Ezidor Bennett, photographer. Manchester. 1870s.

By chance I came across several of these group photos by the same Manchester photographer, Ezidor Bennett. An old newspaper article tells us that he went bankrupt in 1876, which helps date them. He appears to have specialised in these groups of children. Many of them appear quite down-at-heel. The photos may have been paid for by an orphanage or church charity. Though small, these photos preserve a great deal of detail, which only becomes evident with the help of a scanner and photoshop.

 

Liverpool.

This girl on the right is beautiful. I scanned this faded CDV last year but she only really came to life when I enlarged her today. Probably 1870s judging by the dress.

Post-mortem baby

This is the first time I've found a post-mortem photograph in a flea market. This sad scene is from Kent. 

Spooky kids

Several commenters have remarked that this pair give them the creeps. I think their style of dress and their expressions may indicate mourning. Possibly they had been recently orphaned. A sad story behind this one, I'm sure.

Men and children

A soldier and his boy.

Men with children. Where are the mothers? In some cases they may have been dead. It seems to have been more common in the past for studio family portraits to have been taken with only one parent (or grandparent) present. 

Yorkshire

From a photographer based in Burnley and Padiham in Lancashire

Mother and sullen child "Rachel".

The 'Rachel' label has been placed deliberately under the child, not the mother, so I think we can assume Rachel is the child. I wonder what the rest of her life was like. I bet she was a beautiful adult.

Men. 1870s

An unidentified group of men, including one surprising Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike. Who were they?

Found Album

A £20 bargain I found in a house clearance shop in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. It contained 21 cabinet portraits and two photographs of buildings, dating from the 1870s to 1910, taken in different parts of England and Scotland, and one from San Francisco. Several individuals appear more than once. I assume it was a family album, though the content doesn't pin it down to any one locality. See them all here.

"Miss Sarah" and her pupils. Watford.

Girls and their teacher posing with croquet mallets and ball. Pencilled on the reverse: "School at Watford kept by three sisters. Miss Sarah here." Watford museum have been trying to find out more about this one for me, and sent me this message:


It turns out there were several private schools, generally run by spinsters or widows, for the education of 'young ladies' at this time in Watford. Having a look at the Kelly's Directory on 1878 there were 10 private schools listed. None specifically mention a Sarah although often the first name or initial wasn't included. In the Peacock Directory of 1890 there are three schools mentioned as being run by sisters:

The Misses Payne, St Albans Road .
The Misses Moor, Gwynmoor, Vicarage Road .

The Misses Yorke, High Street.

At the time it was one of the few avenues of income for ladies to set up and run their own schools but little information about them survives.

The Lion's Mound, Waterloo, Belgium.

The battlefield of Waterloo started attracting curious tourists before the corpses were even cold in 1815. The Lion's Mound, seen in the background here, was erected in 1820 by the King William I of the Netherlands to commemorate the wounding of his son during the battle. You can see tourists at the base of the lion statue enjoying the view. This photograph was probably taken in the 1870s and mounted on a specially printed card, in English, no doubt by a photographer specialising in the tourist trade. Who is this old man? Is he a visiting British veteran or a local guide? Is he old enough to have been present at the battle itself all those decades ago? I wonder.

John Mappin

To draw an archaeological analogy, this is the photo researcher's equivalent of stumbling across a Pompeii. A  man born in the 18th century who was kind enough to leave us not only his image but also an incredibly informative label giving his exact date of birth, profession and both his work and home address. I laughed out loud when I found it. Such a helpful and upbeat fellow. John Mappin was an offshoot of the family that founded Mappin and Webb. His firm issued metal tokens which could be redeemed for surgical trusses, an innovation that was discussed in the British Medical Journal in 1955. He had 13 children and has hundreds of living descendants all over the world. One of his great-grandsons, an American named John Little who died in 1990, committed to magnetic tape an oral family history which included this charming love story:

"In Manchester [John Reynolds] didn't find anything interesting so he walked south to Birmingham. There he called on a man named John Mappin who dealt in surgical instruments hoping that he could get a job. He was told that there was no work for him. As he stood interviewing on the front porch, the gentleman's daughter, age eighteen, was standing in the hall. She overheard the conversation and was able to get a look at the young man, my grandfather. John Mappin had thirteen children in all. His daughter in the hallway was rather frustrated at the time since she and her sister had arranged to have a double wedding with two young doctors. Her young doctor, however, had recently left this world due to an attack of small pox. She thought John Reynolds did not look too bad so as he was walking away, she climbed out of a window and ran after him. She caught up with him and they both walked back to Liverpool and had eighteen children."

When I contacted them I discovered that the Little family had never seen a photograph of their ancestor, so I gave them the original of this one. Home at last!

Mystery man, New Zealand. 1870s.

A photo that didn't strike me as particularly interesting when I saw it the flea market bin, but I knew an expert collector in Christchurch who I was sure would be able to make something of it. I was not disappointed. As you can see from his blog, he has researched the career of photographer, Daniel Mundy, in some detail. To his surprise, he found that an exact copy of this portrait is held by the New Zealand National Archive. It is in a collection that was bestowed by renowned German geologist Sir Johann Franz Julius von Haast. The bearded man in the portrait remains unidentified, but was quite probably a friend of Haast's.

Ernie and Grace Fordham

I found these two on separate days and it took me a while to realise they were the same couple. They don't look all that different or older in the later photo, even their pose is the same, but somehow much is changed. They were easy to find in the census records, in London in 1870, and then 17 years later, still childless. They appear confident and optimistic in the first photograph, worn out and sad in the second, though putting a brave face on it. On the back of the first photo a hand written note describes them as 'uncle Ernie and aunt Grace'. A neice or nephew inherited these images, no child of their own. We can only guess, but I think they had children and lost them. It was not so unusual in that age. Brave people. I hope the rest of their lives were not too hard.