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Ask the photo expert – striking tintype

Our photo expert, Jayne Shrimpton, analyses your family photos.

Joan Drage sent us her photo and asked:

‘I am attaching a metal ferrotype photograph and have also included the information on the reverse. This was found among a large collection of carte de visite photographs which my husband inherited but it is the only one printed on metal. He has been able to identify most of the others but has no idea who this rather distinctive man is. It might give us a start if you could suggest an approximate date.’

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Jayne says:

‘This is an interesting photograph – a ferrotype or tintype, to use its more popular name, although the word ‘ferrotype’ is a more accurate description as the image was struck onto a thin iron plate. This photographic process was first patented in America in the mid-1850s and the ferrotype enjoyed great popularity there for many years.

In Britain it didn’t meet with such success: being the cheapest kind of photograph available, it was considered inferior by many photographers and relatively few British studios produced tintypes, favouring cartes de visite and other card-mounted prints.

Tintype photography became more popular from the late-1870s onwards, especially with outdoor photographers and itinerants who plied their trade in on-the-spot photographs at the seaside, fairground and on the street, the metal pictures being handed direct from the camera to the customer. Few ferrotypes taken in a photographer’s studio survive in today’s family collections, so your studio tintype is a fairly rare example.

Tintypes were not widely accepted by commercial photographers; however, they could produce extraordinarily clear, good portraits, as illustrated here. This powerful, intimate image looms out of the blank background, appearing almost three-dimensional and depicting every contour of your ancestor’s face and detail of his dress with impressive clarity.

The close dating of male portraits is sometimes difficult as men’s fashions changed only subtly, but several elements of this man’s appearance indicate that he was photographed during the 1870s. He wears the fashionable hairstyle of this decade, the top hair swept or flicked back over the head, while his long, extremely bushy beard and full moustache reflect the taste for very prominent facial hair among some men at this time.

He is well-dressed for the photograph and the garments visible in this short half-length view comprise a formal frock coat, waistcoat and spotless white shirt, the wide lapels of both coat and waistcoat also features that suggest the 1870s.

Unusually for tintypes, which are generally not labelled, the studio details are attached to the back of the plate. The London Ferrotype Company seems to have had a brief existence and is not listed on the usual London photographers’ database, but a photographic colleague, Marcel Saffier, has advised that the business is named in an advertisement dating from 1873, confirming the clues that the image indicates.’

Jayne Shrimpton

If you’d like to send your photo to Jayne Shrimpton, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Jayne only has time to analyse two photos each month, but if yours wasn’t chosen this time, you could be lucky next month!

Ask the photo expert – mystery scene

Our photo expert, Jayne Shrimpton, analyses your family photos.

Evan Franklin sent us his photo and asked:

‘I found this photo among my late father’s photographs. I suspect that it was taken around 1920 in South East England and would like to know where. In December 1918, when my father was 11 and his brother was 9, they were orphaned when their parents died in London from Spanish flu, within 14 days of each other. The boys were placed in Dr Barnado’s home.

They never spoke of the ordeal but at the age of 16 one ended up as a sailor on a ship between Southampton and Cape Town, South Africa and the other was sent to a Canadian farm. The brothers never met up again. We think that the lady in this picture is a Mrs Alice Newman Hall who took the two boys in on weekends and left them £50 each in her will.’

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Jayne says:

‘Old photographs often connect in a direct way with the experiences of past family members. The story that you have related is very poignant and one that may well resonate with other family historians reading this.

Many of our forebears were affected by the pandemic known as the Spanish flu, which claimed around 200,000 British lives in 1918, while orphaned children were frequently separated from their siblings and ended up leading new lives abroad. It sounds as though Mrs Newman Hall played an important role in the unfortunate young lives of your father and uncle and it would be good to be able to establish whether she could be the lady pictured here and, if possible, where the photograph was taken.

This street scene is either a casual amateur snapshot or an example of a ‘walking picture’, a photograph of passers-by taken by a street photographer who then handed the subjects a ticket and, if they wished, they could visit the photographer’s kiosk later, to purchase their photograph.

The lady in the foreground is the most prominent figure here and, since this photo has survived in your father’s collection, it does seem likely that she was known to him. She looks to be middle-aged or elderly, perhaps aged somewhere between her late 50s and early 70s, so hopefully this fits in with what you know of Mrs Hall’s age at the time that the photograph was taken.

