Female Photographers on Bicycles, circa 1890s

These young American women can be seen as they started off on a bicycle tour, and they are holding their box cameras so they can click some pics along the way.

Kodak introduced the first commercially successful box camera with roll film in May 1888. Their advertising slogan was “You press the button – we do the rest.” It was an easy to use camera, suitable for everyone, and users could take a whole series of photos without having to reload the camera.

Today is the start of a long holiday weekend, and we expect that many Americans will be going on similar bicycle journeys, over 120 years later, using smartphones instead of box cameras to capture memories.

Learning to Ride a Bicycle, circa 1895

English photographer William Gordon Davis titled this composition “Maidens with a Disregard for Convention.”

And yes, in the 1890s, a female on a bicycle was disregarding convention. Many men (and some women) considered bicycle riding unladylike, unhealthy, and even shocking. But to the women “wheelers” taking life by the handlebars meant freedom.

An editorial published in the May 1896 edition of Munsey’s Magazine stated, “To men the bicycle in the beginning was merely a new toy, another machine added to the long list of devices they knew in their work and play. To women, it was a steed on which they rode into a new world.”

And once they rode forth, there was no going back.

Stunning Portrait Photography by Clarence Hudson White

Clarence Hudson White (1871–1925) was an American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. He grew up in small towns in Ohio, where his primary influences were his family and the social life of rural America. After visiting the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he took up photography.

Portrait photography by Clarence Hudson White

Although he was completely self-taught in the medium, within a few years he was internationally known for his pictorial photographs that captured the spirit and sentimentality of America in the early twentieth century. As he became well known for his images, White was sought out by other photographers who often traveled to Ohio to learn from him. He became friends with Alfred Stieglitz and helped advance the cause of photography as a true art form.

In 1906, White and his family moved to New York City in order to be closer to Stieglitz and his circle and to further promote his own work. While there he became interested in teaching photography and in 1914 he established the Clarence H. White School of Photography, the first educational institution in America to teach photography as art.

Due to the demands of his teaching duties, his own photography declined and White produced little new work during the last decade of his life. In 1925 he suffered a heart attack and died while teaching students in Mexico City.

These beautiful photos are part of his work that Clarence Hudson White took portraits of American ladies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The shelter, 1897

Woman seated on a porch railing, 1897

Blind man's bluff, Newark, Ohio, 1898

Girl with harp (Letitia Felix), Newark, Ohio, 1898

Girl with sword, circa 1898

See more»

February 2, 1852: The First Public Flushing Toilets Open in London

Sited at 95 Fleet Street, next to the Society of Arts, the toilets were exclusively for gents. However, a public toilet for use by ladies was opened just over a week later on February 11 at 51 Bedford Street – a mile away.

Of all the technological feats and wondrous designs to come out of The Great Exhibition of 1851, there is one invention that we still use regularly today without even thinking about its ingenuity, to many, this will, at some stage or other, have been a life-saver – particularly after a lunch time drink.

At the Exhibition, a man named George Jennings, a Brighton plumber, installed his so-called ‘Monkey Closets’ in the Retiring Rooms of The Crystal Palace. These ‘Monkey Closets’ caused great excitement as they were the first public toilets anyone had ever seen, and during the exhibition 827,280 visitors paid one penny each to use them. For ‘spending a penny’, they received a clean seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine.

When the exhibition finished and the Crystal Palace was moved to Sydenham, the toilets were set to be closed down. Jennings, however, persuaded the organizers to keep them open. They agreed, and the penny toilets went on to generate revenue of over £1000 a year.

After the success of Jennings’ Crystal Palace lavatories, public toilets started to appear in the streets, the first of these being at 95, Fleet Street, London, next to the Society of Art on February 2, 1852; with one for women opening a little later, on the February 11 at 51 Bedford Street, Strand, London. These ‘Public Waiting Rooms’ contained water closets in wooden surrounds.

The charge was 2 pence entrance fee and extra for washing or clothes brushes. These new facilities were advertised The Times and on handbills, distributed around the city. These ‘Public Waiting Rooms’ however, did not become successful, and were eventually abandoned due to their unpopularity with the public, and the awkward design of the lavatory and flushing technique.

