Vintage: Victorian Era Child Criminals (1870s)
All the prisoners photographed here spent time in Newcastle Gaol between December 1871 – December 1873. They were all under 18. via Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums
1800s
Vintage: Everyday Life in Norway (19th Century)
Life in Norway (especially economic life) was “dominated by the aristocracy of professional men who filled most of the important posts in the central government”. There was no strong bourgeosie class in Norway to demand a breakdown of this aristocratic control of the economy. Thus, even while revolution swept over most of the countries of Europe in 1848, Norway was…
Vintage: World’s First Fitness Machines (1892)
The gyms of today have developed from a prototype designed by Doctor Gustaf Zander more than 150 years ago. Zander was born in Stockholm in 1835. In 1857, when working as a gymnastics teacher, he realised that he didn’t have enough time or energy to teach all of his students properly. His solution was to build a number of appliances…
Vintage: Nebraska Mug Shots (Late 19th Century)
The Nebraska State Penitentiary used photography beginning in 1867 to record the likeness of the state’s most infamous residents. The Omaha police photographed suspects when arrested. Whether the people depicted were guilty or innocent, behind every photograph is a human story. This glimpse back at some of the thousands of photographs in the Nebraska State Penitentiary and Omaha Police Court…
Vintage: Everyday Life of Atlanta, Georgia (19th Century)
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Atlanta was gradually rebuilt. Due to the city’s superior rail transportation network, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868. In the 1880 Census, Atlanta surpassed Savannah as Georgia’s largest city. Beginning in the 1880s, Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, promoted Atlanta to potential investors…
Vintage: Cléo de Mérode Portraits (1890s and 1900s)
Posing for many photographers who diffuse her image worldwide, in newspapers and postcards, she is elected Beauty Queen in 1896 among various celebrities. The same year, she enhances her fame when a white marble sculpture, La Danseuse, by Alexandre Falguière, is said to have been moulded on her body; facing a public scandal, she claims she only lent her features…
Victorian Era 19th century Cabinet Cards with reverse side (1870s to 1880s)
Collection of vintage 19th century Victorian Era Cabinet Cards with reverse side (1870s to 1880s). The cabinet card was a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870. It consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm.
Vintage: Shipwrecks from Isles of Scilly (Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries)
From 1869 onwards, members of the family systematically recorded most of the great shipwreck disasters that occurred around the Isles of Scilly — a small group of islands off the coast of Cornwall in southern England. Patriarch, seaman, and pioneering shipwreck photojournalist John Gibson established his first photographic studio in Penzance in 1860 before returning to the Scillies and bringing…
Vintage B&W photos of Paris, France (late 19th Century)
After the fall of the Commune, the city was governed under the strict surveillance of the conservative national government. The French government and parliament did not return to the city from Versaillles until 1879, though the Senate returned earlier to its home in the Luxembourg Palace. On 23 July 1873, the National Assembly endorsed the project of building a basilica…
Vintage: Ottawa – Capital City of Canada (late 19th Century)
Starting in the 1850s, large sawmills began to be erected by entrepreneurs known as lumber barons, and these became some of the largest mills in the world. Rail lines erected in 1854 connected Ottawa to areas south and to the transcontinental rail network via Hull and Lachute, Quebec in 1886. The original Parliament buildings which included the Centre, East and…
Vintage: Gum Bichromate Process by Robert Demachy (late 19th Century)
Robert Demachy was the leading French proponent of Pictorialism and the director of the Photo-Club de Paris, the French parallel to the American Photo-Secession (led by Alfred Stieglitz), the Viennese Kleeblatt, and the British Brotherhood of the Linked Ring. Like his American and European counterparts, Demachy produced and promoted a type of photography that self-consciously evoked drawing and painting-part of…
Historic B&W photos of Copenhagen, Denmark, late 19th Century
In 19th century, Copenhagen experienced a period of intense cultural creativity known as the Danish Golden Age. Painting prospered under C.W. Eckersberg and his students while C.F. Hansen and Gottlieb Bindesbøll brought a Neoclassical look to the city’s architecture. In the early 1850s, the ramparts of the city were opened to allow new housing to be built around The Lakes…
Vintage: Women’s Styles of Maine from the Late 19th Century
19th century fashions are highly romanticized in books and movies. Despite the prim and proper feminine ideal of the day, fashions in this period created an often exaggerated, ostentatious look. Tight corsets, gigantic hoop-skirts, and outrageous bustles make today’s fashion trends look sedate by comparison. These rare and interesting vintage photographs from Camden’s Knox Mill treasurer Charles W. Babb (1863-1956)…
Daguerreotype Portraits of Ladies born in the late 18th century (1700s)
Photo collection of mid XIX century Victorian Era Daguerreotype Portraits of Ladies born in the late 18th century (1700s). via jessecollectorfreak @ Flickr
Vintage: Daguerreotypes of St. Louis from 1848-70 by Thomas Easterly
Thomas Easterly (1809-1882), a native of Vermont, was an itinerant photographer in Iowa and the upper Midwest until 1848 when he settled in St. Louis. He operated a daguerreotype studio in the city until the 1870s. Thomas photographed mostly portrait, but street and urban photography were parts in his work. Here are some rare photographs capturing everyday life in St. Louis…
Historic B&W photos of Berlin, Germany (19th Century)
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city’s economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main railway hub and economic centre of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, neighboring suburbs including Wedding, Moabit and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of…
Vintage: Washington DC in the mid-19th Century (1840s-1860s)
In the 1830s, the District’s southern territory of Alexandria went into economic decline partly due to neglect by Congress. The city of Alexandria was a major market in the American slave trade, and pro-slavery residents feared that abolitionists in Congress would end slavery in the District, further depressing the economy. Alexandria’s citizens petitioned Virginia to take back the land it…
Vintage: Dublin in the late 19th Century (1860s-1890s)
Dublin, unlike Belfast in the north, did not experience the full effect of the industrial revolution and as a result, the number of unskilled unemployed was always high in the city. Industries like the Guinness brewery, Jameson Distillery, and Jacob’s biscuit factory provided the most stable employment. New working class suburbs grew up in Kilmainham and Inchicore around them. Another…
Vintage: Victorian Era Portraits by Lady Clementina Hawarden (1860s)
Lady Clementina Hawarden (1 June 1822-19 January 1865) was a noted portrait photographer of the 1860s. Hawarden first began to experiment with photography in 1857, taking stereoscopic landscape photographs before moving to large-format, stand-alone portraits of her daughters. Much of Hawarden’s life remains a mystery to us. It is doubtful that she kept a diary as nothing has been discovered,…
Vintage: Everyday Life of Cairo in the 19th Century (1860s-1880s)
Under the Ottomans, Cairo expanded south and west from its nucleus around the Citadel. The city was the second-largest in the empire, behind only Constantinople, and, although migration was not the primary source of Cairo’s growth, twenty percent of its population at the end of the 18th century consisted of religious minorities and foreigners from around the Mediterranean. Still, when…
