Arthur Latham, Derby County player & manager

This postcard portrait, also sent to me by Cynthia Maddock, posed a few identification problems for her. However, after an equiry through an article in the Derby Evening Telegraph's 'Bygones' section, reproduced on This is Derbyshire here, Derby author Anton Rippon came up with the information that it was Arthur Latham, a former Derby County player in the early days of the club.

He was one of the club's early players when they joined the Football League in 1888 and became trainer when he finished playing in 1891. He was the England trainer on several occasions. He died in Derby, in November 1929.

The site Bygone Derbyshire, which appears to be an online version of the DET Bygones feature, has an article entitled, "Derby County: Plan Backfires" which has a photograph of the 1898 Derby County football team, the Rams, including a younger Arthur Latham. He is also mentioned in another Bygones article, "Derby County: Men who wielded the magic sponge":

One of the first ["men of the magic sponge"] at Derby County was Arthur Latham, who played right-back for the Rams in their early Football League days. By the mid-1890s, he had become the trainer and continued in the role until 1919. That was typical, for while players and managers come and go at an alarming rate, a trainer often stays with one club for many years.

Arthur Latham was born in 1863 at Coventry in Warwickshire, the second child of a silk weaver Thomas Latham and his wife Ann Fleeman. Shortly after he was born, the family moved to Derby, where they settled in St Werburgh's parish. By the time Arthur was eighteen, he was working with his father as a house painter and decorator, a profession in which he continued for most of his life. In 1887, he married Harriet Ann Adcock at Derby, and they were to have at least five children (four daughters and a son).


The reverse of the postcard has a postmark showing that it was franked at 8 p.m. on 7 September 1912. The message, written on the same day and addressed to "Mr. J.J. Burnett, c/o The Elms, 40 North Parade, Aberystwyth," reads:

The County made a draw 1 to 1 but had the best of the game. Blackburn scored from a penalty kick. - Mrs. B. all right. J.H.S. 7/9/12.

The 1911-1912 season was the one in which Steve Bloomer, who will feature in a future Photo-Sleuth article, helped Derby County to win the Second Division title. Being at the top of the table meant that they were promoted, together with Chelsea, to the First Division for the 1912-1913 season. Blackburn Rovers had finished the 1911-1912 season at the top of the First Division, so Derby holding them to a draw would presumably have been considered pretty good form. (Not that I know much about football, but I can read as well as the next man)

The front of the postcard portrait has the studio name, "Treble, Derby," in white at the lower left, indicating that it was printed by hand on the negative. Edward Montague Treble had a studio on East Street, Derby from around 1912 until at least the late 1920s.

References

Adamson, Keith I.P. (1997) Professional Photographers in Derbyshire 1843-1914, Supplement No. 118 to The PhotoHistorian, September 1997, ISSN 0957-0209.
Trade Directories on microfiche from the Derbyshire Family History Society (Collection of Brett Payne):
"Postcard Picture was Rams Player", on This Is Derbyshire, from The Derby Evening Telegraph, 25 August 2008
"Derby County Plan Backfires" and "Derby County: Men who wielded the 'Magic Sponge'", on Bygone Derbyshire, from The Derby Evening Telegraph
Index to GRO Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes from FreeBMD
International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS Church's FamilySearch database
Indexed 1841-1901 UK Census Images from Ancestry

Family and cottage in Belper, by Thomas B. Mellor

This carte de visite is from the collection of Cynthia Maddock, a fellow collector of old photographs by Derbyshire photographers who very kindly shares images from her collection with me and, by extension, readers of both Photo-Sleuth and my other site, Derbyshire Photographers.


The image shows a group of people, presumably members of a family, arranged rather haphazardly in the garden in front of a house. The house itself is double-storey, contructed of dressed stone, with chimneys at each gabled end, and a thatched roof. Four large windows are visible, the upper two with visible curtains, each with numerous small panes. A smaller building with a tiled roof, also with a multi-paned window is partially visible at the left. In front of the group is a pole set vertically in the ground, perhaps three metres high, with a string or thin rope tied near the top and extending towards and to the left of the photographer, possibly a washing line. The tiled roofs of other buildings situated behind the main house are just visible immediately to the left and right of the photo. I believe this must be the back garden of the house, rather than the main frontage which faces the road.


