Blog

Ask the photo expert – female ancestors

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

Andrew Elliot sent us his photo and asked:

‘Please find attached an old photograph of three women. It is a glass plated photograph – perhaps an ambrotype – in a framed case. The scratches on the image are from the negatives when I photographed many years ago with film! Any dating based on the clothing would be great. The photograph would have been taken in Fife, Scotland.’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘Ambrotypes, as you point out, are photographic images on a glass plate and are often mounted in a frame or presented in a hinged case. Most ambrotypes taken in photographers’ studios date from the later 1850s or early 1860s, being rapidly superseded during the 1860s by the new card-mounted carte de visite photographs, although outdoor ambrotypes may date from as late as 1890. If you are correct about the format of this photograph, then it is a relatively late example of a studio ambrotype, dating from the 1870s.

Dress clues invariably provide the best evidence for the timeframe of an unidentified photograph and the appearance of young women, like these pictured here, generally offers the most accurate dating clues. Female fashions in clothing and hairstyles changed regularly in the past and the up-to-date modes favoured by young women in particular can provide a very close date range. Here we see three female ancestors, the girl in the centre the youngest figure here and probably aged no more than 14 or 15 years old, judging from her juvenile hairstyle showing the hair dressed in youthful ringlets.

The standing women (possibly the girl’s older sisters?) wear adult fashions, their elaborate hairstyles typical of the 1870s. The drawing back of the hair off the face during the later 1860s and 1870s inspired the vogue for long pendant earrings, as worn here, while the height of many 1870s coiffures necessitated the wearing of neat hats tilted well forward on the head, as seen on the left. This lady looks especially fashionable and the style of her dress, buttoned down the centre-front, suggests that she is wearing the narrow ‘Princess’ dress that followed the elongated cuirass line. Introduced around mid-decade, this new silhouette replaced the early-1870s bustle shape and helps to date this photograph to c.1875-79 – a close timeframe that may help you to positively identify these ancestors.

Another interesting feature of this picture is the knitting! Photographs depicting women and girls (and, occasionally, men) knitting by hand date back to at least the 1860s, for knitting has a long history in Britain, being especially associated with fishing communities that produced traditional fishermen’s ganseys. This embryonic garment, however, is no sturdy blue seaman’s jersey, but a delicate white or pale-coloured article taking shape on small needles – a baby’s garment, perhaps?

Looking at the lady occupied with her knitting, she appears to have a pronounced ‘bump’ below her waist, strongly suggesting that she is pregnant and might therefore be preparing her unborn baby’s layette. This kind of subject is rarely seen in family photograph collections and adds a fascinating extra dimension to this scene. Have any findmypast.co.uk followers seen anything similar to this photograph?’

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 – old school photo

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

Roger Thomas sent us his photo and asked:

‘This photograph is about 17cm by 11cm: the mount is stiff cardboard with a plain back. I can only assume it was taken at a school in Plymouth, Devon. I would like to know the date, please.’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘Old school photographs feature in many of today’s family photograph collections. As early as the 1850s photographers were hired to record the pupils of elite academies and schools like Harrow and Eton and certain studios built their reputations on academic portraiture, like Hills & Saunders (established 1852). School photography for the wider population, however, developed after the passing of the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which led to larger numbers of children from ordinary families attending school. Regular photographer visits to local schools were also encouraged by technical advances during the later 1870s, particularly the introduction of convenient dry photographic plates, which facilitated photographic work away from the studio. Most surviving school photographs, therefore, date from the end of the 1870s onwards.

You mention that your photograph was possibly taken in Plymouth, Devon, perhaps because that’s where your ancestors lived. The card mount specifies Birmingham, but this may be a ‘red herring’. Internet research reveals that George Watkins Holden, manager of the Elementary Schools Photographing Company operated in many different locations, as listed on the decorative columns on this mount, including Plymouth. There is an interesting biography of him on the website of Brett Payne

This indicates that by the late 1870s, Holden was travelling widely around the country (or possibly used local agents) and was specialising in scholastic photography. Several examples of his school photographs are uploaded here and if you scroll down you’ll see an elementary photograph taken at Plymouth in 1895: the mount is identical to yours.

