Sepia Saturday 140: Two weddings and a funeral

For my contribution to the Sepia Saturday scrapbook this week, I have delved into my collection of specimens from Derbyshire's longest lived studio, that of W.W. Winter. This group of wedding photos - slavishly following Alan's matrimonial photo prompt - was a recent purchase on eBay and is probably the most recent example that I have from this studio.


Unidentified wedding group, c.1950s
Paper print (156 x 114mm) by W.W. Winter, Derby
The listing naturally caught my eye, or rather eBay's search tool, because of the studio's location, but it also turned out to be an interesting research problem. On the face of it, the wedding portraits offered relatively few clues as to the identities of the subjects. The bride could be in her mid- to late thirties, the groom - with an incipient receding hairline - perhaps a little older, and he is wearing a cassock and dog collar, so presumably an Anglican priest.


Photographic "Wedding" card folder
W.W. Winter Ltd. Midland Road Derby
The series of three 6⅛" x 4½" prints, one showing the wedding party standing outside the church in landscape format, the other two of the bride in portrait format, have their corners inserted in diagonal slits in pre-printed and embossed pale blue card folders (177 x 133mm or 7" x 5¼") with white decorated edging.


Reverse of paper print
Negative number "59165 A," surname "Edwards"
The prints have the standard W.W. Winter signature logo blind stamped in the bottom right, while a negative number and the surname "Edwards" are written in pencil on the reverse.


Reverse of card folder
Inscribed with negative number "59165 A" & surname "Edwards"
The same negative number and surname are inscribed in pencil, albeit apparently a different hand, on the back of the blue card folder.


Unidentified bride, c.1950s
Paper print (114 x 156mm) by W.W. Winter, Derby
The portraits of the bride show her holding the bouquet in a similar position outside the church.


Photographic "Wedding" card folder
Inscribed with surname "Edwards" & Negative number "59167B"
W.W. Winter Ltd. Derby
One of the folders has the pre-printed studio name in a different font, although it is otherwise identical.


Unidentified bride, c.1950s
Paper print (114 x 156mm) by W.W. Winter, Derby

Unidentified bride, possibly "Dordy," c. 2 February 1959
Paper print in embossed card folder
W.W. Winter, Derby
But it is an inscription on the inside cover of the folder housing the third portrait which provided the only clue left by the presumed original owners.

To Lily
with Love
Dordy +
Peter
2.2.1959

I can't be absolutely sure about the name "Dordy," but that's my best guess, based on a comparison with the remainder of the text, e.g. see how the "o" is written in the word "Love."


If I were to have any chance of identifying the subjects, it was clear that I would have to make some deductions, assume they were correct, and test the theory by seeing where that led. So perhaps ...

- the wedding took place on 2 February 1959,
- since it was captured by W.W. Winter, it was most likely taken somewhere near Derby
- "Dordy" was the bride, Peter the groom,
- their married name was Edwards,
- "Dordy" was a pet name, perhaps short for Dorothy or Doreen, and
- she gave the wedding photos to a close friend or relation named Lily.


Unidentified wedding group, c.1950s
Paper print (167 x 119mm) by unknown photographer
The last of these seemed plausible since accompanying the W.W. Winter wedding portraits in the same eBay lot were three further wedding portraits, similar in size and shape, but in plain card folders (with no photographer shown) and obviously a different wedding. However, the bride in these three portraits (above and below) is clearly the same woman who appeared as a bridesmaid in Dordy's group wedding photo.


Unidentified wedding group, c.1950s
Paper print (167 x 119mm) by unknown photographer

In order to find a suitable marriage record for Dordy I turned to FreeBMD, which has to be one of the most useful, and used, free UK genealogical research tools currently available on the net. Although this unofficial database of the GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Index, compiled by voluntary indexers, is not yet complete, the coverage for the 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century is very good, and growing. A quick check of the graphs (or charts if you prefer) for marriages shows that both transcription and validation for 1959 are estimated as complete, which will give us a good degree of confidence that we are likely to be searching a full set of records.


The basic FreeBMD search page has a very simple, and versatile, interface where I inserted the following details of the presumed wedding:

Type: Marriage
(Groom's) Surname: Edwards
(Groom's) First name: Peter
Spouse's First name: Do
Date range: Mar (Qtr) 1959 - Mar (Qtr) 1959
Counties: Derbyshire

N.B. Since I wasn't sure about the bride's first name, I decided to specify only the first two letters. This search engine matches all first names in the database with start with these letters and fit the other specified criteria, i.e. a wildcard after the specified letters is assumed. All other details were left blank.


