An interesting album of well composed but largely amateur snapshots, giving a flavour of life in Bermuda in the 1880s, composed by a lady visitor. Of the Bermuda pictures, the 54 smaller are often captioned in pencil. There are 7 larger format images which could be the product of a professional studio, though there are no attributions or captions in the negative. There are a further c. 50 images taken mostly in Pittsburg and Chicago.
The album begins with shot of the crowded pier of the Outerbridge & Co. dock at 47 Broadway New York, where the photographer is waved off by a man called “Rob”, marked with a cross. There follow a series of Bermuda coastal views taken from the water, and an interesting composition of dockworkers manually preparing the gangplank for disembarkation from the steamer. There is a fine large format image of Front Street, Hamilton, showing great piles of cargo sacks and barrels. There are several good images of the Hamilton Hotel, plus one of the Bermuda Seed Store. There are several good “general views”, taken from high vantage points. There is an image of two figures at what looks like the veranda of the Hamilton Hotel captioned “Mr & Mrs Tucker who were on the steamer with me. He was an invalid.”
As well as town and waterfront views, there are several clearly taken further inland. A particularly fine image shows a lily field, with two figures working the crop. There are several charming portraits of the album’s compiler, a young woman in a black dress, driving a donkey and trap, clearly travelling with a female companion, elsewhere named as “Zouie”. The captions indicate these were taken en-route to the governor’s mansion. A visit for lunch with “the Admirals” takes the photographer on an interesting cruise to what look like offshore barracks, with a couple of good shots of the dry docks.
The images of Pittsburg, Chicago and Boston which follow after are of a mostly industrial and architectural theme, with one rather unusual exception of a group of women practicing what looks like outdoor aerobics, on a set of trapeze rings.
