Sepia Saturday 283: Laying New Rails at Derby

Sepia Saturday's theme image this week was taken in the early 1890s shows a number of railway workers standing at the entrance to a large tunnel in County Mayo, Ireland. Some years ago I published a scanned and digitally retouched image of a roughly trimmed cabinet card from my collection which I entitled, "A group of railway navvies from Sheffield, Yorkshire."

Thanks to information later received from fellow photohistorian Simon Robinson, I discovered that the workers were more likely to be excavating water reservoirs rather than railway cuttings, but that hasn't prevented it becoming the most popular page on Photo-Sleuth, and "navvies" being the most common search term for visitors arriving via Google. If you type "railway navvies" into Google's image search, it should be in the top few images. According to Google Analytics tools, in the seven years since it was published it has received 1839 hits, a steady stream of visitors averaging 5 per week. I have no idea why, except that it is a great picture. It's also one of my most pilfered images, having been reposted without attribution on a multitude of other sites including, I was surprised to learn, the web site of the Smithsonian Magazine (who should know better).


Railway workers
Print (97 x 141 mm) mounted on thick card
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Today I have a similar image of railway workers, likewise scanned from a roughly trimmed albumen print mounted on thick card. Sadly it's a little worse for wear, the photographic emulsion being considerably faded, the surface of the print showing a good deal of ly spotting, and having a large tear almost completely across the upper right hand quarter. the photograph shows a group of five railway workers standing across several sets of railway tracks, with several buildings visible in the background, including a possible railway station and platform at the far right. Judging from the clothing and headgear of the men, I suspect that it was taken in the late 1880s or 1890s, at roughly the same time as the theme image, and perhaps a decade or so earlier than my other navvies photo.


Inscription: Laying New Rails at Derby(?)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The intriguing thing about this photo is the caption written in black (or perhaps very dark blue) ink on the reverse. It's rather difficult to decipher but it may read, "Laying new rails at Derby" (or possibly Darley), and that is how it was advertised when I purchased it off eBay not long ago. If any readers can shed light on where the photograph might have been taken, I'd be very grateful to hear from you, either by comment below or via email.

Sepia Saturday 274: A Grand Tour of Europe, 1904

A year ago in Vacation Days are Kodak Days I featured a few images from a collection shared with me by Bill Nelson, scanned from a series of nitrocellulose negatives taken by an as yet unidentified amateur photographer on a European tour in 1904, probably using a No 3 Folding Pocket Kodak camera. Most of these high quality shots were taken in locations that were, even in 1904, relatively well known tourist destinations, but with an eye for composition and a technique that betrays not inconsiderable experience.

Today, given this week's Sepia Saturday image prompt of a poster of a coal cart drawn by two horses, I'd like to show you a few more of these images. I was initially struck by how many scenes included carts, carriages, wagons and other vehicles drawn by animals, wondering whether the photographer had intentionally focused on them, but in those pre-motor days, such methods of conveyance were a normal facet of everyday life in Europe, and our photographer would have used at least some of these during his journey.


Horse-drawn omnibuses, London, England, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
The journey appears to have started in bustling London, where the wide and still unpaved streets were full of pedestrians dodging a variety of horse-drawn hansom cabs, carriages and omnibuses, overshadowed by the tall buildings of the city. A deluge of advertisements flood the viewer with admonishments to buy Horlick's Malted or Nestle's Milk and Fry's Cocoa, or to watch the latest show at the Adelphi or Wyndham's theatre.


Organ grinder tableau, possibly in London, England, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
In a quieter suburban street, with a background of sash windows drawn up to let in the languid afternoon air, he captured this engaging image of an organ grinder busy shutting up shop at the end of a day's performances. His hat is perched jauntily on the back of his tousled head, a monkey balances on the organ and his daughter poses between the shafts of the hand cart, totally absorbed by the photographer setting up his apparatus on a tripod. Almost as an afterthought, a pedestrian in a straw boater walking along the pavement, perhaps on her way home from shopping, is momentarily distracted by the tableau.


Suburban scene, possibly in London, England, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
A less well framed, and yet just as charming, scene captured in a slightly upmarket residential area appears to record a visit to a private house. The upstairs windows are neatly framed by chintz curtains and underscored with an ornate wrought iron balcony. A hansom cab waits at the kerb, a horse impatiently champing at the bit and stretching its neck against the pull of the reins, while a group of young boys loitering on the pavement ham it up for the camera.

