William Kilburn's 1848 Chartist Daguerreotypes

William Kilburn's Daguerreotype photo of the Chartist meeting at Kennington Common on 10 April 1848 — Figure 1: William Edward Kilburn, Great Chartist meeting at Kennington, 10 April 1848. Source: Royal Collection Trust.

Early photograph of Chartist meeting at Kennington Common in 1848. — Figure 2: William Edward Kilburn, Great Chartist meeting at Kennington (second image), 10 April 1848. Source: Royal Collection Trust.

Introduction

Remarkably, a pioneering photographic record survives of the culmination of one of the most significant days in England’s nineteenth-century political history—William Kilburn’s fascinating Daguerreotypes (Figures 1 and 2) of the Chartist mass meeting held at Kennington Common (now Kennington Park), London on 10 April 1848.¹ Among the earliest photographs of a crowd, these historic images of a demonstration widely feared of precipitating insurrection have received occasional attention from scholars since they were rediscovered in the Royal Collection in the late 1970s; however, surprisingly little detailed analysis has been published to date.² We also know comparatively little about Kilburn—or what his motivations might have been for recording the Chartists in such an unprecedented manner. While a lack of explicit documentary evidence doesn’t help in this respect, we can speculate upon his motives for doing so. Close examination of the two extant images also reveals some surprising detail that helps us understand the (supposed) revolutionary intent of the Chartist leadership on 10 April. A final issue raised by historians—but not addressed satisfactorily to date—is whether the Chartist photographs were, in fact, the first of a crowd. As we’ll see, it’s clear that they were not although this finding does not lessen Kilburn’s technical achievement or the significance of his work.

10 April 1848

Chartism was a working-class mass movement that sought democratic reform of the British electoral system (primarily by giving all men the right to vote).³ When revolutions erupted in various European states in early 1848 the Chartists organised a popularly-elected National Convention (or anti-parliament)⁴ which met near Fitzroy Square in London.⁵ Having virtually a lone voice in parliament (Feargus O’Connor) and relatively few adherents with the actual right to vote, the Chartists relied upon intimidatory mass action and the petitioning of parliament to attempt to sway political opinion. Accordingly, Convention leaders planned a display of force at Kennington on 10 April prior to marching upon parliament to deliver the National Petition. Similar ‘monster’ petitions were presented in 1839, 1841 and 1842 and, like its forbears, the 1848 petition was signed by millions and demanded radical reform of parliament.⁶

In wake of the tumult in Europe and rioting in London, Glasgow, Manchester and elsewhere, the Russell Whig government increased penalties for sedition, banned the proposed Kennington meeting and made extensive defensive preparations in the capital involving the army, police and about 85,000 special constables.⁷ Undeterred, and supported by sympathetic trades and expatriate Irish nationalists, the Chartists asserted their constitutional right to meet and petition parliament and, on the morning of Monday 10 April, the rank and file gathered at Kennington as planned.⁸ Chartist leaders journeyed from the Scientific and Literary Institute in a specially-built wagon at the head of a large procession; another wagon carried the National Petition. At Kennington, Feargus O’Connor met with senior police and was told that the meeting could proceed but the crowd would not be permitted to march over the Thames and upon parliament.⁹ Amid some dissent, O’Connor persuaded the Chartists to abandon the planned march to Westminster and, after the meeting ended, the petition was delivered without fanfare or violence.¹⁰

Anti-Chartist poster, 1848. — Figure 3: Anti-Chartist poster exhorting workers not to attend the Kennington meeting, early April 1848. Source: Public Record Office.

From the day of the meeting the attendance at Kennington (estimated variously from 10,000 to 300,000 people!) was contested in the liberal, conservative and radical-Chartist press.¹¹ Over the next few days, the 300 kilogram National Petition was examined by a parliamentary Select Committee who claimed it had less than half the supposed five million signatures.¹² While extended popular radical mobilisation had contributed to the limited franchise extension encapsulated in the 1832 Reform Act, in 1848 the Chartists’ demands were (once again) summarily rejected. Further incremental expansion of the franchise did occur in the later nineteenth century, but many working-class men were denied the vote until the the final year of the Great War (and most women for another decade after that).

