As we discussed in the previous episode, a wave of Spiritualism swept England and the U.S., among other countries, during the Victorian era. Influences ranging from 18th century German physician Franz Mesmer, the American Civil War, the high mortality rate of infants, the development of psychical and psychological practices, and the popularity of Gothic literature and ghost stories from writers like the American Edgar Allen Poe and the Irish Sheridan Le Fanu, helped to advance interest in Spiritualism and the occult. Claims of communicating with the dead, some by genuine believers, many by charlatans, led to an increasing cultural, intellectual, and financial interest in creating avenues to access the spirit world, including spirit photography and psychic demonstrations. The breadth of Victorian society’s interest in Spiritualism and the occult can be illustrated by the various prominent figures who were early members of the Society for Psychical Research, including Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, John Ruskin, and Alfred Tennyson.
This interest in Spiritualism and the occult had a strong impact on the genre of horror. Ghosts and the ability to communicate with the dead obviously lent themselves easily to the genre and have been part of the genre for centuries —but the newly applicable technological aspects of that communication, like spirit photography, which were accomplished through various advances in technology, were able to add new dimensions to the genre. Indeed, spirit photography initially influenced how ghosts were portrayed in the medium of film.
Furthermore, this interest translated over to the medium of the stage. By the 18th century, science had already merged with the theatre. And by the mid-19th century, scientific demonstrations were popular attractions ripe for a hungry Victorian audience. John Henry Pepper was one of the most popular and important of such demonstrators during this period. While he never made any scientific discoveries of his own, nor published but very few research papers, his natural understanding of exhibition and entertainment allowed him to reinterpret scientific demonstrations to create a performance of scientific marvel. As Dr. James A. Secord of the University of Cambridge states, “Known today as a pioneering precursor of cinema, Pepper's real significance lay in making the phenomena of physics and chemistry visible and hence accessible throughout the English-speaking world” (Secord, 2002).
Pepper’s most enduring legacy is the stage illusion he popularized in the 1860s, which combined science and theatre with the Victorian public’s interest in Spiritualism. Pepper’s Ghost, as the illusion came to be known, was invented by Liverpudlian engineer Henry Dircks and announced in 1858 at a meeting for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Secord, 2002), though the principles of such a concept had been around since 16th century polymath Giovanni Battista Della Porta discussed it in his 1584 work, Natural Magic (Wong, 2016).
Here is a short video from the Royal Collection Trust about a recreation of the Crimean Ball of 1856 for the Summer Opening Exhibition of Buckingham Palace in 2019. It offers a brief history of the illusion and how the illusion was done for the exhibition.
John Henry Pepper, a London-born chemist and lecturer, developed a manner to adapt Henry Dirck’s illusion for use on a larger scale. The illusion, as originally performed, involved placing a large plate of glass at a 45-degree angle so that it reflected toward the audience a view of the orchestra pit, where the actor playing the ghost was hiding. To not cast a shadow and properly reflect on the glass, the actor playing the ghost had to lie inclined against a black background. Meanwhile, the actors on the stage were performing at the same spatial level in the theatre as the audience. According to an article in Scientific American: “When the lights were bright on the main stage and dark below, the reflection of the ghost stayed hidden. But when the lighting above dimmed and grew bright below, the reflection suddenly appeared” (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2015). Because these images preserve many of the indicators, like shade, size, and texture, that are used for identification by our visual perception of depth, they can appear to us as three-dimensional. Originally, ghosts were only depicted as sitting or reclining due to limitations in the space beneath the stage (Secord, 2002).
The illusion originally premiered on Christmas Eve of 1862 at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London, during a performance of an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, based on Dickens’ fifth and final Christmas novella—with A Christmas Carol having been his first. In the story, Redlaw, a miserly, Scrooge-like chemistry teacher, wishes to escape from his painful memories. Haunted by a ghostlike twin of himself, the phantom offers Redlaw the opportunity to erase his memory. But, according to an article in Scientific American:
"Theatergoers attending this particular performance were in for a shock: instead of confronting the usual flesh-and-bone actor with a sheet over his head, Redlaw faced an incorporeal entity that materialized onstage, apparently out of thin air. Spectators were astonished. The play, which had not been performed in London for more than a decade, became an instant sensation. Enthralled audiences filled the Royal Polytechnic's 500-seat theater for 15 months straight, shelling out £12,000—or the equivalent of more than $2 million today” (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2015).
