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Derbyshire
Photographers' Profiles by Brett Payne, of Tauranga, New Zealand William Rodbourn of Newhall |
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| William Rodbourn operated briefly as a photographer in
the Newhall area in the mid- to late 1870s. |
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| William Rodbourn was born in
Stanton, near Newhall, Derbyshire in 1848, son of a labourer Thomas
Rodbourn (1822-1887) and Mary Bannister (1821-1855). His mother
died in 1855 and a year later his father remarried, to the widow of a
Newhall collier. They moved to live in Wood Lane in about 1858,
where his father gained a position as clerk at a local colliery.
Later, Thomas Rodbourn became a publican, and was proprietor of the
Swan Inn in Stanton & Newhall. William, too, went to work as a fireman at the local colliery in his early teens. By 1871 he was working as an engine driver in Great Wyrley, Staffordshire but in 1873 he married Ann Wain at Newhall, and moved back to the village, where he continued working as an engine driver. In 1878 or 1879, the family moved to New Normanton in Derby, where they lived at 5 Howard Street and William obtained a position as an agent for the Prudential Assurance Company. A single carte de visite is known from this photographer, identified with an ink stamp on the reverse. It seems likely that William Rodbourne was never a full-time photographer, and worked only briefly in the Newhall area in the late 1870s, possibly between 1875 and 1878. |
| Portfolio |
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Unidentified
teenage boy by W. Rodbourn & Co. of Newhall, Burton on Trent Undated, but probably taken c. 1875-1878 Format: Carte-de-visite Image © & courtesy of Claire Casey Notes |
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| References
Images kindly provided by Claire Casey 1841-1901 UK Census - online from Ancestry.com FreeBMD International Genealogical Index - online from the LDS church Anon (1870) Harrod & Co.'s Postal & Commercial Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Staffordshire. - from University of Leicester - Digital Library of Historical Directories. Wright C.N. (1874) Directory of South Derbyshire, Third Edition, October 1874, Derby. Anon (1881) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co., London. Anon (1887) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co., London. Anon (1891) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Nottinghamshire, Kelly & Co., London. University of Leicester's Digital Library of Historical Directories Anon (1895) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Kelly & Co. Limited, London. Anon (1895) History, Topography, and Directory of Derbyshire, T. Bulmer & Co. - by kind courtesy of Sonia Addis-Smith Anon (1899) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Nottinghamshire, Kelly & Co., London. University of Leicester's Digital Library of Historical Directories Anon (1912) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire 1912, 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. Craven, Maxwell (ed.) (1993) Keene's Derby, Breedon Books, Derby, pp. 200-202. - by kind courtesy of Sonia Addis-Smith |
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