'The Chemist'
Frederick Scott Archer (1814 - 1857)
“Frederick Scott Archer was a great pioneer, whose invention of the wet collodion process revolutionized the Art of Photography, but who nevertheless died unrecognized and in virtual poverty.”
Unrecognized
Frederick Scott Archer (FSA) was without doubt one of the great pioneers of early photography, whose name should without doubt stand near to, if not alongside the likes of Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot. The publication of his discovery in 1851 of the so called wet collodion process revolutionized photography, making it easier to obtain images with exposures of a few seconds only, and which also enabled multiple positive copies to be quickly made from the same glass negative plate; unlike the Daguerreotype process which produced a one off positive image on a silvered copper plate which could not be readily replicated. The Wet Collodion Plate was the preferred photographic process from its introduction in the early 1850s until the advent of the mass produced Dry Gelatin Plate in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
Yet at the time of his death in 1857, although well respected by his photographic colleagues, he was largely unrecognised by the rest of the public at large; certainly unrewarded and definitely in impoverished circumstances. Even today he is not as well known as the other early photographic pioneers. The 150th Anniversary of his death in 2007 came and went largely unnoticed by the world, despite ample opportunity in the years since his death for historians to reassess his contribution to the development of photography.
Up until now there has been no detailed biography of Frederick Scott Archer. What has been written to date is vague, almost always repeating the same information (often incorrect), without any documentary or physical evidence to support it. I shall attempt to rectify this unfortunate and unforgivable situation – Frederick Scott Archer deserves to be heard. History owes it to him.
“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) from his speech ‘Pro Publio Sestio’
Frederick Scott Archer of Hertford
It is generally believed that Frederick Scott Archer was born in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire around 1813; the son of a Butcher.
However there is no extant documentary or other evidence to support this view. The 1841 Census record relating to Frederick Scott Archer states somewhat confusingly that he was born in Scotland; whilst the 1851 Census states that he was born in Hertford, Hertfordshire around 1814. The family headstone in Kensal Green Cemetery adds weight to the theory that he actually came from Hertford, stating that his father was ‘THOs ARCHER FORMERLY of HERTFORD ...’.
No record of a Thomas Archer butcher of Bishops Stortford can be found in the surviving documents of the Hertfordshire Archive and Local Studies Office (HALSO), at Hertford. However records relating to Thomas Archer, Butcher of Hertford and his ancestors are to be found in abundance at the HALSO.
Furthermore, Frederick Scott Archer, his brother James and his sister Sarah were all baptized in All Saints Church, Hertford on the same day – 21st April 1822. The only certain connection of Frederick Scott Archer to Bishops Stortford is that his wife Frances Garrett Machin was born there, the daughter of Nathaniel Smith Machin, an auctioneer of Bishops Stortford and King Street, Covent Garden, London. Even the date of his death is often given incorrectly as 2nd May 1857; his death certificate clearly shows he died a day earlier on the 1st May 1857.
‘The Archers of Hertfordshire’
He was born on the 30th August 1814 probably at his father’s premises in Bull Plain, Hertford or at the family’s manor house at Priory Farm, Hertford on the Balls Park Estate of Lord John Townshend; and not at Bishops Stortford contrary to the popular belief stated in all other biographies. At the time of his birth the family’s fortunes were on the slide.
Priory Farm, Hertford, Hertfordshire, possible birthplace of Frederick Scott Archer
His father Thomas Archer was descended from a long line of Butchers and Farmers in Hertford and the neighbouring parishes of Buntingford and Westmill, and previously from the market town of Saffron Walden in Essex. When FSA was born his grandfather Thomas Wright Archer was the tenant at Priory Farm which he rented from the Lord of the Manor, Lord John Townshend. On his death in 1817, the tenancy of Priory Farm passed to his son Thomas Archer along with a thriving butchery business, with the meat from the livestock he reared at Priory Farm.
