"Kate's Picture: An Exciting Scene in an Eastern District Photograph Gallery"

Katie Malone was a 20 year old servant girl living at 80 ½ Division Avenue, Brooklyn, in the spring of 1883. Apparently overrun with requests for “tintypes” by her admirers, she decided to get her picture taken since the weather was so fine. One had to wait for a clear sunny day so that the lighting would be advantageous.

She took her older sister Delia along for company, and dressed to the nines, she headed to the photographer’s. It seems that they didn’t have a lot of money, or as the Eagle reporter put it (with barely disguised glee) “the financial question received careful consideration.” In other words, they weren’t going to Palmer’s studio at 481 Fulton, where one could purchase photograph albums and scrap book albums in “cloth, leather and plush,” picture frames in “gold, plush and velvet,” in which you would place your “Hand Colored Artotype Engravings,” for $6.50 and upwards - that was a lot of money. They wanted to spend fifty cents or so.

So the Malone sisters decided to patronize the studio of “Mr. Lemuel S. Hicks, of No. 191 Grand street…Mr. Hicks is a well known photographer in the Eastern District, where he has taken cheap pictures for thirty years.” (The former towns of Williamsburgh and Bushwick had become the Eastern District of Brooklyn in 1855).

Katie was determined to get her money’s worth and she “removed her wraps, brushed her flowing locks of saffron colored hair and arranged her bows and ribbons with consummate skill.”
Lemuel asked if she wanted to sit or stand. Katie said she would stand. “But that pose will not make you look well in the picture, it is too awkward,” Lemuel said. Katie was looking “very stiff and rigid,” according to the Eagle (whose coverage mocks both parties pretty equally).

“I think it will answer,” said Katie. “I wish to pose as Mary Anderson in ‘Galatea.’” This was W.S. Gilbert’s play Pygmalion and Galatea, which the American stage actress Mary Anderson (1859-1940) had starred in, on a European tour, in that very year (1883). She was blond and handsome and beloved by the public, who called her “Our Mary.” Mary Anderson is the lady in the above lefthand photo, playing the role of Parthenia in a different, equally dramatic, play.

Lemuel did not think much of this idea at all, and “mildly suggested that she had neither the form nor features of Miss Anderson, but said he would comply with her request but could not promise to make a good picture.” This is not a good beginning.

Sure enough, the first photograph was so awful that Katie threw it on the floor. “Try me again,” she commanded. She then “assumed the pose of Genevieve Ward in ‘Forget Me Not.’” She was referring to Dame Genevieve Ward (1837-1922), a British-American actress and soprano. You can see from her photograph (on the righthand side, above) that Miss Malone was a frustrated drama queen. The heroine of Forget-Me-Not as played by Miss Ward (writes the New York Times in 1881) was “beautiful and fascinating - a woman of evil in the guise of charming suavity.”

Kate struck a pose that she felt was beautiful, fascinating, and full of charming suavity. Lemuel thought that her Genevieve Ward impression was as bad as her Mary Anderson, and “said she had better sit down like ordinary people and not soar after the unattainable.”

They argued for awhile. Lemuel at last gave in and took another photograph, “which was even more objectionable than the first.” The Eagle notes that by now “the subject was very much disgusted with the whole proceedings, and the artist was raving mad.”

The last time we met Lemuel he was raving mad at Lydia, and he did a number on the furniture. So we know that this is not going to end well.

I am going to let the Eagle tell what happened next. This part of the newspaper story is entitled “Fun in a Photograph Gallery”:

Miss Kate demanded another picture. Mr. Hicks demanded fifty cents. The young lady refused to pay the tenth part of one mill for the alleged libellous photograph. The artist said she was a “homely old thing,” and no means known to the art could ever make a good looking woman of her. Remarks of this kind were indulged in to a considerable extent when Mr. Hicks, taking a stand at the door, intimated that he would have 50 cents or her life.

At this point the stories diverge. Katie and her sister Delia (who at this time came to her aid) said that Lemuel Hicks “took Kate by the hair of the head, struck her on the forehead and then threw her on the floor. He then grabbed two muffs, three pocket handkerchiefs, a pair of gloves, two letters and a pocketbook containing $3 in money, articles which belonged to the ladies and were on the sofa, and took them away, saying, ‘I am more willing to kill you than give back your things.’”

Lemuel, of course, said it wasn’t like that at all. He said that when Kate demanded more photos, he said he couldn’t oblige as he “had already used up more raw materials than the price of the picture.” Then he said Katie and Delia were about ready to leave and he said, no, they had to pay him first. After which, said Lemuel,

“…Kate got excited and ran into me, striking me in the chest with her head. I pushed her away and both girls ran out of the gallery crying ‘Police!’ They left their property behind them and have not since called for it.”

Lemuel supposedly had a witness, a Miss Eliza Beach of 304 Leonard street (just down the block from Lemuel’s house at 313 Leonard) who said she was there and saw everything, and it was exactly as Lemuel said. She was there taking care of his baby, Eliza Beach said. That would most likely have been Frank Hicks, born August 16, 1882 (and therefore in March 1883, about 7 months old), youngest of Lemuel’s children with Lydia’s successor, his second wife Susannah Jane Anderson.

Lemuel Hicks was arrested on charges of assault and battery (Katie’s charge) as well as larceny (Delia‘s charge). The court was told that the things all belonged to Delia and had a total worth of $15. Lemuel pleaded not guilty to everything.

After adjourning the case for 12 days - perhaps to rest his head - the judge dismissed the case but charged Lemuel $5. Lemuel is referred to in the later article as “the prisoner” so I guess he was in the Raymond Street Jail for a couple of weeks; it was a notorious place, built in 1879. William Lee Younger writes in Old Brooklyn In Early Photographs 1865-1929, that it was “criticized for its barbaric conditions” almost from the moment it opened, but unbelievably enough, remained in use until 1963. Lemuel must have been relieved to get out of there, and hopping mad too.

The judge told Katie and Delia to go get their things from the gallery at 191 Grand (I wouldn’t have wanted to go back, if I had been one of them). Lemuel said “If they don’t find all the money they claim to have lost they mustn’t blame me…for they are mistaken when they say there was $3 in the pocketbook.”

Lemuel paid the $5 fine (I wonder if he had taken any of the Malones’ money to pay it?) and was heard to mutter on his way out, “The next time any girls come into my gallery for their picture you may just bet your bottom dollar I will make them pay in advance.”

And to think that the Malones could have gone two doors down, to 195 Grand, and sat for Lydia instead.

Sources:

Younger, William Lee. Old Brooklyn In Early Photographs, 1865-1929 (New York: Dover, 1978), p. 38.

“A Photographer In Trouble: An Eastern District Artist‘s Method of Taking Pay for Poor Pictures,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 17, 1883, p. 4.

“Kate’s Picture: An Exciting Scene in an Eastern District Photograph Gallery,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 29, 1883, p. 4.

Advertisement for Palmer’s Photographic Studio, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 21, 1883, p. 3.

http://famousamericans.net/genevieveward/

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdfres=9C07E5DE133FEE3ABC4951DFB566838A699FDE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_and_Galatea

And many thanks as always to the NYPL Digital Gallery for the photographs of Mary Anderson and Genevieve Ward.

Note: I tried to find the Malone sisters and Eliza Beach in the 1882-3 Lain's Brooklyn City Directory, with no success; ditto with the 1880 census. But if I do find them, I'll edit this to reflect that.