Public toilets only really became popular after Mr. Thomas Crapper developed some improvements to Jennings’ initial flushing mechanism, which promised “a certain flush with every pull”, these improvements did a lot to increase the popularity of the public toilet. Crapper also developed some other important toilet - related inventions, such as the ballcock.

George Jennings died on April 17, 1882 in a traffic accident, when the horse pulling his cart shied, and threw him across the road into a dust cart. He sustained minor injuries and a broken collar bone. Later, he appeared to be healing well until he suffered a congestion of the lungs and died. He was aged 72.

His company continued its work, now being run by his son, and by 1895, with a new improved method of flushing in place, it had provided the public toilets for 36 British towns, and they could also be found in Paris, Florence, Berlin, Madrid, and Sydney as well as far-flung destinations in South America and the Far East. 

The designers, architects and engineers of the Victorian age built public conveniences to a very high standard. When conveniences were to be above ground, they were built to be aesthetically pleasing, and built with high quality materials such as marble and copper, and furnished with fine ceramics and tiles.

Not many original Victorian public toilets survive today, in London they are recognizable by the fine and fancy railing work above ground, with steps leading under street-level.

(via The Victorianist)

Queen of Montmartre: 18 Amazing Portraits of Louise Weber, aka La Goulue, From the Late 19th Century

The Moulin Rouge in Paris was a dance hall, brothel, and theater full of pleasurable extravagancy. It was a place where people of all different backgrounds came together to experience the revolutions of society. The morals and boundaries of everyday society were blatantly ignored, as an undeniable elasticity ruled the dance floor. At the Moulin Rouge, youthful dancers moved across the floor with an aura of seduction and inspiration. These dancers came to life among the can-can rhythms and revealing high-kicks. They came to life in the rapidly transformative atmosphere. And one of these dancers was the famous, shameless “Queen of Montmartre,” La Goulue.

Louise Weber (July 12, 1866 – January 29, 1929), aka La Goulue, was one of the most celebrated dancers at the Moulin Rouge. She had an outrageous spirit that was daring and outspoken. She had a personality that was captivating in its promiscuous charm. She had a strong passion for dance. Starting at a young age, Weber worked in a laundry with her mother, cleaning the garments of those more fortunate. However, Weber did not allow her laundress occupation stop her from dancing and fantasizing a life for herself in the dance halls of no rules, of transforming roles in society. Behind her mother’s back, Weber borrowed the garments left at the laundry by customers and went at night to the world where she truly belonged, the world of movement and dance. Dancing on tables in small clubs around Paris, flipping off mens hats with her toes, charming audiences with her fearless power and stance, lifting her skirts to reveal a heart embroidered on her underwear, gaining the attractions of the painter Auguste Renoir, and downing the contents of nearby customers drinks, Louise Weber became “the Glutton,” La Goulue.

When the Moulin Rouge first opened, La Goulue was there with her dance partner Jacques Renaudin, otherwise known as the very flexible “Valentin le Desosse,” ready to shine under the flashy dance floor. Performing the “chahut,” an early form of the can-can, La Goulue became a permanent headliner of the dance hall. She became a seductive sensation, a wild woman of fame. She was the highest paid entertainer of her day, gaining her earnings based on her captivating audaciousness and exciting movement. She was a dancer of much interest, becoming one of the favorites of Toulouse-Lautrec, the artist, who immortalized La Goulue in his many works of her.

See more»

40 Amazing Tintypes of Victorian Teenage Boys

Unlike the women’s clothing, Victorian men’s fashion did not undergo any radical change. Men wore stove-pipe pants during the initial years of the century. The men’s costumes were to be formal, sober and elegant during the work hours and otherwise. The basic feature of the Victorian men’s clothing was clean and basic lines, use of dark color and a detailed work of the costume.

Around the 1840s, the general trend followed by men as far as clothes were concerned was to wear frock coats which fitted tightly and were up to the calf length. Along with the coat, men also wore waist-coats or vests. By the 1850s, men wore shirts with high collars and a bow. The aristocratic class normally wore the top-hats while the bowler hats were worn by the working-class.

During the 1860s, men’s fashion underwent a change. The neckties were broader and were to be tied in a bow or looped into a loose knot and tied with a stickpin. Another change that took place was that the frock coats became shorter.