Usually school children were photographed in their class groups, or, sometimes, two or more classes combined. They were carefully positioned so that each small face was visible, as it was hoped that every parent would purchase a copy – just like today. Generally in Victorian photographs like this, the children were lined up in rows in the playground, flanked by the head teacher and/or class teacher on one or both sides, as seen here. Sometimes a slate was positioned in the middle of the picture stating the year, school and class: when present this provides very useful historical information.

Dating local school photographs that have no helpful slate involves dating the style of dress worn by the pupils. Children didn’t usually wear a school uniform as such, but were told to ‘come clean’ for the photographer’s visit and would have made an effort to wear their best clothes. Here we see girls from what look to be several year groups as they appear to be different ages, ranging perhaps from around seven to 11 years old – coinciding with what we would today call junior school. The younger girls wear loose smock dresses hanging in folds from the chest – a style of frock introduced for young girls in the early-mid-1890s.

Some girls, especially several of the older pupils, wear a more fitted version with a tighter bodice and accentuated at the waist with a waistband. They all wear the puffed sleeves fashionable in the 1890s. I would date this photograph to c.1894-9, a close timeframe that should hopefully help you to identify one of these girls as an ancestor – possibly someone who also appears in other family photographs.’

Jayne Shrimpton

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.’

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

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.’

Click to enlarge

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 photo expert – possible wedding photo

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

Doreen Tyrrell sent us her photo and asked:

‘I wondered if you could possibly date the attached photo. I am hoping it is around 1890 to confirm who I think it is, but it could possibly 1902-ish?’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘It’s perfectly natural for family historians to guess at the identities of ancestors in old photographs that aren’t labelled with a name or date – a common scenario! Having them accurately dated will always help to either confirm or disprove a theory, ruling different possibilities in or out. The visual evidence doesn’t lie and, particularly, the clothing and accessories worn by past family members in a photograph can only date from within a certain time period. Here we see a youngish couple, whose dress we would expect to be fairly up-to-date for its time, whatever their social background.

When women appear in a photograph, this always offers a closer timeframe than male-only portraits, since female fashions changed regularly and can usually be pinpointed to within a few years. This lady wears the separate blouse and skirt that was becoming popular in the early 20th century, her plain tailored skirt fitting smoothly over the hips and shaped with panels to flare out towards the hemline following the fashionable line.

As usual the blouse is the more decorative garment and here we see the typical blouse of the early-Edwardian era, full in front, to accentuate the bust, and embellished with neat vertical tucks on the sleeves. The sleeve style gives the best dating clue, as this shape, narrow in the upper arm and widening towards the wrist, where it is gathered into a fitted cuff, is typical of the years 1901-1904.

Hat styles are also helpful for dating and, although several types of ornate hat were worn at any given time, this shape, worn at a slight slant on the head, is again characteristic of the early-1900s. You don’t mention why you have in mind the years 1890 or 1902, but a date of 1902 would certainly fit this photograph perfectly.

Men’s appearance is not possible to date as precisely as that of women but the man here wears the characteristic three-piece lounge suit of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, an ornate watch chain suspending a seal worn across the waistcoat front. Interestingly, instead of the usual formal starched shirt collar and tie of this era, he wears a black neckerchief: labouring men often wore a handkerchief or scarf around the neck, so I would guess that this ancestor worked in the manual trades.

The pose of this couple, one standing, the other seated, is typical of an early studio wedding photograph. There is no indication of a wedding here in the sense of white dress or flowers; however, this was not unusual in the early-1900s when many ordinary brides simply wore a good daytime outfit and decorative hat on their wedding day. Notice, though, how the lady prominently displays rings on the third finger of her left hand: this could also signify that marriage was the occasion that prompted this photograph. Hopefully 1902 was the date of a recorded family wedding and this has now helped you to establish the identity of these ancestors.’

