Sepia Saturday 224: The Servants at Quantock Lodge

The Sepia Saturday image prompt this week shows a woman watering her artichokes while a man, presumably her husband, stands with a pipe firmly clenched in his mouth and holding a shovel. He's perhaps pretending that he's just finished the weeding, but is clearly not dressed for the task. My contribution to the meme this week is a group of servants, including gardeners and groundsmen, who may be in their best clothes, but they don't look quite as out of place in the garden.

In something approaching the manner popularised by fellow Sepians Tattered + Lost and Mister Mike, I will attempt a deconstruction and/or reconstruction of the occasion.


Quantock Lodge Servants, 79/August, Cabinet card portrait
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This early cabinet portrait mounted on plain card was a fortuitous purchase on eBay a few years ago, lucky in that such items often attract furious bidding which very quickly puts them totally out of my reach costwise, but if I remember correctly I was the only one to show any interest in this. It is unusual not only for the subject matter, a large group of servants from a big house, but also that the location and date are written on the card mount.

Quantock Lodge is a mansion built as a holiday residence in the Gothic revival style during the mid-19th century for Henry Labouchere, 1st Baron Taunton (1797-1869), and described by Nocolas Pevsner as "a large rather dull Tudor house ... Gothic Stables, a specially crazy Gothic Dovecote and a big Gothic Lodge." Although Baron Taunton's second wife inherited the estate on his death in 1869, his eldest daughter Mary Dorothy Labouchere (1842-1920) lived there after her marriage in 1872 to Edward James Stanley, D.L., J.P. (1826-1907), later a British Conservative politician from 1882 until 1907. By August 1879, when this photograph was taken, the Stanleys had a son and a daughter, both born at St George Hanover Square, London, and a second son was born on 30th August, also in London.


Cabinet card portrait by Monsieur Bernard's Prince Imperial Photographie Francaise, 8 Alphington St, Exeter
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Rather than using printed card mount, the photographer has used a small paper label with his details pasted on the back of the card.

MONSIEUR BERNARD'S
PRINCE IMPERIAL
MEMORIAL
Photographie Francaise.
-:o:-
8, Alphington St. EXETER.
Copies may always be had.
No.
I've been unable to find records of a photographer named Bernard working in either Exeter or Somerset. However, there was a Daniel Bernard of Austrian origin living at 12 Smythen Street, Exeter in April 1881 who described himself as picture frame dealer. That he had links with Somerset is demonstrated by the birth of his two children at Bristol in 1875 and 1878. Bernard's use of the name "Prince Imperial Memorial" was particularly opportunisitic, considering that Napoléon, the Prince Imperial, had been killed in Zululand only a couple of months earlier, and the "Prince Imperial Memorial Fund" set up in mid-June.


Detail of Quantock Lodge servants
This group of servants - 10 male, 9 female and a young lad - is large, indicative of a fairly wealthy household, which the Stanleys certainly were. Mary's mother and paternal grandmother were members of the Baring banking family. The census record of Quantock Lodge, Over Stowey, Somerset for 3 April 1881 (p1 & p2), only 20 months after the photograph was taken, shows 21 servants - 8 male, 12 female - as well as a governess and a young boy, with three additonal male employees living in married quarters nearby. In order to compare the census list with the people we see in the photograph, I have extracted their details:

Name	Age	Occupation	1871--1891
Eleanor E. MAJOR	22	Governess
Annie REID	40	Butler's wife (Visitor)
Caroline FARLEY	49	Housekeeper
Emile WELLS	30	Cook
Elise REDFLEUR	31	Ladies Maid [sic]
Mary MAY	25	Nurse	Housekeeper, 1891
Thomas REID	45	Butler
Walter REID	37	Valet
William DAVIS	28	Under Butler
Thomas WALKER	30	Footman
James GRANDFIELD	25	Footman	Under Butler, 1891
Henry WATTS	32	2nd Coachman
James STACEY	23	Groom
George LUCAS	22	House Servant
Mary A. PRICE	26	Kitchen maid
Alice E. TOFFS	19	Kitchen maid
Elizabeth VINCENT	22	House Maid
Gerald A. ELLIS	8	Scholar (Nephew)
Clara PACKER	31	Head Housemaid
Hannah HUTCHINGS	28	Still Room Maid
Elizabeth WALTER	28	2nd Housemaid
Jane HOOPER	19	3rd Housemaid
Caroline THORNE	18	4th Housemaid
William ISTED	39	Head Coachman
Archibald BOUSIE	60	Head Gardener	Head Gardener, 1871
John MARSHALL	56	Head Gamekeeper

The boy was actually Mrs Stanley's nephew, Gerald Arthur Ellis, but I've included him in the extract because he is, rather oddly, listed among the servants. Gerald's father Major-General Sir Arthur Ellis was Equerry to the Prince of Wales, and Gerald himself became a Page to Queen Victoria.