Early historical accounts of the events of 10 April 1848 in London tended to reiterate the view taken at the time by a relieved establishment—that the inflated petition, the exaggerated attendance at Kennington and the failure of the Chartists to march upon parliament amounted to a political ‘fiasco’ which, ultimately, signalled the end of the movement.¹³ More recently, historians have explored late Chartism in a more nuanced fashion and concluded that insurrection was, in any case, never seriously contemplated by mainstream leaders in April 1848.¹⁴ As we’ll see below, under close examination Kilburn’s photographs reveal some interesting detail that tends to support the modern scholarly view. Before looking at these issues, Kilburn’s background and his relationship with the Royal family need to be outlined.

William Kilburn and the Royal Family

Despite being one of the first photographers to work for the British Royal family, William Kilburn remains a quite obscure figure: no detailed biographical scholarly research has appeared to date.¹⁵ Briefly, he was born at Ely Place, London, in 1818 to Catherine (1787–1874) and Thomas Kilburn (1786–1830).¹⁶ Thomas was a warehouseman and merchant whose Irish-born father William (1745–1818) was a skilled illustrator who became a successful calico printer; by the time Chartism emerged in the late 1830s, the extended Kilburn family was relatively prosperous having connections with East India trade and the London banking and insurance industries.¹⁷ At the time of the 1841 census William described himself as an accountant resident with his widowed mother, siblings and servants at Haverstock Terrace, Hampstead.¹⁸ William married Louisa Ludlam Tootal in 1854¹⁹ and they had three children.²⁰ Louisa was a member of a prominent textile manufacturing family and subsequent census records suggest that the Kilburns enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence attended by household servants and a governess.²¹

Kilburn first photographed the Royal family in April 1847 and Prince Albert purchased the Chartist Daguerreotypes the following year.²² As noted earlier, the two surviving photographs of the Kennington meeting appear to have lain forgotten in the Royal Archives for many years—in 1978 Gus Macdonald noted that (one) Kilburn photograph had been ‘only recently unearthed’.²³ Despite Kilburn’s images very likely being the earliest extant photographs of mass political protest, it was not until 2016 that the first chapter-length study by Jo Briggs appeared.²⁴ While this remains the most detailed account to date, Briggs primarily is concerned with what might be termed the aesthetics of representation rather than my interest in the wider political context.

Unfortunately, we do not know how or when Kilburn developed an interest in photography—or who trained him. That said, from early 1847 he became one of the few licensed Daguerreotypists working in London.²⁵ It’s also clear that Kilburn rapidly became an accomplished practitioner, garnering Royal patronage within a couple of months of commencing operations at 234 Regent Street. Initially, Kilburn specialised in portraits colour-tinted by the French miniaturist Léon Mansion (André Léon Larue) who had provided the same service to Antoine Claudet, one the earliest commercial photographers in Britain.²⁶ Figure 4, a portrait of Prince Albert taken in 1848, is a good example of Kilburn and Mansion’s collaborative work. Securing Royal patronage so quickly likely was of great benefit to Kilburn’s early career and, ultimately, his clients included the renowned Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, prominent politicians such as Richard Cobden and Benjamin Disraeli, and other famous Victorians such as Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens.²⁷ William’s elder brother Douglas (1811–71) also became a pioneer photographer in the Australian colonies, commencing operations in Melbourne soon after William opened his first London studio.²⁸ Later operating from 222 Regent Street, in 1861 William was still styling himself ‘Photographer to the Queen’ but he also had other business interests and, by the end of the decade, he had retired to the Isle of Wight where he died in 1891.²⁹

Figure 4: William Edward Kilburn, Portrait of Prince Albert, 1848. Source: Royal Collection Trust.