Dating outdoor photographs like this relies on accurately dating visual clues, especially the dress of any people in the scene. The lady we believe to be Mrs Hall is conservatively dressed, although her appearance is hard to pinpoint very precisely, several younger women are more up to date and wear the fashions of the later 1920s or turn of the 1930s – c.1926-30. We see this especially from their short hemlines, first worn at around knee-level in 1926, and from two deep-crowned cloche hats, a style of the later 1920s and very early 1930s. The parked motor cars along the kerb are also from this kind of era.

Judging from your story, your father and his brother were already travelling or living overseas by the time of this photograph, but perhaps Mrs Hall sent it to your father a year or two after his departure as a way of keeping in touch. Positively identifying the urban environment seen here is difficult as there are no firm clues, although you suspect a location in South East England. If a street photographer took this photograph, a seaside town is possible, since many worked in popular holiday resorts, although I have seen examples taken elsewhere.

Do any findmypast.co.uk readers by chance have a similar photograph that may shed some light on this picture, or happen to recognise this wide, tree-lined street flanked by shops?’

Jayne Shrimpton

If you’d like to send your photo to Jayne Shrimpton, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Jayne only has time to analyse two photos each month, but if yours wasn’t chosen this time, you could be lucky next month!

Ask the expert – missing military information

Our resident military expert Paul Nixon, pictured below, offers advice on how to solve your military family history mysteries.

From Grahame Reed:

‘I am trying to trace the military history of my great-great-grandfather but have only been partially successful.

His name is Charles Reed, born in 1808 and died on 27 October 1884 in Harpenden, St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Charles married his second wife Eliza Moorcroft on 10 July 1850 – the certificate shows his profession as ‘Colour Sgt 60th Rifles’. From the information given below in the 1851 census, Charles probably previously served in Ireland. The details of his first wife are not known.

The 1851 census shows Charles Reed, his wife Eliza, daughter Adelaide (born 1836 in Ireland), son Charles (born 1840 in Ireland) and daughter Caroline (born 1841 in Windsor, Berkshire) – these three children are by his first wife.

The birth certificates of his sons born to Eliza show the following:

• Arthur (born 21 April 51) shows Charles as a labourer – this is my great-grandfather.
• Walter (born 2 August 1852) shows Charles as an Army pensioner.
• Certificates for Edward (born 19 April 1856), Joseph (born 25 May 1861) and Frederick (born 26 March 1863) indicate that Charles was a Staff Sgt in the 2nd Royal Middlesex Rifles living at No 7 Militia Storehouse, Barnet, South Mimms.

Other census documents show Charles as a Chelsea out-pensioner in 1852.

We have been unable to trace any military or pension records or any details of his first wife or the record of Caroline’s birth at Windsor in 1841.

Your help would be appreciated in pointing out the path we should take to fill in the gaps detailed above.’

Paul says:

‘Thanks for your email.

Do bear in mind that there is a wealth of military information that has not been published online. In the absence of a pension record in the WO97 Chelsea Pensioners’ Service Records, you need to look at WO12 (general muster books and pay lists) and also WO25/266-688 (regimental description books 1756-1878). First of all, find Charles Reed in WO12 and then work backwards until you get to the description (on enlistment) in WO25.

If he was born in 1808 he could well have joined up around 1826, or even earlier if he enlisted as a boy. The description books give a physical description of the soldier and are generally arranged by initial letter of the soldier’s name in the various regimental volumes. You’ll get physical characteristics plus age, where born, former trade, former service etc.

A further offline source is WO23/26-65 which are the admission registers of Chelsea out-pensioners between 1820 and 1875. These are arranged by regiment, each volume containing a number of regiments. All of these WO (War Office) series can be requested at The National Archives in Kew, London. You can do that yourself or hire a researcher to do it for you.

Unfortunately, no personnel records survive for the Volunteer Force (the precursor to the Territorial Force) so you’ll be unlikely to find anything specific about his time in the 2nd Royal Middlesex Rifles, although you could of course gen up on this battalion and also the 60th Foot (King’s Royal Rifle Corps) to plot his likely career path. Good luck!’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

April newsletter competition winner

We’re very pleased to announce the winner of our April newsletter competition. We asked you ‘Which four counties did we add new parish records for this month?’

Congratulations go to Wendy Dear from Bristol who correctly answered ‘Northamptonshire, Yorkshire, Dorset and Kent’. Wendy wins a copy of ‘Air Raid Shelters of the Second World War: Family Stories of Survival in the Blitz’ by Stephen Wade.

Thanks to all of you who entered – look out for the next competition question in our May newsletter, coming your way very soon.

New Suffolk and Kent parish records published

We’ve published more than 180,000 new parish records for Suffolk and North West Kent on findmypast.co.uk

This is great news for any of you with Suffolk or Kent roots as the records could hold vital new information about your ancestors.