Status and heirarchy of servants in a Victorian house
Image © and courtesy of BBC News Magazine
I can't give an authoritative source for this, but I have the impression that census listings for such households generally show the servants in order of seniority. It is interesting to note that the head gardener had been there since 1871, while two of the servants were still working at Quantock Lodge a decade later in 1891. In those ten years Mary May had worked her way up from Nurse to Housekeeper, while James Grandfield had undergone a similar promotion from Footman to Under Butler.


The Butler and the Housekeeper, Quantock Lodge
The two central figures in this tableaux, also probably the oldest, are almost certainly the most senior male and female servants in the household, the butler and the housekeeper. The butler looks to be in his forties. Thomas Reid was shown as 45 in the 1881 census, but 46 or 47 when he died at Quantock Lodge in February 1884 - depending on source - and is therefore a good candidate. His wife Annie is described as a visitor in the census, and was therefore not a regular member of the household. After her husband's death, she continued to live nearby in Taunton, described in the 1891 Census is "living on her own means."

The housekeeper at Quantock House in April 1881 was Caroline Farley. She gave her age as 49, but I've been able to track her through the remaining census records from 1841 to 1901, and it appears that at the time the photograph was taken in the garden of Quantock Lodge in August 1879, Caroline was probably in her mid-fifties. The housekeeper in the photograph looks a little older than this, perhaps in her sixties, but there are no older women in the census list, so this may be Caroline Farley's predecessor - it's difficult to be sure.


The Valet, Quantock Lodge
Thomas' younger brother Walter Reid was also at Quantock Lodge in 1881, aged 37 and employed as a valet. Judging by his clothing, his age and the similarity of their facial features (in particular ears, nose and mouth), I think he may be standing in the back row, second from right, with his right hand resting with some degree of familiarity on the shoulder of a woman seated on the butler's right, and possibly his left hand on the shoulder of another young woman. Walter was the executor of his brother's will dated April 1884, in which he left a personal estate of £480. I've been unable to find any record of Walter after this date.


The Under Butler and the House Servant, Quantock Lodge
Judging by their clothing, their ages and their proximity in the lineup to the butler, I believe that the two young men standing in the back row, directly in line with the butler and the housekeeper, are probably the Under Butler (right) and male House Servant (left), listed in the 1881 census as William Davis (aged 28) and George Lucas (aged 22). George Lucas was an inmate of the Dorchester Union Workhouse at Fordington in 1871, his mother having died when he was very young.


The Two Footmen and the 2nd Coachman, Quantock Lodge
The double-breasted coats with large brass buttons worn by all three young men standing at the right hand end of the back row makes them likely to have been footmen and coachmen. In 1881 Thomas Walker (30) and James Grandfield (25) were the two footmen, while Henry Watts (32) was the Second Coachman. It is difficult to tell whether that is the order they appear in the photograph.


The Cook and the Head Housemaid, Quantock Lodge
Unfortunately these two are in a part of the photograph which has been overexposed, with a resulting loss of definition. From their clothing, seniority dictated by their position seated to the housekeeper, and their ages, I believe them to be the Cook (left) and the Head Housemaid (right). In 1881, these positions were filled by Emily Wells (30) and Clara Packer (31). I tracked down Emily/Emma Wells to the magnificent Petworth House in Sussex in 1871, where she was employed by the 2nd Lord Leconfield as a Still Room Maid, the most junior servant in the household.


