Lincoln’s Inn <1>
1 May 1857
My dear Sir
Circes has prevented me from meeting Mr Loxley <2> until to day – but at last we have discussed the subject – and I have stated to him Your views [according to Your last instructions]
Mr Loxley’s statement is that his Clients are Men of substance tho’ in respect of this Company <3> there has been already a severe loss – [in all of about £4000] and that they are in chancery <4> with Mr Dallas <5> from whom they seek to dissociate themselves but who denies their right to do so under the terms of the partnership deed – The case has already been before V. C. Wood <6> & it stands for further argument for the 18th inst.
It would seem their present object is to get rid of Dallas and to reform the Company which they are advised they can do – & then to recommence operations their movements being now reduced to the lowest scale of expenditure, merely to keep in existence –
It is their object to treat for an accomodation – by having an exclusive License <7> on condition of augmenting the per Centage as the Sales encrease and on each sub license granted by them, but to pay at present a small per centgecentage [the real profits to the present time on the Sales not having exceeded £120]
Mr Loxley thought 5 per Cent <8> too high on the gross sales tho’ he did not object to that principle – he took a note of Your [illegible word] as to the chrome gelatine Plates Photogs and metal Plates –
You will be good enough to let me know Your feeling as to this suggestion of the Exclusive License – I see no objection to it if an adequate portion of addl Royalty be made – if You agree – I will as the next step send the Drt of a proposal to Loxley and see how he alters it – first howr submitting the same to You
Ever Yours faithfully
J. H Bolton
Notes:
1. One of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar. Bolton had his chambers [lawyer’s offices and, at the time, living-quarters also] there.
2. Of Fry and Loxley, solicitors for the company. The other partner, Peter Wickens Fry, had been a prominent opponent of Talbot’s photographic patents.
3.The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company) was based on the work of Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor and former Manager of the Imperial Printing Establishment in Vienna. Located in Holloway Road, Islington, London, from 1856-1857, Pretsch took over as manager and Roger Fenton (1819–1869), photographer & lawyer, was a partner and their chief photographer. Starting in late 1856, they published a serial portfolio, Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, illustratated with photogalvanographs derived from several photographer's works. Photogalvanography was uncomfortably closely based on elements of WHFT’s patented 1852 Photographic Engraving but, unlike Talbot, the plates were heavily retouched by hand. Compounding the legal objections of Talbot, their former manager, Duncan Campbell Dallas, set up a competing company to produce the Dallastype. The company collapsed and near the end of 1860 Pretsch, out of money, allowed his patent to lapse. A public appeal was launched in 1861 to assist him but he returned to Vienna in 1863 in ill health, going back to the Imperial Printing Establishment, but finally succumbing to cholera.
4. With a lawsuit pending.
5. Duncan Campbell Dallas, manager of the Photogalvanographic Company. See also Doc. No: 08870.
6. William Page Wood, Baron Hatherley (1801–1881), Chancery judge; Vice-Chancellor (1853), Lord Chancellor (1868).
7. To practise Talbot’s process, patented as Improvements in the Art of Engraving, Patent No. 565 of 29 October 1852. For a description of the process, which transferred a photographic image on to an engraving plate coated with gelatine and potassium bichromate, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 273–74.
8. See Doc. No: 07396.
9. Talbot was seeking an injunction against the Photogalvanographic Company as he considered that it was infringing his patent.