A woman wearing an enormous pancake hat, so characteristic of the mid-1900s, pauses on the threshold, in front of the already open doorway, while the somewhat disembodied lady of the house and a uniformed house maid peer as if taken unawares over decorated flower boxes through an open window. A scullery maid, caught as if by accident while having an rare break from her daily drudgery, leans wearily against the railings on the steps leading down to the servants' quarters in the basement.


Outside the Blue Ball Inn, Countisbury, Lynmouth, Devon, England, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
In Somerset the photographer visited several locations popularised by Romantic poets, such as in R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone (published in 1869), including Lynmouth, Countisbury and Porlock. Here a coach drawn by six horses prepares for departure from the Blue Ball Inn, which still operates to this day as a bed and breakfast.


Donkeys outside the New Inn, Clovelly, England, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
The tiny but picturesque fishing village of Clovelly in North Devon, brought to public attention by Charles Kingsley's 1855 novel Westward Ho! was another destination visited. Its steep cobbled streets, wattle-and-daub cottages, donkeys with pannier baskets and crusty old characters provided fertile ground for photographic procrastinations.


Dog cart in the Netherlands, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
A journey on one of the many ferries crossing the Channel took our photographer to Normandy, where the lives of peasants and fishermen on the pebbly beaches around Étretat caught his attention for a while, and then to the Netherlands, where he photographed this young man selling wares from a small dog cart parked in a leafy avenue.


Smock mill Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, Germany, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
The ubiquitous Dutch windmills and canals were photographed too, but it was this huge smock mill in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam (just west of Berlin, Germany) that caught my eye, particularly because of the marked contrast presented by the bizarrely shaped horse-drawn van. Unfortunately I can't quite make out the name of the business painted on its side, and the banner-shaped sign on top is facing the wrong direction, but I wouldn't mind buying a frankfurter or an ice cream from him, should either of those be on offer (perhaps not a frankfurter in Berlin).


Oxen and wagon, Austria, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
In Austria a group is just visible taking refreshments in the cool shade of a leafy arbour in the village square, although the camera catches a woman washing laundry in the cherub-adorned fountain, while two oxen harnessed to a four-wheeled cart wait patiently nearby.


Possible itinerary for Grand European Tour, 1904
A possible itinerary drawn up for the unknown photographer's 1904 Grand Tour through Europe is somewhat fanciful, given that we don't have a clear picture of the order in which the photos were taken, but it does give an impression of the large amount of ground covered. One of the most intriguing aspects to this story is that a contact print of one of the negatives has been discovered in an archive in Bayreuth, Germany, suggesting that the films were being developed and printed along the way. How would this have been feasible for an amateur in 1904? For an answer to that we must start by looking at the camera which produced these fine photographs.


No 3 Folding Pocket Kodak DeLuxe Camera, modified Model AB, c.1902
Image © and courtesy of David Purcell
118-format roll film, with individual frames measuring 3¼" x 4¼" was introduced by Eastman Kodak specifically for the No 3 Folding Pocket Kodak camera first offered for sale in April 1900. By 1904 this camera was available in its fifth version, the Model C-2, with an array of shutter and lens options. Given the high quality of the images, it seems likely that our photographer was using a recent version with high quality lens and shutter, perhaps similar to the modified AB Deluxe model with Persian morocco leather case, brown silk-covered bellows and an engraved silver nameplate, advertised in the 1903 Kodak catalogue for a pricey $75 (compared with $17.50 for a standard model).


Negative album and index card for 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format rollfilm
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
The negatives in this collection, some with slightly uneven edges suggesting they were cut using a pair of scissors, are housed in a negative album containing 100 thick paper pockets in a thick green cloth-covered card folder, advertised in Kodak's 1903 catalogue for $1.00 (below).


Eastman's Negative Film Albums, extract from 1903 Kodak catalogue
Image courtesy of the Digitized Kodak Catalog Project
Each 118-format transparent film cartridge with 12 exposures cost 70 cents, and supplies were available from Kodak outlets in, amongst several other cities, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna. Several dozen rolls must have been used during the trip, since there are multiple negatives in each sleeve.


