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| William
Arthur Hudson
was born on 22 August 1884 at North Rode, near Macclesfield, Cheshire,
son of Matthew
George Hudson (1846-) and Elizabeth Parry (1849-). His father
was a gardener, employed by wealthy East Indies & South America
merchant and landowner Charles Stewart Carlisle (1844-) at The Grange,
in North Rode, Cheshire, while a maternal uncle William Parry was the
coachman. In the early 1890s, after being laid off at The
Grange, his father found a post as a gardener at the Corporation
cemetery in Macclesfield, and they moved to town. Arthur, as
he was known, attended Mill Street Higher Grade School until his first
job as a trainee gardener in 1898, at the age of fourteen.
After only a few months he, too, was laid off, and he then had a couple
of short stints as an office boy before joining the Post Office in
1899. Initially he took charge of ten telegraph boys, with a
rank of indoor
messenger, but after passing
his Civil Service entrance examination and attaining some skill as a
telegraphist, he was appointed as sorting
clerk and
telegraphist in May
1901. He remained with the post office for sixty years,
eventually retiring in 1959. |
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| On
12 June 1909 he married Bertha
Pilkington (1877-1969), daughter of a coal merchant from Buxton,
Derbyshire, at the Wesleyan Chapel, Buxton. They settled in
the High
Street of Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, where Arthur Hudson was
appointed sub-postmaster and also operated a stationery shop.
They had
two children, a son John
Pilkington Hudson (1910-2007)
and a daughter Margaret "Molly" Pilkington Hudson (b. 1912).
William Arthur Hudson died in 1976 in Wales, at the age of 92. W.A. Hudson was a keen and more than competent photographer, printing many of his family portraits onto postcards and sending them out to friends and family. He also produced postcards of views in and around Buxton during the period 1910 to 1913, of which there are examples in the Portfolio below. The numbering and the name "High Peak" Series, on the reverse, suggest that there may have been at least several hundred views produced. However, his grandson Dick Hudson believes that photography was probably little more than a sideline. There is no evidence that he ever operated as a commercial portraitist. |
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| Portfolio |
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| Empire
Hotel - Buxton, Headquarters
for Sherwood Foresters, Notts. & Derbys. (High Peak Series #100) by W.A. Hudson, Photo Specialist of Chapel-en-le-Frith Undated, but probably taken between November 1914 and Feb/March 1915 Format: Post Card Image © & courtesy of Mike Briggs |
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| Combs
Lake, Chapel-en-le-Frith (#518) by W.A. Hudson, Photographer & Post Office of Chapel-en-le-Frith Undated, but postmarked 1913 Format: Post Card |
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| Aerial view of Chinley by W.A. Hudson, of Chapel-en-le-Frith Dated 1913 Format: Post Card Image © & courtesy of Picture the Past |
| References
Images and information kindly provided by Picture the Past, Dick Hudson & Mike Briggs 1841-1901 UK Census - online from Ancestry.com FreeBMD North East Midland Photographic Record - Picture the Past Anon (1912) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire 1912, Kelly's Directories Ltd., London. Anon (1932) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire 1932, Kelly's Directories Ltd., London. Adamson, Keith I.P. (1997) Professional Photographers in Derbyshire 1843 - 1914, The PhotoHistorian, No. 118 Supplement, September 1997, ISSN 0957-0209. Courtesy of John Bradley. |
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