W. D. WELFORD Photo Journalist

By SAM WELFORD FRPS

A few years ago whilst searching in the photographic journals of the eighteen eighties and nineties I often seemed to come across a namesake, W. D. Welford, not thinking that there could be any connection with my own family. However, in studying the family history an association was found which encouraged me to compile this account.

Oddly enough the connecting link was found in a cigarette card, No 10 in the John Player series "Cycling" published in 1959,which was mounted in "The Family Record of the Bateman, Welford and Leaver Families", which I came across in the course of my investigations. This most meticulously compiled record had been completed by about 1945.

The Cigarette Card shows a Lady and Gentleman on a "Salvo" Sociable cycle of 1882 that is said to have inspired the sentimental ballad "Daisy, Daisy..........on the seat of a bicycle made for two". Perhaps the couple even inspired the song for they were both keen cyclists before marrying. The obverse of the card says that "The riders are Mr and Mrs W. D. Welford, famous in the history of photography as well as cycling. W. D. Welford was the first paid secretary of the Cyclists Touring Club and Mrs was the first woman member".

Mrs Welford maintained her interest in cycling throughout a long life and in 1958 at over eighty years of age attended the Diamond Jubilee of the C.T.C. at Harrogate and early in 1959 she broadcast amongst "a galaxy of cycling notabilities" from Radio Normandy in "The Cyclist's Magazine of the Air". She also had photographic interests running "highly successful studios in London, Brighton and Birmingham until retiring from this activity at the age of seventy five". She is said to have exhibited her pictorial photographs world wide and to have won many awards. At least two of her pictures were reproduced in her husband's journals; "Going to Market" in "Reviews of Reviews" and in "Cycle and Camera" a print "Summer Breeze" which was a child study.  By present day standards these pictures would be deemed very ordinary snapshots.

Although W. D. Welford developed photographic journalism as his career he maintained an interest in cycling that is shown by a number of articles on the general theme of the use of photography on cycle tours. Moreover he was the joint Editor of "Cycle and Camera" a journal, price one penny, which ran from 22nd May 1897 until 1st January 1898 although he left in August. His first entry into photo-journalism appears to be in "Photography News" in 1885 with an article reviewing four makes of “The New Rapid Printing Paper", which he did not find very satisfactory-contrary to the maker's claims. Articles in the following years dealt with such topics as toning solutions for chloride papers including one for toning P.O.P. to simulate Platinotypes, "In Belgium with a Hand Camera" and in 1895-4, a series of articles on "The Influence of the Hand Camera".

His enthusiasm for the Hand-held Camera was amply demonstrated by a series of twenty articles published in "Photography" throughout 1891 and 1892 on the theme "The Hand Camera and how to use it"; the later articles extolled its virtues for photographing street scenes, fetes sports, fairgrounds etc. He was a member of the Editorial Staff along with other such well-known people as Captain Abney. H. Sturmey Chapman Jones F. H. Sutcliffe. W. K. Burton and others. These articles formed the basis of a number of books "The Hand Camera and how to use it". "The Hand Camera Manual and in collaboration with H. Sturmey "The Photographer's Indispensable Handbook and even earlier than these, in 1887 another  "Hand Camera Manual".  He was the compiler of the apparatus section of the "Photography Annual" and contributed a number of article on his favourite topics. The Hand Camera and the Magic Lantern. One of his publications was "The Indispensible Handbook to the Optical I.antern” in 1888.

From 1894 W. D. W. contributed from time to time to the British Journal of Photography and its Annual, until 1901. In one of these articles in 1900 he reported his activities demonstrating the Thornton Film, which was a forerunner of Roll film on a nitro-cellulose base consisting of a hardened gelatine and emulsion layer which was stripped from its paper support on completion of processing and drying. In demonstrating this film to photographic clubs he had visited 120 different societies in various towns travelling up to 1,450 miles per week and an estimated 50,000 miles in a year. In one period of eleven weeks he had visited clubs every night excepting Saturdays and Sundays' - and there were no cars in this period; The Photographic Reviews of Reviews was W. D. Welford's principal venture in Photo-journalism. He was the Sole Proprietor and Editor during its period of publication from 1892 to 1897.It was a monthly publication by Illife and Sons and may well have taken over from "The Photographic Review" a very short-lived journal edited by Thomas Bolas in 1889.The journal was, as the name implies, very largely a review of other journals together with original items and very many scraps of photographic news and views. One illustration was a photo-montage of the covers of all the photographic journals published in the English language - twenty seven in all. It was generally well illustrated and included about one hundred photographs of photographic personalities of the period, but not one of himself. W. D. Welford was a Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society and around 1905 was the President of the South Essex Camera Club. He died in 1919 and an Obituary Notice appeared in the BJP Annual of 1'''20 and to quote from it "....Mr Welford however had not been connected with photographic journalism for many years past, although until a few months of his death was an active member of the staff of Kinematograph Weekly and was a writer of cinema plays". No mention of him was found in that journal for 1919 and the British Film and Television Library has no record of him.