Kodak 118-format roll film
Image © and courtesy of Geoff Harrisson
The opening pages of Kodak's 1902 catalogue focused on their daylight-loading film cartridge, which utilised a strip of black paper along the back of the film strip to exclude light, making "pocket photography practical and ... it possible to do away with the dark room in loading and unloading the camera." This technology was already a decade old, invented by S.N. Turner of the Boston Camera Manufacturing Company for his Bull's Eye camera, then licensed and later purchased by George Eastman for the Pocket Kodak range.


Eastman's Kodak Developing Machine, extract from 1903 Kodak catalogue
Image courtesy of the Digitized Kodak Catalog Project
By the time their 1903 catalog was released, however, the emphasis had taken a leap forward as Kodak announced, "The Dark Room is abolished" with the introduction in August 1902 of the Kodak Developing Machine, an idea brought to Eastman a few months earlier by its inventor A.W. McCurdy. The Kodak slogan had made a radical change, from "You press the button, we do the rest" to "You press the button, then do the rest."


Eastman's Kodak Developing Machine, extract from 1903 Kodak catalogue
Image courtesy of the Digitized Kodak Catalog Project
With this tank (the Style E sold for $7.50, which included a wooden carrying case with leather handle) and a Kodak Developing Outfit (containing chemical powders and various other equipment needed, for another $1.60) our photographer would have been set for his expedition. According to The Kodak Story, a press photographer took one of these portable developing tanks with him to the front of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and was able to send developed negatives back to Collier's magazine for quick printing and publication.


Cover of 1903 Kodak catalogue
Image courtesy of the Digitized Kodak Catalog Project
Even with some presumed failures, our photographer must have been extremely competent, and I think we must examine the motives for this tour. Was he or she merely recording the adventure for posterity, as some snapshots of people in gardens and on board ship attest to, or were some of the photographs intended for some other purpose? Eastman Kodak Ltd sponsored a huge international contest open to amateur photographers, and many of the winners were featured in The Grand Kodak Exhibition, a spectacular travelling photographic show which toured Britain in 1904 and America in 1905.


Men and Girl on the Docks, Marken, Netherlands, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
It is possible that our photographer was inspired by seeing this exhibition in England. Compare the images taken in Marken and Volendam in the Netherlands with those graphics used to illustrate Kodak marketing material and it's hard to deny their similarity. With such a serious commitment to photography, some considerable previous experience and, in the light of both contest and exhibition, was our photographer hoping to enter his own photographs in a subsequent competition? Or perhaps there was a hope of selling scenes to a postcard publisher?


The Streets of Volendam, Netherlands, 1904
Nitrocellulose negative film, 3¼" x 4¼", 118-format
Image © and courtesy of Bill Nelson
Marken, Volendam and Alkmaar have long been tourist destinations, just as they were when I visited my Dutch grandparents in Holland in my youth, and likewise other European destinations like Oxford, coastal Devon, Bayreuth, Potsdam, Prague and Vienna. The itinerary was one already well worn by generations of travellers as attested to by any number of Baedeker guides from that era. A new century in which transatlantic travel was much easier and quicker presented huge marketing opportunities for the firm of Eastman Kodak, and they had already made it clear they welcomed contributions from skilled amateurs.

Acknowlegements

Many thanks to Bill Nelson for the opportunity to study his collection of nitrocellulose negatives and reproduce scans of them, and for an ongoing conversation from which much more may eventually emerge.

I'm indebted to Rob Niederman and Milan Zahorcak for their extremely useful Digitized Kodak Catalog Project, which has cast such light on the background to Bill's collection, not to mention Rob's kind responses to my questions and sharing of his extensive knowledge of the history of old cameras.

Thank you also to David Purcell and Geoff Harrisson for permission to use the photographs of items in their private collections, which help to round out the photohistorical story.

References

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers, 240p.

Coe, Brian (1988) Kodak Cameras: the First Hundred Years, East Sussex, United Kingdom: Hove Foto Books, 298p.

Collins, Douglas (1990) The Story of Kodak, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 392p.

Hannavy, John (Ed.) (2013) Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Routledge.

Niederman, Rob & Zahorcak, Milan (nd )Digitized Kodak Catalog Project

Sepia Saturday 273: The Automobile Association Road Patrol Service

I've been absent from both Sepia Saturday and this blog for almost a year, pursuing various other interests, but what better time than Easter Weekend (spring or autumn, depending on your location) to return to the fray.