The Governess and the Lady's Maid, Quantock Lodge
There are only two women dressed in dark clothing, both of them fairly young, and they must, I think, be the Governess and Lady's Maid. The young woman seated on the grass at the far left of the group has a substantial hat, and appears to be of an appropriate age to be the 22 year-old Governess, Eleanor E. Major. Ten years later she was working as a Governess to the family of her previous employer's sister, Mina Frances Ellis, and was still employed as a governess in 1901. The woman holding a dog on her lap may be the 31 year-old Elise Reafleur (or Redfleur), the Swiss-born lady's maid to Mary Stanley.


The Nursemaid, Quantock Lodge
Five months prior to the sunny summer morning when Monsieur Bernard visited Quantock Lodge, the Honourable Mrs. Stanley placed an advertisement in the Morning Post, a conservative daily London newspaper "noted for its attentions to the activities of the powerful and wealthy," looking for a "superior Nurserymaid to help in the care of two children (see below). Pregnant with her third child, she was obviously anticipating the extra work load. It would be nice to think that Mary May, the 25 year-old "Nurse" listed in the 1881 Census, who was still with the Stanleys ten years later at Quantock Lodge as housekeeper, came to them in response to this advertisement. My feeling is that she is seated at far left, between the butler and the governess.


Advertisement in the Morning Post, 18 March 1879
In 1898 Mary Ann May married the under-butler James Grandfield and the couple moved to Kensington where James found work, now as a butler. The 1901 Census shows the Stanley household without a butler. James was still working as a butler in London in 1911 and died in 1919, while Mary died in 1939.


The Kitchen and House Maids, Quantock Lodge
The three remaining women in the group, standing immediately behind the butler, housekeeper and cook, look to be in their early to mid-twenties, and could be either kitchen or house staff. Unaccounted for in the census are two kitchen maids, four house maids and a still room maid. Presumably some were either too busy to outdoors engaging in such frivolities as a photographic portrait (read camera-shy), or absent on the day.


The Head Gardener, Quantock Lodge
The man standing at the extreme left of the group may be the Head Gardener, Archibald Bousie, who lived with his family in the gardener's cottage on the estate. He was born on 9 March 1821 at Markinch, Fife, Scotland and, judging by the number of credits in The Flora of Forfarshire by William Gardiner, published in 1848, he was a very knowledgeable and active botanist as a young man. Mr Bousie was employed from c. 1848 by Henry Labouchere, Lord Taunton, as the head gardener in the famous gardens laid out by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton at Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire. He won numerous medals and prizes for his fuschias, rhododendrons, calceolarias, fancy pelargoniums, figs and desert apples in flower and fruit shows at the Crystal Palace, Royal Botanic Society and Royal Horticultural Society between 1855 and 1863.

After Stoke Park was sold in 1863, Bousie moved to Quantock Lodge where he worked in a similar capacity, first for Lord Taunton and later for his daughter and son-in-law, the Stanleys. He died at Over Stowey on 20 December 1910, aged 89 years, after having passed on the reins at Quantock Lodge to his son David Alexander Bousie.


The Head Gamekeeper and the Groom, Quantock Lodge
As we get further down the list, I feel on more shaky ground regarding identifications. The man with a large stick and an even more impressive beard seated on the grass is dressed as an outdoor servant, but I don't believe he can be the Head Coachman, so I think it more likely that he is a gardener or a gamekeeper. The 1881 Census shows one John Marshall, aged 56, Head Gamekeeper, living near Quantock Lodge and it seems likely this is him. The man seated at far right, holding onto a dark-coloured poodle, is probably the groom, shown in the census as James Stacey, aged 23.


The Young Lad, Quantock Lodge
Finally, we have the well dressed young lad sitting cross-legged in front of the housekeeper and the cook. There is only one boy shown in the census, Gerald Ellis, nephew of Mrs Stanley, but in August he would have been only six years old, and this chap looks to me to be around 9 or 10, at least. The Stanley's eldest son Henry Thomas Stanley was a year younger than Gerald, so it's not likely to be him either. I suspect that he was a local lad employed as a Hall Boy.


