I have a card that intrigues me. It dates from around 1890.

It is a thick postcard-sized card. One side shows a photograph of some xxx boys aged 7-15 and about ten men in bowler hats and boaters. The interesting thing for me about this photo is that it was taken outside the rear entrance to my present house, which in the 1890s was part of Elmfield College, York. (The card is item xx in the archives of Elmfield College.)

The reverse of the card shows an etching from Marion & Co.: a seated woman painting a man’s portrait on an easel. This is accompanied by the text “From the Studio/ of/ John W Lumley/ Dale End/ Kirbymoorside/All Negatives Kept”.

Who were Marion & Co., and who was John W Lumley?

For Marion & Co. see xxx.

On Ancestry, I found a John William Lumley (8dec1850-17may1918) whose gravestone is in All Saints Cemetery, Kirkbymoorside. JWL, as I shall call him, features in the 1851 census as an infant aged 3 months, living with his widowed 34-year-old father William T Lumley. William is a “Druggist & Stationer” living at Howe End and born at Cropton, about five miles away. Presumably John’s mother (William’s wife) died recently, following John’s birth. William must have been fairly affluent as he had living with him a Housekeeper, a General Servant, and a Druggist Apprentice. (These are a 28-year-old widow named Caroline Carpenter; 17-year-old Hannah Richardson, and 17-year-old John S Bentley.)

In the 1871 census, JWL is described as a “Chemist & Stationer”, as is his father and his 23-year-old step-brother, John Carpenter, son of Caroline Carter whom William has subsequently married. (Caroline is by now 49, born in Ampleforth; in 1851 she was 28 and born in Easingwold. One wonders where the 3-year-old John Carpenter was in 1851. Is he the “Nurse Child” recorded at xxx ?)

William and Caroline also have a daughter, Elizabeth A Lumley, who is aged 13 in 1871.