Anon (1874) Directory of South Derbyshire & Places Within 12 Miles of Derby, Third Edition, publ. C.N. Wright, October 1874, Derby, publ. online by the University of Leicester's Historical Directories project
Anon (1875) Derby Rates Register, November 1875, Derby Local Studies Library, Courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Anon (1876) Extracts from The Derby Mercury, 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Courtesy of Gale Cengage Learning
Anon (1877/78) Register of Electors, Derby Local Studies Library, Courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Anon (1877/78) Register of Burgesses, Derby Local Studies Library, Courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Anon (1880) Directory of Staffordshire, Kelly & Co., London, indexed on the GENUKI Staffordshire Photographers Index by Mike Harbach
Anon (1880) Derby Rates Register, 1880, Derby Local Studies Library, Courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Anon (1881) Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co., London, publ. on microfiche by Derbyshire Family History Society
Anon (1881) Indexed images of the Census of Derby, 3 April 1881, Courtesy of The National Archives and Ancestry
Anon (1887) Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co., London, publ. on microfiche by Derbyshire Family History Society
Anon (1891) Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co., London, publ. online by the University of Leicester's Historical Directories project
Anon (1891) Indexed images of the Census of Derby, 5 April 1891, Courtesy of The National Archives and Ancestry
Anon (1913) Portion of the Ordnance Survey Map of Derby, publ. Ordnance Survey, Courtesy of the Derby Local Studies Library
Leeson, Angela (ed.) (1992) The Winter's Collection of Derby: 125 years of Derby photographers W.W. Winter Ltd., Breedon Books, Derby, ISBN 1 873626 20 7
Craven, Maxwell (1993) Keene's Derby, Breedon Books, Derby, ISBN 1 873626 60 6
Allard, Sarah & Rippon, Nicola (2003) Goodey's Derby: Paintings and Drawings in the Collection of Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Breedon Books, Derby, ISBN 1 85983 379 9
Anon (2008) How architect Aslin bridged design gap, publ. Evening Telegraph, 26 Sep 2008, reproduced online by This is Derbyshire.co.uk
Craven, Maxwell (n.d.) Canary Island, Derby: An area rich in heritage, publ. Derby Evening Telegraph, reproduced online by Bygone Derbyshire.

Dating of card mounts from overprints - Richard Keene Junior of Derby & Burton-onTrent

Richard Keene (1825-1894) was probably Derby's most renowned Victorian photographer, taking a leading and pioneering role in the development of photography in the region. Keene's Derby by Maxwell Craven (publ. 1993 by Breedon Books, ISBN 1 873626 60 6) describes his career as a landscape and portrait photographer in some detail. Two of his sons also became photographers: Richard Keene Junior (1852-1899) had studios in both Derby and Burton-on-Trent, while Charles Barrow Keene (1863-1937) continued the Derby business, which included printing, publishing and bookselling, after his father's death.


Although he was in London working in an accountant's office in 1871, Richard Keene Jnr. opened the Midland Studio in Siddals Road, Derby in the mid-1870s. The business is not listed in Wright's 1874 trade directory, so he presumably started after that it compiled. Adamson (1997) shows him as operating at 49 Siddals Road in 1876, which appears to have been on the south side, somewhere between Liversage and John streets. A carte de visite taken at the Siddals Road premises is shown above. It has square corners suggesting a date of 1875-1876. The style of clothing worn by the subject is simlar to that in a portrait on Roger Vaughan's web site, dated as roughly 1875.

It is interesting to note, as an aside, that Keene claimed to be the "inventor of the new dry process." Nothing further is known about the process, although it is worth acknowledging the role that his father played "in encouraging the career of Sir William Abney, a major second-generation pioneer of photography," who made important discoveries in the field of chemistry and colour photography (Craven, 1992).


Keene apparently did not last very long in Siddals Road, because the electoral register for 1877 (nominally dated 1 October) shows him at Derwent Street East. The second cdv has a similar mount which is overprinted with the Derwent Street address, indicating that he had moved, and was using up old card stock. There are, however, some differences in the card mount, indicating that he was in the earlier location at least long enough to have a second batch of card mounts printed. The corners are rounded instead of square, and a simpler font has been used for the words, "PHOTOGRAPHER & ENAMELLER."

Note the broad sash around the child's waist, which probably went all the way around the back of the chair. This was one of several tricks commonly used by Victorian photographers to ensure that children didn't move during the lengthy exposure times necessary to ensure a good picture. Other early methods included having the children seated on their mother's lap, firmly in their arms. In some portraits it is just possible to make out a mother, disguised or hidden behind a blanket, sheet or curtain. Getting the child to maintain that smile for any length of time would have been a trickier prospect, I'm sure.


The third carte de visite is a half-length seated portrait of an unidentified young woman on a newly designed, slightly more elaborate card mount with the Derwent Street address, again with the "Midland Studio" title. He still described himself as a "photographer and enameller," but also as the "sole inventor of the new dry process."

The low negative number (632) on the reverse of the portrait taken shortly after his move to Derwent Street suggests that he had not seen a large number of customers at his previous locale. Examination of negative numbers from card mounts of other, more successful Derby photographers from the same period, e.g. W.W. Winter in the perhaps more convenient Midland Road, shows thousands of portraits per year, rather than hundreds.

Although there had been rapid redevelopment in shops and other businesses of what used to be private gardens along Derwent Road East in the 1860s and 1780s, as a result of the rebuilding of the Exeter Bridge, and the resultant increase in traffic, Keene was sadly still unable to make his studio pay. In January 1878 his creditors met to discuss arrangements for liquidation of his assets. He was declared bankrupt in March, and his entire "stock-in-trade" and his portrait gallery in Derwent Street were auctioned off at the end of April. A dividend in the liquidated estate was declared in October.


Keene then moved to Burton-on-Trent, where he had set up in business at 56 High Street by the time the 1880 edition of Kelly's Directory of Staffordshire was compiled. [Source: GENUKI Staffordshire Photographers Index by Mike Harbach] The fourth cdv in the sequence is a half-length portrait of an unidentified young woman leaning on the back of a chair. The rounded shoulders, corseted boddice with embroidery and buttons down the front, a high frilly collar, brooch at her neck, with her hair tightly drawn back from a centre-parting and braids tied up at the back, all suggest to me a date of between 1878 and 1880.

This estimate is borne out by an examination of the reverse of the photograph, which reveals that it is a Derwent Street mount, overprinted in red ink with the words, "REMOVED TO 56, HIGH STREET, BURTON-ON-TRENT." Another low negative number (873) further supports the interpretation, from the use of the overprinted card, that he had only recently moved to Burton.


I'm happy to report that by the time the fifth portrait in this series was taken, probably in the mid- to late 1880s, Keene had reached negative number 3144, which showed at least a moderate degree of success. The design on the reverse of the card mount is of a type referred to generically by Roger Vaughan as "Bamboo and Fan"; after being originally designed by Marion & Co. c. 1884, it was wideley copied and adpated by other publishers, and this particular design is by A.A.C. I estimate this portrait was taken between 1884 and 1888.

Many thanks to Samantha Smith and Paul Clarke for images of photographs used in this article.