Quantock Lodge servants
Possible identification of individuals in Quantock Lodge Servants photo:

1. Archibald Bousie, aged 60, Head Gardener
2. Walter Reid, aged 37, Valet
3. Unidentified Kitchen or House Maid
4. George Lucas, aged 22, House Servant
5. Unidentified Kitchen or House Maid
6. William Davis, aged 28, Under Butler
7. Unidentified Kitchen or House Maid
8. James Grandfield, aged 25, Footman
9. Thomas Walker, aged 30, Footman
10. Henry Watts, aged 32, Second Coachman
11. Mary May, aged 25, Nurse(maid)
12. Thomas Reid, 45, Butler
13. Caroline Farley, aged mid-50s, Housekeeper
14. Emily Wells, aged 30, Cook
15. Clara Packer, aged 31, Head Housemaid
16. Elise Reafleur/Redfleur, aged 31, Lady's Maid
17. James Stacey, aged 23, Groom
18. Eleanor E. Major, aged 22, Governess
19. John Marshall, aged 56, Head Gamekeeper
20. Unidentified Hall Boy

Of course I understand that most readers will have decided, probably well before getting to this point, that my IDs are at best tentative, and in the worst case, rather unlikely. My aim at putting this list out in the cybersphere is to generate some interest and possibly further information about the servants who worked, perhaps not straight away, but hopefully in due course.

For more gardening of the sepian variety, I can recommend visiting the other Sepia Saturday contributers.

Sepia Saturday 163: A photographer at the front door

The Sepia Saturday prompt photo this week shows a man standing in a deep bank of snow on a sidewalk in Keene, New Hampshire, "after the great storm, March 13, 1888." I'm sticking with the theme only peripherally, in the sense that it shows people in front of houses, and I'm once again grateful to Gail Durbin for giving me the idea for the topic.

Another area that fascinates me is images of people standing outside their houses in photographs that show the whole house. Was this a winter activity for beach photographer? I think one of my cards actually has a message saying that a photographer had come to the road that day.

Unidentified family in front of their home, postmarked Leytonstone, 1910
Postcard portrait by unidentified photographer
Image © lovedaylemon and courtesy of Flickr
On the reverse of this postcard in Gail's collection is written the following message.

A photographer came today to take the houses.

The family are posed along the short garden path in front of what is presumed to be their home. Whether the family or the house were the primary motive for the portrait is not clear, but it falls within a large genre of photographs of people taken in outdoors settings, and more specifically with their home featuring prominently in the view, apparently by photographers who roamed the suburbs touting for business.


Lovedaylemon's "Us outside our house" set at Flickr
Gail has a huge set of several hundred such images on Flickr, fittingly entitled, "Us outside our house," which are well worth a browse. The bulk of them are postcards, and probably date from the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s, with a few as late as the 1930s. I hadn't noticed previously, but Gail is quite correct that a large proportion of the portraits seem to have beeen taken in winter, as evidenced by the leafless trees and ivy. What is more unusual is to have a record of the circumstances surrounding the actual taking of the portrait.


Baker-Haseldine family in Derby, 1920
Mounted print by L.P. Hitchens
Image © and courtesy of Jane Porter
In an article written in April 2008 I discussed a family group portrait taken in an informal garden setting in the suburbs of Derby. According to the story told to photograph owner Jane Porter by family members:

It was 1920 in Derby. That was the year when my gran - Madge - was born. The story is that a photographer knocked the door and offered to take a photo of them. They rushed to get themselves tidied up and cut some roses from the back garden to hold. Ethel (the middle of back row) had just been doing the washing (she'd had her sleeves rolled up).

The photographer L.P. Hitchen (1877-1922) was a cotton weaver in Burnley, Lancashire for much of his life, and probably only tried his hand at photography for a brief period, not long enough even to have card mounts printed. I can find no other record of his photographic work apart from this portrait.


Portrait of unidentified family group and house, c. mid- to late 1860s
Carte de visite by Thomas B. Mellor of Belper, Derbyshire
Image © and courtesy of Cynthia Maddock
Cynthia Maddock sent me this image of a much earlier carte de visite portrait in the same vein, featuring a large family, complete with baby and cat, arranged in front of an old thatched cottage. Thomas Barker Mellor of The Butts, Belper, Derbyshire practised as a photographer in and around that town for roughly a decade from the late 1860s until the mid- to late 1870s. While he may have had a studio, I have yet to come across an example of his work which hasn't been taken outdoors. Even an 1874 group portrait of Butterly Company workers appears to have taken place in a hastily constructed makeshift studio in an outdoors setting. A garden at Pentrich Lane End formed the backdrop to the charming Fletcher family portrait taken c. 1867, as shown in a charming carte de visite in Robert Silverwood's collection.