While Henry Dircks and John Henry Pepper obtained a joint patent, Pepper retained all financial rights to the illusion (Secord, 2002). Unsurprisingly, the men’s partnership soon ended acrimoniously over issues involving priority and credit (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2015). But Pepper did not simply use such scientific inventions for purposes of entertainment; he also sought to educate and illuminate for the Victorian public the science behind such illusions (Secord, 2002). By explaining how the illusion worked in his public lectures, Pepper was able to provide a critical and educated eye to an age and audience fascinated by Spiritualism and the supernatural.
And, interestingly, Pepper’s Ghost remains an important part of hauntingly amusing entertainments, adapting itself to the 20th and 21st centuries. It has been utilized in films like the 1971 entry in the James Bond cannon, “Diamonds Are Forever”, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film, “The 39 Steps” (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2015). It is also used in popular attractions, one of the most famous being the Disney attraction, “The Haunted Mansion”. According to Vice Magazine:
"[Using] Pepper's technique on a much grander scale … [the Disney Creative team members] installed massive sheets of glass to reflect two sets of animatronic ghosts. The first set was installed directly above the audience's heads. And the second set of ghosts was installed directly beneath the audience's feet. … everything besides the ghosts is painted black … [to] [ensure] that the glass will only reflect the ghosts and not the machinery moving them around” (Wong, 2016).
And as I said, Pepper’s Ghost has also been used into the 21st century. For example, in 2012 at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog performed on stage with an optical illusion showing the murdered Tupac Shakur. While many thought this illusion to be the result of a 3-D hologram, it was a 2-D image produced through an adaptation of Pepper’s Ghost, including the use of a plastic surface angled at the same 45 degrees as described by Pepper and Dirck (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2015).
A good description of the illusion, with footage of the Tupac illusion at Coachella, the Michael Jackson illusion at the 2014 GMAs, how the Disneyland Haunted Mansion illusion is done, as well as other modern incarnations of the illusion. WARNING: There is some language during the Tupac footage that some could find offensive.
Here is a short video from some of the companies that specialize in a modern digital version of the Pepper's Ghost illusion.
Hypnotism, telepathy, and especially mesmerism, with its sexual undertones, also influenced the horror genre. For example, Mary Shelley, in her 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, references mesmeric trances multiple times. Indeed, Shelley’s husband, Percy Shelley, was mesmerized in 1820 in Pisa to avoid surgery for kidney stones (Stanbury P. , 2012). Before the discovery of ether, mesmerism was often being experimented with by surgeons, such as James Esdaile and James Braid, during the early to mid-19th century, and was utilized for its therapeutic and anesthetic benefits (Rosen, 1946). Until the end of the 19th century, hypnotism, evolving from mesmerism, (Radovančević, 2009) was also used in this manner and as a treatment for psychological issues, such as hysteria.
Another example of mesmerism’s use in horror is Edgar Allen Poe’s use of it in multiple stories, including the 1846 horror short story, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar; though, according to Dr. Peter Stanbury, a librarian at the Australian Society of Anesthetists, Poe fails to comprehend mesmerism (Stanbury P. , 2012). And, of course, Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, firmly established hypnotism and telepathy as part of vampire mythology.
Frederic W.H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, Henry Sidgwick, Frank Podmore, and George Albert Smith.