There are several bushes visible in the foreground, but also what appears to be some sort of stone platform. On top of this platform are a large dish, a bucket, a jar, a smaller dish and, I think, a cat! There appears to be a pipe sticking out of the left-hand side of the platform, which causes me to wonder if it is some kind of washing area.

There are eight people in the photograph. From left to right they are:
- a middle-aged woman in a light-coloured dress, standing with her hands together in front of her, facing towards and to the right of the camera,
- a middle-aged or older woman in a dark dress, seated, with a blurred mouth (I won't say why!)
- a young child, perhaps three or four years old, slightly blurred and partly obscured by the pole,
- an older man, standing with his arms crossed,
- a younger woman in a dark dress, seated, and looking down towards a very blurred small child in her lap,
- a middle-aged woman in a light-coloured dress, standing with her hands together in front of her, facing to the left of the camera,
- a middle-aged man, standing behind the stone platform, and leaning with both forearms on the platform.

There is no indication from an inscription or any other history attached to the photo who the subjects were. However, my initial guess would be that they are, from left to right, maiden aunt, grandmother, child, grandfather, mother with child, maiden aunt and father. I estimate from the style of the dresses of the younger three women, together with the fact their ears are just visible from beneath their tightly drawn back and centre-parted hair, that the photograph was probably taken in the mid- to late 1860s, say between 1865 and 1869.


The photographer, as evidenced from the backstamp on the card mount, was Thomas Barker Mellor of Nottingham Road, Belper in Derbyshire. Adamson (1997) mentions only that Mellor was operating from The Butts in Belper around 1874, presumably taken from an entry in Wright's trade directory of that date, which also described him as a music teacher. However, it is clear from the entry in the 1871 Census, in which he described himself as a photographer, and the existence of several cartes de visite from the late 1860s, that he was working in the profession prior to that date.

Thomas B. Mellor was born at Belper in 1849, one of the large family of draper John Mellor (1812-1900) and his second wife Jane Barker. It seems unlikely that he would have worked as a photographer with his own printed card mounts prior to the age of about eighteen, and the earliest date for a photograph by him on a printed mount is therefore likely to be c. 1867.

He married Mary Ann Allsop at Belper in 1874 and they moved to Bakewell in about 1877. Mellor appears to have ceased working as a photographer at this time, being listed as an "organist and teacher of music" in both the 1881 and 1891 censuses. He appears, therefore, to have been working as a photographer for about a decade, from c. 1867 until c. 1877. Thomas Mellor died in 1915.

References

Adamson, Keith I.P. (1997) Professional Photographers in Derbyshire 1843-1914, Supplement No. 118 to The PhotoHistorian, September 1997, ISSN 0957-0209.
Digital Trade Directories courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories:
- Harrod, J.G. & Co. (1870) Postal & Commercial Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Staffordshire.
Trade Directories on microfiche from the Derbyshire Family History Society (Collection of Brett Payne):
- Wright, C.N. (1874) Directory of South Derbyshire, Third Edition, October 1874.
- Kelly (1881) Directory of Derbyshire.
Index to GRO Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes from FreeBMD
International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS Church's FamilySearch database
Indexed 1841-1901 UK Census Images from Ancestry

James Denham Wise & The Trafalgar Photographic Company

Diana Burns sent me images of three cartes de visite by The Trafalgar Photographic Company. They show her great-grandfather Daniel Talbot (b. 1848) and possibly his cousin, the manager of the company, James Denham Wise (b. 1842) with his wife, and their son James (b. 1869). She wondered, "if the low number of the negative shown on the back was a clue to the company having just opened, with relatives and friends coming in as customers?"


Daniel Talbot, by The Trafalgar Photographic Company,
37 Chandos Street, Charing Cross, London, c. 1872-1873
I think Diana is quite right in her assumption that the low negative numbers on the photographs are an indication that they were taken at a very early stage in the studio's life. It is not clear to me from my own research who the photographer was at the Trafalgar Photographic Company, but I suspect that James Denham Wise was the business manager, and may not have taken any of the photos himself. In the 1871 and 1881 censuses he described himself respectively as "Manager Fine Art Dept." and "Agent & Commercial Traveller Hardware Provisions & Fancy Goods."