The Suffolk Family History Society and North West Kent Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Further details of the records are as follows:

Search the parish records now

New military nurses records spanning 110 years

You can now find out if your ancestors are among the 8,969 people who were awarded the Royal Red Cross nursing award. These records span the period 1883 to 1994.

The Royal Red Cross was first awarded in 1883 ‘for special exertions in providing for the nursing, or for attending to, sick and wounded soldiers and sailors’. The award was so special that only 246 women had been considered worthy of the honour by the start of WWI. This rose to 6,741 by 1922, when new classes of medal were introduced.

Men became eligible for the first time in 1976, so it’s possible to find both male and female ancestors in these records.

This release follows the publication of five other sets of military nurse records on findmypast.co.uk in November 2011.

Sue Light provided findmypast.co.uk with these records. The image on this page is also courtesy of Sue.

Search the military nurses records now

Search new Plymouth and Devon records for 3.5 million people

Search new Plymouth and Devon parish records covering 3.5 million people and five centuries on findmypast.co.uk

These records include baptisms, marriages and burials from 1538 to 1911, making it easier than ever before to trace your Devonshire ancestors before the first census and the start of birth, marriage and death records in the 19th century.

Here you can see an example of one of the records – click on it for a larger version. On 10 September 1846, young lovers from Plymouth, William Yeo, a Waterman, and Jane Brown,
of no occupation, were married in Stoke Damerel. Both bride and groom were recorded in the register as minors by the lenient vicar, and the signatures of the witnesses weren’t of their parents or anyone obviously related.

Other interesting finds in the parish records include Devon’s most infamous celebrities of the past: Reverend John (Jack) Russell, the ‘dog breeder in a dog collar’, Devonshire’s Lady in Waiting to Queen Adelaide, Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first computer and Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies.

Plymouth City Council’s Plymouth & West Devon Record Office provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, as part of the Plymouth and West Devon Collection.

Search the Plymouth and West Devon parish records now

Famous family trees: Brenda Blethyn

Welcome to the third post in our series of blogs exploring the family trees of the famous. Experienced family historian, Roy Stockdill, takes us on a journey through time as he investigates the family history of the famous, both living and dead. This time, Roy takes a look at Brenda Blethyn’s family tree.

The brilliantly versatile Brenda Blethyn, OBE, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, has a family history that is as unorthodox as her acting career.

Brenda Blethyn - courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

The actress has made over 30 films, including the one that propelled her to stardom, Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1996). She’s veered an eclectic path between film comedies like Saving Grace and the cricket-based TV series Outside Edge, a cinema adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and gritty dramas like Vera, in which she currently stars as a dedicated, obsessive detective chief inspector solving murders in north-east England.

Brenda Blethyn was born in the Kent seaside town of Ramsgate in 1946, the youngest of nine born to a Roman Catholic couple who didn’t marry until they’d already had eight children! Brenda herself has never made any bones about this, for in her memoirs entitled Mixed Fancies (2006) she wrote:

“According to Dad, when he met Mum it was love at first sight and it wasn’t long before he popped the question. Mum, however, although she felt the same way, said she needed a little more persuading. Quite a lot more persuading as it turned out! Even after the birth of their eighth child in 1943.”

Technically speaking, then, Brenda was the only one of the nine born in wedlock. She was born as Brenda Anne Bottle on 20 February 1946.

Brenda’s parents were William Charles Bottle, born in 1894 at Boughton under Blean, a village between Faversham and Canterbury, and Louisa Kathleen Supple, born in 1904 at Canterbury. Thus, when Brenda arrived her father was almost 52 and her mother was 41. Brenda was 20 years junior to her eldest sibling.

The couple had met in the early 1920s when both were in service at a big house in Broadstairs, next to Ramsgate. William came back from six years with the Royal Field Artillery in India, where he was a bombardier, to work as a chauffeur in a household where Louisa was a parlour maid. According to Brenda in her memoirs, the family were poor but very close.

I found William C Bottle in the 1911 census. He was then aged 17 and working as a milkman –perhaps an appropriate occupation given his surname! The family were at 77 Church Street, St Peters, Broadstairs, and William’s parents – Brenda’s grandparents – were another William Bottle and his wife, Jane Ellen.

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William snr was shown as being aged 53, a labourer, born at Maidstone, and Jane Ellen was 47, born at Ramsgate. According to the census schedule, they had been married for 31 years and had had eight children, all of them then still living, but only William and his younger brother, Thomas, 14, were still at home.

