905
with eleven portraits, under the title “On the introduction
and progress of the screw propeller” notably featuring
Francis Pettit Smith and Charles Manley.
The partnership was dissolved March 8, 1865, and
Maull continued the fi rm as Maull & Co., closing the
City studio and opening a new one at 62 Cheapside.
Polyblank fi led for bankruptcy November 2, 1867, and
was eventually discharged in the following January. A
persistent rumor in the Polyblank family suggests that
he emigrated to the United States in the late 1860s, but
no further trace of him has been recorded, and the end
of his career is unknown.
In 1877, Henry Maull reconstituted the fi rm, and
took as his partner his former manager, John Fox
(1832–1907). As Maull & Fox, the fi rm soon closed
the surviving City studio, and concentrated their pho-
tographic work at 187a Piccadilly, a second-fl oor studio
situated above the well- nown bookshop, Hatchards. The
partnership was dissolved after only eight years, on May
21 1885, but Fox’s son, Herbert Fox (1870 –) continued
the fi rm, assisted by Frederick Glover after Maull’s re-
tirement to Ramsgate in 1890. He died in Brighton June
26, 1914, a year after Maull & Fox became a limited
company in order to acquire the Piccadilly business.
In 1924 the West End studio was moved to 200 Gray’s
Inn Road; it was wound up October 26, 1928, and the
copyright and negatives acquired by the Graphic Photo
Union, eventually absorbed into Kemsley Newspapers,
publishers of the Sunday Times, in 1952.
Like many other Victorian photographic studios,
Maull found the transition to the twentieth century a
leap too far. In addition, their substantial contracts with
the illustrated weeklies to supply a constant stream of
portraits for reproduction as wood engravings, began to
decline dramatically with the introduction of photogra-
vure and the rise of specialist fi rms. The fi rm’s very static
poses, with an occasional prop, had gone irretrievably
out of fashion by the end of the nineteenth century.
Henry Maull’s elder brother, George Maull (1820–
1885) operated two photographic studios in the Lew-
isham area of South London in the 1860s and 1870s,
but is not known to have participated in the West End
studios. A good selection of work by Maull’s various
partnerships is held by the National Portrait Gallery,
with smaller collections at the Victoria & Albert Mu-
seum & Hulton Getty.
David Webb
Further Reading
Johnson, William S., Nineteenth Century Photography:Aan An-
notated Bibliography. New York: G. K. Hall, 1990.
Hacking, Juliet, Photography Personifi ed: Art and Identity in
British Photography 1857–1875, University of London
thesis 1998.
Watkins, Herbert, The Athenaeum, May 29, 1858, 694.
Polyblank, George Henry. Polyblank Society Newsletter no 3
(September 1987).MAWSON & CO. (ESTABLISHED 1828)
The company originated as Mawson and Company in
1828 when John Mawson (1815–1867) began trad-
ing in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, specialising in
pharmaceutical products. Mawson followed the pho-
tographic discoveries of the times and once the new
discipline was established, he began to produce the
necessary chemicals. By 1848, he had engaged Joseph
Wilson Swan (1828–1914) as his assistant, but made
him a junior partner in 1865, by forming Mawson &
Swan. Within two years, however, Mawson was killed
in a nitro-glycerine explosion whilst officiating as
Mayor of Newcastle and Swan took control. Mawson’s
widow was Swan’s sister and Elizabeth now joined the
company to supervise publishing and bookselling, and
when the company eventually relinquished its inter-
est in photographic materials, it continued to trade as
Mawson, Swan and Morgan, into the middle of the
twentieth century.
Swan had previously worked for six years as an
apprentice to a local fi rm of druggists and joined with
knowledge of chemistry and the evolving photographic
processes. It was natural for the two men to explore
aspects of emulsion making, and Mawson introduced
his partner to local contacts and then constructed a small
workshop for him above the pharmacy, at 39 Moseley
Street, Newcastle. By 1854, Swan had perfected the
production of collodion, and the company entered the
growing photographic market by launching Mawson’s
Collodion. For forty years, the product maintained its
reputation, as many testimonials confi rm—”the fi rst of
its kind, the best as well, and doubtless the most largely
used and widely sold of all collodions in existence.”
Another success came in February 1864, when Swan
patented the carbon printing process, which provided
distinctive photographic prints, free from deterioration.
The company marketed carbon prints, as well as the
materials for making them, and offered the process under
licence to third parties, such as The Autotype Company,
which later purchased the rights. (In 1885, Swan also
negotiated a business partnership with Thomas Annan,
Glasgow.) Swan’s expertise in working with electric-
ity led to the invention of a carbon fi lament light bulb
(1879) and variants of the invention were adapted for
photographic applications, such as standardising studio
lighting and controlling variable for exposing carbon
prints and bromide prints.
Swan’s success with the carbon process had capital-
ised on the company’s prowess in combining a suitable
gelatine for making the print, and a powerful lamp
for making the exposure. With a general manager