Unidentified Automobile Association cycle scout, c. early to mid-1920s
Postcard format portrait by Morgan's Studio, Cavendish St, Chesterfield
Image © & courtesy of Simon Debell
This postcard portrait was kindly sent to me last year for use on my Derbyshire Photographers web site. It features an unidentified young man dressed in the uniform of an Automobile Association Cycle Scout with his bicycle. The donor wondered whether the uniform was a prop, but I doubt it. Morgan's Studio (Proprietor, Henry John Morgan) operated from premises at 7 Cavendish Street, Chesterfield (Derbyshire) from at least 1926 to 1932.


The Automobile Association came into existence in 1905, and my "Member's Copy" of The Road Book of England & Wales published c. 1936 (courtesy of Nigel Aspdin) has the following relating to the history of the organisation in its introductory pages:

The Road Patrol Service
... some motorists organized ... a few cyclists on the London-Brighton road whose task it was to warn all passing motorists of "police-traps" ... The week-end cyclists on the Brighton road were the first A.A. patrols. To-day more than 20,000 miles of road in the British Isles are regularly patrolled by an army in distinctive khaki uniform ... The majority of the men are mounted on motor-cycles with yellow side-cars which contain full equipment to enable the riders to deal with the minor troubles which may still beset the motorist.

Automobile Association Cycle Scout, undated
Image © Automobile Association & courtesy of Carlton Reid
The Online Bicycle Museum states that "motorcycle patrols, known as Road Service Outfits or RSOs" were introduced in 1919, and that "by 1923 there were 274 AA motorbike patrols but still 376 cyclists."


After a legal test case in 1910 involving an AA patrolman and a potentially speeding motorist, patrolmen were instructed by their superiors to salute the drivers of cars displaying the AA emblem, except when there was a speed trap nearby. The 1926 handbook stated:

It cannot be too strongly emphasised that when a patrol fails to salute, the member should stop and ask the reason why, as it is certain that the patrol has something of importance to communicate.

Arthur Wood in bus conductor's uniform, c. early to mid-1920s
Postcard format portrait by Morgan's Studio, Cavendish St, Chesterfield
Image © & courtesy of Margarey Thackray
A similar portrait by Morgan's Studio of a young man in a bus conductor's uniform, using the identical painted backdrop, has been dated to the early 1920s, and I believe the cyclist portrait to be from a similar time period.


Unidentified group in Salvation Army uniform, c. late 1920s to early 1930s
Postcard format portrait by Morgan's Studio, Cavendish St, Chesterfield
Image © & courtesy of Gill Taylor
A third "uniform" portrait from this studio shows a group from the Salvation Army, although judging from the slightly different text this photograph was probably taken a few years later. It seems unlikely that Morgan's Studio specialised in portraits of people wearing uniforms, and it's probably just chance that half of the six examples that I have from this studio are in this vein.

Now I suggest that you dust off your own cycling uniform, get your bike out of the shed, and join the rest of this week's Sepia Saturday participants for what promises to be a very pleasant excursion.

Sepia Saturday 222: A Question of Berthage

Last year I had some correspondence with Bill Forster relating to the Stalag XXID Prisoner of War Camp at Poznan in Poland, which I wrote about in the story of Bill Ball and Work Camp 9. Bill had another query in connection with his own research on a group of sailors who also ended up in Stalag XXID:

I have a puzzle in identifying a photograph of a (French?) port where a requisitioned LNER ferry is berthed which carried the troops of the BEF to France in 1939-40. This is in connection with the book I published about my father's wartime destroyer, HMS Venomous, which I update between editions on my web site. I have successfully identified photographs taken by the men on Venomous at Calais on 21 May 1940 and at Boulogne on 22 May 1940 and uncovered some fascinating stories of the refugees they landed at Folkestone and Dover.

HMS Archangel by Eric Pountney
Image courtesy of Bill Forster

But [I] was puzzled by [this] photograph taken by the Wireless Telegraphy Operator, Eric Pountney, until it was identified by members of the "Ships Nostalgia" Forum as the LNER ferry Archangel which was used as a troop transport in 1939-40.