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 – mourning ancestor

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

Margaret Noble sent us her photo and asked:

‘I would be grateful if you could give me an approximate date for this photograph. I think the lady is my great-great grandmother, who was a Roman Catholic. Any other information that you can glean from the photo would be very welcome. Many thanks.’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘This professional card-mounted studio portrait is likely to be one of the two standard types of photograph that dominated Victorian and early Edwardian portrait photography: either the small carte de visite or the larger cabinet print which was more popular in the late 19th century. This is a fairly late example, as seen from the dark coloured mount, printed with gold lettering. Black, bottle green and, less commonly, chocolate brown were fashionable colours for photographic card mounts for about 20 years only, c.1885-1905. Many family collections contain photographs on dark mounts, so knowing their period of production provides a helpful dating clue.

Here we see a middle-aged or slightly older lady seated in the three-quarter length pose characteristic of the late-19th century. The style of her clothes is very distinctive and offers an accurate idea of when the photo was taken. Her tight-fitting bodice with pointed centre front, high collar and narrow sleeves was fashionable during the later 1880s and beginning of the 1890s. We can’t see the exact shape of her skirt from her seated position but the slight draping of the front fabric suggests that the back may feature a modest projection – the late phase of the 1880s bustle sometimes seen around the turn of the decade. Her day cap was an older lady’s accessory by this time and its tall shape is again typical of the late-1880s or early-1890s. On a younger woman her dress style would usually indicate a close timeframe of c.1887-90, but, being older, she may be rather behind the times, so I suggest that we consider the years 1887-93.

A person’s religion is rarely evident from a photograph but what is striking about this lady’s appearance is that she is wearing mourning dress – the special clothing and accessories recommended following the death of a close relative and an important element of Victorian death ritual. Older ladies often wore black, therefore, it can be hard to positively identify mourning in photographs but here we see very clearly the bands of crape on her bodice lapels, cuffs and in a deep swathe on her lower skirt. Crape, a crimped, dull silk gauze fabric, has a distinctive textured appearance and since crape was only worn for mourning, when spotted in a photo it always signifies bereavement. In fact, mourning would have been the event that inspired this portrait, as having a photograph taken in formal mourning dress was a significant aspect of the occasion. With mourning dress, nothing was supposed to shine or gleam: notice how she also wears a dull black metal watch chain and black mourning brooch.

Victorian women wore a more recognisable form of mourning dress than men and widows bore a heavy burden as they officially publicly mourned their deceased husbands for at least two and a half years. Mourning dress is a complex subject but the presence of touches of white here, on her cap and cuffs, suggest that this lady may have been in the second stage of mourning when she was photographed. I don’t know your 2 x great grandmother’s dates, but if she lost her husband in the late-1880s or early-1890s, then this confirms that she is very likely to be the ancestor pictured here.’

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 – mysterious Aunty Olive

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

Corrinne Ryan sent us her photo and asked:

‘This mysterious photograph was in my grandmother’s photo album, along with the name ‘Aunty Olive’. That is all I know.

To date I have been unable to find an Aunty Olive, but if I could have some idea of her age, date of birth, place, status, and reason for the photograph… anything at all… I may find a starting place in my search to find out who she is.’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘This is a stunning photograph, a very clear and intimate portrait – fantastic from a fashion point of view! The high image quality suggests that it was taken in a professional photographer’s studio, although no photographer or studio details are visible here. If this is a card-mounted photograph, usually a studio name and address would be printed on the bottom and/or the back of the mount. Perhaps the original photograph bears these details: if so, the town or city named will confirm whereabouts the photograph was taken. The studio location is also likely to be where this ancestor lived at the time, as clients usually visited a photographer close to home.

Accurate dating is essential for positively identifying past family members represented in old photos and dating this portrait should help you to find out more about your enigmatic ‘Aunty Olive’. Here we only have the visual image to go on, but fortunately female photographs can usually be dated fairly closely from dress clues as ladies’ fashions changed regularly in the past and are generally recognisable as belonging to a specific era. Younger women in particular would have been keen to show off their most up-to-date garments, accessories and hairstyle in a photograph.

This young woman wears a very fine and formal dress made of perhaps a light woollen fabric, the bodice incorporating a central panel of silk satin and edged with sequins or similar dark, shimmering passementerie and delicate white lace at the cuffs and collar. The most prominent feature, however, is her sleeves, which demonstrate the full gigot or ‘leg-o’-mutton’ shape fashionable during the 1890s.

