Eason & Co. – A Victorian Photo Studio in Dalston

In 1857 John Eason (1814-1885) went from selling lace and artificial flowers to becoming a portrait photographer, transforming his drapers shop in Westminster into a photo studio. John was likely inspired by the commercial success of other photo studios, as the new technology of the camera and image processing was embraced across society.

John’s first photo studio was not immediately successful and it was closed by 1861, likely due to the high number of photo studios already in Westminster. Hit with financially difficult times, John and his family moved from Marylebone to the less wealthy area of East London, where he then worked as a local preacher for the East End Mission, and as a house and estate agent. At some point in the 1870s, John took up photography again, based at 16 Dalston Lane.

John shared his interest in photography with his two sons Arthur and Henry, and the family ran their photo studio under the name Eason & Co. and also Arthur Eason & Co., at 16 Dalston Lane over two decades (c.1870s-1893). At the age of 18, Arthur was also running a photo studio at 24 Dalston Lane (1875-76) and later, in 1878, he had another studio at 9 Cornhill Road in the City of London.

In the 1850s John Eason was part of a wave of tradesmen who left their established occupations to set up photo studios. The photo studio as a commercial business emerged in the 1840s, however, due to patents and the high cost of image processing materials, it was initially taken up only by wealthy entrepreneurs. They served affluent customers who could afford paying around one guinea (equivalent to £100 today) for a photo sitting.

By 1854, the patents for image processing had expired, and anyone could use the technology to produce photographs without paying a fee. It was also quick and simple to learn how to use the camera. Combined with the fall in costs of equipment, setting up a commercial photo studio became affordable. In 1851, 51 people across England were listed in the national census as professional photographers. By 1861, this number had exploded to 2,534. 

Sitting for a portrait was now affordable for the working and middle classes. They could save up and have photos taken of special occasions such as weddings or full family portraits.

The Eason family was deeply religious, with both John and Henry preaching locally and Arthur traveling abroad as a missionary. Arthur joined the China Inland Mission, travelling through China’s provinces to spread evangelism, around 1881-1887 and again during 1890-1893. During his first mission in Shanghai he married fellow missionary Minnie Southall. In addition to their six children, they adopted three year old May Eason in 1887, who reportedly had been abandoned by her mother and saved by Arthur from drowning. Her name was possibly anglicised by the Eason family.

John Eason had close connections to William and Catherine Booth, who founded the Salvation Army in 1865. Their religiously-motivated mission aimed to support those living in poverty. They set up shelters, soup kitchens and adopted a quasi-military structure and uniform style.

The Eason collection includes several portraits of the Booth family as well as missionaries and delegates working with the Salvation Army. One sitter was Elizabeth Drabble, a committed member who wears an embroidered jersey proclaiming a lifelong commitment to God in her portrait. As a staff captain at training homes in Clapton, Elizabeth would have prepared hundreds of recruits for officer roles in the Salvation Army.

These officers were commissioned to serve and preach in all parts of the world. Wong Ock, Hong Joug and Wing Wong are believed to have been Chinese delegates of the first Salvation Army International Congress (an annual conference) in London in 1886. Wong Ock had been recruited while living in California. He trained in Clapton in 1885 and spent two years preaching across England.

In the later decades of the 1800s, the styles of photographers evolved from sombre to more humorous and surreal. The Easons embraced this, taking memorable and sometimes absurd images that showed the playful side of their sitters.

Many of the Easons’ portraits have lavish sets and costumes, perhaps helped by John’s past career as a draper, in which he would have known where to get fine clothes and materials. Grand sets and props were regularly used by Victorian photographers to evoke importance and elegance. Most of the Easons’ clients were not members of the elite upper classes, but sitters would arrive in their best outfits to help encourage an impression of high rank.

The Easons’ had a variety of sets that helped frame many portraits. A Christmas scene set, used with the Booth family children, was popular with sitters to make cards for friends and families. A nautical theme was considered fashionable at the time, influenced by Queen Victoria’s own son who was photographed in a sailors suit in the 1840s. Many parents brought their sons to photo studios dressed in a sailors suit. To meet this demand, the Easons had a masthead accessory for boys to pose on as well as a painted seascape.

Music hall artists used photo studios to produce advertisements for their shows. Music hall was a performance genre popular in East London through the 1800s, consisting of entertainment shows with comedy, songs and recognisable characters. The Eason studio’s use of sets, props and costumes gave performers the perfect backdrop to promote their acts.

The Great Atroy was a music hall entertainer who had success and has been described as a ‘society juggler’. A great deal of thought and work has gone into making his photograph, both in terms of creating the set and the illusion of a trick actually taking place.

Other sitters are not known to us now but are recognisable as music hall artists because of the characters and costumes that were common for them to wear at the time. American Wild West style shows were extremely popular in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s. Both Jessie Lacey and Mr Penny may have featured on the bills of Wild West shows with ‘trick and fancy rope acts’ and characters such as ‘Buffalo Bill’. They may have been included in an action packed spectacle of cowboys, native Americans, trick shooters and speciality acts.

When John Eason died in 1887, he left the photo studio to his youngest son, Henry. Henry and his wife Rhoda lived at 16 Dalston Lane, running the photo studio while Arthur was away on his religious missions in China. 

After almost two decades as a family business, the photography studio on Dalston Lane finally closed in 1893. Henry and his wife moved to Chigwell and Arthur and family moved to Essex where he continued to work as a photographer. By 1911 Arthur was no longer listed as a photographer but worked as a Chinese translator living in St Pancras in London. In 1914 he emigrated to Canada with his wife Minnie and several of their children. May stayed in England and continued working as a teacher.

In 2000, 117 years after the studio closed, 2,000 glass plates of photographic portraits taken by the Eason family were discovered in an old school building on Wilton Way in Hackney Central and cared for by Bridgit Anderson and Jim Four. Some of the digitised prints were donated to Hackney Museum in 2003. In 2026 the plates were donated to Hackney Archives.