I found somewhat conflicting information about the dates of operation of the Trafalgar Photographic Company. The photoLondon database shows the business succeeding the tenure of Frederick Pipere (1823-1873) at 37 Chandos Street, St Martin's Lane, Westminster and operating from 1872 until 1873, subsequently being taken over by Frederick Pipere's widow Sarah Ann Pipere (1823 - 1909), who was there from 1873 to 1885, and operated for some of that time as the Charing Cross School of Photography. Another entry in the same database states that the studio was at 37 Chandos St, Covent Garden W.C. from 1874 to 1875.


Possibly James Denham Wise & Lucy Wise, by The Trafalgar Photographic Company,
37 Chandos Street, Charing Cross, London, c. 1872-1873
Frederick Pipere died in the second quarter of 1873, and it seems likely that James Denham Wise took over the proprietorship of the premises at 37 Chandos Street, Westminster, near Covent Garden at around the time of Pipere's death. However, as Pipere may have been unwell for a while prior to his actual decease, it would be dangerous to assume that the Trafalgar Photographic Company only commenced after his death.

The suggestion, however, is that the tenure of the Trafalgar Photographic Co. may have been of fairly brief duration.


Possibly James Wise junior, by The Trafalgar Photographic Company,
37 Chandos Street, Charing Cross, London, c. 1872-1873
Two of Diana's three photos have negative numbers (8 and 30) which are amongst the lowest that I've seen. The third photo (James Wise junior) doesn't have one at all, which doesn't surprise me - many studios used them irregularly, or not at all - but I still think that it would have been taken at around the same time, possibly during the same sitting, as the portrait of his parents, James Denham & Lucy Wise (neg #8), which used the same chair. Bearing in mind my deductions on the period of operation of the studio, I would suggest that all three photos were taken either in 1872 or 1873. If James Denham Wise junior was born in late 1868 or early 1869 (from FreeBMD), then he would have been about four or five years old, which seems about right. It would be natural for them to use family and friends for subjects while they were still practicising, and building up a clientele. They may even have used such portraits to advertise the business.

The card mounts have square corners, while the design on the reverse is typical of the early to mid-1870s.

Now to the identity of the photographer. I noticed that living two doors down from James Denham Wise and his family in the 1871 Census, at 127 Lancaster Road, was a photographer of Danish origin, Lauretz Dietrichson. The photoLondon database shows him operating a studio at 63 Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, Paddington in 1871 and 1872. I wonder if he subsequently worked for the Trafalgar Photographic Co. for a couple of years? There's no way for us to know, without further information, but it is a possibility.

A child's portrait by Frederick J. Boyes of Derby

Hilary Booth sent me this charming portrait of family member Florrie Swann, taken by Derby photographer Frederick J. Boyes.


Hilary writes: "Florence Swann's mother Harriet Clark was Mary Clark née Porter's first child. We have traced Harriet on the census records until 1901 when she was working at a lunatic asylum in Bristol, unmarried. We have found a marriage record in 1908, so we think Florence Swann was born around 1910? She had a sibling Leslie who was born about 1912. Hopefully we may be able to be more accurate when the next census record is released.


The cabinet card mount is one of Boyes' most common standard designs, used from 1893 until the early to mid-1900s. One interesting feature of Boyes' cabinet card and carte de visite portraits is that he stamped almost all of them with the negative number. Although my portfolio of Boyes portraits is still fairly small, and I only have a few which are accurately dated, this has given me some idea of his output.

Neg # --- Date
4188  --- c.1889-1891
6634  --- c.1893
12538 --- c.1896-1897
14446 --- April 1898
17249 --- c.Nov 1901

Boyes was a particularly accomplished photographer who, although he had a fairly late start in Derby c. 1886, quickly established an excellent reputation for fine quality portraiture. I estimate that by the turn of the century he was taking between 60 and 100 portraits a month (or 2-4 sittings a day). This was, of course, nothing like the 450-500 sittings per month being achieved by W.W. Winter in Midland Road at this time, but then Winter had been much longer established, and was situated in a very favourable location, close to the Derby railway station.