Given that Victoria, Albert and their children variously sat for Kilburn a number of times between 1847 and about 1852, why did this relationship come to an end? A speculative answer lies in the Queen’s increasingly ambivalent (and even somewhat troubled) attitude to being photographed by the early 1850s. Kilburn first photographed the Royal family at Buckingham Palace on 22 April 1847.³⁰ Despite utilising the Palace green house to make the most of a clear Spring day, he was unable to successfully capture Victoria and Albert’s relatively young children; on the other hand, Victoria found her likeness ‘very successful’ and, a few months later. Kilburn claimed to have been appointed ‘Photographist to Her Majesty and His Royal Highness Prince Albert’.³¹ By early 1852, however, Victoria had become overtly self-conscious about her appearance, describing her likeness in one Kilburn family portrait taken at Windsor Castle in February 1852 as ‘horrid’ (as can be seen from the surviving Daguerreotype, she also seems to have erased her face from the offending image).³² Further, in two roughly contemporaneous Kilburn portraits, also of the monarch and her five eldest children, Victoria completely obscured her face in a most unconventional manner by posing in profile while wearing a bonnet. The Queen’s plainly unsettled relationship with the camera c. 1852 perhaps explains why Kilburn seems to have disappeared from Royal orbit at about this time.

Composition and Content

When the Daguerreotype process was introduced to the public in 1839 it required excessively long exposure times that precluded even controlled studio portraiture; however, chemical processing innovations by various early photographers in Europe and the USA soon reduced exposure times substantially and made commercial studio portraiture viable from 1840.³³ Despite being complex—and potentially very hazardous—the Daguerreotype process was used by the majority of early professional photographers and, by 1848, William Kilburn was able to utilise the maturing technology to capture the large outdoor demonstration with surprising clarity. However, there is also some obvious ghosting of moving detail in both the Chartist images (suggesting that exposures of a couple of seconds or so were required on the day). Although very little documentary evidence appears to have survived in relation to the capture of Kilburn’s Chartist photographs, considerable planning and preparation likely were required to execute them so successfully.

Both Daguerreotypes are standard half plates (11 by 15 cm) but also are quite detailed (particularly under magnification, a characteristic of the form). The rear of Figure 2 is inscribed ‘Great Chartist Meeting at Kennington April 10, 1848’ and ‘Taken from nature’ (the adjunct intimating the extraordinary technical achievement represented by both photographs). When examining Daguerreotypes it’s important to note that most (including Kilburn’s Chartist photographs) are laterally reversed media. The composite landscape image of Figures 1 and 2 below (Figure 5) has also been digitally reversed to give a more natural perspective of the total panorama Kilburn captured at Kennington, looking east from near the Common’s western boundary.

Figure 5: Composite and laterally reversed image of Kilburn’s Chartist photographs.

Both photographs are similarly composed but Figure 1 (at left in composite Figure 5) has a more northerly aspect than its twin. Presumably, the main portion of the Chartist crowd features in each; substantial bodies of people also are visible at the Common’s eastern periphery. The similar extent of the crowd boundary at mid frame in the composite image suggests that both photographs were taken at about the same time. Two speech making platforms are evident: one clearly is a horse-drawn wagon (in the middle ground of Figures 1 & 5); the other appears to be either a larger wagon/dray or a hustings located to the southeast of the aforementioned wagon; this larger speaking platform is only captured in Figure 2 (at right in composite Figure 6). David Goodway surmises that the wagon in both images is not the main processional car as the one slogan that is partly visible—‘LABOUR IS THE SOURCE OF ALL WEALTH’—does not tally with quite detailed press accounts of the leaders’ carriage.³⁴ Somewhat surprisingly, however, Goodway doesn’t mention the second larger platform visible in Figure 2.

As noted earlier, another wagon was used to transport to Kennington the large paper ‘bales’ constituting the Chartist petition.³⁵ While this wagon isn’t evident in either photograph, it does appear to be depicted in a woodcut engraving explicitly derived from a Daguerreotype (probably a third image taken by Kilburn, extending his panoramic view further to the north) published in the Illustrated London News on 15 April 1848 (Figure 7 below).³⁶

Engraving of Chartist meeting at Kennington Common 10 April 1848. — Figure 6: The meeting on Kennington Common, *Illustrated London News*, 15 April 1848, p. 239. The petition wagon is pictured at middle left.