When Frederick was a young boy his father’s business began to fail. In the Hertford Chronicle edition of the 20th June 1820 an advertisement appeared asking for the creditors of Thomas Archer, a bankrupt butcher of Hertford to come forward. Shortly afterwards on the 8th August, the same newspaper was advertising the sale of live and dead farming stock formerly belong to Thomas Archer. A meeting of creditors followed on the 13th February 1821 and the ultimate shame a trial at the Hertford Assizes on the 23rd July 1822.
At this trial in which Thomas Archer did not appear having apparently fled the town, his creditors were in dispute with the assignees of the bankrupt butcher’s estate over ownership of certain items of farming stock. It was alleged but not proved that Thomas Archer knew he was to become bankrupt and sold the farming stock to his assignees before disappearing.
It was not long afterwards that Thomas died, leaving Frederick and his siblings orphans. His mother, Elizabeth had died earlier in 1817. For a short while they were brought up by relatives, probably by one of his many aunts and uncles that lived in the nearby villages of Westmill and Buntingford (FSA’s Great Grandfather, James Archer of Buntingford, had at least 18 children!).
‘To London and India’
The Archer orphans did not spend long with their relatives, and all went their separate ways. Frederick, his sister Sarah and his brother James left Hertfordshire to seek their future in London. Henry Thomas Archer the eldest son moved to London and set up practice as a Solicitor, whilst his sister Fanny, lived in Bishops Stortford in the last years of her life and died there in 1891. Frederick’s other brother George, initially apprenticed to his father, joined the Army in 1832 and became a trooper in the 11th Hussars Cavalry Regiment, and spent a number of years in Cawnpore, India. He then went onto to take part in and survive the infamous ‘Charge of the Light’ Brigade’ at Balaclava on the 25th October 1854!
Frederick arrived in London sometime after 1822 (the exact date is as yet unknown), where he initially became an apprentice to Benjamin Massey – a bullion dealer, goldsmith, silversmith and coin dealer of 116 Leadenhall Street in the city’s ‘square mile’.
It was during his time at Leadenhall Street that Frederick began to realize what he wanted to be and who he wanted to become. Benjamin Massey originally a native of Norwich, Norfolk had set up in business in the city some 15 years or so before Frederick Scott Archer came to London. By the time FSA became his apprentice his business was thriving – dealing in every kind of precious jewellery – diamonds, pearls, watches, gold, silver and antique coins.
Here the young Archer was enthralled by all that he saw and became fascinated with coins and in particular the representations of the sculptured heads that appeared on them depicting the Kings and Queens of Europe, the Tsars of Russia and all the other rulers of kingdoms far away. He became an expert in numismatics and regularly gave appraisals to customers who brought both antique and modern coins in for valuation. Benjamin Massey had implicit confidence and trust in his young apprentice, as Archer’s widow would later testify:
“Otherwise Mr. Archer’s career was a singular one: losing his parents in childhood, he lived in a world of his own; I think you know he was apprenticed to a bullion dealer in the city, where the most beautiful antique gems and coins of all nations being constantly before him, gave him a desire to model the figures, and led him to the study of numismatics.
He worked so hard at nights at these pursuits that his master gave up the last two years of his time to save his life. He only requested him to be on the premises, on account of his extreme confidence in him.”
The above extract gives great insight into the direction in which FSA’s career was to develop. It was through his love of coins that he began his work as a Sculptor.
Sculptures
During his Apprenticeship, Frederick Scott Archer’s knowledge of coins and his talent in sculpting the figures he found on them came to the attention of Edward Hawkins, the keeper of coins, medals, prints and drawings at the British Museum. On Hawkins’s recommendation, FSA began attending classes in Art and Sculpture, at the prestigious Royal Academy Schools (RA). It was here that a learnt to become a proficient if not exceptional Sculptor.
From 1836 until 1851 Archer exhibited numerous works in sculpture at the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy, then held in Somerset House in the Strand. These were mainly busts of well-known people such as the musician Sir George Smart (1839): the Dean of Manchester (1848): the Marquees of Northampton(1850); as well as portrait medallions of the engineer Sir Isambard Marc Brunel (1841,1842) and miscellaneous narrative historical subjects, Falling Angels (1836) and ‘A Young Briton Receiving Instruction’ (1848).
