Welsh Journals

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Bute Street. With the opening of the second Bute Dock and the Rhymney Railway, this had become the main thoroughfare from the docks. Some 26 premises in Bute Street became occupied by photographic studios at various times before the turn of the century. The establishments not only attracted the seaman on shore leave, but were respectable enough for the local working man to bring his family to be photographed. New housing in the strip of land between Bute Street and the Glamorganshire Canal was occupied by the wealthy shipping agents and the artisans of a developing dockland. Bute Street was certainly a meeting place of the classes. In 1865 Robert Lloyd Beard's 19 year old daughter had married a sorter in the Post Office George Dewsbury Jenks from Kidderminster. She opened her own studio in Herr Goldman's former premises at 280 Bute Street and advertised that she: relies with confidence on the experience she acquired during the time she was in Mr Beard's establishment. The favorite carte de visite she takes in the most finished style of art and in a manner she is certain will give satisfaction. No picture will be allowed to leave her studio that does not reach a high standard of merit and satisfy the most fastidious among her patrons as well as please her friends35 Her father, whose much-reported unhappy marriage culminated in a summons for beating his wife, left her in Butetown and opened a new studio at 6 Duke Street.36 Intense competition caused him to reduce his charges from 6s to 5s for six cartes, and from lls to 9s for a dozen in two positions.37 In the same year William Lewis's Smith Street studio in Crockherbtown was charging 10s for a dozen cartes in two positions, and 12s for them fully coloured. Gentlemen requiring photographs of favourite animals, horses, dogs, etc, or views of their country seats were waited upon with a portable studio.38 To round off Robert Lloyd Beard's story, in July 1868 he married the landlady of the Old Dolphin Inn, Church Street and set up his glasshouse studio on the roof.39 Mr and Mrs Jenks moved their studio to 34 Bute Street and her mother went to live with them under her single name of Susan Jones.40 Robert Lloyd Beard seems to have been no relation of Richard Beard the daguerreotype entrepreneur from Plymouth. Nor, as his advertisements were at pains to insist, was he related to Alfred Lloyd Beard from Burnham on Sea who took over at Lewis's studio in 1865. Alfred Lloyd Beard eagerly shifted to Jacquier's former studio in Angel Street following Jacquier's bankruptcy41 but then moved on to Jenks' old Bute Street premises. Finally, in 1871, he opened a prestigious establishment in the Royal Arcade from which he operated until 1885.