Searching using these parameters produced a single hit, a marriage entry for one Peter A. Edwards, spouse's surname Sewell, in the Shardlow Registration District (near Derby).


Clicking the GRO Reference Page number gave a list of all the names listed on that page of the register, including that of Peter's bride Doreen N. Sewell.


I then used the FeeBMD Index of birth registrations to look for a Doreen N. Sewell born somewhere in Derbyshire between 1910 and 1930 (assuming that she was in her 30s or early 40s at the time of her marriage. Finding one whose birth was registered in the Belper R.D. in the September Quarter of 1919 (Dordy would have been thirty-nine years old when whe was married), and whose mother's maiden name was NEALE, I was able to search for potential siblings. Indeed there were at least five Sewell sisters (shown above) including, conveniently, the youngest named Lily V.


Unfortunately, searching the FreeBMD marriage index for marriages for a Lily V. Sewell, even without any constraining dates or location, produced not a single hit. However, bearing in mind that her wedding would probably also have taken place in the 1950s (or thereabouts), we already known the coverage for that decade is patchy (we hit lucky with 1959).


I therefore turned to the comprehensive subscriber-only Ancestry database, which was far more successful, turning up a marriage for Lily V. Sewell and Albert H. Young in the Woolwich R.D. (Kent) from the September Quarter of 1952. Lily was apparently married six or seven years earlier than her older sister, when she was thirty-two years old.


The photograph of the happy couple signing the register was of fairly decent quality, so I tried some digital manipulation of a detailed scan (click image above for a more detailed version), in an attempt to decipher the handwriting in the register. Unfortunately, while I think I can make out the name, Lily Victoria Sewell, that's about the extent of it. I sadly haven't been able to determine the name of the parish church, but it is likely to be in one of the parishes of Charlton, Kidbrooke, Plumstead or Woolwich.


So, you might well ask, we've had the two weddings, but where is the funeral? When I was trying to identify as many people as possible who appeared in both wedding parties - can you see Dordy and her husband to be, Peter, in Lily's wedding photo? - there was one man who, although he appears to have taken the place often reserved for the father of the bride, looks too young for that role. Perhaps he's an uncle, or other member of the family? There is an older woman, also present on both occasions, who looks old enough to be Dordy and Lily's mother.

As shown by the above entry in the National Probate Calendar, Walter Edward Sewell of 298 Boulton Lane, Alvaston, Derbyshire (a pig iron carrier by trade) died on 12 July 1948, and was sadly not able to attend either of these two daughters' weddings.

For more weddings, and possibly a funeral or two, try Sepia Saturday's other offerings this week - I can guarantee you'll not be disappointed.

Sepia Saturday 72: A graduation photo in rich sepia hues

This week I'm going to follow Alan's lead, so my post for Sepia Saturday will have nothing whatsoever to do with you know what. Instead I'm going to share with readers a photograph which I think epitomises a second wave of popularity of the sepia photograph in the 20th Century.

The colour sepia was named, according to the Wikipedia definition, after the rich brown contents of the Sepia cuttlefish's ink sac. Sepia, gold and selenium toning have been used both to provide warmer hues to photographic prints and to make the compounds more stable, enhancing the archival properties. In the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in the United States, prints with rich, deep brown tones became very popular and were used by many studios, often mounted on elaborate embossed, coloured and patterned card, or in folders.

Among the photographs collected by Hampton (New Hampshire) resident Louis Dubois, and donated to the Photo-Sleuth archives by his daughters Irene and Judy, are several examples of such lavishly coloured, mounted and decorated portraits, including todays offering. N.B. I've tried to match the colours as closely as I can to the original with Adobe Photoshop, but of course it may look slightly different on your screen from what it does on mine.


This portrait of a young woman has been printed on thin card (118.5 x 170.5 mm) with a matt finish, the corners of the print then being inserted into slots cut in a thicker brown, embossed and faux leather patterned card (146 x 213 mm) with feathered edges.


The mount has, in turn been affixed within a 2½-leaf vertically opening folder (152.5 x 221 mm folded; 152.5 x 276 opened) made of similar brown card.


