Victorians Unposed

Rare and wonderful photographs and film of daily life in the Victorian/Edwardian Era.

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Girls jumping off a wall in Fort Greene, May 22 1886

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Two women at a farm in Rotheütte, 1849

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‘Blackbirds’, a group of men and women sitting in a fallen tree. Photograph by Louis Milton Thiers

[vintageeveryday]

Edwardian London as seen through the eyes of a Russian tourist, 1909. See more photos here…

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The British Royal family at the Manchester exhibition of art treasures, 1857

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Autochrome of a woman in a tree, Russia by Peter Ivanovich Vedenisov c.1910

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A group of ladies walking in the park c.1885

[met-photos]

[La Comtesse at Table with Hand to Face] by Pierre-Louis Pierson, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Photography

David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1975 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/261364

[met-photos]

The Boulevards at Paris by William Henry Fox Talbot, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Photography

Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283070

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The inside of Jenner’s Department store in Edinburgh, Scotland c.1895

[yesterdaysprint]

Miss Trott and Miss Moore, Junction City, Kansas, 1898

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People ice skating in New York’s Central Park c.1858

[byjove]

I own a book that should not exist.

I collect old books. Mostly turn of the century stuff published between 1870 and 1920. My parents did too. They emassed a collection of books somewhere in the thousands. They got them out of abandoned houses, at auctions, as gifts and at every antique store on the east coast. My dad cleaned out his house after the divorce and I got some of the books. I planned to keep the good ones and hopefully sell some of the ones I didn’t have room for. For the past several days I have been researching the different titles and publishing dates to see how much they’re worth, usually it’s somewhere between $15-$50 so I’m not getting rich off it any time soon. I encountered this book:

Beautiful, right? Screams late Victorian period opulence. Definitely keeping it. I check for an owner’s name or little note on the title page, I love books that were Christmas gifts long ago. Instead I find this:

A gift for a student as an award for her academic success. From either 1875 or 1895. Very fucking cool. I search for the Chatsworth Institute of Baltimore Maryland in hopes that I am holding a significant piece of history in my hands. No such Institute has ever existed in Baltimore, none. Not historically, not currently. There is a Chatsworth school in Maryland but it’s a contemporary public school. I cannot find record of this school anywhere online, there is nothing left behind, it must have been a formal school to afford to give awards. There should be some trace of it. It’s like this book came from an alternate universe.

Let’s go to the title page:

Beautifully illustrated by a W Cunston or W Gunston. Neither name being up anyone. The name of the author of this book is nowhere to be seen. The publisher is London based and mostly published childrens books (including the words of Beatrice Potter) and that is the only concrete fact I can get. Googling “Eilon Manor” and “The Four Sisters” brings up very little. I sift and I find a book called Eilon Manor published in 1863. Like Baptista, it’s an incredibly boring piece of literature for Victorian young women. The author is listed as D. Richard, no first name, no gender, no location. D. Richard does not seem to exist either.

I cannot find any other copies of Baptista a Quiet Story. I cannot find D. Richard or W. Gunston. I cannot find a publishing date on this book. It is truly as though it slipped out from another parallel dimension.

[yeoldenews]

It looks like people in the comments discovered quite a lot about the book itself, but here’s a bit about the original owner and the school she attended because I was bored and curious…

Chatsworth Hill School (later called Chatsworth Female Institute) opened in the fall of 1868 and operated until the summer of 1877. It was located at 188 Franklin Street in Baltimore and was operated by Miss A. E. Hasson. Tuition was $500 (about $9,700 today) per year for borders and $125 ($2400) for day students. This covered education in English, French and Latin. Music and German were extra, as was the use of a piano which cost $5 ($97) per quarter. Students were required to provide their own wearing apparel (which was to be marked with their name), towels, silverware, napkins and napkin rings.

Katie Newman was the daughter of a local attorney and attended Chatsworth for the 1874 and 1875 school years. Katie’s older sister Grace also attended Chatworth and was the valedictorian of the class of 1873.

Katie was presented with this book on the evening of June 17, 1875 by Rev. W. U. Murkland of Franklin Street Presbyterian Church during the closing exercises for the 1875 school year which were held in the school’s parlors. (Though I’m personally guessing it was inscribed by a teacher as the handwriting looks rather feminine to me.) She was 16 years old at the time.

On October 24, 1883 Katie married a tobacco merchant from Pennsylvania named William A. Buckingham. He was a member of the firm of Buckingham, Swope & Co. (later Buckingham Brothers Cigars), which seems to be most remembered today for making these funky advertising mirrors.

The two were married for only two and a half years before Katie died on March 24, 1886, two weeks after her 27th birthday. None of the newspaper accounts of her passing state a cause of death, and Maryland didn’t require deaths to be registered until 1898, so I’m unsure what caused her to die so young.

Katie is buried with her parents (who both predeceased her) at Loudon Cemetery in Baltimore.

The street the Newmans lived on was known as Kate Avenue until the 1930s when the name was changed to Cold Spring Lane.

[lostinhistorypics]

A koala drinks from a spoon, Australia, 1900.

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Garden at the Moulin Rouge, 1898

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Mrs Macquarie’s chair c.1880 vs today

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Georgiana, Helen, Louisa and Caroline Dillon on the steps of Clonbrock House. Included in the photo are Zoe (shaggy terrier) and Ness, the Dillon Dogs.

Date: 10 November 1863