His best known sculptures were those of ‘Alfred the Great with the Book of Common Law’ which was exhibited at Westminster Hall in 1844 to mixed reviews; and his wall monument to Lady Albert Conyngham (1850) for Mickleham Church, Surrey, which was carved in the form of an urn and was illustrated by an engraving in the Gentleman’s Magazine for May that year but was criticized as having been ‘too severely copied from the antique’.
Most of Archer's work in sculpture remains untraced in 2010.
It is not known where FSA lived during his early years in London, it may be as his widow testified that he spent a good deal of his time at 116 Leadenhall Street and may even have slept or resided there. However some time before 1841, FSA moved to No. 3 Cecil Street, near to the Royal Academy offices at Somerset House, in the Strand. This is confirmed by his Census entry for the year 1841.
It was at about this time that Archer met a young lady called Frances Garrett Machin, a Governess to a family living in Welling, near Bexley in Kent. On the 4th January 1844, they married at Bexley in Kent. How Archer met his future wife is not clear, but it is quite likely that they met whilst she visited her father’s auction house the famous Debenham & Machin (later Debenham & Storr) of No. 26 King Street, Covent Garden. This establishment was a well known landmark and meeting place and very close to where Archer was living – everybody knew of Debenham & Machin in Victorian London.
'Perhaps you would like to know what they are selling by auction at Debenham and Storr's this sultry July afternoon. I should very much like to know what they are not selling. Stay, to be just, I do not hear any landed estates or advowsons disposed of: you must go to the Auction Mart in Bartholomew Lane if you wish to be present at such Simoniacal ceremonies; and, furthermore, horses, as you know, are in general sold at Tattersall's, and carriages at Aldridge's repository in St. Martin's Lane. There are even auctioneers, I am told, in the neighbourhood of Wapping and Ratcliffe Highway, who bring lions and tigers, elephants and ourangoutangs, to the hammer ; and, finally, I must acquit the respectable firm, whose thronged sale-room I have edged myself into, of selling by auction such trifling matters as human flesh and blood.
But from a chest of drawers to a box of dominoes, from a fur coat to a silver-mounted horsewhip, from a carpenter's plane to a case of lancets, from a coil of rope to a silk neck-tie, from a dragoon's helmet to a lady's thimble, there seems scarcely an article of furniture or wearing apparel, of use or superfluity, that is not to be found here. Glance behind that counter running down the room, and somewhat similar to the narrow platform in a French douane, where the luggage is deposited to be searched. The porters move about among a heterogeneous assemblage of conflicting articles of merchandise; the clerk who holds aloft the gun or the clock, or the sheaf of umbrellas, or whatever other article is purchased, hands it to the purchaser, when it is knocked down to him, with a confidential wink, if he knows and trusts that customer, with a brief reminder of "money" and an outstretched palm, signifying that a deposit in cash must be forthwith paid in case such customer be not known to him, or, what will sometimes happen, better known than trusted. And high above all is the auctioneer in his pulpit, with his poised hammer, the Jupiter Tonans of the sale.
And such a sale! Before I have been in the room a quarter of an hour, I witness the knocking down of at least twenty dress coats, and as many waistcoats and pairs of trousers, several dozen shirts, a box of silk handkerchiefs, two ditto of gloves, a roll of best Saxony broadcloth, a piece of Genoa velvet, six satin dresses, twelve boxes of artificial flowers, a couple of opera glasses, a set of ivory chessmen, eighteen pairs of patent leather boots - not made up - several complete sets of carpenters' tools, nine church services, richly bound, a carved oak cabinet, a French bedstead, a pair of china vases, a set of harness, three boxes of water colours, eight pairs of stays, a telescope, a box of cigars, an enamel miniature of Napoleon, a theodolite, a bronze candelabrum, a pocket compass, twenty-four double-barrelled fowling-pieces (I quote verbatim and seriatim from the catalogue), a parrot cage, three dozen knives and forks, two plated toast-racks, a Turkey carpet, a fishing-rod, winch, and eelspear, by Cheek, a tent by Benjamin Edgington, two dozen sheepskin coats, warranted from the Crimea, a silver-mounted dressing-case, one of eau-de-Cologne, an uncut copy of Macaulay's "History of England," a cornet-a-piston, a buhl inkstand, an eight-day clock, two pairs of silver grape-scissors, a poonah-painted screen, a papier-mache work-box, an assortment of variegated floss-silk, seven German flutes, an ivory casket, two girandoles for wax candles, an ebony fan, five flat-irons, and an accordion.
