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taken by Oscar Gustav Rejlander and engraved by Sir
John Gilbert. Bede met Rejlander in the early 1850s
through a mutual friend William Parke, a Wolverhamp-
ton bookseller and printer. Rejlander was the unmistake-
able model for the Swedish photographer in Bede’s
Photographic Pleasures. Other friends also found their
way into the book including Hussey Pache, who inspired
the creation of the young woman with chemically
stained fi ngers in Bede’s illustration ‘A Photographic
Positive.’ Hussey Pache was the niece of John Moyer
Heathcote, who was then living at Conington Castle,
Huntingdonshire. Along with the amateur photographer
Captain Grenville Wells, Heathcote became interested
in photography in the early 1850s and Bede appears to
have learnt how to take photographs in their company.
Heathcote was satirised under a photographer’s focusing
cloth in Bede’s ‘The Present Attitude to Photography.’
Bede may have produced his own photographs for
Glencreggan of 1861 but by 1864 he had turned to John
Thomson, a Scottish landscape photographer, to provide
the plates for Rosslyn and Hawthorden.
Thomas McLean fi rst published Photographic Plea-
sures in 1855 priced at 7s.6d. In 1859 it passed to John
Camden Hotten and by 1863 Day & Son published it at
a cover price of one shilling. An example of the book’s
topicality is its allusion to the Talbot v. Laroche patent
infringement case. However not all of Bede’s references
are credible in that he misspelt Thomas Wedgwood’s
name and credited Daguerre with fi xing his photo-
graphs on paper with nitrate of silver. Although Bede’s
familiarity with photography may have been relatively
superfi cial, his sense of humour and comic timing were
well judged. He left behind a body of work that satirised
but never maligned what at the time were seen to be the
manifest absurdities of photography.
Janice Hart
Biography
Cuthbert Bede was the pseudonym of Edward Bradley,
born on 25th March 1827 in Kidderminster, Worces-
tershire, England. He created his pseudonym from
the names Saint Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede. A
comic writer and illustrator he pursued these interests
alongside the obligations of his religious calling. He
led a number of congregations, advancing from cu-
rate, to vicar to rector in small to medium sized, and
often ancient and beautiful, orthodox churches. His
best known works are The Adventures of Mr Verdant
Green, an Oxford Freshman published in 1853 and
Photographic Pleasures: Popularly Portrayed with Pen
and Pencil which appeared in late January 1855. He
was advised by George Cruickshank, collaborated with
Alfred Smith and knew a great many of the literary men
and illustrators of the period. He appears to have learnt
photography with the amateur enthusiasts John Moyer
Heathcote and Captain Grenville Wells and also met a
number of professional photographers including John
Thomson and Oscar Gustav Rejlander. Photographic
Pleasures, his most sustained satire of photography, is
a mixture of acute observations and unintended errors,
the later indicating that Bede’s grasp of photography
was relatively slight. However Bede did bring humour
to what were thought of at the time as photography’s
most absurd and therefore entertaining characteristics.
He died on 12th December 1889.Further Reading
Marion Harry Alexander Spielmann, The History of “Punch,”
Cassell, 1895.
Michael Hallett, ‘Professional Photographers in Worcestershire
1851–1920,’ in the Royal Photographic Society Historical
Group Supplement, Spring Issue, 1986.
Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, ‘Cuthbert Bede’ in One Hundred
Years of Photographic History: Essays in Honour of Beaumont
Newhall (ed. Van Deren Coke), University of New Mexico
Press, 1975.
Bridget and Heinz Henisch, The Photographic World & Humour
of Cuthbert Bede, Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
Katherine M Hutton, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, or, an
Idea in Need of a Publisher, Durham University Press, a spe-
cial supplement of the Durham University Journal, 1994.
Blanchard Jerrold, The Life of George Cruickshank, Chatto &
Windus, 1882.BEDFORD, FRANCIS (1816–1894)
British photographer, artist, lithographer, and
publisher
Francis Bedford was as accomplished with waterco-
lours, lithography and architectural drawings as he was
with photography. As an architectural and landscape
photographer, his achievements rank alongside those
of Roger Fenton and Francis Frith.
Throughout the 1840s, with a growing reputation for
ecclesiastical architectural drawing and his established
talent as a lithographer, he was commissioned to illus-
trate a number of projects, including A Chart Illustrating
the Architecture of Westminster Abbey (1840), A Chart
of Anglican Church Architecture Arranged Chronologi-
cally with Examples of Different Styles (1843) and The
Church of York (1843).
In 1851 he produced 158 chromolithographs for
Digby Wyatt’s Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century,
at the Great Exhibition 1851 which was published over
the following two years. Other lithographic commis-
sions included 100 plates for Owen Jones’ The Grammar
of Ornament (1856), and The Treasury of Ornamental
Art (1858). For the latter, and for Art Treasures in the
United Kingdom (1858), the lithographs were “drawn
on stone” from Bedford’s own photographs.