A friend of GBS -- a photo researched and a curious coincidence...

Last weekend I tagged along on a visit to Sussex Uni (for my son) and while he and his Dad toured the campus, I snatched a quick visit to the North Laine. I was with my daughter and it was she who noticed the perfect outfitter's for me as we wandered along Upper Gardner Street market:

 I withstood the ribbing in good part. It was such a lovely day and I was so happy to be back in Brighton.

Best of all, soon we came around to my favourite vintage emporium, Snoopers' Paradise.

Once again I had had to negotiate how much time I was going to be allowed in there. The time before last, on my own, I had crouched on an old pouffe (as one does) for over four hours, going through the old photos at my favourite stall. Last time was with my son and I only got a measly twenty minutes, if that. This time, in an effort to avoid similar frustration, I had already made it a condition of the whole visit that I would get an hour or so on my own in there -- but in the event it was more like forty minutes, and for quite a lot of time I was being 'helped' by an impatient young person flipping through the photos at high speed. It was agonising as I had just zeroed in on a new set of photos -- dispersed throughout the hundreds in the boxes -- from a single family where the owner had very helpfully written dates of birth and all sorts of other details on the backs. My mind was boggling at the thought of the research I could do into that family! But I ended up scrabbling and grabbing at a few more or less random photos that caught my eye before I was marched away.
     I chose one of the photos because it had a name on the back, but it wasn't until a few days later that I worked out what the name was and started to look into it. This is the photo:

On the back is the name 'J Kingston Barton'. The J is for James.

It's unfortunately rather difficult to read the date because it goes over the right-hand emblem but I believe it says Mar[ch] 17 1879. James Kingston Barton was born in Hong Kong in 1855 so would have been a young man of twenty-four at the time. Do you think he looks twenty-four? It's sometimes difficult to tell with old photos. I also believe that his name is written by his own hand: if you compare it to his signature on his marriage banns, from 1891, almost twenty years later -- although the capital letters are a little more flamboyant (amateur graphology bit coming up here), perhaps hinting at his more secure position in society, the other letters are formed in exactly the same way:

James Kingston Barton's father was an Irishman and a medical doctor who had taken his wife Rhoda out to China in the mid 19th century. Their first four children were born in Hong Kong before they returned, first to Ireland and then to London. The family lived at Chester Villa, 14 Lansdowne Rd, Kensington for a while, then seem to have had a spell in Bedford. James was already training to be a doctor himself by the age of 16 and in 1876, aged 22, he went to Australia. But he did not emigrate permanently  (See addendum at end of post): he was having his photograph taken in Baker Street by 1879 (if I have the date correct) and at the next census, in 1881, he was a visitor at 88 Gloucester Road, London.
     J Kingston Barton, as he styled himself, seems to have had a very inquiring mind. His name pops up on late Victorian papers about 'puerperal sepsis in cattle' and 'congenital anaemia' and he is often to be found debating the issues of the day at the Royal College of Medicine. His particular claim to fame seems to have been a close study of the digestive habits of 'kelts' -- salmon or sea trout that are weak and emaciated after spawning.
     The most interesting thing about JKB is his close friendship with GBS -- George Bernard Shaw.

G Bernard Shaw in 1879

Shaw was in the habit of dining at Kingston Barton's home every Saturday evening in the late 1870s and into the 1880s where no doubt the discussion was piquant and wide-ranging. According to Michael Holroyd's biography of Shaw, when Shaw's lover became pregnant she went to see Dr Kingston Barton, perhaps as he would be discreet. And when Shaw wrote an alarmingly frank account of the alcoholism in his own family he sent a copy to Kingston Barton. 
     In 1891 JKB married Georgina Graves, nee Marshall, a woman who had been widowed just a year earlier. She was Irish and he seems to have been back in Ireland for a time, or at least visiting regularly. They lived for many years at 14 Ashburn Place, Kensington. JKB outlived his wife by 17 years and died at the age of 86. His last home was in a very pleasant private road in Wimbledon. He seems to have left all his money to the Public Purse.

When I discovered that the photograph I had picked up more or less at random on an antique stall was of a man who had been a close friend of George Bernard Shaw I was pleased. What are the chances that a random person will have any claim to fame at all? But there's a further twist to the story...
     Today I have been sorting out the old photographs I inherited from my Mum. These are not my family's photographs but a large stash of very old photos that I found in her outside shed when I had to clear her house. They were not kept in ideal conditions, far from it, but were a little damp and covered in gritty dirt. I think Mum must have bought them in a job lot at an auction and perhaps lost interest in them. There were so many of them and I just threw them into a drawer without sorting through them. It was because I've become so interested in old photos that it finally occurred to me that it was stupid to hanker after photos on the stall in Snooper's Paradise, which I can only visit very occasionally, when I had a whole drawer of old photos just waiting for me to look at them. So this weekend I did. There are so many and I have no idea who they belonged to or who they're of. They seem to come from a number of different families. So far I have just sorted them into postcards of places and photos of people and a few other subsets. The numbers are overwhelming and it makes me feel sad to think that I have no way of finding out who they're of (barely any have names attached to them). But I was just putting them away more neatly in boxes when I spotted one of a gentleman. No, it couldn't be... I think it is. It's James Kingston Barton again!

 
The fact that the photo was taken at an address just five minutes' walk from 14 Ashburn Place clinches it for me. And of course the similarity of his moustache, collar and tie, hair, sideburns. It's him! But what on earth is the probability of my already having (unknowingly) a photo of this chap who I discovered in Brighton? Infinitesimally small! I feel all a-flutter with the wonderful serendipity of it.