Portrait of unidentified family group and house, c. late 1880s-early 1890s
Cabinet card by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin (Hewitt collection)
I am particularly interested in such examples, as they provide valuable information on a group of photographers who otherwise tended not to leave much in the way of documentary evidence of their work, even though their output was often prodigious. I can't be sure, and certainly can't provide any sources for it, but I believe some photographers may have specialised in this house-to-house trade. From as early as the 1850s there were itinerant photographers who would frequent country fairs, but I believe there were also plenty of practitioners who never had permanent studio premises, and sought out customers wherever they could find them. If that meant going from house to house in the suburbs, then that's what they did.


The Payne family at home, c.1894-1895
Cabinet card portrait by A & G Taylor of Derby
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
In spite of the photographer's imprint suggesting a studio in Queen Anne Buildings, New Briggate, Leeds, I believe this portrait of my grandfather and his parents to have been taken in the garden of their house (and grocer's shop) at 83 St James' Road, Derby, not long after their return from Chicago in late 1892. A greenhouse is visible in the background, and my great-grandfather is sitting on a newspaper to prevent his suit trousers from being ruined by sitting in the rockery. A & G Taylor was a huge firm with branches country-wide; several of these branch studios in the Midlands (Derby, Nottingham, Leeds & Sheffield) were run together by a manager William Middleton in the 1880s and 1890s. I suspect that they temporarily ran out of stock of card mounts for the Derby branch at this time, and used some old card stock, since the Leeds branch was by that time being managed by someone else. I think it likely that the photographer was touring the neighbourhood, and the Payne family made the most of the unexpected opportunity.


Uncle Hallam, Aunt Sarah & Leslie Payne, St James' Road, Derby
Postcard portrait by unidentified photographer, c. 1907-1909
Image © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
A decade later this postcard portrait taken on the street outside the same house and off-licence, then occupied by my grandfather's Uncle Hallam, was almost certainly taken by a similarly opportunistic photographer. It depicts, from left to right, an unidentified female shop worker, Sarah Emma Payne (1870-1946), Charles Hallam Payne (1870-1960), my grandfather Charles Leslie Lionel Payne (1892-1975) handling an early form of shopping cart - presumably used for transporting beer deliveries indoors - and an unidentified young man in charge of Hallam's horse and brewer's dray.


Charles and Maud Gunson at their house near Tauranga, c. 1911-1913
Postcard portrait by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
Part of my work as a volunteer at the Tauranga Heritage Collection involves scanning of old photographs in the collection. This image of a postcard is from a group which belonged to the Stewart and Gunson families of Tauranga and Katikati, and shows Charles and Maud Gunson in front of a wooden house with enclosing verandahs and a fenced garden with several shrubs. No photographer's imprint is shown on the back of the postcard. Since no children are shown, it is likely to have been taken shortly after their marriage in 1911. At that time, the most likely type of camera used to produce this format would have employed glass plates, and is therefore less likely to have been in the hands of an amateur, since roll film cameras were easily available by then and were far more portable. It is likely, therefore, that this too was taken by a travelling, or at least roving, professional photographer.


Various unidentified children, late 1890s - early 1900s
Cabinet card portraits by Frank Day of Heanor
Images © & courtesy of Alan Craxford and Terry Smith
Although his portraits concentrate on the human subjects and give little prominence to the houses and gardens, Frank Day was another Derbyshire photographer who made a practice of visiting customer's homes in Heanor from the late 1890s until about 1912. The Ray Street address given on some of his cabinet card mounts is where he was living in 1901, so perhaps he had a darkroom and processing facility at home, but no studio. It is interesting to note that in April 1911 the census shows him near Pontypridd in Wales. He described himself as a photographer working on his own account, so perhaps he was preparing for the influx of spring visitors to Wales. If so this would lend support to Gail's idea that such photographers may have followed the seasonal trade.


