Require Historians' Help re a Victorian Period

[Coinery]

Historians please! Can anyone tell me anything at all about this Victorian photo? Period re clothing, status, scenario that she might be photographed in the first place? Guess at her age? Anything at all!

I've managed to find out the photographer Augustus Lafosse was born in 1839 and died aged 88, so a very big window.

Was she a vicar's daughter, maybe a missionary?
What status? Wealthy? Middle-class? Apparently most people could afford to have a set  of CDVs made, so she doesn't necessarily have to be wealthy? What's your thoughts?

[Rob]

Searching the address gives a visiting card ca1880 for the Corps Dramatique. 

Knoll Street goes off Bury New Road. I'm pretty certain the large house at the top of the road looking down it to the left used to be called Knoll or Knolls House. Now it is split into a textile importer and Orthodox Jewish School. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pellstrand+ltd&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=1msEWon4HanS8AfPwaboAQ

Follow the link and it will give a view and a map.

[davidrj]

I found him on Ancestry https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/36146232/person/28046358624/facts

Born in Belgium, naturalised British citizen, lived Bury New Rd. 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses all list profession as photographer. 

[Rob]

I'm assuming the building was split up into businesses even then, because the card I illustrated reads ENT STA HALL after his name, which I would take to mean Entrance Stairs Hallway, i.e. by the front door.

In the 50 years leading up to WW1, Higher Broughton was quite a well to do area, so a lot of people living close by would have had their pictures taken there.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Rob

[davidrj]

36 Bury New Road was his residential address in 1881,1891,1901. 1871 he is ar 4 Rock Mount, and in 1911 he’s at 25 Dover St

i found him in a couPle if trade directories

1879 Allan’s Buildings, 82 Victoria St and Knoll House, Bury New Road

1886 1 St Ann’s Place

1902 407 Oxford Rd. 

so at a guess I would say he starts his business at home, with a separate door for the studio, and later moves to commercial premises late 1870s. If the photo was later than 1879 I would expect the commercial property would be cited as the address

David

[Rob]

I have no idea where Rock Mount or Dover St were. Much of the area has been redeveloped since the sixties. Bury New Road is still the main drag up the hill out of Manchester, but houses are virtually non-existent these days, with almost everything lower down below no. 390 flattened 50 years ago and redeveloped for business use. 36 Bury New Road would be next to Strangeways Hotel close to Waterloo Road amongst the asian wholesalers' premises, all bar a few builings of which post-date this period. Knolls House is 397 Bury New Road. Even some of the redeveloped bits were redeveloped again in the 90s onwards - Hooray!!

Victoria Street is the continuation of Bury New Road, down by the Manchester Arena and Chetham's School. Almost everything has gone here, but the school would have opened up business opportunties. His residential address would have been between the two business addresses. Based on a theatrical group sharing the same address at Knolls House, it is unlikely that he lived there. Certainly the property is too large for a single family to live there, so both 1879 addresses would be business ones. I think all we can conclude is pre-1886 when he is recorded in the city centre.

[davidrj]

Your local knowledge makes sense Rob

 

[Guest Coinery (Stuart)]

Goodness, many thanks, chaps! Just read a contemporary document about the Manchester studio (including dimensions) being in an extraordinary location, being high up and out of the smog of Manchester. 

On a nightshift tonight, so will have to duck out for now. Any thoughts on a date?

 I'm trying to link the date/photo with a series of 4 letters I have, dated 1893/4/5/6 from a mother to her children, where she was separated the entire duration, and maybe forever, it doesn't say. I think the girl in the photo could be the mother, especially if the photo dates to 10-15 years earlier, which my first investigations suggests it does.
I want to include as much of this detail into a novel I'm scaffolding out at the moment called 'Nurse Gray' (a nurse I want to call Arabella Gray).

sorry, not logged in.

[Coinery]

A nice little snippet someone shared with me - married women of the period would not wear their hair down in public! 

[Rob]

The Victoria St address would be next door to Manchester Cathedral too, so another reason for having a studio there.

[zookeeperz]

Perhaps these people could tell you some more. Seems these picture-graphs  carry some value

http://sensationpress.com/victorianportraits_forsale.htm

[Coinery]

On 11/9/2017 at 3:50 PM, davidrj said:

 If the photo was later than 1879 I would expect the commercial property would be cited as the address

David

Many thanks, David, I'm hoping for a date of around then, because it would then be viable that this lady was the mother of two children around the date 1893-96

[Coinery]

It's amazing what you can find out on the 'net!

"the negative room has racks for 14,000 negatives" 

So what do we think of her age? Does around 15 seem a fair shout?

