1242
example of a late Victorian townhouse. The family
archive, including Sambourne’s photographs, is held at
Kensington Central Library.
Colin Harding
Further Reading
Shirley Nicholson, A Victorian Household, Sutton Publishing
Limited, 1988.
Mary Anne Roberts, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910),
History of Photography, Vol XVII, Summer 1993.
Robin Simon (ed.), Public Artist, Private Passions: The World of
Edward Linley Sambourne, The British Art Journal, 2001.
SANDERSON, FREDERICK H.
(1856–1929)
English photographer and inventor
Frederick Sanderson was born in July 1856 to a long
established Cambridge family. He started work as a
cabinet maker and as a wood and stone carver and
became interested in photography in the 1880s. He
took a leading role in his local photographic society.
Photographic retailing was added to his cabinet mak-
ing business.
Sanderson had a particular interest in architectural
photography and, unable to fi nd a camera to meet his
needs, he set about designing one. The outcome of his
work was the subject of British patent number 613 of
10 January 1895. The patent described a method of
supporting the front or back of a camera which allowed
them to be fi xed at any angle. In practice the design was
incorporated into a double strut on each side of the front
standard which could be locked into any position. The
patent also referred to a rotating lens panel into which
the lens was mounted eccentrically and bellows which
tapered on their lower side to aid the extreme movement
available with the strut arrangement.
Sanderson licensed the design to George Houghton
and Son of London who initially had the camera made
for them by Holmes Brothers. Holmes Brothers were
incorporated into Houghtons Ltd in 1904 and the camera
was subsequently made and sold by them or their sell-
ing company Ensign Ltd until its demise in 1940. The
camera was popular and the original fi eld camera model,
made in a variety of plate sizes. A hand and stand model
was offered from 1899. The hand camera underwent a
process of continual improvement with further patents
from Sanderson and others. It was last listed in Ensign’s
1938 catalogue by which time upwards of 26,000 ex-
amples of the sixty distinct models of Sandersons had
been made.
Frederick Sanderson does not appear to have made
any further signifi cant contribution to photography. He
died on 9 July 1929 leaving an estate valued at £1887
12s 3d.
Michael PritchardSARONY, NAPOLEON (1821–1896) AND
OLIVER FRANÇOIS XAVIER
(1820–1879)
The Canadian brothers, Napoleon and Olivier Sarony,
earned their respective reputations on opposite sides of
the Atlantic—Napoleon becoming New York’s pre-emi-
nent 19th century theatre photographer while his older
brother operated the most successful portrait studio in
the north-east of England.
The sons of an offi cer in the Austrian army who had
moved to Canada after Waterloo, the brothers moved
to New York with their parents in 1831, and by 1841,
both had become enthused by photography, with Oliver
operating daguerreotype studios briefl y in both New
York and Quebec. Napoleon, however, initially trained
as a lithographer and worked for a time with the eminent
American print-maker Nathaniel Currier before setting
up his own lithographic business in partnership with
James Major in 1843. By 1857 the company had ac-
quired another partner and traded as Sarony, Major &
Knapp. Despite his later success with photography, he
retained a profound interest in lithography.
In 1843, the year Napoleon established Sarony & Ma-
jor, Oliver had emigrated to England, and spent several
years as an itinerant daguerreotypist in eastern England.
Early advertisements list him in the 1840s and early
1850s operating studios in towns and cities in Yorkshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire. Given the attempts
by Richard Beard to retain tight control over the use of
the daguerreotype in England in the 1840s through his
patents and licences, it can be assumed that Oliver was
using the process unoffi cially.
By 1854, he was operating a mobile studio throughout
Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, eventually opening a per-
manent studio in Scarborough, Yorkshire, in 1857. This
represented a complete change of direction for Oliver,
as itinerant photographers were usually at the lower end
of the market, while advertisements for the Scarborough
studio emphasised the quality of his work, and were
priced accordingly. Before the end of that year he briefl y
opened another studio in Newcastle, and returned to
Scarborough in July 1858 to open Gainsborough House,
a custom-designed studio built to his own specifi cation
at South Cliff, and he remained at that address until his
death in 1879. Many of the studio’s cartes-de-visite bore
the address ‘Sarony Square, Scarborough.’
Oliver Sarony was not only a fi ne photographer, he
was an innovator as well, with a keen business eye.
Several of his innovative ideas were patented—with two