In the previous episode, we discussed the early years of the Society for Psychical Research, including its founding members, Frederic W.H. Meyers and Edmund Gurney; the Society’s founding member and first president, Henry Sidgwick; and early, influential member, Frank Podmore. George Albert Smith, the Brighton-based film pioneer, director, and inventor of Kinemacolor, whose life we partially discussed in the previous episode and with whom we are continuing in this episode, began his theatrical career as a mesmerist and telepath, in an act he created and performed with the dubious Douglas Blackburn. While Smith’s act was more likely composed of magic tricks and theatrics than genuine psychical phenomena, both he and Blackburn joined the Society for Psychical Research, first in displays of their supposed psychical skill which were performed for observation and experimentation, then as associate members. Though Blackburn left the Society under mysterious circumstances about a year into his involvement, Smith became closely involved with the society, becoming the personal secretary to founding member Edmund Gurney and, after Gurney’s death, to founding member, Frederic W.H. Myers. Beyond his role as personal secretary, Smith contributed to the Society’s experiments and research and coauthored papers for the Society’s journal.
Spiritualism also increased academic interest in exploring and expanding our understanding of the capabilities of the human mind. The early activities of the Society for Psychical Research, while obviously sometimes lacking in proper scientific skepticism, especially regarding Blackburn and, most likely, Smith, were genuine in its pursuit of scientific and academic studies, applying then-current scientific methods to their research. Much of this work also contributed to the then-nascent field of psychology, including through studies on hypnotism, hallucinations, and disassociation. Indeed, the skepticism the Society applied to its research and its pursuit of exposing psychic frauds caused Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to leave the Society, believing it to be anti-Spiritualist.
The Society for Psychical Research and the field of psychology were so intertwined that the Society’s research was often presented by various members of the Society during the Congress of Experimental Psychology, which was the forerunner to the International Union of Psychological Science. For example, during the first Congress of Experimental Psychology, held in 1889 in Paris, a proposal for a census on hallucinations was taken up as a joint international study by the president of the Society for Psychical Research, the Utilitarian philosopher and Cambridge professor, Henry Sidgwick; the American philosopher and psychologist, William James, who is considered by the American Psychological Association to be one of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century and was essential in the creation of Harvard's psychology department; (Department of Psychology, 2022) and Léon Marillier, who was editor, with Protestant theologian Jean Réville, of the Revue de l'histoire des religions (Conrad, 1892).
And, as mentioned in the previous episode, the relationship between the Society for Psychical Research and the Congress of Experimental Psychology grew even more involved the following Congress, which was held in England in 1892. Not only was Henry Sidgwick appointed the second president of the Congress of Experimental Psychology, but Society for Psychical Research founding member, Frederic W.H. Myers, acted as one of the honorary secretaries of this Congress. Furthermore, among the speakers who presented at this congress, was prominent Society for Psychical Research member Eleanor Balfour Sidgwick, who spoke on thought-transference (Editors of The Athenaeum, 1892).
Indeed, beyond her status as wife of Henry Sidgwick and sister of the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Lord Arthur Balfour, Eleanor Balfour Sidgwick was an academic, administrator, and activist in her own right. Eleanor Sidgwick’s work for the Society for Psychical Research included contributing to its research, publishing articles, and presenting findings at academic conferences.
As I stated in the previous episode, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in History of Women’s Suffrage that Spiritualism had provided equal opportunities for women to speak and hold leadership positions (Braude, 2001). These progressive attitudes regarding women were reflected within the leadership of the Society for Psychical Research. Henry Sidgwick; his brother, the Classical scholar of Ancient Greek literature and Fellow of Corpus Christie College at the University of Oxford, Arthur Sidgwick (Rayner-Canham & Rayner-Canham, 2009); and Classicist and founding member of the Society for Psychical Research, Frederic W.H. Myers, were all active in advancing the cause of women’s higher education and, eventually, promoting the conferral of degrees—with Frederic W.H. Myers stating in his autobiographical sketch, “Fragments of Inner Life”, that he “resigned [his] lectureship in 1869, for the purpose of helping to start the new movement for the Higher Education of Women” (Myers, 2022).
But we should be careful in applying terms such as feminism to Eleanor Sidgwick or to the leading members of the Society for Psychical Research. According to the late historian, Dr. Janet Oppenheim, “While some feminist historians today acknowledge the difficulties implicit in making certain Victorian women wear a label that these nineteenth-century activists never pinned on themselves, they nonetheless feel compelled to continue employing the categories of ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’ …. The matter under debate, however, is not merely whether we should impose categories retroactively, with the possibility of distorting the past by doing so, but what we actually mean when we use these terms” (Oppenheim, 1995).
