Victorian children, 1880s
These two children had their photograph taken on a beach near North Berwick. In the late Victorian period amateur photography was still quite technically demanding and few families could afford the equipment or time required - both appear bored with the process.
This image was printed from a 1/2 plate glass negative. The photograph is of a girl (left) and a boy (right) sitting on a sandy bank. Both are dressed in holiday clothes, but with coats, gloves and hats.
This photograph is part of a family collection made from the 1880s-1900s. Dr Richardson settled at North Berwick. He photographed family members, trips and events and, when his son founded North Berwick Museum, the collection was deposited there. It now provides glimpses of upper middle class life of the period.
Note: Updated 14 December 2007 with corrections supplied in a comment by richardsondavid44.
Museum id no. 2152
4 comments
Pete Gray wrote...
And as their father was a keen photographer, this was perhaps not their first pose of the day!
richardsondavid44 wrote...
These were taken by my great grandfather in the 1890s. He moved his family to North Berwick from Edinburgh in the 1880s.
The caption above is incorrect. Although a doctor - he studied medicine at Edinburgh and Vienna Universities - he did not practice medicine in North Berwick, or anywhere else for that matter. Instead, he brought his family of 5 children up on money left to him by his father. (His father had served a tailoring apprenticeship in Edinburgh and then moved to London where he had opened a shop in Old Bond Street. He made a lot of money before his death in 1850 when James T was 3).
The boy in the right is my grandfather, David Richardson. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, joined the RAMC and ended the Second World War as a major general - he was Director of Hygiene for British and .
The child on the left is actually a girl, my great aunt and David's older sister. She married a lawyer and died in Pittenweem in the 1980's.
Pete Gray wrote...
Update: Thanks for the additional information and corrections richardsondavid44. Sorry for not replying earlier - Flickr doesn't tell me when new comments are posted.
I've now updated the caption with the new info, and passed it on to our Collections Officer who can update the main record. The inaccuracies in our original record are clear from the comment.
I'd be bored too if I had to stand still for 10 minutes :)