Keen to uncover album clues
QPlease can Jayne Shrimpton help me to identify the people in a set of photos found among the possessions of my grandmother, who passed away many years ago? I once took some photos of the album containing them to a ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ show and Eric Knowles identified it as probably a book of cartes de visite, but otherwise I am no further forward. Grandmother’s family came from the north coast of Scotland and were mainly agricultural labourers apart from one lady, a housekeeper in Lairg. I have tried tracking some of the studios but it still doesn’t give me much to go on. I think they mainly date to the 1800s but I’m afraid the quality isn’t great as they are photos of photos: a relative holds the originals. The wooden album is very frail and apparently it holds no other clues as to who these people are. We do, however, still have some of the jewelry and a collar that seem to appear in one photo: they must have meant a lot to my grandmother and great-grandmother. To me, the ladies’ outfits are fabulous: they look as if they are trying to tell a story, with the documents or flowers in their hands. I’d love it if Jayne could help by offering an approximate date for these photos please. Many thanks. Chris Connearn
AThese photographs are displayed within pre-cut apertures on pages of a purpose-designed late-victorian photograph album. Typically, albums from the late-1800s contained both small cartes de visite (cdv) photographs and larger cabinet prints: I cannot confirm from these scans whether your photographs are indeed all cdvs as advised. Either way, they are all professional studio portraits, reflecting the fact that few families owned their own cameras in the 19th century, and so had to visit a local commercial photographer to have their likeness captured.
Photo 1
With this photograph we only have the visual image to go on – essentially your ancestor’s formal appearance in a very ‘dressy’ dark velvet daytime costume heavily-trimmed with dark lace and ornamented with metal or glass bead trimmings known as passementerie. This is a handsome outfit suited to a relatively comfortably-placed, mature married lady and we note how she consciously displays her wedding ring, proclaiming her marital status. The style of her outfit, comprising high-necked, tight-fitting, front-fastening bodice with narrow sleeves slightly puffed at the shoulder and matching plain velvet skirt dates her appearance to the early-1890s, c.1890-93. This welldressed lady also wears a bar brooch and bracelet – accumulated jewellery that may include some of the heirlooms you mentioned. The posy of dried flowers is simply a studio ‘prop’, giving her something to hold and enhancing the feminine effect. She will have visited the studio to mark a special occasion and going by her attire and what we can see of her face, I would suggest an occasion such as her 40th birthday.
Photo 2
When trying to date ‘mystery’ photographs, if the studio is named on the mount, as here, it can help to research operational dates. For early Scottish photographers, I use the excellent two-volume Scottish Studio Photographers to 1914 by D Richard Torrance (2011). This printed source states that your photographer, William Leeper Dunn & Co. ran their studio at 273 King Street, Aberdeen from 1893 until after 1914. This provides a useful post quem date of 1893 and we can in fact date the image extremely closely from the lady’s distinctive costume. Her wide shoulders and vast puffed upper sleeves representing the fashionable ‘leg-o’-mutton’ style date her appearance to c.1894-96. She may be slightly younger than No.1, but they could belong to the same generation, possibly sisters born broadly 1840s/1850s.
Her ‘letter’ is again a studio ‘prop’, something for the hands to do, and creating an air of gentility.
Photo 3
This is an interesting photographic portrait composed in the closeup three-quarter length composition common throughout the 1870s to early-1890s. The lady’s high-necked fitted bodice with straight sleeves is attached to a bustle skirt, as seen from the full drapery behind and beneath her – a feature dating her appearance to c.18851890. Unfortunately the top of her interesting headdress is obscured by the album page. The long, dark, veil-like ‘falls’ (streamers) trailing over her bodice could possibly suggest a mourning bonnet, yet her ornate-looking skirt panel is not typical of mourning dress. A high quality image would help here.
Photo 4
This dark photographic mount dates this portrait to between the early-1880s and c.1902, when black and bottle green card mounts were in vogue. Consulting Scottish Studio Photographers to 1914 once again I found that Maurice Pearlmann only ran the St. George’s Cross studio briefly during 1885-1887. I recommend extending the earliest date back a year, but this still creates a close time frame for this image: 1884-87. Your young ancestor’s fashionable appearance in a slender sloping morning coat with coordinating waistcoat and trousers supports this perfectly, his age 20s in my opinion.
Photo 5
This portrait displaying a limited view of the subject, and without any studio details to aid dating, nonetheless dates to a similar era as No.4. Key dress details include the fashionable morning coat and white handkerchief in the top pocket: broadly, this photograph dates to between the mid-1880s and mid-1890s. Perhaps these two young men were brothers?
Photo 6
Unfortunately we can’t see this portrait of a mother and infant very clearly, but it should prove a helpful and interesting photograph. Although her costume is partly obscured, the mother’s narrow skirt arranged in pleated tiers and her circular white collar date her appearance to the early-1880s: c.1880-84. We cannot tell the toddler’s sex for certain, but s/he is aged about 2-3 years old, so we can calculate their birth year as between around 1877 and 1882 – an important clue when considering these forebears’ likely identities.
Conclusion
All of these photographs date to within about 15 years during the 1880s and early-mid 1890s, the album itself probably first acquired c.1880s. So you should consult your family tree and consider which family members were closely connnected to your grandmother and her mother at that time. I would also recommend that you request complete, good quality scans of the original photographs from your relative, to see whereabouts exactly each one was taken, and to enable a clearer study of the details and comparison between the various faces for possible matches or family resemblances. JS