Like today, the definitions of what feminism means were complicated, and there were many subdivisions within feminism during the Victorian and Edwardian eras of the women’s movement, with it breaking into factions, such as “conservative”; “relational”; “socialist”; “liberal”; “evangelical”; “equalitarian”; “Marxist”; “relational”; and “complementarian”.
According to Dr. Janet Oppenheim, Eleanor Sidgwick was a moderate suffragist, as she believed that women deserved the right to vote and have the power to engage in and effect decisions that involved their lives and futures. Additionally, Sidgwick believed in a woman’s right to pursue an education purely for her own needs and pleasure. She also believed in a woman’s right to remain unmarried and celibate instead of having to marry and procreate—believing that women should not be forced to marry for reasons of status or money and that it was better for a woman to never be married that to be in an unhappy marriage—progressive ideas during this time.
Eleanor Sidgwick was mathematically gifted, assisting her brother-in-law, future winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Lord Rayleigh, during the time Lord Rayleigh was Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge. According to Dr. Janet Oppenheim: “[Sidgwick] quickly became [Lord Rayleigh’s] invaluable colleague in the series of experiments that definitively predetermined the electrical units of absolute measurement—the volt, ohm, and ampere. So significant was the assistance she provided in collecting the data, performing the complex mathematical computations, and participating in the observations that her name appeared as joint author of three important papers that he published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Thus, Sidgwick practiced what she preached about a woman’s right to exercise her own intellectual talents to the utmost” (Oppenheim, 1995).
Additionally, she was a leading figure at Newnham College, a women’s college at the University of Cambridge which her husband, Henry Sidgwick, was instrumental in helping to form. First as vice principal, then as principal, and serving as its treasurer for over 40 years, Eleanor Sidgwick’s guidance fostered a time of growth and evolution for the college, with a boost in student population, staff hirings, its number of buildings, and its amount of property, all sustained by her understanding and control of the college’s finances. This position allowed Sidgwick to become a nationally recognized figure in women’s education, with her eventually becoming a member of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education; the president of the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; and her appointment by the University of London to its senate.
Nonetheless, Eleanor Sidgwick was unsure if women were as intellectually capable as men; and believed that, even within their intellectual and academic pursuits, women were better suited to assisting, supporting, and nurturing, as she herself stated: “even if very few women should prove capable of the greater and more important part of the work of discovery and research—fewer even than the very few men—I have a good hope that women will do excellent work in the subordinate fields of science and learning, will do well much laborious work that needs to be done, though it is not very brilliant or striking, and will in particular prove excellent assistants” (Oppenheim, 1995).
As Dr. Janet Oppenheim concluded regarding Eleanor Sidgwick’s legacy:
"The documents amassed in the Newnham College archives and in Henry Sidgwick’s papers at Trinity College make it clear that Mrs. Sidgwick was a woman of independent judgment, to whom her husband frequently deferred, but she so thoroughly downplayed her own contributions to any cause [with which] she assisted that she has been largely overlooked by the chroniclers of the Victorian and Edwardian women’s movement. Unlike some women activists of her generation, Mrs. Sidgwick never articulated what has been called ‘a sustained critique of the gendered order of society.’ She never gave detailed attention to the issues of women’s wages and the economic foundations of their dependence. She certainly wanted to improve the quality of education available to middle- and upper-class women; she hoped thereby, in general terms, to expand their professional opportunities and promote their economic self-sufficiency, but the problems of working-class women, and even the difficulties facing university-trained women who sought employment outside the increasingly glutted teaching profession, never attracted her close scrutiny. Accepting the basic structure of gender relations in British society, she assumed that the changes she advocated could be implemented without creating any serious social disturbance. From a late twentieth-century vantage point, these are blind spots in Eleanor Sidgwick’s outlook that help to explain … feminist scholars substantial neglect of Mrs. Sidgwick” (Oppenheim, 1995).
