Statement of a Photographic Man.
“I’ve been on and off at photographic-portrait taking since its commencement—that is to say, since they were taken cheap—two years this summer. I lodged in a room in Lambeth, and I used to take them in the back-yard—a kind of garden; I used to take a blanket off the bed, and used to tack it on a clothes-horse, and my mate used to hold it, if the wind was high, whilst I took the portrait.
“The reason why I took to photographing was, that I thought I should like it better than what I was at. I was out busking and drag-pitching with a banjo then. Busking is going into public-houses and playing, and singing, and dancing; and drag-pitching is going out in the day down the little courts—tidy places, little terraces, no thoroughfares, we call drags. I’m a very determined chap, and when I take a hidea into my head I always do it somehow or other. I didn’t know anything about photographs then, not a mite, but I saved up my money; sometimes a 1s.; if I had a good day, 1s. 6d.; and my wife she went to work at day boot-binding, and at night dancing at a exhibition, or such-like (she’s a tolerable good dancer—a penny exhibition or a parade dancer at fairs; that is, outside a show); sometimes she is Mademoiselle, or Madame, or what it may be. I got a loan of 3l. (and had to pay 4l. 3s. for it), and with what I’d saved, I managed to get together 5l. 5s., and I went to Gilbert Flemming’s, in Oxford-street, and bought a complete apparatus for taking pictures; 6½ by 4¾, for 5l. 5s. Then I took it home, and opened the next day to take portraits for what we could get—1s. and over. I never knew anything about taking portraits then, though they showed me when I bought the apparatus (but that was as good as nothing, for it takes months to learn). But I had cards ready printed to put in the window before I bought the apparatus. The very next day I had the camera, I had a customer before I had even tried it, so I tried it on him, and I gave him a black picture (for I didn’t know how to make the portrait, and it was all black when I took the glass out), and told him that it would come out bright as it dried, and he went away quite delighted. I took the first Sunday after we had opened 1l. 5s. 6d., and everybody was quite pleased with their spotted and black pictures, for we still told them they would come out as they dried. But the next week they brought them back to be changed, and I could do them better, and they had middling pictures—for I picked it up very quick.
“I had one fellow for a half-guinea portrait, and he was from Woolwich, and I made him come three times, like a lamb, and he stood pipes and ’bacca, and it was a thundering bad one after all. He was delighted, and he swears now it’s the best he ever had took, for it don’t fade, but will stop black to the end of the world; though he remarks that I deceived him in one thing, for it don’t come out bright.
“You see, when first photography come up I had my eye on it, for I could see it would turn me in something some time. I went and worked as a regular labourer, carrying pails and so on, so as to try and learn something about chemistry; for I always had a hankling after science. Me and Jim was out at Stratford, pitching with the banjo, and I saw some men coming out of a chemical works, and we went to ‘nob’ them (that’s get some halfpence out of them). Jim was tambo beating, and we was both black, and they called us lazy beggars, and said we ought to work as they did. So we told them we couldn’t get work, we had no characters. As we went home I and Jim got talking, and he says, ‘What a fine thing if we could get into the berth, for you’d soon learn about them portraits if you get among the chemicals;’ so I agreed to go and try for the situation, and told him that if I got the berth I’d ‘nanti panka his nabs snide;’ that means, I wouldn’t turn him up, or act nasty to him, but would share money the same as if we were pitching again. That slang is mummers’ slang, used by strolling professionals.
“I stopped there for near twelve months, on and off. I had 10s. at first, but I got up to 16s.; and if I’d stopped I’ve no doubt I should have been foreman of one of the departments, for I got at last to almost the management of the oxalic acid. They used to make sulphate of iron—ferri sulp is the word for it—and carbonate of iron, too, and I used to be like the red man of Agar then, all over red, and a’most thought of cutting that to go for a soldier, for I shouldn’t have wanted a uniform. Then I got to charging the retorts to make carbonate of ammonia, and from that I went to oxalic acid.
“At night me and Jim used to go out with the banjo and tamborine, and we could manage to make up our shares to from 18s. to a guinea a-week each; that is, sharing my wages and all; for when we chum together we always panka each other bona (that is, share). We always made our ponta (that is, a pound) a-week, for we could average our duey bionk peroon a darkey, or two shillings each, in the night.
“That’s how I got an idea of chemicals, and when I went to photography many of the very things I used to manufacture was the very same as we used to take portraits, such as the hyposulphate of soda, and the nitrate of silver, and the sulphate of iron.