This folder is constructed so that the upper and lower leaves can be folded back, and the point of the lower leaf inserted into a slot in the upper, creating a stand for display purposes.


The following is handwritten in black ink on the inside of the lower leaf (image enhanced for clarity):

Helen C. Gilpatrick
H.A.
1923

Helen Christina Gilpatrick was born in New Hampshire on 30 July 1905, daughter of William Merton Gilpatrick (1879-c1963) and Alice née Kershaw (1879-1963). The family moved to North Hampton around 1915, by which time Helen had two younger sisters Gladys Mae (c1907-1938) and Dorothy Gertrude (1909-1985). William Gilpatrick was a brick and cement mason, doing contract jobs wherever he could find the work, but Hampton proved to be a good base, and he was on the entertainment committee of the Men's Club. Alice, although born in England, had immigrated with her family to the United States when very young and settled in Fall River, Massachusetts. However, she moved easily into the Hampton community, soon becoming a stalwart of the Mothers' Circle. In 1920, they were living at 179 High Street in Hampton, and all three girls attended Hampton Academy.


Helen, too, became very active in Hampton community affairs, particularly at the Congregational Church Sunday School. When she graduated from Hampton Academy in a ceremony at the Town Hall on the evening of Friday 15 June 1923, she was one of five honors students. The graduation class roll is shown in the program she later donated to the Tuck Museum - now held by the Lane Memorial Library - and the names of honors students, marked here (by me) with an asterisk, were published in the Portsmouth Herald on 18 June:

*Eva May Lantz
Douglass Everett Hunter
*Helen Christina Gilpatrick
Malcolm Dana Roberts
Vernon Libby Booker
Grace Wilomina Blake
Harold Reynold Beede
*Walter Randolph Clark
Gertrude Shirley Blake
*Norman Oswald Marston
Hazel Estella Lamprey
*Evelyn Crosby Shaw

At least four other members of this graduating class are subjects of photographs in the Louis Dubois collection, and I will feature them here on Photo-Sleuth in due course, together with details of any further connecting stories that I can unravel. However, it appears on the face of it, that Helen had this fine portrait taken to mark her graduation, and gave copies to her class mates, including this one.

I found the following extract from the local rag, The Hamptons Union, dated Thursday, February 12, 1925, which seems to confirm her predilection for necklaces:

A very pleasant surprise was given Miss Helen Gilpatrick last Saturday evening, when a number of her friends gathered at her home. The evening was passed very pleasantly by playing games. A beautiful string of crystal beads were presented to her from those present. Delicious refreshments of ice cream and cake were served. The guests departed at a late hour having enjoyed a very pleasant evening.

Although her two younger sisters married, Dorothy in 1936 to Norman Smiley and Gladys a year later to Leroy Shea, she remained single, working as a book-keeper and stenographer, and living in Hampton until at least the early 1960s. She died in Florida in August 1985.

Whitman Studio, Malden, Massachusetts


Whitman Studio (at right), 100 Pleasant Street, Malden, 18 July 1923
The Whitman Studio, situated on Pleasant Street, Malden (Mass.), which Helen Gilpatrick visited in 1923, shown on the edge of the photograph above, probably within weeks of the sitting, was operated by Edgar L. Byrd from at least as early as 1910 until shortly before his death in September 1956. Early in his career, he was responsible for the photographs of Helen Keller published in her book, "The World I Live In" in 1907.

References

Lane Memorial Library Archives, Hampton

1881 Census of the UK, from Ancestry.co.uk

UK GRO Birth, Marriage & Death Index, from FreeBMD

US Federal Census Collection, WW1 Draft Registration Cards, US City Directories & the Portsmouth Herald newspaper, from Ancestry.com

Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Maine Births, Marriages & Deaths, from FamilySearch

US Social Security Death Index (SSDI) from FamilySearch

Malden Historical Society (2000) Malden, Arcadia Publishing, 128p.

Jane Wyatt Barnes (1817-1887) of Collycroft, Edlaston

Nigel Aspdin sent me the following image of a photograph and asked me when I thought it had been taken, because he wasn't able to marry up his estimate of the date of the portrait with what he knew about the subject, his ancestor Jane Wyatt Barnes.