ADDENDUM
I mentioned above that James Kingston Barton went to Australia in 1876. Two new things have come to light since I first wrote this post. Firstly, on scrutinising the handwritten manifest of the SS Osyth on which James sailed to Australia, I see that he was not a passenger but rather the ship's surgeon. What an excellent way to see the world!
The other thing I've discovered is that on this trip JKB also went to New Zealand. I know this because, on going through my Mum's old photos, I found a second photo of him in the pile! This one is by the well-known Christchurch photographer Nelson K Cherrill, who in fact had only arrived in New Zealand himself in 1876, having emigrated from Tunbridge Wells (see this very interesting biography of him).

 So someone whose photo collection I now own knew JKB well enough to have more than one photo of him. I wonder if it could possibly be Reverend Bott?

A day trip to Brighton

This was the (slightly 'Shopped) view at my feet as I waited for the 9.20am train from Luton yesterday morning. I had had to give in to an insistent voice in my head telling me to go back to Brighton again. Brighton looms nearer because there's a wonderful direct train from Luton that takes you there in two hours, right through the heart of London. Unfortunately, I only discovered after I'd bought my ticket that the 'through' part wasn't working this weekend so I had to cross London by Tube. Still, by noon I was in the North Laine (and the rain). 

It didn't matter. I wasn't there to sit on the beach (unlike this lovely pair, found yesterday). I was there to feed a terrible hunger that's been raging in me for getting on for two months now. You may remember that, last half term, I went to Brighton with my family and got to indulge my love of old photos with an hour in Snoopers' Paradise. I think I bought five photos that time. One was of Lionel and Ethel Long and I managed to find out a little about the Longs, as reported in this post. Two of the other photos I bought that day turned out to be related to each other. I started to research the family in them and it exploded into an almost full-time project. I haven't been so absorbed by something for a very long time. I'm not quite ready to tell of my discoveries -- I'm waiting for a book to come from the National Library of Australia! Luckily I can arrange international loans through the Uni where I work. The book is going to be the culmination of the whole thing (I hope) but meanwhile I thought I remembered that there had been other photos from the same set that I'd left behind in Snoopers' Paradise.
    

There had been about 2000 photos in three or four boxes at the stall where I got the first ones and I had only had an hour. Now that I had got so intensely engaged with the family in the photos, I just couldn't bear the thought that there were more photos of them left behind. I had to go and see if I could get them.
     I went straight to Snoopers' Paradise and made for the stall where I remembered standing to look through the boxes of pictures. Nothing. There were no photos at all! I can't describe how desolate I felt. I thought some of them might have gone, but surely not all of them. I hunted all over the stall, in drawers, behind old fire screens, in cash boxes. Gone. Then I rallied myself and thought I should at least check around the rest of the flea market -- perhaps people own more than one stall and move their stock around. At the very least there would be other stalls with photos, even if they weren't my special ones. I couldn't leave empty handed. So I spent an hour or so going round the whole place. I didn't find 'my' photos but I found a few other nice ones, including the beach scene at the top. I went to pay and to interrogate the people on the till. 'Can I contact one of the stallholders, please? I came specially to get some photos and I can't believe they've all been sold.' They rolled their eyes and said, 'No.' The woman said, 'There are lots of other stalls with old photos, I'm sure you'll find something you like.' I couldn't explain how I felt that my 'photo family' needed to be kept together and that those photos were saturated with meaning now. They'd come to life.

I went back out into the rain and got some lunch -- the £6 special at Soup-Urb -- pretty nice. The piece of rocky road I had for pudding was the best I've ever had. I sat looking out of the window at the rain and I thought, 'I can't just go home. I'll go back to Snoopers' Paradise and I'll look round with my "kitsch" eyes on instead of my "old photos" eyes. There must be something cool in there.'
     Back I went. It was more like a fun house in there than a flea market -- everyone was trying on wigs and hats and taking photos of each other: 'Try this coat on, you'll look just like a pimp!' I wandered round and within a couple of minutes, I have no idea how, I'd found the stall with the boxes of photos! There they were, still thousands and thousands of them, all jumbled up. What with misremembering which stall it was and then missing it on my first trawl, it's a miracle I found it at all. I was so happy. I hunkered down on the floor and went through each box systematically to sort out the ones I needed. Very thoughtfully, 'my' chap had numbered and dated all his photos so it was easy to tell which ones were his. And I know his handwriting so well now -- I've matched it to his 1911 census return. If anyone had been watching me (I'm sure no one was remotely interested) they'd have seen me going through box after box of photos looking only at the backs. I found TWENTY more of 'my' photos. Some of them are very blurry or don't have any people in them, but I bought them just the same. I had to reunite them as much as possible. What's hard to bear is that the highest number on the ones I've now got is 'No. 442' and I only own 22 in total, so I don't like to think about where the other 420 have got to. I wonder if I'll ever find any more of them? Probably not.
     I was in Snoopers' Paradise until almost 5pm, just sorting through photos. By the time I left I was so stiff I was reeling. I just went back to the station and caught the next train to London. It was the strangest day out I've ever had but I have assuaged the need I had to see what was still to be found.
I'm keeping schtum for now on the story I've managed to find out, but will just show one of the photos I got yesterday, of the daughter of the family -- blurry but lovely, I think. More -- much much more -- to come...