Kensall Green <1>
Decr 28/54
Sir
I have some recolection of the person you speak of from yorkshire but I do not remember his name and I do not think wee have his name in our books (altho I will look and if I find it lett you know) as I think wee did not charged him for the instructions we give him, I have no recollection of ever employing a person the name of Porter,<2> there may have been such a person employed in Regent St <3> as men but not as master -
I have tried the expirement with the Galic Acid as you desired and the result was that the moment the Galic Acid was poured of the plate the negative came out quit as quick as with pyro Galic Acid, but very faint and all the warming afterwards would not bring it out any more, altho I boiled the galic Acid on the plate with a spirit lamp it kept clean but it would not come out any more (of course you know that with nitra of Silver it comes out very well) I believe Mr Crooks<4> [illegible deletion] made a very good portrait in developing with the Galo nitrate. The galic Seem to require moore nitra of Silver in developing than the pyro Galic, for the Silver that remains on the plate after it comes [illegible deletion] out the nitra bath & Camera is often Suficient, unless you keep the plate to long then it is best to dip the plate in the nitra of Silver bath again, or els mix a little nitra of Silver intu the pyro but I prefer dipping the plate in the bath first as you get a Cleaner Picture
there is an article on PyroGalic Acid in the last number to the Photographic journal, if you like I will send you it<5>
your Obidient Servant.
N: Henneman
Notes:
1. Monument House, Kensall Green, outside London. The earliest advertisement for this traced thus far was published in the 1 March 1853 issue of The Journal of The Photographic Society, v. 2 no. 1: "Talbotype - Photography - Messrs. Henneman and Co. Photographers to the Queen, 122 Regent Street, beg to inform their patrons and the public, that the have, in order to make their Establishment more complete, erected in the suburbs a manufactory on a large scale for Photographic printing and the preparation of the various papers now used in Photography; and that they are now in a position to execute Contracts to any extent."
2. Inexplicably, Henneman was forgetting Charles Porter (b. 1828), a servant at Lacock Abbey who was the frequent subject of photographs and at least for some time a photographic assistant to Henneman. [See for instance Doc. No: 05005].
3. 122 Regent Street, London: base of Nicolaas Hennemans' Talbotype or Sun Picture Rooms, later the firm of Henneman & Malone, photographers to the Queen.
4. Possibly Sir William Crookes (1832-1921), chemist and physicist, involved in legal case on whether the patent for the calotype process covered the collodion process . [See Doc. No: 07077, Doc. No: 07098].
5. John Williams, 'On Pyrogallic Acid', Journal of the Photographic Society, v. 2 no. 25, 21 December 1854, pp. 82-84.