John Knox Home Crawford

Postcard Portrait

John Knox Home Crawford was based at  Portobello, 1898 to 1921 1915. (See Reply 1 below).

He had studios at:

Thank you to Archie Foley, Portobello for pointing out that the houses in Portobello High Street were re-numbered in 1900, so No 137 in the table above is almost certainly the same building as No 223.

The trade directories show this as being the address of Elsmere Studio 1912 and 1925. 

The post cards portrait above is from Elsmere Studio 

Postcard View

J K Home Crawford appears to have published most of his postcards under his own name, some printed in Saxony.  However, the view of Portobello from Joppa was published as Wrench Series, No. 8324.

Please click on the image below to see more views of Joppa:

©

 Portobello Rowing Club

A book of Portobello post cards, by Archie L Foley, includes a photograph of the senior crew of Portobello Rowing Club, standing outside their Boat House at Portobello [Portobello in old picture postcards  -  volume 1]

It shows the four members of the senior crew and their cox in 1893.  One of the members is J K H Crawford.

Reply

1.

Graham Hogg

Edinburgh

Thank you to Graham Hogg for providing more information that he has discovered about the studios of Marshall Wane and JK Home Crawford, the company that took over the business of Marshall Wane.

Graham wrote:

Studios

Marshall Wane

and

John Knox Home Crawford
 

"I did some searching in the Scotsman Digital Archive a few weeks ago and came up with the following, which probably needs checking by someone more competent than me:

-  Marshall Wane was originally from the Isle of Man;

-  He died in Glasgow on 14 Dec. 1903, having moved there some time between 1902 and 1903, which would imply that he retired from the business then, perhaps to ill-health/old age;

-  His son Charles M. Wane was also a photographer and I assume he took over the business;

- In 1907 the business was put up for sale - i.e. the photographic portrait business and the ‘landscape business’ (landscapes for postcards?).

-  The business was bought by JK (John Knox) Home Crawford in 1907.  Crawford already had a studio at 130 Princes Street which is where Marshall Wane & Co. relocated to after the purchase.  JK Home Crawford also owned a studio in Portobello, which was damaged by fire in 1905;

-  In February 1916, JK Home Crawford's Princes Street and Portobello studios and equipment were put up for sale, as well as a collection of 60,000-70,000 negatives. (I wonder what happened to them!) 

I don’t think there could have been much interest as there had to be an auction later that year of Crawford’s assets. Crawford had presumably gone bankrupt as there was a meeting of his creditors in January 1917 (EdinPhoto, however, has Home Crawford working in Portobello until 1921 ) **

Graham Hogg, National Library of Scotland:  April 2, 2012

Correction

** Thank you, Graham,  for pointing that out.  I took the details from Slaters' Directories for 1903, 1907, 1911, 1915 and 1921.  (Slater's directory is only published once every few years.)  However, based on your research above, I think the entry in the 1921 directory must have been based on out of date information.  So, I've now made this change to the studio list in the EdinPhoto web site

 Peter Stubbs, Edinburgh:  April 6, 2012

J K H Crawford  -  Questions