HMS Archangel at northern French port, by Lt Peter Kershaw RNVR
Image courtesy of Bill Forster

I have recently found a further photograph in my own collection taken by Lt Peter Kershaw of a ship which looks very similar berthed alongside a quay with railways wagons. But where was it taken? Venomous escorted troop carriers from the Solent (Southampton/Portsmouth) to Cherbourg, Le Havre and Brest in the first few weeks of the war and I suspect it would have been taken at one of these channel ports. Where there are no letters or journals - as in the case of Eric Pountney - I rely on his photographs to tell the story.

What I've done is had a good look at all three of the ports that Bill mentioned - Cherbourg, Le Havre and Brest - using the myriad of postcard views that are available, many of them on the Delcampe postcard auction web site. European postcard publishers were prolific, and there are a wealth of sources on the net for images of scenic postcards published before, during and after the Great War, up to the mid- to late 1920s. There appear to be far fewer from the 1930s, and I suspect that this may have been due to financial pressures caused by the Depression, although I haven't found a confirmation of what is really just an assumption on my part to explain the apparent paucity of images.


Le Havre, Bassin de l'Eure, undated postcard view
From what I can tell, Le Havre was the only one of the three which had the very distinctive tower lights, one of which appears close to the edge of the quay at centre-left in Bill's Archangel photo. They are very tall, probably of steel construction with a lattice framework, and are characterised by a curious bell-shaped frame for the lamp hanging from a short at the top. The lighting towers appear in most of the postcard views of Le Havre port from the early 1900s until the late 1920s - as in the view above, undated but probably from the 1920s.


The Inner Harbor, Le Havre, by Camille Pissarro, 1903
Image courtesy of The Web Gallery of Impressionism
They are also depicted in many paintings by Impressionist artists, who appear to have congregated in Le Havre before and after the turn of the century. A typical example painted by that "father of the Impressionists," Camille Pissaro, in 1903 includes one of the characteristic tower lights.


La Nouvelle Digue - The New Dike, Le Havre, postcard view, PM 1927

Sadly, I've been unable to find any images of the port, wharves and quays which show railway carriages, or even areas clearly identifiable as railway sidings, although there were tramlines on some of the quays which serviced the ocean liners, I believe. However, I did find a 1927 (postmark) postcard depicting "La Nouvelle Digue" (or, The New Dike), which may well be where railway sidings were later built. The port was extensively damaged by bombing during the Second World War, so looking at modern photographs is probably no use at all.


Bassin des Torpilleurs, Brest, postcard view, PM 1912
None of the postcards I could find for Brest displayed such tower lights.


L'Entrée des Jetées, Cherbourg, postcard view, PM 1908
I did find a postcard view of the port at Brest with a similar tower light, but the design was sufficiently different to rule it out as a candidate for the Archangel's berth. While I can't rule out this particular quay being at some other as yet unidentified port, I think I can be fairly confident in saying that it's not either Cherbourg or Brest. If the Archangel only visited these three ports, then it was, in all likelihood, Le Havre.

I'm grateful to Bill Forster for permission to include the contents of his email and the the HMS Archangel photographs in this article. I have primarily aimed at demonstrating how the huge database of scenic images, in particular of old postcards, now available in various locations on the internet can be used to research and identify our own family photographs. Apart from the postcards for sale on various auction sites such as Delcampe and eBay, there are many web sites created by postcard enthusiasts. A little inventive searching will find the one with a particular focus that you're looking for.

If you haven't yet had your fill of reading about old photographs and postcards, the remainder of this week's Saturday sepians will no doubt have plenty more.

Sepia Saturday 221: The Photo Boat

Travelling photographers catered for quite a different section of the portrait trade from those who had established studios in larger towns. The population of smaller towns and villages just didn't generate enough business to keep a full time permanent studio viable year round. In order to make ends meet, the photographer who either lived in or wished to cater to a small town needed to either find extra work in an alternative trade, or travel further afield in search of customers.

In previous articles here on Photo-Sleuth I have written about several of these itinerant tradesmen who worked in Derbyshire, England: "Professor" Frank Simpson, Charles Tyler and Charles Warwick all owned caravans and toured the countryside, often following the circuit of summer fairs.


J.B. Silvis' U.P.P.R. Photograph Car
Image © and courtesy of Richard D. Sheaff
In North America the rapid settlement of vast expanses of land in the late nineteenth century meant that practitioners who wished to ply their trade there needed to be inventive. Much of the expansion took place along the network of railroads, it is therefore not surprising that railroad photographers set up business to service these disparate communities. The most famous of these was perhaps John B. Silvis, proprietor of the Union Pacific Rail Road car, who took portraits and sold stereoscopic and other landscape views along the Union Pacific and other companies' railway tracks from 1870 until 1882.