Child and caged bird in conservatory, c.1890s
Cabinet card by unidentified photographer
Image © & collection of Brett Payne
I have many portraits taken in similar settings, sadly now bereft of any documentation to demonstrate how the photographer and client found each other. More often than not, they don't even have the photographer's imprint or location to show where they are from. For a more affluent family, I suspect that a studio photographer might be summoned from his regular premises to the client's home, and would perhaps expect to charge somewhat above his standard studio rate for the extra effort involved. However, a less well known practitioner sans premises in the High Street, and consequently without the attached overhead expenses, who was touting for business by door-knocking in a residential suburb might be able to reduce his charges to somewhat less than the going rate in order to attract customers. I suppose it was a niche readily filled by those without the resources to rent and fit out expensive studios with backdrops, furniture and props.

I suspect I've moved well away from the theme that most Sepians will follow this week, so if you want some variety, please pay them a visit. There are a few to get around, so it might be an idea to bookmark Sepia Saturday and make it a regular haunt.

Sepia Saturday 139: Uncle Farquhar and his faithful hound

I have a little catching up to do with reading the previous two editions of Sepia Saturday, so my effort for this week's hasn't been given the attention to detail that I would have preferred. Nevertheless, I hope readers will appreciate the contribution, which I think bears at least a passing similarity to Alan Burnett's image prompt, in the form of a Great War era poster exhorting people to recycle.

Portrait of man and dog by unidentified photographer
Plain paper print (65.5 x 107mm)
Collection of Brett Payne
Judging by the size of this plain paper print (2½” x 4¼”), probably a contact print, it was taken with Kodak 116 film or an equivalent in another brand. The casual pose of the subjects in the informal garden setting suggests this was a portrait by an amateur photographer, using one of the many cheap cameras that became available in the first couple of decades of the 20th Century, such as the 1A Folding Pocket Kodak.

A smartly dressed man, complete with a Homburg hat (popularised by Edward VII) and pipe in hand, stands on the luxurious lawn, facing the camera and with his body angled to the right. His is quietly attended by a largish dog which may be a border collie, but I'll leave the identification of breed to those more qualified. In the background are flower beds with a glass-topped cold frame, and some plants growing up a wire trellis, against a wooden paling fence. The latter probably separates the subject's garden from that of the neighbour, whose glass-panelled greenhouse with an open skylight forms a backdrop to the portrait. A three to four metre high tree - perhaps some kind of fruit tree - with a supporting stake, is sited to the left of the cold frame, while some much larger trees are just visible in the background. Since the branches of one of the larger trees are bare, and yet there are still leaves on the young, presumably deciduous tree, I would tentatively deduce that the photograph was taken some time in the autumn.

"Uncle Farquhar Nov 1914"
Reverse of plain paper print
Collection of Brett Payne
The reverse of the print reveals that it was once pasted into one of the black-paged albums that became very popular in the first few decades of the 20th Century. A good portion of the album page from which it was torn has remained firmly affixed to the back of the print, and it is on this remnant that a later hand has inscribed "Uncle Farquhar Nov 1914" in pencil, a convenient confirmation of my autumnal guess.

George & Mary Bloye's Photo Album
1860s/1870s style carte de visite album with brass clasps, publisher unknown Collection of Brett Payne
I must at this stage hasten to point out that I was not the vandal, and should also reveal that I found the snapshot amongst a collection of twenty-seven cartes de visite, generally from a much earlier period, inserted within a standard leatherette-covered mid-Victorian carte de visite album that I purchased some years ago - pictured above.

Portraits of Emma Jane Farquhar and Joseph Kent Farquhar
from George & Mary Bloye's Photo Album
Collection of Brett Payne
The album contains a number of annotations in the same pencilled hand that is seen above, both on the backs of card mounts and occasionally on the album pages themselves. There is also a small, slightly damaged label stuck at the top right hand corner of the flyleaf, inscribed "George Bloye Birmingham 1858," although this replaces an earlier, but now erased, inscription which reads, in past, "... Bloye ...ptember 1922," all in the same hand. Also written in pencil on the flyleaf in the by now familiar handwriting, then messily crossed out, is the following: "It was Grandpa's in 1858."

Inscription on flyleaf of George & Mary Bloye's Photo Album
Collection of Brett Payne
I won't go into too much detail about either the annotations or the individuals mentioned, but wanted to point out that clues like these are vital in determining the integrity and provenance of a photograph album, whether it is from a family collection or purchased, as this one was, on eBay. One must always treat annotations with some suspicion since, as appears to be the case with this album, they are often written a good time after the album was purchased and compiled. However, having done some genealogical research into the names mentioned and marrying up these individuals with the subjects of the photographs, I am satisfied that the collection is largely intact, and not merely compiled by some latter day collector or eBay hopeful.

