Lincoln’s Inn <1>
4 Sept 1857
My dear Sir
The letter of which I send You a copy on the or Side is by no means re-assuring as regards the position of the Company with which we are in treaty.
I have no confidence in the stories told of the great Manchester capitalist <2> – in commerce, as elsewhere, all is not gold that glitters – if he were so rich why does he not extricate his associates from their entanglements?
It would be in my judgement prudent to take what we can get for a License & have Your Invention <3> acknowledged so far –
Ever Yours faithfully
J. H Bolton
Wm H. Fox Talbot Esqe
[enclosure: copy, in another hand, of Fry & Loxley to Price Bolton & Filder]
(Copy)
80 Cheapside
3rd Septr 1857
Dear Sirs,
Talbot v Walker
We are exceedingly sorry to have occasion to trouble you again so soon upon this subject but the affairs of the Photogalvanographic Company <4> are in so critical a state just now that unless we are able in the course of a few days to give some definite answer to the enquiries of our Clients as to the result of our negociations with you we fear any compromise of the matter will be useless – Be good enough therefore if you conveniently can to let us hear from you shortly –
We are Dear Sirs
Yours truly
(sd) Fry & Loxley
Messrs Price Bolton & Filder
Solrs
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. This was James Carlton, a muslin manufacturer who took on George Walker as a partner. In spite of Bolton's reservations, in addition to his commercial success (or perhaps as a foundation of it) "there has perhaps not been a Manchester merchant whose character for honour and integrity stood higher than James Carlton's": Josiah Thomas Slugg, Reminiscences of Manchster Fifty Years Ago (Manchester: A. E. Cornish, 1881), p. 27. See also Doc. No: 07437.
3. Talbot had patented a method of photographic engraving: Improvements in the Art of Engraving, Patent No. 565 of 29 October 1852. He was in dispute with the Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company as he considered that it was infringing his patent.
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.