M. LAFOSSE AT KNOLL'S HOUSE, MANCHESTER. 

Delightfully situated in its own grounds at Higher Broughton, 
above the vapours of murky Manchester, is a quaintly built villa 
of black oak, a bit of mediaeval architecture that seems to have 
been forgotten by the modern builders, who have been so busy 
planting their bricks and stucco around. It is Knoll's House, 
and, posed on its terrace-like pedestal, it appears all the brighter 
and more pleasing by reason of its contrast to the solemn square 
edifices in the neighbourhood. The gable roof and shining black 
beams are charmingly picturesque, and as the building lies back 
at some distance from the road, there are quietude and repose to 
still further enhance its beauty. 

The interior is no less pleasing. An oak passage, somewhat 
low and sombre, with shining casques of steel and polished breast- 
plates on either side, leads to a panelled room in which there is 
much exquisite carving. Here everything is in good taste and 
keeping with the structure. The furniture is all of black oak,
and on the massive sideboard are tankards and platters of 
burnished silver. The fireplace is of mediaeval design, and the 
settees and curtains have an air of the tapestry age about them. 
To be brief, in the construction of Knoll's House, every bit of Old 
Manchester that could be collected together by its builder was 
made use of, and the experiment, a risky one, has yielded a very 
happy result. It is only the oak room and hall, however, that 
possess an old-fashioned air. The rest of the rooms have lofty 
ceilings and modern furniture, although in the handsome gallery 
or reception room there are also much antique work and rare 
carving to admire. 

M. Lafosse has a business establishment in the town of 
Manchester itself, and it is only the higher class camera work 
that is executed at Knoll's House. M. Lafosse' s name stands so 
high as an artist that we need not speak here of the merits of 
his pictures ; he executes large numbers of cabinets, for which 
he possesses a wide reputation, while in respect to club portraits 
on opal — to take another branch of work — they are produced 
upon so large a scale that M. Lafosse actually employs a staff of 
framers on the premises. 

A courtyard separates the house from the working depart- 
ments, the studios being again connected by a passage with the 
front entrance. "We cross the yard, and M. Lafosse points out 
where his large groups are taken. There are a rustic bench and 
two or three chairs upon a platform, the boarded background 
being painted of a greyish tone, and trained with imitation ivy. 
"After two o'clock I can do anything I please there; I know 
my effects as well as in the studio indoors." "We pass on into the 
framing room. "Here are the cheap club portraits we were 
talking about just now ; our charge, finished in colours, is thirty- 
five shillings, or two guineas in black and white." The pic- 
tures are all upon opal, the latter being simply albumenised, 
coated with collodion, and sensitized in the ordinary way. In 
reply to a question as to toning, M. Lafosse says : " The tint is 
so satisfactory after development that we never tone." 

"We enter the printing room. It is a model of construction and 
ingenuity. It is an oblong apartment, and, as a matter of course, 
not very light. Along the length of the room runs a dresser or 
bench, upon which the pressure-frames are stood for changing. 
In front of the printers are large roof -like windows, and the 
frames, put upon a sliding tray, may be either pushed forward 

under these windows, or farther still into the open air for print- 
ing. There are six of these sliding trays, measuring some five 
feet broad, all of which in turn are drawn in upon the dresser, to 
change the frames ; and according as the tray is pushed out 
again into the light much or little, so the printing proceeds 
quickly or slowly. Conveniently situated behind the printers is 
the darker sensitizing room, whence fresh supplies of paper are 
drawn, and also the negative store room, so that the employes 
have all necessary to do their work conveniently to hand, and 
the operations proceed smoothly and uninterruptedly. The nega- 
tive room has racks for 14,000 negatives, each pigeon-hole con- 
taining ten plates ; hence the numbering is at once plain and 
straightforward. M. Lafosse is never troubled with rising of 
the film ; he employs both Hubbard's and the Autotype varnish. 

There are two fine glass rooms at Knoll's House, at right 
angles to one another. Our kindly host insists upon taking a 
portrait, so we sit down. When the picture is taken, however, 
we scarcely know, for there is such a humorous rattle the whole 
time, and all sorts of conjuring going on with a fan, and anec- 
dotes about past sitters and present ones, that by the time we 
begin to compose ourselves, he says it is all over. M. Lafosse 
is of opinion that French photographers are certainly not ahead 
of those in England now-a-days. " But Paris photographers 
have many advantages — that is a nice little fan, isn't it ? — you 
see their models pose so much better than you English people do 
— that's a capital smile ! — and then they dress so much better. 
Here you have people who don't know how to dress at all ; they 
come arrayed in glaring satin or a nasty shiny grey, like that you 
are wearing — capital laugh that ; just keep it on — thank you." 

