Lincolns Inn <1>
5th Aug 1857
My dear Sir
At length Mr Loxley <2> has broken silence & explained its cause, which has been owing to the dispute of his clients with Mr Dallas <3> now only on the eve of adjustment – the latter withdraws and the property in the Patent <4> remains wholly with the former –
In the mean time they have been consulting Mr Hindmarsh <5> who has composed a long & elaborate opinion favourable of course to his clients & unfavourable to Your claims – Mr Loxley read me his opinion at the same time stating the wish of his clients to come to an arrangement by taking a license for such part of Your invention <6> as may be considered to be Your’s in the use of the bichromate of Potassium with Gelatine – for this they offer to pay £50 per annum so long as they work and in case they should ever work to the extent of a nett profit of £2000 per ann: then the License fees to be doubled –
I have requested him to furnish me with this in writing also an answer seriatim <7> to the proposals and a copy of Mr Hindmarsh[’]s opinion which I do not venture to quote from memory for fear of any inexa[c]tness –
It will be better to await the arrival of Mr Loxley’s Letter before You make up Your mind what reception to give to such a proposal – it is something gained to have the principle admitted of compensation –
Some thing was said too about Your joining the Partnership but to this I objected throwing out a probability of Your rending assistance in developing the new art in case satisfactory terms were entered into.
This letter is merely to prepare You for what is coming, in case You should be contemplating a move from hence
believe me to remain My dear Sir Ev 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 Patent Photogalvanographic Company with whom Talbot was in dispute regarding his patent for photographic engraving. See Doc. No: 07807. The other partner, Peter Wickens Fry, had been a prominent opponent of Talbot’s photographic patents.
3. See Doc. No: 07399.
4. 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.
5. A barrister.
6. Talbot had patented a method of photographic engraving: Improvements in the Art of Engraving, Patent No. 565 of 29 October 1852. The first part of Pretsch’s process was broadly similar to that of Talbot in that it used gelatine and potassium bichromate, but the second part used the electrotype process.
7. in due course