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  • Help comments unnamed photo

    I'm going to try and get another photo on here from photobucket. I had such trouble last time but fantastic help and advice and the thread is still going. I hope it is OK to have twwo threads please tell me if it bad form!

    I would appreciate any comments help to try and date/age this man. As usual I have my own theory of who he is but will never be proven. Why oh why did they not think to put a name on!

    Thanks Chris
    Attached Files

  • #2
    Hi Chris,
    The photo's come up very small, which is probably caused by the "attachment" option automatically reducing the file size.
    For instructions on how to use Photobucket see this thread: http://www.familytreeforum.com/refer...otobucket.html
    Sarah

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    • #3
      Thanks Cloggie will try again

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      • #4
        Made the picture larger on photo bucket - here goes!
        No go I got upload error I might have known

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        • #5
          Chris - can you just copy the code that you have on photobucket - the 4th one down in the list.
          You don´t need to attach it to your post - just copy and paste the code into the thread.
          Elaine







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          • #6

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            • #7
              Did it thanks!!! Thats come up a lot bigger

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              • #8
                Still thinking about this. Is it possible to scan the back? Sometimes there can be dating clues about the photographer or studio location.

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                • #9
                  Despite his beard, his hair and whiskers are short, which implies latter half of the 19th century.

                  His coat is short(er) and has a velvet (?) collar. Those things, particularly the contrasting collar, came into fashion in the 1880s. Also his trousers are still quite long compared to later shorter versions.

                  Definitely still 19th century as his waistcoat has lapels.

                  I don't really estimate the man more than 45 to 50 or even rather in the latter half of his 30s.

                  Can that be right?
                  Last edited by kiki1982; 16-06-09, 21:00.

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                  • #10
                    I've been looking at this website

                    Victorian Photographs by Year

                    not at the fashion but at the furniture, plush padded chairs with deep fringing seem to date from c1875

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                    • #11
                      I agree with this gentleman having his photo taken in the 1880s, his hat and the style of his clothes fit in to that period. I don't think he is old, certainly not over about 40...

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                      • #12
                        Many thanks for all your comments. Sorry I don't have the original so nothing on the back, although I would have made notes at the time the original was in my possession if there had been. The man who I was hoping this to be was born in 1829, so from your comments, it's looking doubtful.

                        BUT I have just noticed something now I am looking at enlared version to the one I have. My brother suffers from dupitrons constricture (excuse spelling) where fingers on the hand bend inwards lying almost flat against the palm and there seems to be something amiss with his hands or am I being fanciful. Apparently the condition is heredity.

                        AND the man I want it to be, Alexander Fletcher, was married three times. On the first two entries in parish register, he signed his name, but on the third marriage he made his mark with an X. I always wondered why that was and thought he may have had some sort of accident or suffered from the same condition as my brother. Although he may have not wanted to belittle his new wife who signed with an X after all he was 23 years her senior!!
                        Chris

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                        • #13
                          Remember, just because we don't think he looks in late middles age, it doesn't mean he wasn't. Also I can see what you mean about his hands. If it's not the man you hope, I think he is definitely a relative...Is there any discription of the man you hope he is? as this gentleman is large chap..

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                          • #14
                            Sorry Barbara I never seem to be in for any length of time these days.

                            The only thing I can say is he does look very like my dad did and he went corpulent as he got older, also my dad kept all his hair up until he died in his late 70's and the large gentleman does not seem to be losing his.

                            In this genealogy lark we sometimes have to have our own theory as long as it is not posted as fact then I'm happy. Also although my Alexander was described as an artisan on one of the censuses in the context of being a machinist they were I am sure in a hand to mouth existance, both from the adresses where they lived and the fact that their children worked sometimes from the age of nine. What I am trying to say is the large gentleman although undoubtedly was wearing his best clothes, he does not strike me as being 'well heeled', and my Alexander died in 1895 age 66 and was burried in a paupers grave, no memorial no trace. Now if he did indeed have some problem with his hands then he would not have been able to work in the latter years, the family going into slow decline......

                            I'm rambling again
                            Chris

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                            • #15
                              Chris, I don't this man is dirt poor honestly, and if they are his clothes, poor folk didn't have top hats. Sometimes the sitter would borrow clothes, but he's a big chap...............

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                              • #16
                                Many thanks Barbara you sound lovely
                                Chris

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                                • #17
                                  I agree about the hand. Certainly his right one is a little bit strange making a fist when hanging off a table (although we all do that sometimes)...

                                  If his picture was taken in the 80s or 70s and it was only later he couldn't work anymore, then it is easily possible that he became a pauper quickly. Artisans usually earned quite well but not so to say like higher middle-class... So saving up to live on his own means when old will not have been possible.

                                  About the machinist: it can either be an artisan who makes machines/motors/... like you say, or someone who operates a machine of some kind and does everything so it does its work, or someone who shifts scenery in the theatre (pulls the background up and down). Machinists could also be the people who worked in factories as the one responsible for the machine and its techinique. So it is not imperative that he should have earned good money, although his clothes seem that, though...

                                  As to age, I wouldn't really worry about it. People could actually look younger than others as they do now. Not everyone looked worn out by the time they were 40.

                                  I have seen 2 photos from the 1860s with a top hat with two contrasting fabrics/materials (like the collars kind of thing) usual top hats being shiny, but I don't know if that is really decisive. He could have had that hat for ages or it could have been in the photographer's office. What's more, top hats were reasonably expensive because they had to be handmade. Although in the latter part of the 19th century they became an upper-cmass thing because mass-produced Bowler hats came into fashion because of their price. I can imagine that your relative would have seriously held on to his cherished top hat because it had cost so much...

                                  What did strike me, is the bad quality of the photo and the lack of background, but then again, it might just be coincidence. Bad copy, taste of the photographer...

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                                  • #18
                                    There are many factors in this photograph that point me to an 1870's to
                                    1880's time period. His hair is cut close to the head and has a side parting/ the full moustache and beard/ the five buttoned, single breasted waistcoat with its possible narrow stepped lapel, deep V to the opening at the top and the W style to the bottom edge rather than a straight waist edge/ the deep revers to the lapels and all round edging of the coat/ the style and form of the fly fronted trousers/ the shape and form of the plain vamped footwear/ the plain back drop and the possible use of a neck stand & brace the foot of which appears to be behind the rear leg of the chair/ plus the position of the subject with arm resting on an occassional table and facing just off set to the camera. As for the Lincoln & Bennett sitting on its crown on the table, top hats were reduced in size in 1865 (in England that is) but had increased in height in the latter half of the 1870's, however Lord W. Pitt Lenox wrote in "Fashion Then & Now" in 1878 ......"the chimney pot hat has been reduced in its height and improved in its shape"..... The light coloured banding around the hat is not uncommon but it has a depth to it rather than a narrow one that one would see in photographs but it could have just been the style that caught the owner's eye when purchasing it.

                                    don

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                                    • #19
                                      Many thanks for your detailed observations and reasons for dating it to 1870/80. It has really focused my attention from all your comments. The hat in particular which I hadn't paid much attention to, but to my mind on looking closer at it, does anyone else think it looks much too big for his head or is that because it is nearer the camera? I sort of measured it using a mark on the edge of a post it note and then putting that on his head and it looks far too big.

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