F.E. Webster's Dental and Photo Boats, Lake Charles, Calcasieu, Louisiana
Mounted paper print, 204 x 153mm
Image © and courtesy of Jana Last
In parts of the United States, however, communities were linked by waterways rather than roads or railways. Many tradespeople serviced their customers from riverboats, but I had never come across a photographic studio housed on one until I saw this image shared by Jana Last on her family history blog. Jana's maternal great-grandfather Frederick Emory Webster (1864-1946) graduated from the Western Dental College, Kansas City, Missouri in April 1896. Some time during the next decade he appears to have operated a dental surgery from the boat shown at centre in the photograph above which, according to the handwritten caption, is on the shore of Lake Charles in Louisiana.


Detail of F.E. Webster's Photo Boat, Lake Charles, Calcasieu, Louisiana
Moored alongside is an almost identical craft with a sign reading "F E WEBSTER PHOTO BOAT." (Click on the image above for more detail.) That it does indeed house a photographic studio seems quite plausible, as the end of the boat closest to shore has large windows and a special skylight with pitched roof which I believe was the actual room where portraits would have been taken.


F.E. Webster's Dental and Photo Boats, unknown location
Mounted paper print, 202 x 124mm
Image © and courtesy of Jana Last
Jana has at least two more photographs of her great-grandfather's boats, although the photographer's studio has now been replaced by the premises of an optician. That the same boat was converted from studio to eye-testing rooms, and presumably a dispensary (or how would he have made a living, since the eye-tests were advertised as free?), is fairly certain because the characteristic skylight is still just visible in both photographs.

In fact, the Photo Boat may have been Webster's first craft, as the name painted on the prow appears to read "F.E. Webster No. 1," while that on the dental boat is quite clearly "No. 2." I've not been able to decipher the caption fully (it is written in either Portuguese or Galician, in neither of which I am proficient), but it appears to state that the floating theatre is towed by the steamboat with two smokestacks.


Detail of F.E. Webster's Dental & Photo Boats, Lake Charles, Louisiana
That steamboat appears to be a different one from that in the first photograph taken at Lake Charles (see detail above). Judging from the apparent lack of paddles or smokestacks on the floating studio and surgery, they were not self-propelled, but rather barges towed by a paddle steamer. It's not clear whether Webster owned his own steamer, or whether he just hired one to tow the two barges whenever they had exhausted the opportunities for business in one location and wanted to move to another. However, I did note that the steamboat superstructure also has "Photographer" signwritten on the wheelhouse.


F.E. Webster's Dental and Optical Boats, Natchez, Mississippi
Mounted paper print, 205 x 153mm
Image © and courtesy of Jana Last
The caption on the third photograph indicates that it was taken at Natchez, Mississipi. Locations in FE Webster's timeline show a general migration south, away from his former residences in Stockton (Kansas) and Kansas City (Missouri), down first the Missouri River and then the Mississippi, although since none of the photographs are accurately dated it is difficult to be precise about his movements. By April 1899, when he was granted a patent for a dental handpiece, and shortly after the granting of a divorce from his first wife, he gave his address as "Clarendon, Monroe, Arkansas." It may have been an address of convenience, perhaps that of his lawyer, as presumably he was on the move much of the time.


Portrait of Cynthia Maria Webster née Waterman (1834-1895)
taken by The F.E. Webster Photo Boat, c.1894-1897
Albumen print (47 x 61mm) mounted on printed card (60 x 77mm)
Image © and courtesy of Jana Last
Jana is also very fortunate to have a portrait taken F.E. Webster's Photo Boat studio. Although identified as the photographer's mother, who died in September 1895, I think it's possible it might be the portrait of one of her daughters. Whoever it is, we can see from the card mount that it was produced on the boat, and I believe from the wide sleeves worn by the subject that it was taken in the mid-1890s.