There! I am fairly out of breath. The mere perusal of the catalogue is sufficient to give one vertigo…’
Twice Round the Clock, or ‘The Hours of the Day and Night in London’, by George Augustus Sala, 1859
Wet Collodion
Sometime before 1848, FSA moved house again, and in the London Post Directory for that year he listed as living at No. 18 Tavistock Street, near to Covent Garden, and working as an Artist.
London Post Office Directory 1848: Frederick Scott Archer, 18 Tavistock Street, Artist
In the November of 1847 FSA was introduced to William Henry Fox Talbot's Calotype process through his doctor and friend, Dr Hugh Welch Diamond, a keen photographer. At first FSA used the photographic medium as an aid to sculpture to record his finished work and probably to photograph sitters from which he could model busts. He became increasingly fascinated with photography to the exclusion of sculpture and became an early member of the Calotype Club (from 1848 referred to as the Photographic Club).
At that time the two main photographic processes in existence both had limitations. Daguerreotypes were highly detailed but required long exposures and produced a "one off positive image; the Calotype allowed many prints to be made from one negative but these were produced on paper and were therefore not as sharp.
Archer wrote in ‘The Chemist’ (March 1851) that he was unhappy with ‘the imperfections of paper photography’ and of his endeavours to find a negative material possessing ‘fineness of surface, transparency and ease of manipulation.’
From 1848 Archer began experimenting with glass as a negative support. A light-sensitive coating of albumen (egg which on glass had been used by others with some success but the solution was difficult to spread smoothly and was extremely delicate. Archer experimented instead with collodion. This was made from guncotton. a powerful explosive invented in 1846. It is produced by soaking ordinary cotton in nitric and sulphuric acid. This substance was then dissolved in a mixture of alcohol, ether and potassium iodide to produce the syrupy collodion that could be poured onto glass. This plate was then sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate solution and exposed in the camera while still wet.
Archer's findings were first published in the ‘Chemist’ magazine in March 1851 in a communication dated 18th February. The new process was much faster than the Calotype reducing exposure times to seconds rather than minutes. It was also less expensive to produce than the daguerreotype. Importantly it allowed superbly detailed negatives to be made of a quality never before seen. By printing the new negatives on albumen paper new aesthetic possibilities and practical applications for photography were opened up.
Archer gained permission to show a few of his collodion negatives which were displayed to acclaim a few days before the closing of the 1851 Exhibition at the Crystal Palace., Hyde Park. London
That same year an early enthusiast for Archer's process, Robert J. Bingham, photographed the prize winning exhibits of the Paris Industrial Exhibition to produce some 2500 collodion negatives in a comparatively short time. This convinced many other photographers of the practical viability of collodion beyond doubt despite the cumbersome equipment required for exposing the wet plates and developing them in location. Collodion photography gradually displaced most other process and was prevalent from around 1855 to 1881 when it was superseded by the more convenient gelatin dry plates.
The widespread use of the wet collodion process can also be attributed to the fact that Archer did not patent his invention but shared his findings with fellow photographers and published it freely with no profit to him. By contrast, throughout the 1840s and the early 1850s, Talbot maintained a stronghold over the license of his Calotype process and threatened legal action against those who breached his copyright. Martin Silvester Laroche refused to pay a license after Talbot challenged him which led to the court case of Talbot v. Laroche in 1854. In the case Talbot claimed that Archer's wet collodion method, being essentially a negative/positive process like his own, came under his 1843 Calotype patent. The verdict was that although Talbot should be recognized as the inventor of the negative/positive process Archer's discovery was not covered by the Calotype patent and thus free for all to use without restriction.
