Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Portrait of a man seated on a donkey cart: 'John Walker, commonly known as 'Black Jack,' or 'Darkie,' is one of the army of licensed hawkers who supply the daily wants of the Metropolitan poor...' Smith's text, much of it reproduced as Walker's verbat...
Cheap fish of St. Giles's. Photographer: Thomson, John
Scope & Content:
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) View of a fisher-seller and his stall, with customers crowded round: 'It has often been remarked that but for our cheap fish supply the poor of London would undoubtedly be reduced to the most acute stages of starvation. Notwithstanding, therefore, the...
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Portrait of two men, posed at the rear of a horse-drawn omnibus. The figure on the left is, 'William Parragreen, known as 'Cast-iron Billy',' a driver since 1834 and now at the end of his employment with the London General Omnibus Company.
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Portrait of a metropiltan water cart, used for street cleaning: 'The men employed on the water-carts work according to the state of the weather. Thus, in summer under a hot dry wind, they emerge at early morning from the vestry yards and radiate over ...
'Mush-fakers' and ginger-beer makers. Photographer: Thomson, John
Scope & Content:
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Portrait of a ginger beer maker with his barrow and an itinerant umbrella-repairer ('mush-faker'), posed on Clapham Common: 'According to a rough estimate there must be about 300,000 galons of ginger-beer sold per annum in the streets and immediate ne...
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Study of a fireworks night effigies on a small donkey cart in a London street, accompanied by a man in woman's dress banging a drum: 'The accompanying photograph is that of a nondescript guy, somewhat clumsily built up by a costermonger who lives in t...
'Hookey Alf,' of Whitechapel. Photographer: Thomson, John
Scope & Content:
Genre: Portrait Photography (generic types) Group portrait of men, women and children, posed in front of a public house in Whitechapel: 'Even new paint and a new roof have failed to destroy the quaint look of this inn, while the groups generally seated outside contemplating the broad, busy road...