Three-piece suits were invented around the 1870s and instantly were a hit among the people. During the mid-1800s, dinner jackets were also used for formal occasions. By the end of 1880s, men had started wearing the newly introduced blazers for outdoor activities like sports, sailing, etc.

Take a look at these amazing tintypes to see what teenage boys looked like during Victorian era.

See more»

Photos of Old English Costumes Dating From ca. 1450 Through the 1870s

Talbot Hughes (1869–1942) was a British painter (of genre, history and landscape), a collector of historical costumes and miniature portraits, and writer on fine art and costume design. He amassed a collection of over 750 historical costumes and accessories, dating from ca. 1450 through the 1870s, which he used as studio props.

In 1910 he sold a small collection of bags to the Victoria and Albert Museum and also donated individual items, including an 1820s frock coat. In 1913, when Hughes decided to put the rest of his collection up for sale, he was offered £5,000 by an American department store who wished to donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than send his collection abroad, Hughes instead sold it to the department store Harrods in London for £2,500, where it was displayed for three weeks to advertise the store’s own range of women’s contemporary fashions.

After this period, Harrods transferred the collection by donation to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the result of negotiations by the then Director of the V&A, Cecil Harcourt Smith. The collection is still kept at the V&A. Talbot Hughes continued to donate individual items to the Museum up until 1931.

See more»

42 Portraits of Rural Americans From the Mid-19th Century

The United States began as a largely rural nation, with most people living on farms or in small towns and villages. While the rural population continued to grow in the late 1800s, the urban population was growing much more rapidly. Still, a majority of Americans lived in rural areas in 1900.

Rural Americans in the 1840s and 1850s

New machines for use in farming were invented in this period, but horses, oxen, and people still provided most of the power that operated the machinery. While farmers now produced cash crops (crops grown for sale), they were still remarkably self-sufficient, often making or trading for nearly everything required by their own families.

Here below is a set of amazing photos from Mitch Young that shows portraits of rural Americans in the 1840s and 1850s.

A little girl with crossed eyes

A woman posed by a vase of flowers

A baby girl

A country boy wearing a great hat

A darling little girl in a tinted off shoulder dress and red coral necklace

See more»

Daguerreotypes of Parents With Children in the Mid-19th Century

When it comes to the Victorian era, that was not a good era to be a child. It sounds like a miserable experience, whether you were poor or rich. It doesn’t take much research to learn that we should all be grateful that there are things parents did in Victorian times that no parent would do today.

Victorian parents were not known for showing affection. In fact, they believed even minimal amounts of affection would spoil a child. Victorian parents were encouraged to never kiss or hug their children, only a peck on the forehead before bed if they really couldn’t help themselves.

These daguerreotypes from Mitch Young captured portraits of Victorian parents posing with their children in the mid-19th century.

See more»

Stunning Vintage Portraits of Girls in Front of Mirrors Taken by Lady Clementina Hawarden

Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, née Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming (1822–1865) commonly known as Lady Clementina Hawarden, was a noted English amateur portrait photographer of the Victorian Era.

As a devoted mother, her life revolved around her eight children. She took up photography in 1857; using her daughters as models, she created a body of work remarkable for its technical brilliance and its original depiction of nascent womanhood.

Lady Hawarden showed her work in the 1863 and 1864 exhibitions of the Photographic Society. With the exception of a few rare examples, her photographs remained in the possession of her family until 1939, when the more than eight hundred images were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Only recently have they been the objects of research, publication, and exhibition.

See more»

35 Fabulous Photos of Victorian Couples on Their Wedding Days

Brides in the 19th century did not wear white for their weddings for most of the century—the color was too expensive and impractical without modern bleaching techniques. Instead, colors like purple, dark blue, brown, red, and gold were popular. Brides would often wear their Sunday best, as having a separate dress to wear for just one occasion was extremely impractical in a world without the mass-production of textiles we have today.

Towards the very end of the century, white dresses became more popular with the revolution in production techniques, however many of these dresses would be dyed darker colors by the brides after their wedding day and reused. Grooms would wear their best clothes.

Here below is a set of fabulous photos that shows Victorian couples on their wedding days.

See more»