However, there were suggestions that Archer was not the only inventor to have come up with the idea of using collodion on glass. Bingham claimed that:
'In a pamphlet on photography, which I published in London in January 1850, I mentioned the employment of collodion in photography, and communicated the secret of this discovery to the most distinguished photographers of London.'
Archer did not dispute that others had suggested the possible use of collodion before him but he claimed priority to this publication of its practical application.
In a letter published in Notes & Queries in 1852, Archer responded to a correspondent who ascribed the discovery of the collodion process to Gustave Le Gray:
“I considered my claims to the invention of the collodion process in photography so well recognised, that there could be no necessity for bringing myself forward: seeing, however, that your correspondent G. C., in your number for Dec. 11, ascribes the invention to Mr. Le Gray, in justice to myself I feel obliged to set you right upon the subject. I have Le Gray's work, published in Paris in July, 1851, in which he certainly mentions collodion, amongst a variety of other materials, as an excellent "en collage" for paper. He states what collodion is, as he describes the nature of other materials, but he does not add one word concerning the manner of using it. He does not give the required pro-portions, nor does he allude to its applicability on glass. For this suggestion I gave him full credit in my manual published last March; but I think a great difference should be made between a per-son who merely suggests the possible use of a material, and another who works it out and gives the public the benefit of his labours. Mr. Le Gray never published the process, excepting in the last edition of his work, which you are aware only appeared a few weeks ago. In 1850, I communicated the results of my numerous experiments to my intimate friends, Dr. Diamond, and Mr. Brown of Ewell, when I showed them how collodion might be used. In March, 1851, I published the process in the Chemist: in consequence of which Mr. Fry called upon me, and I derived pleasure from communicating my discovery to those persons interested in the art. Mr. Fry proposed an introduction to Mr. Horne of Newgate Street; and I went to the house of that gentleman several times, and made him familiar with the process. He saw how useful it would become, and the result was an arrangement for him to sell my iodized Collodion; which fact can be proved by the advertisements inserted in various papers during the summer and autumn of that year. For several months he had the exclusive sale of it : for, until he made it himself, I refused to supply other opticians who applied for it. Now there are various maker: but, for many months, I was the only manufacturer of iodized collodion for sale. I was certainly the first who published the mode of using it, and gave the required proportions of the various chemicals necessary in the process. I have been repeatedly advised to advertise it as the Archerotype, but I was unwilling to do so; not because I doubted my right to the name, but I was satisfied with the general recognition of my claims, and left others to name it for me. Had I done it myself at once, the invention at this late hour would not have been claimed by another.”
Archer was usually unassertive about his invention because he was a shy man. His character was described by a contemporary, John Beattie, a Bristol daguerreotypist who visited him in June 1851 to enquire about the collodion process:
“I soon found nothing more was necessary. I met a thin, pale-faced,, over-thoughtful man, possessing a manner so free, unsuspicious, and gentle, that in a few minutes all idea of my being an intruder was entirely removed... He was profuse in description (as if I paid him a fee) and ended with the words, 'Perhaps would like to see me make a picture? Beattie added. But Mr. Archer's did not end there. He wrote me a list of chemicals which I was to procure, and told me to use his name at Horne and Thornethwaite's [the chemists]...”
In 1852, together with his assistant Peter Wickens Fry, Archer also devised the collodion positive, or 'Ambrotype' process which became extremely popular for portraiture. This was a variant of the wet collodion process in which an underexposed negative was coated with black paint, paper or velvet resulting in a unique positive image often presented in a velvet-lined, plastic or leather ease.
Horne, Thornthwaite and Wood, opticians and philosophical instrument makers of Newgate Street, London, arranged with Archer to sell his iodized collodion and took out newspaper advertisements in the autumn of 1851. Despite interest from other opticians and chemists Home and Thornthwaite continued to be the sole distributor of Archer’s Collodion, for several months.
