Painting a thousand words...

The article, 'The Eastern Pioneer', in the February 2022 edition of Scottish Field, about John Thomson’s amazing photographs brought back memories of another Victorian photographer who visited China and the Far East in the 1910s.

My grandmother Helen Morton Corsar was the only child of Arbroath linen manufacturer David Corsar and his wife, whose family were another Arbroath Manufacturer, Websters. When she was in her teens, my grandmother sailed with her father and uncle to the Far East, including China. The trip was part business, relating to the continuing success of the Arbroath sail cloth/linen industry, but it also provided the opportunity to see the sights. My grandmother took her camera and when she returned to Arbroath the films were developed and the photographs mounted in albums.

Fast forward many decades into the 1950s. From the age of nine I used to be sent to stay with my grandmother who was now widowed and living in the suburbs of Aberdeen. Her house was filled with fascinating items from her trip around the world. I remember being intrigued as she told me tales of what she saw on her trip to the Orient. She would tell me how tourists would throw coins into the water and how the native children would dive in to retrieve and keep them. She had Chinese silk wall hangings, a pair of opium pipes, ivory carvings, eastern ceramics and silk gowns.

But, the items that really fascinated me were her photograph albums from her tour of the Orient in the 1890s. This was a time when there was terrible cruelty and the poor lived in extremely impoverished conditions. Tourists/ businessmen were welcomed by the Chinese. One set of her photographs showed a train journey. The train had steamed into a small town where a 'show' had been prepared for the incoming tourists. The 'show' was an execution. A local had committed a crime, probably menial in Western terms.

My grandmother, obviously not squeamish, had witnessed the act. Whether she or her father or uncle had actually taken the execution snaps remains a mystery. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) her photograph albums, inherited by my cousin, were destroyed in a house fire in the 1960s.

I wonder if John Thomson had witnessed and recorded similar inhumanity towards fellow man during his visit to the Orient? I intend to visit the Heriot-Watt University to see the exhibition. Thank you for your article evoking distant memories. Tom Burnett, Straiton, Ayrshire

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