Brenda’s mother, Louisa Kathleen Supple, appears also in the 1911 census at 99 Military Road, Canterbury. She was aged seven and one of six children living with their parents, Edward Supple, a 36-year-old plasterer, and his wife who was also called Louisa, aged 34. The whole family all gave Canterbury as their birthplace. This entry shows that Edward and Louisa had been married for 13 years and had had nine children, two of whom had died.

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With Findmypast.co.uk’s marriages indexes, I found the marriage of Brenda’s paternal grandparents William Bottle and Jane Annie Ellen Challen in Thanet, Kent in 1878. I traced William and Jane through the various censuses and it seems fairly clear that, when she married William Bottle, Jane Challen was only 15, perhaps just short of 16. He would have been 19 or 20.

In those days, the minimum age for marriage was 14 for a male and 12 for a female (until 1929). Not too many girls married at 15 but it was by no means impossible.

I was fortunate enough to be supplied by another descendant with a photo of the couple, which appears on a Bottle One-Name Study website and is reproduced here.

William Bottle and Jane Challen - courtesy of Liz Samson

One slight oddity I discovered in the census records was that in 1881 William Bottle was enumerated with his in-laws, Edward and Clara Challen, at 11 Hackney Road, Shoreditch, Middlesex, in London’s East End. William’s occupation was given as ‘sweep’ and he was only eight years younger than his mother-in-law, Clara Challen, aged 32, born at Canterbury. Edward Challen, 36, was a tobacconist, born at Ramsgate.

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Where was Jane, William’s young wife? She was at 12 Staffordshire Street, Ramsgate, aged 18 and described as the wife of a chimney sweep, with their daughter, Eliza, just a year old.

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Why William and Jane were enumerated separately in 1881 is a mystery – possibly William was just visiting his in-laws at Shoreditch. However, they were together in all the subsequent censuses in Kent, William being a chimney sweep’s labourer in 1891, a bricklayer’s labourer in 1901 and described simply as a labourer in 1911.

William Bottle’s birth was found in findmypast.co.uk’s birth indexes in Maidstone in 1858. Yet when I looked for him and his parents in the 1861 census, I stumbled upon another curiosity! There was only one candidate – a William Bottle, aged 2, one of four children living with parents Charles and Elizabeth Bottle, at Bone Alley, Maidstone.

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However, William’s birthplace was shown as Stepney, which could only have been an error because in all subsequent censuses it was clearly given as Maidstone. Moreover, I could find no birth of a William Bottle at Stepney at the appropriate time.

Charles Bottle was a shoemaker, born at Maidstone, but unfortunately his age was unclear. The image suggests it could have been 61, 57 or 51. I subsequently discovered that, in fact, Charles was baptised in 1809. Whatever Charles’s age, his wife, Elizabeth, a needle woman, was considerably younger, being shown as 40 and her birthplace given as Abingdon, Berkshire. This couple, Charles and Elizabeth Bottle, were Brenda Blethyn’s great-grandparents.

Oh dear – the vagaries of censuses once more! I found Charles and Elizabeth Bottle in 1851 when they were living at 3 Bartholomew Place, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets with four children all born in the East End of London. Charles was a bootmaker, aged 39, and Elizabeth was 30, her birthplace in this census being given as Reading, Berkshire, some way from Abingdon.

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A close analysis of the 1851 and 1861 censuses and birth indexes – taking into account the errors – suggests that Charles and Elizabeth had half a dozen children born in the East End between about 1842 and 1856 and then another two, including William, born at Maidstone.

I couldn’t find a marriage between Charles and Elizabeth though, either in Kent or East London. So I obtained a copy of the birth certificate of their son William from the General Register Office for England and Wales.

This revealed that he was born on 4 July 1858 in the registration district of Maidstone at 6 Windmill Row. His father was Charles Bottle, a shoemaker journeyman, and his mother was Elizabeth Bottle, formerly Wellman.

Despite being armed with this new information, I could still find no marriage between a Charles Bottle and Elizabeth Wellman. So, either the marriage was  somehow not recorded or the couple were never married in the first place – shades of the relationship of Brenda Blethyn’s parents decades later!

* Thanks for help with this article to John Bottle, who runs the Bottle One-Name Study and Liz Samson, a descendant of William and Jane Bottle who supplied the photograph of that couple.

Roy Stockdill

Roy Stockdill has been a family historian for almost 40 years. A former national newspaper journalist, he edited the Journal of One-Name Studies (for the Guild of One-Name Studies) for 10 years. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Society of Genealogists and is commissioning editor of the ‘My Ancestors…’ series of books. He writes regularly for Family Tree magazine.