It’s interesting to note that one of this newspaper’s most capable early engravers, William Linton, was by 1848 a reasonably prominent Chartist activist.³⁷ The engraver of Figure 6 isn’t identified but, in any case, Linton’s biographer indicates that he had moved on to other work by April 1848.³⁸ If a third photograph was taken its fate is unknown; that said, Kilburn’s relationship with the Illustrated London News continued into the early 1850s, when a series of engravings made after his portraits of various English politicians also were published.³⁹ Given the disputation over the attendance at Kennington (and, more generally, the highly politicised press representation of Chartism), it’s worth noting that the photograph chosen for mass circulation appears to give a somewhat truncated view of the actual extent of the meeting.

Newspaper sources variously state that the Chartist leaders arrived at the centre of the Common between about 11.30 am to midday; if one of the speaking platforms I’ve described is, in fact, the specially fitted out leaders’ car, Kilburn exposed the images between about 11.30 am and 1 pm.⁴⁰ Both photographs clearly were taken from a somewhat elevated position near the Common’s western boundary. While no explicit documentary evidence appears to survive on this point, a first or second-floor window of the Horns Tavern (then located on the northern corner of what are now Kennington Park and Kennington roads) is a likely candidate; Jo Briggs notes that a slightly more southerly location is also possible.⁴¹ The engraving below (Figure 7, made c. 1843), provides a view of both potential locations and their physical relationship to the Common.

Engraving of Kennington Common near Horns Tavern about 1843. — Figure 7: Engraving of the vicinity from which Kilburn’s photographs were taken, looking south from the western boundary of Kennington Common c. 1843. St Marks Kennington is at left and the Horns Tavern at right.

In 1848 Kennington Common was about 20 acres (8 hectares) in extent; in the mid 1850s, partly under Prince Albert’s influence, it was converted into Kennington Park and the area photographed by Kilburn now forms part of the park bounded by Kennington Park Road, Kennington Park Place and St Agnes Place. The map below shows the site of the Horns Tavern and other features captured by Kilburn. Note that few (if any) of the buildings photographed in 1848—including a sulphuric acid factory with the prominent chimney—appear to have survived. Had one done so with a relatively unmodified façade, it may have been possible to calculate Kilburn’s position more precisely by way of mathematical analysis.⁴² As we’ll see below, this point is important when speculating upon Kilburn’s reasons for taking these photographs.

Why Did Kilburn Photograph the Chartists?

Due to a lack of extant documentary evidence we can only speculate upon Kilburn’s motives for taking the Chartist photographs. That said, the widely anticipated (and widely feared) showdown between Chartism and the state would seemingly have offered significant commercial and promotional opportunities for a photographer willing to push the boundaries of the relatively new form. In this context it’s worth remembering that no other British photographer appears to have undertaken a similar experiment—at least successfully—in the entire Daguerreotype era (c. 1840–57). And, in hindsight, Kilburn likely was well rewarded for his efforts. Daguerreotypes are inherently reflective media and were difficult to copy by photographic means in the 1840s. This meant that (for practical purposes) each image was unique and photographers couldn’t expect to generate additional income from the sale of copies.⁴³ On the other hand, the advent in 1842 of Herbert Ingram’s Illustrated London News (and its imitators) provided an avenue for some of the earlier photographers working in England to distribute their work in a new kind of mass media (albeit in relatively low resolution woodcut-engraved form).⁴⁴ Thus in 1848 Kilburn likely received two payments for his Chartist images: one from the Illustrated London News and another from Prince Albert. However, it should be remembered that the Kennington Common photographs did not bring Kilburn to Royal notice—as one notable reference source incorrectly claims.⁴⁵ Rather, Kilburn first photographed the Queen and her family in April 1847—almost a year before the Chartist meeting.⁴⁶

During the turbulent 1790s Kilburn’s grandfather William had been very much opposed to the democratic radicals of his day.⁴⁷ Unfortunately, we don’t know what the photographer thought of the Chartists in 1848. David Wooters suggests that William junior likely was interested in politics given the Chartist photographs and his subsequent portraits of politicians also published in the Illustrated London News.⁴⁸ However, I’ve not come across any explicit evidence of William Kilburn’s politics during the Chartist era. That said, we do have one indicator for his later life. As mentioned earlier, William retired to the Isle of Wight and a poll book which survives for the June 1870 by-election there shows that he voted for the successful Conservative candidate, Alexander Baillie Cochrane (as did his younger brother Frederick, who also lived on the Isle of Wight).⁴⁹ Of course, poll books reflect the fact that voting was then still conducted in public: the secret ballot (a key Chartist demand) largely was implemented in Britain in 1872.