Frederick (Watson) Emory Webster (1864-1946), taken c.1890-1896
Cabinet card print by David P. Thomson of Kansas City, Missouri
Image © and courtesy of Jana Last
Webster, pictured here in Kansas City while he was studying to be a dentist or on his graduation, may not have lasted very long in the photograhic trade, but his choice of studio was pretty unusual. I've not yet found evidence of any other portrait photographer using this mode of transport, although there may well have been some.


Doremus' Mississippi Views Photograph Gallery, c.1870s
J.P. Doremus was a portrait photographer from Patterson, New Jersey, who in 1874 constructed a floating photographic studio which he used to travel down the Mississippi:

... from St Paul, Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico photographing steamboats, waterfronts, bridges, lumberyards, log rafts, and river towns. Doremus would then convert these images to stereo card views which he described in a short work entitled "Floating Down the Mississippi" (1877).

While there are plenty of extant stereoviews by Doremus, there is no evidence that he took any portraits in this studio. Perhaps Webster's studio was one of a kind.

I'm very grateful to Jana Last for the opportunity to use these photographs from her private collection. Thanks also to Dick Sheaff for the use of one of his fine images. You may or may not find similar modes of water transport in this week's Sepia Saturday contributions, but I can guarantee that there will be plenty of interesting images.

Post Script 31 March 2014

Mike Brubaker has very kindly drawn my attention to a collection of photographs of Photo Studio Boats on the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library web site, which demonstrates that Mr Webster's venture was not the only one of its kind. From this page, I extracted details of the following:
- Williams Photo Boat, Sistersville, West Virginia, 1896-1900, and on the Muskingum River, Marietta, Washington County
- H.O. Schroeter's Floating Photo Studio, Green River, Kentucky, 1900
- Doremus Photo Gallery No.1 named Success and No. 2 named Flora
- Thornton Barrette's Photograph Boat, Russell, Ky., 1899-1900
- Little Gem Floating Pictures, unknown location and date
- Eureka Photo, unknown location and date
Clearly more research can be done on this topic.

Post Script 14 March 2021

A further communication gratefully received from Gary Saretzky has shed much more light on the fascinating activities of John P. Doremus and his floating Photograph Gallery between 1874 and 1881:

You mentioned lack of evidence that Doremus took any portraits on his floating gallery. There are frequent mentions in his diary that he did and I’ve seen examples of a tintype and a cabinet card, although these portraits seem to be quite uncommon compared to his stereo views taken on his travels down the river from 1874 into the 1880s.  Excerpts from his diary are available online in Stereo World 30:5 and the entire diary from March 1874 to the end was published in S. & D. Reflector in sections from March 1992 to December 1993, also available online.  Doremus did not take all the portrait himself as he had a camera operator as well as other staff.  When he was away from the boat for an extended period, he let his operator continue taking portraits for a percentage of the gross.  The quality of the portraits I have seen are not impressive and I suspect those were taken by his operator.  On one occasion mentioned in his diary, he got into a physical fight with an unsatisfied inebriated customer.

References

Last, Jana (2014) The F. E. Webster Dental and Photo Boats, Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog, 3 February 2014.

J.P. Doremus, on the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium web site.

Stereoviews by J.B. Doremus, from George Eastman House.

Sepia Saturday 189: Ode to the Rickshaw-wallah

This week I'll take you globe-trotting once again. While I suspect you'll be treated to a myriad of contraptions powered by the internal combustion engine by other Saturday Sepians, I'm choosing to use a more environmentally friendly, if not particularly pc, means of transport.


Jinnirickshaw, undated probably c.1880s, unidentified photographer
Albumen print (141 x 95mm) mounted on printed card (155 x 112mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This mounted albumen print of a non-standard format was purchased on a whim, partly because it's a well composed and exposed photograph of an interesting subject, representing a way of life that's pretty much disappeared, but also because it doesn't merely reinforce the colonial stereotype of white sahib being conveyed from one shady verandah to another by a rickshaw-wallah.

Judging from the style of print and mount, I estimate that it was probably printed in the 1880s or 1890s, and I think it may have been taken somewhere in the Indian sub-continent. The printed text at lower left appears to relate to the subject, rather than the photographer or publisher, and suggests that the photograph may have been produced in some numbers. Indeed, I found another copy of the image here, dated 1895.

The derivation of jinnirickshaw is suggested by The Free Dictionary to be from three Middle Chinese words, jin (person), lik (strength) and chai (vehicle) via the Japanese word jinrikisha. My Concise Oxford Dictionary states that the variety of spellings one finds are archaic forms of the more familiar rickshaw, which they define as a:

Light two-wheeled hooded vehicle, drawn by one or more persons.

