I don't normally feature unidentified family portraits here on the blog, but I just couldn't resist this one. Even though the nameless humans in the image are pretty much overshadowed in every way by the huge personality of the four-legged character sitting atop the wooden table, I felt there still might be an interesting story to dig up from the clues in this portrait.
He may not really be irascible and "Mr. Pip" is probably not his real name, but I felt "dog" just wasn't a colourful enough moniker, so "Mr. Pip" he will be. I suspect he didn't think too highly of the photographer. The firm hold his owners have on him might indicate that Mr. Pip has already tried to launch off of the table to let the photographer know what he thinks of this posing business and his infernal photographic equipment.
W. C. Fields famously advised, "Never work with animals or children," but it seems J. Holloway worked with both during his years as a photographer, judging from the advertisement he placed in the Glouchester News on 28 May 1887, where he states that "animals and children [are] a specialty." The website Sussex Photo History has already researched the work of Jesse Holloway quite thoroughly and if you would like to know more about his family and photographic studio, you will benefit from visiting their site by clicking on the link above.
But now we're left with two major mysteries:
1) Who are the individuals in the photograph?
2) Who actually photographed this image?
Even though the photographer's imprint says "J. Holloway, Cheltenham," I don't know for sure that Jesse Holloway was actually the photographer. According to Sussex Photo History, Jesse Holloway died in 1896, and his wife, Caroline Holloway took over the business. Then, in 1902, the Holloways' daughter, Edith, became proprietor of the studio. But, according to the 1901 England Census for Cheltenham, every member of the Holloway household was a worker in the family photography business: Caroline (the mother), Annie, Elizabeth, Kate, Wilfred, and Bertha1.
I think it's a good possibility that Mrs. Holloway and her family continued to use the J. Holloway imprint after his death. I could not locate a single Holloway Studio photograph that carried any name other than "J. Holloway" after 1896. That doesn't mean they don't exist, just that I haven't found them. I also noticed that Caroline Holloway continued to use Jesse's name in the Gloucester county directories after his death, as she did in the 1902 entry2:
Holloway Jesse (Mrs.), photographer, 32 Cambray
If I were to date the image, based on clothing, hairstyle and photograph format, I would make a liberal guess it was taken around 1900-1912, leaning towards 1904-05, but I'm certainly not committed to that. Dating this one is tricky. Just when I think I have a date narrowed down, I notice some other aspect of dress or fashion that suggests an earlier or later dating. We can't see the women's skirts or the cut of the man's suit and there is very little in the way of jewellery or fashion accessories to consider. The women's hairstyles seem to be in line with the late Victorian "frizzy" period. Another indication of date is the man's high imperial collar, which was popular in the 1890s to about 1905. One of the women is wearing a fob-watch pinned to her blouse, which was popular in the Edwardian period, but fell out of favour by the end of the World War I.
Mystery #1 seems to be unsolvable at the moment, so onto Mystery #2.
How would you date this image and who, exactly, is Mr. Pip staring down?
1 “1901 England Census,” database, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 16 Aug 2018), entry for Caroline Holloway (age 59), citing PRO RG13; Piece: 2464; Folio: 88; Page: 12; Cheltenham registration district, Cheltenham subdistrict, ED 37, schedule line number 38, GSU roll: 1341277.↩
2 "U.K, City and County Directories, 1766-1946", indexed database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 Aug 2018), page 93, Jesse Holloway (Mrs.) entry; citing "Kelly’s Directory of the County of Gloucester, 1902 (London, Ill.:n.p., 1902)." ↩
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