Even before his connection to the Royal family and apparent conservatism in later years is taken into account, in terms of his class, his family’s business connections and his age (29) William Kilburn would have been a very likely candidate to have enrolled as a special constable during the April 1848 crisis.⁵⁰ Tens of thousands of his peers did so in London at this time; regrettably, there doesn’t seem to be any way of exploring this possibility either due to a lack of extant pertinent documentary evidence. Whether he enrolled as a special constable or not, it’s likely that Kilburn required police cooperation to photograph the Chartists. In short, he needed to get above the crowd to do so effectively. Interestingly, the Horns Tavern was closed and requisitioned for public order administration purposes on 10 April: according to the Times it was ‘occupied and exclusively engaged … by the police authorities, military officers, and others interested in the proceedings of the day’.⁵¹ Once again, however, we face the basic problem that no documentary evidence appears to survive in relation to exactly where the photos were captured—or linking Kilburn to the metropolitan police or the large voluntary force raised to meet the Chartist challenge.

Similarly, it’s not clear whether Prince Albert knew of Kilburn’s intentions to record the Chartist meeting; in any event, a few days beforehand the Royal family were removed to the Isle of Wight as part of the government’s defensive measures.⁵² While the lack of additional evidence relating to Kilburn’s Chartist photographs is a little frustrating, the likelihood that he required police cooperation to execute the Kennington Common photographs raises another possible rationale—political surveillance. Jo Briggs briefly discusses this question, noting John Ragg’s observation that during the nineteenth century photography increasingly was used for surveillance purposes.⁵³ The state certainly viewed Chartism as a serious threat to political and social stability in 1848 and, from the beginnings of the movement in the late 1830s, it had been subject to covert surveillance by spies and informants as well as overt legal suppression. This same surveillance network easily foiled the revolutionary ‘Orange Tree Conspiracy’ hatched by a group of militant London Chartists (possibly under the influence of agents provocateurs) in the summer of 1848.⁵⁴

On the whole, however, it’s unlikely that the Chartist photographs were taken with surveillance in mind (at least at the individual level). As Briggs suggests, photographic technology simply was not up to this task so early in its development.⁵⁵ While Kilburn did manage to capture the Chartists without excessive motion blur, very few people in either photograph would seem recognisable. Had early rain not cleared into bright midday sun it’s likely that motion blur would have been markedly increased due to the probable need for longer exposures. Kilburn’s photographs may well have been intended as a record of historic events, but the two new technologies successfully deployed by the British state for security purposes in the Chartist era were the burgeoning railway network and the electric telegraph. Railways enabled military forces to be posted to ‘troubled’ districts much more rapidly than before while the recently established private telegraph network was commandeered by the state during the political crisis of early April 1848.⁵⁶ In sum, commercial and promotional opportunities likely spurred William Kilburn to Kennington Common on 10 April 1848.

Was Insurrection Intended on 10 April 1848?

Due to the considerable array of military and police force marshalled in London,⁵⁷ it’s likely that considerable violence would have ensued had the massed Chartist body tried to force their way across the Thames to the parliamentary precinct.⁵⁸ A considerable police/military force was also present near Kennington Common (but largely kept out of sight).⁵⁹ Despite its emphasis upon universal male suffrage, one of the features of early Chartism in the late 1830s had been the participation of women—hundreds of local female radical associations sprang up in these years.⁶⁰ But when the 1848 Chartist petition hastily was scrutinised by parliament, the Tory MP William Cripps claimed that only about 8% of a random sample of signatures were female.⁶¹ In fact, it’s clear that by 1848 the active participation by women had declined quite markedly.⁶² In an earlier scholarly reference to the Kennington photographs the eminent historian of Chartism Dorothy Thompson noted that few women are visible in the crowd.⁶³ ‘There were not among them 100 women’, said the London Standard at the time.⁶⁴ Some women certainly are visible near the Common’s western fence (in the foreground of both photographs); however, their peripheral position tends to suggest that they were spectators rather than participants.