A simple graph of the negative numbers plotted against the estimated or actual date of the portraits in my collection of images shows a fairly good trend (see above). If this trend is then extrapolated forwards, we can estimate an approximate date of c. March-May 1904 for Hilary's portrait with a negative number of 20025. Although I am less confident of this estimate than I might have been for one in the date range 1891-1901, since I don't have any dated F.J. Boyes portraits with negative numbers from after 1901, it at least gives us an idea of when it might have been taken. It is odd that my estimate is some seven years earlier than might be expected from Hilary's guess of a birth date for Florrie of around 1910.


Hilary also sent me this postcard portrait of a slightly older Florrie Swann with her younger brother Leslie. There is a definite likeness. Unfortunately, there is little on this portrait to provide an accurate date either, but I estimate it was taken in the early 1910s, say between 1910 and 1914.

Wallis, Furnishing Ironmongers of Bakewell (Part 1)

I received this image of an ambrotype, or collodion positive, recently from Nino Manci, who purchased it in Buxton, Derbyshire.


Apart from a little damage to the emulsion of the original, presumably from abrasion, it is a very nice picture. I should point out that I have carried out some minor digital manipulation of the image - mainly adjustment of the contrast, with no other editing of the picture - as the original was very dark. Although it is no longer housed in the case in which it was likely to have been originally sold, it does still have the ornate pinchbeck frame in relatively decent condition. Pinchbeck, now synonymous with things cheap and tawdry, was a gold-coloured copper-zinc alloy developed in the 1700s by English watchmaker, Christopher Pinchbeck [Source: World Wide Words], that became a popular choice for cheap frames (I think matts in US parlance).

On the reverse of the ambrotype is the inscription, "Wallis Ironmongers, Nr Post Office, Bakewell." The picture shows a shopfront and, in Nino's words, "I presume Mr Wallis at the door of his establishment with the sign 'Furnishing Ironmongers' above him. The shop seems to sell a wide range of household and farming products." The first interesting thing to note is Nino's statement that the photo was probably taken from the mid-1880s to the 1890s. Ambrotypes became very popular, and indeed the most common type of photograph used for portraits, in the mid- to late 1850s, but were still common in the early 1860s, before being rapidly superseded by the carte de visite. However, they were still used occasionally, mainly because of their cheapness, for example by travelling photographers, and enjoyed brief resurgences in popularity from time to time.

The firm Wallis Ironmongers of Bakewell appears to have been fairly long-lived. John, William and Edwin Wallis were three sons of a Bakewell lodging house keeper, William Wallis (c1790-1844) and his wife Mary Lees. Slater (1850) lists the middle son William Wallis (1824-) as a brazier and tinman with a shop on Bridge Street, Bakewell, although the census a year later indicates that they lived with their widowed mother in Water Lane. John and Edwin Wallis were working as carriers in 1851, and John had become an earthenware dealer in 1855 (Anon). By 1857 (White), John had married and opened an ironmongery and glass & china dealers on Bridge Street, and three years later (Harrison, 1860) Edwin was a smallware dealer around the corner in Bath Street.

Their mother Mary Wallis died shortly after the 1861 census, and Edwin Wallis married Ann Kitson (c1838-18 at Bakewell on 22 May 1864. Ann gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, early the following year, but sadly Ann and the boy died soon after. Edwin remarried on 2 August 1866 to Sarah Susannah Bower (c.1837-1919). By the time the 1870 edition of Harrod & Co.'s trade directory was compiled, Edwin was operating as a general dealer and ironmonger at Anchor square, Bakewell, while John and his wife had vanished from the scene. The 1871 Census shows them to be doing sufficient business by then to be employing a shop assistant and a general servant.

By 1881 (Census & Kelly) Edwin & Sarah Wallis were living in Bath Street and operating what was referred to as an ironmongery and general dealership in Bridge Street. Edwin died in late 1883, at the age of 51, leaving a widow and five children, the eldest Mary Ann being sixteen and the youngest only three years old. However, Sarah continued to run the shop, and was listed in the 1887, 1891, 1895 and 1899 trade directories. Her children Lucy and Charles Wallis became shop assistants by 1891, and continued to assist her until at least 1901. Sarah Wallis died in 1919.