Jayne Shrimpton

With this distinctive style, the sleeve puff above the elbow gradually expanded during the early-1890s, reaching its greatest width in 1895 and 1896, before beginning to diminish and retreat higher up the arm. The extreme sleeve width of the mid-1890s sleeve was often accentuated by broad shoulder epaulettes, as we see here, although the fairly high placing of the puff on the arm here could possibly suggest a year or two later. To include all possible years, therefore, I would date this photograph to c.1895-98.

Evidently this young lady is wearing a very special and probably rather expensive outfit, while the floral spray or corsage on her bodice implies a festive occasion. In fact photographic evidence confirms that many formal studio portraits in family collections were taken to mark an important event in our ancestors’ lives. Here ‘Aunty Olive’ prominently displays rings on her ring finger, this deliberate pose usually signifying betrothal or marriage. Since women sometimes wore several rings at once, it can be difficult to single out an engagement or wedding ring, but I am fairly certain that this young lady has just become engaged, or possibly married.

This event may also be suggested by the heart-shaped locket and chain pinned to her bodice – possibly a love token from her fiancé or new husband. Hopefully the close time frame and the likely occasion will help you to identify this intriguing lady from your past.’

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 – unidentified badges

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

Claire Oliver sent us her photo and asked:

‘I was wondering whether you could tell me about this photograph, which was found, with many others, in my aunty’s attic after her death. We have no idea which family members they represent and when they were taken. This photograph just intrigues me as I’d love to know who the women are and what group or gathering they were forming. Of course you can’t tell me that, but I’d be interested to know roughly what year it was taken. I thought you’d know this by their rather stuffy outfits. 1920s is my untrained guess, because of some of their hats!’

Click to enlarge

Jayne says:

‘This scene, depicting forebears and their contemporaries ranked solemnly in rows and dressed up for a special event or outing represents a popular genre of old photographs. Taken outdoors, probably by a professional photographer hired for the occasion, your photographs shows a group of ladies who were almost certainly members of a club or organisation, although, as you pointed out, we can really only guess at what this was.

The only clue may be the small, bow-shaped badges that are pinned onto many of the ladies’ lapels, blouses and scarves, which must surely have symbolised their group and denoted membership. These badges aren’t immediately recognisable, however, so until they are identified I can only suggest that these ladies belonged to a church group or charitable organisation, the Women’s Institute or possibly a special interest society. Religious and social clubs of all kinds were very popular between the wars, when this was photograph was taken, and photographic evidence suggests that female-dominated societies, especially, enjoyed their outings!

Almost everyone here wears warm outdoor clothing so the season was cool, if not wintry. The ladies look well-dressed in their coats and smart accessories and they have the general appearance of a middle-class group. Hats were always worn outdoors in public before WWII and because female styles changed regularly, they usually offer an accurate date for a photograph.

Jayne Shrimpton

As you guessed, this sea of deep-crowned hats indicates a date in the 1920s, but we can narrow this down a little. The most modern hats here are, predictably, worn mainly by the younger ladies, their neat, small-brimmed cloche hats pulled well down over their foreheads confirming a year between 1925 and 1930. Similarly the shorter coats and dresses worn by some ladies are also typical of the second half of the decade, when fashionable hemlines rose dramatically from mid-low calf length to just below the knee.

Other fashionable features to note here are the bar shoes worn by several ladies in the front row – a predominantly 1920s style, although some older women wear more conservative laced boots, as well as longer skirts and old-fashioned hats with a wider brim and tall crown. Typically for this decade, coats are tailored with long lapels and there are many lush fur collars and stoles on view, these being much in vogue during the 1920s.

With a firm date range of c.1925-30 for this photo, hopefully you can now spot one or two of your family members here. Perhaps the building behind was the group’s usual meeting place and if it could be identified this might offer a clue as to the location and occasion. Meanwhile I wonder whether if by chance any findmypast.co.uk readers recognise the ladies’ badges?’

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!