While very few women seem visible in the crowd on the Common proper, if you look closely at the wagon/speaking platform prominent in both photographs (Figure 8) some rather surprising detail comes into focus: a number of women and quite young girls (at least six, identifiable by their bonnets and dresses) were on board.

Excerpt of William Kilburn Daguerreotype of Chartist meeting at Kennington Common 10 April 1848. — Figure 8: Detail of wagon (from Figure 1).

Very likely, these were family members of prominent Chartist leaders. Women disproportionately were injured by cavalry, infantry and police during the Peterloo Massacre at Manchester in 1819⁶⁵ and over twenty Chartists were killed in an insurrectionary clash with the military at Newport in late 1839.⁶⁶ By 1848, large Chartist crowds in London were associated with the supposed metropolitan criminal underclass and sporadic looting and rioting (as had occurred in Glasgow and London in March of that year).⁶⁷ The presence of women and girls (in particular) on the wagon is thus quite surprising: as a focal point of a potentially insurrectionary massed body, this particular space might be expected to have been an exclusively masculine (and adult) domain? Overall, this visual evidence tends to support the conclusion that the Chartist leadership did not expect violence to erupt on 10 April.

The First Photographs of a Crowd?

In 1982 David Goodway stated that Kilburn’s Chartist images were ‘the earliest known crowd photographs’.⁶⁸ Likewise, in 2000 I claimed that they were ‘perhaps the first photographs ever taken of a large crowd’.⁶⁹ More recently, Jo Briggs has also suggested that Kilburn’s images were ‘perhaps the first ever photographs of a crowd’.⁷⁰ However, it’s now clear that Kilburn’s Chartist images were not, in fact, unprecedented. To the contrary, very occasional photographs of outdoor religious and military events were made in continental Europe from 1841. These innovative uses of the new medium took advantage of processing refinements that reduced exposure requirements and, probably, optical improvements (particularly the availability from 1840 of a relatively fast [or bright] Vöightlander lens designed by the mathematician Josef Petzval). For example, a public procession was photographed by Johann and Josef Natterer in Vienna in 1841.⁷¹ Similarly, Philibert-Joseph Girault de Prangey’s 1841 Daguerreotype of a military review at the Tuileries Palace in Paris (Figure 9 below, held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France) depicts a small crowd and predates Kilburn’s Chartist images by quite a few years.⁷²

Figure 9: Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Tuileries, c. 1841. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

A skilled amateur from an aristocratic background, Girault de Prangey’s substantial catalogue of pioneering photographic work in Europe and the Middle East in the 1840s also was virtually forgotten until the late twentieth century. This image is one of a number of views of the Tuileries Palace believed to originate in 1841, prior to Girault de Prangey’s extended photographic travels outside France (primarily undertaken 1842–45).⁷³ Like Kilburn’s Chartist photographs, it was exposed from a somewhat elevated position, in this case probably the Hôtel de Nantes, a building then situated near the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel.⁷⁴

While the pictured Tuileries crowd is substantially smaller and does not have the physical immediacy or detail of Kilburn’s Chartist images, the military formation and its audience does seem surprisingly stable for such an early a photograph. In fact, both photographers’ work is remarkable given the acute technical problems social subjects presented in non-controlled environments in the 1840s. To my mind, Kilburn’s work primarily is significant for capturing a mass political protest so early in the history of photography (the question of whether the Kennington images were the first of a crowd ultimately seems to miss the point in some respects). Perhaps one of the reasons why Kilburn’s Chartist photographs have not been studied in the detail they deserve is that so little primary evidence directly related to them has survived. Moreover, a close comparison of the Daguerreotypes with detailed newspaper accounts of the Chartist meeting at Kennington actually raises a number of conundrums for the historian. One of these is whether the wagon featured in both images was, in fact, the one used by O’Connor and other leaders for their speeches. However, the presence of women and young girls on this obviously prominent vehicle does suggest that the Chartist leadership had nothing more that a ‘moral force’ demonstration in mind on 10 April 1848.