A family occasion in 1890
QI hope your photo-dating expert can help with this photograph of my grandfather’s family. He is the baby, Herbert, sitting on the chair and looks about two years old, so with a birth date of 1885, I estimate the date of the photograph is about 1887. I don’t know the occasion behind the photograph: it is not the parents’ wedding anniversary as they were married in 1865. None of the children were married in 1887 either. Some of the girls seem to be wearing similar dark dresses, so I don’t know if this is a clue. I have attached a copy of the original photo and the same photo with names added as my best guess, and a screen shot of names and dates from Findmypast. The only three identities I am certain of are the parents and my grandfather, although Mary Ann, the eldest child, facially resembles some of my cousins (her grandchildren), so I think she is right too. I would be most grateful if your expert could confirm or correct the names that I have attributed to each person in the photograph.
AJackie Nesbitt
This large-format photographic print, mounted onto thick (but brittle, easily-torn) card with a narrow border around the picture, is typical of late-victorian extended family group scenes. By the late-1800s, when large numbers of people were to be pictured it was becoming increasingly common for a local photographer to visit the family at home, the group being carefully composed outdoors where there was plenty of space and light. The setting was usually the garden at the front or the back of the house, as seen here.
Everyone here is well-dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ clothes and it is their appearance that provides an accurate historical context for this scene. In particular, women’s fashions offer the most reliable date and the dress worn by the three females wearing adult dress – the mother figure and two older daughters, seated beside their parents – indicates a time frame of 1888-1890 for this photograph. The mother and eldest daughter, seated left, are especially fashionablyattired, the asymmetrical buttoned bodice of the mother and distinctive ‘plastron’ front bodice of the daughter confirming a date towards the end of the 1880s or 1890. At that time, the bustle skirt prevailed (difficult to see clearly here), declining by 1889/90.
Four adult males wear the slender three-piece suits fashionable in the late-1800s, jackets slim-fitting with neat high lapels and business-like watch chains suspended across their waistcoat fronts. Other group members are attired according to their respective ages, the girls progressing through gradations in dress
suited to their different stages of development, the young son (‘Henry’) wearing the regular schoolboy’s knickerbockers suit and Eton collar.
This is a classic large late-victorian family group scene composed following photographic and aesthetic convention, the senior members (parents here) and older daughters seated in the middle row, adult sons standing at the back, little children arranged in the front and school-age children mainly flanking the group. Some of the girls were born very close together, but as far as I can tell individual figures here accord with your suggested names. However, the Findmypast records provided state that your grandfather Herbert was born in 1886 (not 1885) and, significantly, this enables a more plausible interpretation of the scene – especially if he was born late in 1886. I estimate that Herbert is aged three here, which could well make the date of the photograph 1890 – a year that accords perfectly with his parents’ 25th (Silver) wedding anniversary. That is definitely the most likely occasion behind this photograph. JS