While Archer gained very little commercial success as a photographer he maintained his living working precariously as an inventor. His inventions included a camera inside which the various developing processes for the Calotype could be self-contained (later adapted for Archer's own collodion process by his friend William Brown of Ewell, Surrey) and a variety of types of lenses. He regularly advertised his cameras and lenses in Journals such as Notes & Queries.
Travelling Photographer
In the years which followed the discovery of the Collodion Process, Archer chose to demonstrate its powers himself, by embarking on what must have been a very heavy schedule of travelling to almost every corner of England and Wales in order to take images of well known historic buildings or scenic views.
It is known that he captured a Collodion Glass Positive image of Hever Castle as early as the spring of 1849. Howevever his earliest extant Collodion images date from 1851 when he photographed the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, near Warwick in England. Its red sandstone remains date from the various periods in its history from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. It was depicted by artists of the late 18th and early 19th century such as J.M. W. Turner and his friend Thomas Girtin, who pointed the way to subjects such as these, entirely suited for the new art of photography. Walter Scott found inspiration in the castle for his popular novel Kenilworth (1821). It was a subject and location well known to the Victorian public for its romantic, medieval associations.
Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire: Frederick Scott Archer, Early 1850s
In the 1850s Painters such as John Everett Millais and others of the Pre-Raphaelite school concentrated on creating paintings of historic ruins overgrown with vegetation. The subjects portrayed by these artists of meticulous, finely detailed, lifelike observations of ancient structures were ideally suited to Archer's wet collodion process. His images of Castles such as Kenilworth, Hever and Warwick are among the earliest photographs of ruined buildings - subjects that continued to be a popular with photographers throughout the 1850s and 60s.
Hever Castle, Kent: Frederick Scott Archer; Glass Positive, c1849
Archer exhibited work in the first exhibition devoted exclusively to photography held in 1852 at the Royal Society of Arts. He was active in exhibiting many works at the Photographic Society Exhibitions in Dundee (1854): Glasgow; British Association for the Advancement of Science exhibition (1855); Norwich (1856); Yeovil (1856) and London (1854, 1855, 1856, 1857).
His numerous picturesque landscape and architectural subjects included views of locations as diverse as Surbiton, Ipswich, Warwick Castle, the Cambridge Colleges, Rochester and the cathedral at St. Albans as well as scenes on the Thames, and in Wales. The prices for Archer's prints ranged from £1 to £1 15 shillings. It is interesting to note that, despite his interest in Sculpture and career as a Sculptor, he took very few portraits of people, and certainly none are known to have survived at any rate.
'Sparrow House', Ipswich, Suffolk: Frederick Scott Archer, c1856
During the early 1850’s sometime after 1851, Archer moved with his wife Frances and their three daughters – Alice, Constance and Janet to 105 Great Russell Street. Bloomsbury, London where he set up a business as a Photographer. It was here that he published a full account of his invention in a ‘Manual of the Collodion Photographic Process’ in two now rare editions, printed in 1852 and 1854.
In 1855 he devised a technique for stripping off the collodion image and transferring this to other supports such as cloth and leather for which he was granted British patent number 1914.
Penniless
Despite his significant contribution to photography Archer died in poverty aged 44, at 105 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury on the 1st May 1857. He was buried in the family plot at Kensal Green Cemetery. London. His death certificate gives the cause of death as 'Cystic Disease of the Liver', as revealed by a post mortem which carried out; and that he had been suffering from it for some 11 weeks. This is a little strange given that 'Cystic Disease of the Liver' is not normally a fatal disease and one wonders whether Frederick's use of extremely toxic chemicals such as Mercuric Chloride played any part in his demise.
The Journal of the Photographic Society in their edition of 21st May 1857 issued the following short note:
“Another victim has been added to the long catalogue of martyrs of science. Mr. Frederick Scott Archer, the true architect of all those princely fortunes which are being acquired by the use of his ideas and inventions, after struggling for some time for bare existence has now departed from us ...”
