In 1905, the photographer James Edward Ellam was at a turning point in his professional career.
A skilled amateur stereographer in his native Yorkshire, he had journeyed south a decade earlier to pursue opportunities offered in London by the leading American 3D company Underwood & Underwood.
It was a decision that changed his life.
Ellam is best-known for a number of the stereos he took for the Underwood company.
Today they feature in museum collections around the world.
Among them are Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations (1897), King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in their coronation robes (1902) and Pope Pius X in his pontifical robes in the Vatican’s Throne Room (1903).
Despite these achievements, Ellam’s career path into Fleet Street seems to have included a subsequent period where he created photographs with a distinctly local flavour.
Hence, his decision to register the copyright of two images taken in or around the Essex town of Dunmow where he lodged at weekends.
Last week’s blogpost featured the first of these press photographs.
It portrayed the prospective Liberal Member of Parliament Barclay Heward (1853-1914) and his wife strolling along Dunmow High Street in the run-up to 1906 General Election.
The second portrayed what he described as ‘a group of the Essex Field Naturalists Club outside Bigods Hall, Dunmow.’
What he omitted to mention was that one of that group was one of the most famous women in the land.
Fashionably-dressed and seated on the front row in a wicker chair, Daisy, Countess of Warwick was a one-time mistress of King Edward VII.
She is pictured at a significant moment in her own life; one that was the subject of almost daily press attention.
During this period, Lady Warwick became actively engaged in politics as a member of the Social Democratic Federation.
However, unlike the Liberal candidate Barclay Heward, who featured in Ellam’s earlier photograph, she was increasingly active in promoting radical socialism ahead of the forthcoming General Election.
As to the photograph’s genesis, a press report in the East Anglian Daily Times and cited in the Essex Naturalist account of the club’s activities provides the background.
On Saturday 8th July 1905 at the invitation of the Earl and Countess of Warwick, “members of the club and many friends, about seventy in all, assembled … for the purpose of inaugurating ‘the Pictorial and Photographic Record of Essex.’”
The brief of the project was “to write the history of the county in pictures.”
The report described how Lady Warwick presided at a luncheon held at Easton Lodge near Dunmow, her husband’s ancestral Essex home.
She first apologised for the absence of the Earl, who was “at Brest on a yachting cruise.”
After lunch, a meeting to discuss the photography project was held “in a commodious double tent amongst trees at the back of the house.”
Following the meeting, the group paid a visit to nearby Bigods Hall, which the Countess had established years earlier as a secondary and agricultural school.
Those present were then entertained to tea by the Principal, Mr. T. Hacking and Mrs. Hacking.
Though the report refers to “about seventy in all” attending the luncheon and meeting held at Easton Lodge, the smaller group pictured in the Bigods Hall photograph perhaps indicates that not everyone made the line-up.
What is particularly noteworthy is the presence of so many women in the picture, making up around half of the group.
At this point in the medium’s history, photography had become a popular and affordable pastime thanks to the advent of Kodak’s ‘you press the button, we do the rest’ range of cameras.
Ellam’s presence too may well have been directly linked to the photographic project being discussed.
Copyrighting the image does though suggest that he recognised that this photograph of the Essex Field Naturalists Club had a long-term value.
What is slightly confusing is that the copyright form completed by Ellam, with this photograph attached and held by the National Archives, is stamped and dated ‘13th March 1905.’
As the weather during the Bigods Hall visit was reported as “gloriously fine,” the dress of those appearing on camera does suggest a July day rather than one in March.
One explanation may be that the 13th March form referred to an earlier occasion.
Armed with a new photograph of the group featuring the media-friendly Lady Warwick, he simply substituted a copy of that taken on 8th July.
Whatever the explanation, the resulting photograph captures a moment in the changing world of Edwardian Britain.
Pressphotoman 
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