Photo 453

Blue album, quarter-bound in calf, measuring 336x227mm and containing loosely inserted prints. The majority are uncaptioned, although several have some identifying notes on the reverse and a few have pencilled identifications of locations on the album leaves. A crudely constructed pocket at the front of the volume contains a number of miscellanous paper cuttings relating to various Indian and European subjects. The photographs themselves break down into two broad topics: European portrait groups and views of Eastern Bengal State Railway rolling stock, workshops, offices,etc. The identity of the compiler of the album is uncertain. The volume was originally assumed to be the property of a railway engineer named Haughton, since he appears in many of the photographs. However, since the captions invariably take the trouble specifically to identify him and refer to him always in the third person, it seems clear that this is not so. A more promising candidate is the figure whose portrait occurs most often in the album, always unidentified except in print 14, where he is listed merely as 'Tom'. This is most likely to be Thomas Andrew Hindmarsh (b. 1862), who joined the Indian Railways in 1884 and who was a Locomotive Superintendent on the Eastern Bengal State Railway at the time these photographs were taken. The subject matter of the second half of the album, which concentrates on rolling stock and railway workshops, would appear to corroborate this to some extent, as would the fact that print 7 is inscribed on the reverse 'For Mrs Hindmarsh'. Hindmarsh is also mentioned in the clipping from the Indian Planters Gazette (24 July 1909) which deals with the improvements in the Eastern Bengal State Railway system, and which is preserved at the front of the album.