A subscription list, the Archer Fund, was established on 21st May 1857, by his friends Roger Fenton and John Mayall with other members of the Photographic Society of London, for the benefit of his family. This was followed shortly afterwards by the setting up of a formal Archer Testimonial committee under the chairmanship of the architect, Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt and the surgeon Jabez Hogg as its secretary; which met for the first time on the 8th June 1857.
Archer’s widow, Frances Garrett Machin, died the following year on the 21st April 1858 at 'Alma Cottage' in the Hockerill District of Bishops Stortford, the town of her birth. The subscription was closed in August 1859 with just £767 collected. His three children were granted a pension of £50 from the Civil List due to their father's photographic discovery, which was noted had saved some £30,000 in the production of Ordnance Survey maps alone.
The report of the Archer Testimonial Committee published in the July of 1858, made the following observation:
“When admiring the magnificent photographic prints which are now to be seen in almost every part of the civilised world, an involuntary sense of gratitude towards the discoverer of the collodion process must be experienced, and it cannot but be felt how much the world is indebted to Mr. Archer for having placed at its command the means by which such beautiful objects are presented. How many thousands amongst those who owe their means of subsistence to this process must have experienced such a feeling of gratitude? It is upon such considerations that the public have been, and still are, invited to assist in securing for the orphan children of the late Mr. Archer some fitting appreciation of the service which he rendered to science art, his country—nay, to the whole world.”
The committee went onto to mention the contribution Archer’s Collodion process had on Astrophotography, when it said in its final report:
‘Mr. Warren De la Rue exhibited to the Astronomical Society, November, 1857, photographs of the moon and Jupiter, taken by the collodion process in five seconds, of which the Astronomer Royal (Sir George Airy) said,
'that a step of very great importance had been made, and that, either as regards the self delineation of clusters of stars, nebulae, and planets, or the self-registration of observations, it is impossible at present to estimate the value.'
Even the famous satirical Punch Magazine was moved by Frederick Scott Archer’s death and wrote in its edition of 13th June 1857:
To the Sons of the Sun (Punch Magazine, 13th June 1857)
"The inventor of Collodion has died, leaving his invention, unpatented, to enrich thousands, and his family unapportioned, to the battle of life. Now, one expects a photographer to be almost as sensitive as the Collodion to which Mr. Scott Archer helped him. A deposit of silver is wanted (gold will do) and certain faces, now in the dark chamber, will light up wonderfully, with an effect never before equalled by photography. A respectable ancient writes that the statue of Fortitude was the only one admitted to the Temple of the Sun. Instead whereof, do you, photographers, set up Gratitude in your little glass temples of the sun, and sacrifice, according to your means, in memory of the benefactor who gave you the deity for a household god. Now, answers must not be Negatives.”
Archer's photographs remain scarce today, despite the fact that he exhibited some 123 wet collodion photographs at various exhibitions in the years 1852 to 1857. The Royal Photographic Society collection contains thirty three albumen photographs including an album of the Kenilworth Castle views.
Also existing are some early experimental collodion positives printed on glass, cloth and leather, a wet collodion plate camera from 1852 and a collodion positive portrait of Archer (1855) by Robert Cade. A view of Sparrow's House, Ipswich was purchased in 1856 from the London Photographic Society Exhibition of that year by Henry Cole, the first director of the South Kensington, later Victoria and Albert Museum. London and remains in that collection.
Footnote:
Of the three Archer children, it is known that at the time of the 1861 Census they were all pupils attending a private school at No. 14 Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington.
The eldest Alice Archer died aged 18 in 1863 at the Vicarage in Saintfield, County Down, Northern Ireland, whilst staying with her Aunt Eliza Debenham Machin who had married in 1844 the Reverend George Edmundson, the vicar of the parish of Saintfield.
Constance Archer died eleven years later in 1874 whilst living in Paris.
Janet Archer however lived a full life. She trained as a Heraldic Artist and never married, eventually dying at the age of 89 at Oxhey, near Watford, Hertfordshire, England.
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