It is a 107.5 x 153.5 mm (4¼" x 6") print - possibly a silver gelatin print - mounted on plain thin white card (approx. 126 x 179 mm) with an irregular bevelled and silvered edge, which itself is mounted on more thin white card (approx. 203 x 280 mm) with a slightly irregular finish, and a plain irregular edge, and then mounted into a buff coloured folder (approx. 208 x 286 mm) with a similar rough edge, and with a thinner paper "protector" page. The folder has an oval art noveau-style design (166 x 176 mm) showing a long-haired young woman holding a flower embossed into the front cover. The name of the studio, "R. + R. Bull," has been pencilled into the lower right hand margin of the topmost card mount.


This style of photographic mount first came into use, in its simplest form, in the early 1900s along with the art nouveau movement. At this time a profusion of new formats offered more exciting alternatives to the cabinet card, at the upper end of the market, and the carte de visite, at the lower end. The photographs mounted in folders remained in vogue for many years, becoming more elaborate after the end of the Great War and during the 1920s. I hope to feature other examples of photographic folders from my collection on Photo-Sleuth soon. However, I estimate that this particular example was probably produced in the late 1910s or early 1920s.


The portrait itself, however, is not at all typical of that era. My first impression was that it was from the 1850s or 1860s, but that was largely a guess. After looking at a large range of designs in Victorian Fashions & Costumes from Harper's Bazaar : 1867-1898, by Stella Blum (publ. 1974, Dover Publications, Inc., ISBN 0 486 22990 4), I am a little more knowledgeable, but no nearer an exact date. Bonnets in this broad style appear to have remained in fashion throughout the 1860s and 1870s, particularly when worn by women of more mature years. The lace shawl was an accessory less commonly used by younger women, but was equally long-lived. It may be of relevance that lace running was one of Ashbourne's principal trades in early Victorian times, although by the 1860s, numbers of lace workers had fallen dramatically. [Source: A Portrait Of Ashbourne in the Mid 19th Century, by the Ashbourne Local History Group, edited by Adrian Henstock, 1978]


Click image for reverse of cabinet card
Once I had told Nigel that the photograph was obviously a copy of a photograph taken much earlier, perhaps in the 1860s or 1870s, he had a more detailed look through his collection of family photographs, and found a cabinet card of what appears to be the same, or at least very similar, portrait. The card mount indicates that it was by Robert Bull of Ashbourne, Robert being the uncle of another Robert Bull who joined the business around 1904.


The design of the card mount, produced by Fallowfield of London, is very similar to one used by Derby photographer W.W. Winter (see Type XV) between 1883 and 1886. Roger Vaughan's article, "Dating Victorian Photograph Card Printers c.1864 - 1895," has the firm of Fallowfield operating from c.1884 until 1888. I believe, therefore, that the earlier Bull portrait was almost certainly produced in the early to mid-1880s.


A detailed examination of the earlier portrait suggests that it may also be a copy. It is theoretically possible that both prints were produced from the same original negative. However, Robert Bull probably only started working as a photographer around 1876, and then only as a sideline to the newsagent's business, so reproduction from an original negative appears unlikely. I suspect that both prints were copied from an original portrait taken in the 1860s or early 1870s, and that the later copy was subjected to some retouching. It is even conceivable that the portrait was taken as early as the late 1850s, when the subject was about forty - if this is the case, then the original would have been an ambrotype.

It is perhaps worth noting that the subject's hair completely covers her ears - after about 1867, ears began to be more noticeable in portraits!

It may help to give some background to the subject's life. Jane Wyatt Harlow was born on 30 October 1817, a daughter of Ashbourne brass founder and clockmaker Robert Harlow (1779-1828) and his wife Amelia née Wyatt (1783-1853). She married Thomas Barnes (1810-1858), an ironmonger and grocer, at St Oswald's, Ashbourne on 11 Jan 1842. With him she had two sons and five daughters, before her husband died in 1858, at the relatively young age of 58. She continued to run the grocery and ironmonger's businesses until she was about 60. She lived at Collycroft Farm, near Edlaston, from the mid-1860s, died there at the age of 69, and was buried at St. Oswald's, Ashbourne on 4 January 1887 [Source: Ashbourne St Oswald Burials, by Mike Spencer].

Other References:
IGI, FreeBMD, 1841-1901 Census from Ancestry.co.uk, Derbyshire Wills database 1525-1928 by Mike Spencer