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Photographs and pictures

The singer Jenny Lind as Lucia di Lammermoor
Chetham's Library Assheton-Tonge collection.

Phelps photographic collection

The Library has a large collection of glass negatives and lantern slides from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly taken by the local amateur photographer Joseph James Phelps. The collection appears to have been compiled around an informed interest in both local and world history with a proportion of Phelps' own pictures together with purchased slide sets, selected as a series of lantern lectures. It includes slides by famous 19th century suppliers including Francis Frith, George Washington Wilson (G.W.W.) and Mancunian J.T.Chapman, all originally acquired around 1880 - early 20th c. and charting popular world travel sites of the period. There also also some 20 boxes of lantern slides of specifically local history interest covering a range of subjects including: canals, industrial development, architecture (old and new including a good amount of material on Chethams itself), family portraiture and some evocative early 20th century street life and city views. There is also a considerable collection of mainly glass plate negatives [2000-3000 items approx.] in mostly half-plate or smaller formats, in the main presumed to have been photographed by J.J.Phelps. The subjects track those for his illustrated lectures mentioned above with a good deal of copy material from books, prints, paintings etc.

Phelps is believed to have been influenced by the photography of Samuel Coulthurst who worked in Europe, and in Manchester and environs around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. A collection of his work can be viewed at Manchester Public Library. Stylistically, there is evidence of a Coulthurst link and also with others working in the documentary tradition of the period including famous London-based photographer Paul Martin.

With widespread use of the easier-to-use dry plate process during the late 19th. century a great expansion in the use and application of photography became possible. This enabled the growth of a number of competent amateur photographers intent on documenting their immediate world with a reality and intensity rarely seen before. Phelps could be said to embody the aims of the serious-minded amateur of the period, representing one of the less well-known photographers who sensitively and painstakingly documented their lives and environment for posterity without the promise of any significant personal reward.

Manchester and local views

A children's mock wedding, 1926; and a view of Birch Lane, Manchester

Chetham's boys in their uniforms; their dormitory in 1894

Piccadilly in the rain; and the Victoria Bridge in 1912

School children assemble; a blind beggar at the west door of the Cathedral

A view of Liverpool Road; and a charabanc trip in Moss Lane

Little Moreton Hall; a view of Market Street

A sample of shots from further afield

A 'picture palace'; a view of a French street market

An Edwardian family outing; imperial troops

Two shots of naval activity in the First World War

Street scenes: Canterbury, and an unlabelled shot, apparently of a European street

Prints and drawings at Chetham's

The Library has collected thousands of prints, engravings, etchings, acquatints and manuscript drawings over the years. A small sample of them follows:

The Liverpool-Manchester Railway; the Manchester Long Room