Wikipedia claims, quite plausibly, that the rickshaw is thought to have been invented in Japan in 1869 after the removal of a ban on wheeled vehicles during the Tokugawa period. After a popularity explosion in that country, it spread quickly to other Asian countries, being introduced to India around 1880.


Kingwell in a rickshaw, Durban, South Africa, c.1920s
Souvenir postcard portrait by unidentified photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Although the popularity of hand-pulled rickshaws waned in the Third World throughout the twentieth century, particularly after the Second World War, there was one country where this mode of transport took on a life of its own. South Africa's first rickshaws were imported into Natal in 1892 and within a decade had become the main mode of transportation, with over 2000 of them in Durban's streets. Gallery Ezakwantu tells a fascinating and well illustrated story of how the rickshaw puller's simple, unadorned calico uniforms and traditional Zulu feathered, bovine-horned headwear have evolved, over time, into outrageous enormous multi-horned headdresses and costumes spectacularly decorated with beads, sheepskins and a variety of other accessories.


An example of one such Zulu rickshaw puller with his conveyance and a client is pictured in the postcard above, probably taken in a makeshift outdoors studio on Durban's waterfront some time in the 1920s. The scene somewhat clumsily painted on the backdrop is easily identifiable as Durban's sweeping beachfront, with The Bluff forming a backdrop to the harbour entrance, as this Streetview shows. The message handwritten on the back of the postcard merely identifies the occupant of the rickshaw as "Kingwell," presumably a surname. I feel that the uniform he is wearing is possibly merchant marine, or perhaps from a colonial administration, but I haven't been able to pin it down.


"Rickshaw Boys" - Durban, South Africa
Postcard by unidentified publisher, posted 1966
In early 1968 my family had an extended holiday in South Africa, photos in the family albums showing that we spent time in Potchefstroom, Simonstown, Bredasdorp, Durban and Umhlanga Rocks. The only memory of that trip that remains with me is an extremely vivid one of the rickshaw drivers on the Durban waterfront. By that time their costumes, and their playing-up-to-the-tourists antics, were probably at their most extravagant. Unfortunately I don't have a family photograph to go with it, which reinforces my idea that it is a real memory rather than one prompted by later tales of the event related by my parents. In my mind's eye, however, they looked very much like the three posing for this mid-1960s postcard.

An excerpt from a 1967 article in the New Age provides a taste of the experience to be expected:

As pictorial attractions for tourists go probably no city in the world would care to challenge Durban ... at the spin of a 20c piece ... some 15 Zulu ricksha boys, who ply their trade along the sweeping Durban Esplanade between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. ... offer outstanding value. They out-Twiggy Twiggy with the number and variety of their poses ... [take] a swing along the sea shore ... [and] spread their regalia like peacocks.

As a six year-old country boy who had never come across anything like this in my life, I was terrified and absolutely refused to go near it. When one of my parents and my younger sister Diana went off down the Esplanade for a ride, complete with the see-sawing, twirling gyrations and strange chants of the "driver," I was convinced I would never see them again. I suspect tears ensued although time, thankfully, has wiped those from my memory.


Bud Payne, Durban or Umhlanga, 4 April 1968
Photomatic photobooth portrait (65 x 68mm)
Images © and collection of Brett Payne
Although, as far as I am aware, no photograph exists of that particular scary ride, there is a photobooth portrait of my father which could have been taken on the same day. It doesn't have any identifying studio marks or printing on it, but by comparison with similar thin-metal-framed prints from the 1950s which I discussed in a previous article, I can tell it was taken in a Photomatic photobooth. It's possibly the latest example of a Photomatic portrait that I've seen.

Getting back on topic, this series of photos suggests that Durban's rickshaw drivers are still attracting the tourists, although I suspect they're no longer offering rides for twenty cents. I don't think I would fancy expending that amount of effort, even for a considerably greater sum.

References

Japanese Rickshaw, at the Powerhouse Museum.

Zulu Ricksha, 1892-2000, Power Carriages of the Mandlakazi Clan, from Gallery Ezakwantu.

Ricksha Boys of Durban, The Age, 11 September 1967, p.11, courtesy of Google Books.