No account of a figure of the past can be considered to be fully comprehensive and there are obvious gaps in the story. W. D. Welford was primarily a photo journalist with, seemingly, a mission to popularize the hand camera. With the improvements in negative materials, in particular the emergence of roll film, the coming of the hand camera was inevitable but W. D. W. making a pioneering start undoubtedly played a part in this development. A photograph reproduced in The Photographic Review of Reviews shows "The late J. Traill Taylor Plate Changing" a top hatted white bearded figure standing over a camera on a substantial tripod, the annotation saying that the photograph was an enlargement from a Hand Camera shot. The New replacing the Old? His use of the camera was primarily to record people and scenes but one of his exhibition pictures was reproduced in Photograms of the Year, "Tilford Bridge", a small print 10" x 4”. He was clearly a man of great enthusiasm and energy not lacking in enterprise; even in the brief reports of talks to Photographic Societies is sense of humour, some times sarcastic, comes over. At one meeting he reported himself as Fordwell and on another occasion answered a critic of the curl of the Thornton Film by saying that .he himself controlled the curl by placing weights of one hundredweight on each corner and if however, the film curled itself from the developer to the hypo at least it was fixed there!  He was fond of making caricatures by combining photographic portraits with drawn caricatured bodies illustrated in both his journals. He also quoted Shakespeare irrepressibly and in his photographs of people and places taken at the Convention held at York in 1896 nearly all the twenty one shots were annotated with quotations from Shakespeare's "original and revised Editions" - the revised versions being his parodies.

Some biographical details are necessary to end this story.

Richard Walter Deverell Welford was born on 1st September 1857 at Newcastle on Tyne the eldest son of Richard Welford of whom more will be told later. Although baptised Richard the name seems to have been dropped, perhaps to avoid confusion with his father. Jean Agnes Morgan whom he married in 1880 at the Unitarian Chapel, Oldbury, Worcestershire was born on 8th December 1854,the daughter of John Morgan of Oldbury. She died on 22nd August 1949,aged 95 at Brighton. There were three daughters of the marriage.

Richard Welford Senior came from his home village of Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, at an early age and settled in Newcastle where he established a reputation in Shipbuilding, Archaeological and Literary circles". Known as a Biographer, Historian and Antiquarian, he was much sought after as a lecturer. He married in 1856 a girl from his native village, Jemima Deverell which explains W. D. W.'s middle name Richard was born on 29th May 1856 at Upper Holloway, London and was baptised at Haddenham on 15th June 1857 the record stating "Richard Welford the base born son of Mary Welford" .Mary was born in 1815 the fifth child of a family of six. Her younger brother, Richard came to London about 1S40 and soon started a Dairy business at Paddington (at premises where the writer was subsequently born) which became Welford & Sons Ltd, absorbed into the United Dairies in 1916.The eldest boy of the family was John, born 1811,the writer's Great Grandfather. This rather tenuous connection with W.D.W. has led to the writing of this story of a Victorian Photo journalist. The cellar of Welford & Son's first Dairy became the writer's first Darkroom!

Sources of Information.

1.  The family record of the Bateman, Welford and Leaver families. Compiled by John Welford Leaver and kindly loaned by Mrs Joan Leaver.

2. Winged Wheel, The History of the first hundred years of the Cyclist's Touring Club.William Oakley.

3. C. T. C. Gazette-photocopies from September, October and November 1938. (Items 2 and 5 kindly given by Mrs Joan Bennett.National H.Q. Manager of the C.T.C.)

4.  The Photographic Review of Reviews. RPS Library.

5.  Photography News.  RPS Library.

6.  Photography (Magazine) and Annual RPS Library.

7.  BJP and Annual RPS Library, Science Museum Library, Finsbury Library.

8.  Focus 25th June 1905 information from John White.

9. Cycle and Camera, information from John White Journals at the Newspaper Library, Colindale.

10. Kinematograph Weekly. The Library of the British Film and Television Institute.

11. Photograms of the Year.  RPS Library.

12. Books by W.D.Welford.  RPS Library.

My thanks to those mentioned, above and to Pam Roberts, the RPS Librarian.

The Webmaster would also like to thank Mr Roy Hungerford ARPS for his knowledge of Mr Welford and for sending me this information that first appeared in the RPS Historical Group's newsletter in Autumn 1984.