M. Lafosse's principal studio, which is about fifty feet long, 
is tinted a dark grey-green. There is a skirting-board at the 
light side eighteen inches from the ground ; then three feet of 
ground-glass, and above that, sloping inwards, three feet of 
clear glass. All or any portion of the ground-glass may be shut 
out by opaque sliding screens, and there is a very ingenious 
arrangement for modifying the top side light that comes through 
the clear glass. A row of small white screens hang down from 
the roof, and in this position do not obscure the glass. But if 
sloped to the right or left — and by means of a frame-work they 
all move together — the light is reflected on to or away from the 
sitter, or, by pulling taut the glass, obscured altogether. The 
screens, indeed, are constructed something after the manner of a 
Venetian blind. The studio contains a vast number of clever 
properties, but the best of all is a large musical box, which 
M. Lafosse finds exceedingly useful when making exposures, as 
sitters then have something else besides themselves to think 
about at the eventful moment. 

In working, M. Lafosse believes it well to make up collodion 
and silver bath in batches. For instance, he makes up one 
hundred ounces of nitrate of silver into bath, and mixes up at 
the same time as much collodion as he is likely to require for 
the same. When these are expended, he prepares fresh supplies . 
In the same way he albumenises a hundred or a thousand plates 
at a time, for M. Lafosse invariably employs an albumen sub- 
stratum both for ordinary work and for his opal enlargements. 
The varnishing is done in an ingenious manner, which our 
readers will do well to note. Our host makes use of a little 
"cheerful stove." 

M. Lafosse's retouching room is also worth making a note of. 
The light enters from a wide window in front, but a curtain 
depending from the ceiling shuts out direct illumination, except 
where the row of retouching frames are placed. The ceiling and 
wall behind are painted a dark neutral tint to absorb the light 
and not to reflect it, so that while the apartment is softly illu- 
minated, the light behind the negatives is still exceedingly 
vivid. Altogether this retouching room is a model. 

M. Lafosse is of opinion that something novel is necessary to 
give healthy impetus to photographic work, and he has not much 
faith in the promenade or any other style of portrait effecting 
such beneficial change. " We do not want merely a variation in 
the cutting or mounting of photographs, but some modification 
of the photograph itself. A real cameo, or bas-relief portrait, in 
which the face stands out from a dark background, would make 
an attractive picture, for example, if we could only produce such 
things. " Possibly, now the Woodbury patent has lapsed, we 
shall have some attention given to the production of photographic 
portraits in relief ; at any rate, M. Lafosse's idea is well worthy 
of record here. 

[Rob]

Shows how much I can remember.

I recognised the name, but the building eluded me. It's further down closer to Manchester at no. 266, was Grade II listed, but redeveloped, and now appears to be a Seat garage. https://salfordhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/knoll-house-salford.html

The guy in question was there from 1874 to 1891 according to the article.

[davidrj]

The young lady’s family probably spent a considerable amount for her portrait, today she would take a selfie on her phone and post in on Facebook.

 

 

[Coinery]

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Shows how much I can remember.

I recognised the name, but the building eluded me. It's further down closer to Manchester at no. 266, was Grade II listed, but redeveloped, and now appears to be a Seat garage. https://salfordhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/knoll-house-salford.html

The guy in question was there from 1874 to 1891 according to the article.

Brilliant link, history's amazing, great to actually see the building, absolutely love it! I don't think it too much of a presumption then to date the photo pre-1891, when Lafosse moved to Devon, aged 52? I believe the late 1870s/1880s will be a reasonable place to stick the pin? 

[Coinery]

58 minutes ago, davidrj said:

The young lady’s family probably spent a considerable amount for her portrait, today she would take a selfie on her phone and post in on Facebook.

 

 

Although I did read that 'most' people of the period could afford a set of 12 Cartes de Visite? There must have been a big market, Lafosse had 14,000 racks for negatives.

[Coinery]

Impressive property!

[zookeeperz]

Iread he produced what we call today portfolio's for actresses and put together albums for well to do families. I would say the girl is no more than 11 or 12 god knows what she is wearing it looks like parts of tree limbs  in the lower middle a kilt perhaps? Could be Scottish I did notice a pattern like a tartan somewhere on the back part of the dress

[Peckris]

On 9 November 2017 at 10:19 PM, Coinery said:

A nice little snippet someone shared with me - married women of the period would not wear their hair down in public! 

My guess is that this is a child, possibly age around 12? (The clothing and fashions of the era, and the ageing effect of Victorian urban conditions, made kids look quite a lot older than a child of equivalent age today). 

"god knows what she is wearing it looks like parts of tree limbs"

I think she's leaning over the back of a cane chair?

Edited November 20, 2017 by Peckris