Before discussing the date that the photograph was taken, I would like to mention one of the reasons that that Nino sent me the image in the first place, as it is particularly relevant to the dating exercise. In his words, and relating to the enlarged portion of the photograph shown above:

What may be of interest to you is that just inside the window, to the right of Mr Wallis is a separate display cabinet displaying photographs. The scan is not as crisp as under a magnifying glass. At the top of the case are the words Seaman and Sons Photographers. The cabinet appears to be full of scenic views of Derbyshire. Many firms, such as Francis Frith made a good living from the sale of such images, and this shows how Mr Seaman also adventured into selling his firm's images though other outlets.

From my study of the photographic firm, it appears they only started trading as Seaman & Sons in the mid-1880s. The founder of the business, Alfred Seaman (1844-1910), opened his first studio in Chesterfield in around 1876. Although his second son Albert Edward was already working as an photographic assistant in the studio in 1881, he was only fifteen years old, and it would have been normal that the firm would only have started trading with the suffix "& Sons" when the sons reached the age of eighteen. Indeed, it is not until the 1887 edition of Kelly's trade directory that the listing is formally shown as A. Seaman & Sons.

It seems unlikely that the man - perhaps in his late 20s or early 30s - standing in front of the shop is Edwin Wallis, as he died in late 1883. I assume, therefore, that he is an assistant hired by Sarah Wallis. Charles Wallis was 25 years old by 1901, so there is a possibility it is him, if the photograph was taken in the early 1900s. I still haven't come to a conclusion when it was taken, but perhaps a discussion of other items in the photograph may help in this regard.

The shop window contains a myriad of interesting items on display, some of which are easy to identify. Rather than presenting readers of this blog with a fait accompli, I thought it might be interesting to open up the task of identifying as many articles as possible, a form of what The Economist recently referred to as crowdsourcing. Although this concept is not new - it was used in the 19th Century to compile the Oxford English Dictionary - the term was first coined in 2006 (Howe) to describe a process which harvests the talents of an undefined group of people, generally via the internet, to perform a task traditionally carried out by an employee or contractor. This is much along the lines of what I have inadvertently achieved on Derbyshire Photographers over the last six years, with hundreds of contributions from family historians and photograph collectors all over the world.

So if you would like to participate in this mini-crowdsourcing experiment, please feel free to download the high resolution version of the image here (but be careful it is over 3MB). I'm looking for a comprehensive list of all the items that can be identified in the shop window, in the doorway, on the pavement in front of the shop, on the walls, etc. If you know, or can find by researching, any interesting details to add about the items, or contemporary (i.e. from that era, not this one) images of similar items, so much the better. Please feel free to either post as comments or by email. I will post the results of our combined analysis as Part 2 of this post in due course, and will include acknowledgements to all who participate.

I am, of course, hoping that there will be some further clues unearthed which may help to narrow the dates. However, even if we don't manage that, it will be an interesting exercise in the powers of our observation. Good luck and thank you.

References

Anon (2008) Following the Crowd. The internet: The idea of "crowdsourcing," or asking crowds of internet users for ideas ... in The Economist, Vol 388, Number 8596, Technology Quarterly Insert, September 6th 2008, p. 8
Howe, Jeff (2006) The Rise of Crowdsourcing, in Wired, Issue 14.06 June 2006.
Anon, Crowdsourcing, from Wikipedia
Quinion, Michael (2004) Pinchbeck /ˈpɪn(t)ʃbɛk/, on World Wide Words
Digital Trade Directories courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories:
- Anon (1855) Post Office Directory of Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire
- Harrod, J.G. & Co. (1870) Postal & Commercial Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Staffordshire
- Kelly (1891) Directory of Derbyshire
- Kelly (1895) Directory of Derbyshire
- Kelly (1899) Directory of Derbyshire
- Kelly (1912) Directory of Derbyshire
Trade Directories on microfiche from the Derbyshire Family History Society (Collection of Brett Payne):
- Slater (1850) Directory of Derbyshire
- Harrison & Co. (1860) Directory of Derbyshire
- Kelly (1881) Directory of Derbyshire
- Kelly (1887) Directory of Derbyshire
Bagshaw, Samuel (1846) History, Gazeteer and Directory of Derbyshire, Photocopy from original now in collection of Barbara Ellison)
White’s 1857 Directory of Derbyshire by Neil Wilson
Index to GRO Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes from FreeBMD
International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS Church's FamilySearch database
Indexed 1841-1901 UK Census Images from Ancestry