Showing posts with label Newton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newton. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

A humorous look at supplying milk to St Albans 100 years ago.

The Milkman who supplied families daily - probably by "F S" circa 1907
My Great Grandfather, Jacob Reynolds, ran Heath Farm Dairy which supplied milk to St Albans. He had a great sense of humour and his scrapbook contains many jokes about milkmen.

Some time ago I came across a comic post card by Karaktus showing a milkman which had been published in St Albans and I decided to investigate. I have still not traced who the artist was but the other artist was one who normally signed himself "F S". Recently I have spent far too much time tracking down "F S" and will be reporting on his probably identity later.

Unfortunately "F S" did not sign all his post cards but I am sure Jacob would have liked the above - where the grin on the face of the milkman makes one wonder whether he "supplied" the families who are following him down the road!
Milkman post card currently on sale on ebay

One issue that often came up was the quality of the milk, and the second card (no connection with St Albans) shows why people were worried.

The issue of whether the milk had been tampered with came up in 1881 when the St Albans Town Clerk, Issac Newton Edwards, (Featured in Hertfordshire Men of Mark) arranged to milk to be sampled and the test- as published suggested that some of the milk from Heath Farm Dairy had been tampered with. However it turned out that the town clerk had recently acquired a herd of cattle and was supplying milk to the town himself - and it was the tests that were suspect ond not the sample! MORE

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Three Victorian Photographers (Hertford, Hitchin & Ware)

Pictures
I have just added examples of the work of three Victorian photographers linked to Hertfordshire, with short biographies of each.
Cabinet Card by Henry Newton

Henry Martinson appears to have been working as a photographer in Ware for a short time around 1890, moving away and apparently giving up photography as a profession after his marriage in 1892.

Henry Newton was a photographer working in Hertford between about 1891 and 1912, his business having been taken over by J M & C W Sneesby by 1914.

CDV by Nichols
George Albert Nichols seems to have moved around a bit but two carte de visite show he worked in Hertfordshire, apparently in the late 1870s. One is a portrait of an elderly gentleman which give an address in Wormley - which was surely to small a village to support a professional photographer. The other is a school group with a similar back and a Hitchin address.