Notwithstanding the overall apparent authenticity of the collection, it is clear that the album could not have belonged to George Bloye in 1858 - apart from his being only 13 years old at the time, carte de visite portraits - and by extension the albums in which they were accommodated - did not become available to the general populace until 1860-1861. The album was probably produced and sold in the late 1860s or 1870s, when George Bloye would have been in his 20s or early 30s. Indeed it it is quite possible that it was a wedding gift to George and his wife in 1869.

Genealogical investigations have revealed that the subject of this portrait is Joseph Kent Farquhar (1849-1925), brother-in-law to the probable original album owners George Bloye (1845-1922) and his wife Mary née Moore (1844-1922). Joseph's wife Emma Jane née Moore (1849-1933) is the subject of the somewhat earlier portrait on the page opposite to that of Joseph.

So ... the question now arises: What is this portrait of Joseph Farquhar, probably taken in November 1914, and originally pasted into a contemporary album during or soon after the Great War, doing in a mid-Victorian family album? The truth is that very few albums remain in the exact state that they were originally compiled when they are handed down through the generations. George and Emma Bloye both died in 1922, and the album - perhaps together with other photos and/or albums - is likely to have been inherited by one of their two children George Herbert Bloye (1870-1931), a Wesleyan minister, and Ethel Mary Harmer (1873-1952), wife of a Wesleyan schoolmaster.

Ethel died in 1952 without any surviving issue, while George Herbert and his wife had two daughters, Joyce Ethel (1902-) and Winifred Mary (1906-). Being the only grandchildren of George Bloye senior, Joyce and Winfred would have been next in line to receive the albums, and one of the two was almost certainly the author of the pencilled captions. Given that most of the subjects of the photos in the album would still have been alive when the girls were in their youth, they would have been familiar with most of the faces, and probably also inserted some of the newer loose portraits into any empty spaces.


View Larger Map Home of Joseph K. & Emma J. Farquhar in 1911
22 Beresford Road, Rusholme, Manchester
What of Joseph Farquhar himself? The 1911 Census shows him and his wife living with three unmarried daughters in a Victorian terraced house in Rusholme, a southern suburb of Manchester, and it seems likely that this was where the snapshot was taken of him in the garden some three years or so later.


View Larger Map
Home & Garden of Joseph K. & Emma J. Farquhar in 1911
22 Beresford Road, Rusholme, Manchester
A bird's eye view of the present day address reveals what appears to be a paved or concreted back garden, but the cold frame of yesteryear was probably placed against the south-facing northern wall of the property, so as to make the most of the sun.

Dunrossness Methodist Chapel
© Copyright Robbie and courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Joseph Farquhar was born in the village of Dunrossness in the Shetland Islands where his father was a Wesleyan minister, but moved with his family to England when he was a young lad. He married Emma Jane Moore, daughter of a carpenter, at Birmingham in 1876, and spent all of his working life employed by a hardware manufacturer, initially as a clerk, then later as a manager and agent.

This post turned out a bit longer than I expected. If you've persevered for this long, I hope you've found the journey of interest, and still have some time left to read the other Sepia Saturday contributions.

Sepia Saturday 94: Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

Traditional

Only time and the collective judgement of fellow Sepia Saturday contributers will tell, but I may be able to make a claim as the closest follower of Alan's theme this week. I believe this young lady, pictured in an unnamed 4¼" x 3¼" paper print from c.1910-1914, and doing her best to ignore the persistently annoying younger brother still in nappies, is well into her training for a career to be spent astride ponies of the inanimate kind. Judging by her apparent age, she may even be the same curly-headed young Queenslander who later caught the roving eye of that wheeled toy horse in 1937.

Here, however, she is less concerned with pretending any skill at polo or other frivolous pursuits. It is clear that she is determined to ride her steed through the jungle ahead, but is just starting to appreciate the importance of an unexpected photo opportunity. For more of those captured moments presented by a squad of sepia sycophants, check out Sepia Saturday's offerings.