958
See also: Art Treasures Exhibition (Manchester,
1857); Bedford, Francis; Rejlander, Oscar Gustav;
Robinson, Henry Peach; Silvy, Camille; and Dancer,
John Benjamin.
Further Reading
Chapman J.T., Manchester and Photography, Palatine Press,
Manchester, 1934.
Gray, Priscilla M., James Mudd: Early Manchester Photogra-
pher, unpublished MA thesis for the University of California,
1982.
Hallett, Michael, Signifi cant years in the history of photography in
the Manchester area, unpublished MPhil thesis for the Council
for National Academic Awards (CNAA), 1976.
Hallett, Michael, “James Mudd Photographer, 10 St. Ann’s
Square, Manchester,” British Journal of Photography, 9 July
1982, 730–736.
Mudd, J., “Artistic Arrangement of Photographic Landscapes,”
Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal, 1857,
156.
Mudd, J., “The Collodio-Albumen Process,” The Collodio-Al-
bumen Process: Hints on Composition, and other papers,
Thomas Piper, Photographic News Offi ce, London, 1866.
Mudd, J., “On the Development of Under and Over-Exposed
Collodio-Albumen Plates,” British Journal of Photography,
17 July 1868, 343.
MULOCK, BENJAMIN ROBERT
(1829–1863)
British photographer and civil engineer
Ben Mulock grew up in a Newcastle and London. When
he was sixteen, his mother died and his father, the Rev-
erend Thomas S. Mulock, deserted his three children.
Because their mother’s legacy was held in trust until
they came of age, Ben’s sister Dinah began writing for a
living, and brother Tom, a promising artist, went to sea.
He was killed by falling from the mast when his ship was
in dry-dock in 1847. In 1848 Ben enrolled at University
College London, where he studied Latin, Mathematics
and Natural Philosophy with a view to becoming a
civil engineer. However, when he turned 21 in 1850 he
received £400 from his mother’s trust and emigrated to
Australia, where he became a farmer and later joined
in the gold rush. Four years later, he returned to Europe
due to persistent eye troubles, and underwent treatment
in Germany and Switzerland in 1854 and 1855. By June
1855 he had joined the Army Works Corps. He spent
the fi rst half of 1856 in the Crimea, working on railway
provision during the war. Shortly after returning to Eng-
land in July 1856, he joined the Liverpool Public Offi ces
Engineers Department. During most of 1858 he worked
in the offi ce of James Newlands, the City Engineer, and
is said to have expressed a desire for “more congenial
work.” It was while staying at Linacre Grange, a farm-
house north of Liverpool, that he became a self-taught
photographer. Some of the pictures he took there have
been published in The Mellards and their Descendants.
He also produced stereographic photographs and pan-
oramas. By December 1858 he was in London, working
as a photographer for JJ Mayall, but he was already in
contact with John Watson, the contractor for the Bahia
and São Francisco Railway (BSFR), who hired him to
photograph the fi rst stage of the works in northeastern
Brazil. Charles Blacker Vignoles, who designed and
supervised the BSFR, was a strong advocate and pioneer
of recording the construction progress of engineering
works using drawings or photographs.
Mulock arrived in Bahia on November 1, 1859. He
described his fi rst impression of the city with an artist’s
eye: “I never saw a place that pleased me more at fi rst-
sight. It stretches round the Bay in the form of a cres-
cent—the shore is high and the houses rise one height
above another, intermixed except right in the centre of
the town with Banana and Cocoa-nut trees all looking
so green.” He immediately set about photographing
the railway works, beginning with the terminus under
construction in Calçada, and continued sending batches
of “views” back to the head offi ce in England, often
twice monthly via the English and French mails. Mu-
lock worked in the fi eld with a portable darkroom of his
own design (a letter he wrote about a similar invention
was published in the Photographic Journal in 1859).
This would also have held his plates and the necessary
chemicals for the day’s work. Glass plates were coated
with chemicals (collodion) immediately prior to use.
After processing they were varnished to retain the image.
Printing was done on albumen-coated paper, which was
sensitized the night before printing. On one particular
upcountry expedition, he took 150 photographic plates
and the associated chemicals with him, transported on
a pack-mule. Only one glass plate broke. Towards the
end of the period, he experimented with the new dry
process, which enabled him to coat the negative prior
to leaving base, and obviated the need to take chemicals
with him. It was his practice to take additional plates of
his views while in the fi eld, and to transfer or duplicate
the resulting negatives when back at base. While Ben
was in Bahia, two engravings based on his photographs
of the BSFR were published in the Illustrated London
News (1860).
Mulock returned home six months before his contract
expired because he felt there was nothing more for him
to do. He took hundreds of photographs during his two
and a half years in Brazil, including stunning portraits
of the “City of Bahia.” The panoramic view of the city
as he fi rst saw it, taken from a fort surrounded by water,
could be considered his masterpiece. Ferrez writes that
its clarity and perfection are unrivalled (1989, 33). The
BSFR presented an album of Mulock’s photographs to
Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, himself an amateur photo-