This attitude also seems to be reflected in the work of George Albert Smith. After all, with Smith having been closely involved in the activities of the Society for Psychical Research and remaining an associate member, it would not be surprising that he shared their views. G.A. Smith’s wife, Laura Bayley, was a performer and, possibly, a filmmaker in her own right—though, like much of the work Eleanor Sidgwick did for her husband, the films with which Bayley was involved were credited under her husband’s name. It's clear that Bailey was interested in film independent of her husband, as Smith, in an interview in 1899 with the Brighton Herald, comments on Bayley having “[come] in to borrow the identical camera and to go off and photograph the waves breaking over the Hove Sea wall” (Fletcher, 2022).
An entertainer from Brighton, who performed primarily in pantomime and comic revues with her three sisters, Laura Bayley was involved in the production of her husband’s films, with her and her sisters often acting as performers in the films. Dr. Frank Gray of the University of Brighton states that Smith’s meeting and subsequent marriage to Bayley “placed Smith in contact with an experienced actress who understood visual comedy and the interests of typical seaside audiences” (Gray, Smith the Showman: The Early Years of George Albert Smith, 1998). As you may remember, Bayley was the unfortunate Mary Jane of the dark comedy, “Mary Jane’s Mishap”, who blew herself up with Paraffin, which we discussed in the first part of “Old Dogs: New Tricks”. Because of her performance in “Mary Jane’s Mishap”, film critic and historian, David Robinson, suggests that Bayley is the first female comedy film star. As mentioned in the previous episode, G.A. Smith had married Laura Bayley shortly before leaving his work at the Society.
On Christmas Eve of 1892, the same year that the second Congress was held in England with Henry Sidgwick as president, Smith announced that he had leased the pleasure garden St. Ann’s Well Gardens in Hove, part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex. Going back to his theatrical roots, Smith operated the pleasure garden, known for its natural beauty, with a fishpond and a large population of Grey Squirrels, with additional attractions, including swings, seesaws, a monkey house, and a gypsy fortune teller (Key, 2014). Indeed, a Mrs. Lee arrived at St. Ann’s Well Gardens with her gypsy caravan in the early months of 1891 and stayed for the next 15 years (Middleton J. , 2019).
By 1894, Smith’s pleasure and amusement garden had added hot air balloons, parachutists, jugglers, trapeze artists, and magic lantern shows (Middleton J. , 2022). His magic lantern shows were described as “an exhibition of dissolving views ‘by means of long-range limelight apparatus’” (Key, 2014). Limelight is theatrical lighting used in the 19th century, often utilized as a spotlight. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, limelight is
“a popular term for the incandescent calcium oxide light invented by Thomas Drummond in 1816. Drummond’s light, which consisted of a block of calcium oxide heated to incandescence in jets of burning oxygen and hydrogen, provided a soft, very brilliant light that could be directed and focused. … Its intensity made it useful for spotlighting and for the realistic simulation of effects such as sunlight and moonlight. Limelights placed at the front of the balcony could also be used for general stage illumination, providing a more natural light than footlights. The expression “in the limelight” originally referred to the most desirable acting area on the stage, the front and centre, which was brilliantly illuminated by limelights” (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022).
Limelights were first in the theatre in the 1830s, but, by the end of the nineteenth century, were largely replaced by the electric light, with the electric arc spotlight taking over that specific role. The use of arc lights, which are a form of electric light, and limelight in the operation of magic lanterns allowed for slide shows to increase the size of the viewing audience. According to the Magic Lantern Society of the United States and Canada: “Equipped with such an illuminant, projectors could display images across relatively large distances, superimpose at almost any rate and level of brightness, and still allow for a precise and highly detailed image” (Magic Lantern Society, 2022).
This is the best demonstration of how limelight works that I could find, sans the cheesy humor!
Changing between lenses to cut from slide to slide allowed Smith to show changes in location, time, and perspective when telling stories through the use of the magic lantern (Gray, 2014). Limelights were difficult to operate, and could be dangerous, with fires and explosions occasionally occurring. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, limelights were gradually replaced by the electric light bulb; however, arc lamps, while modernized, continued to be utilized in some movie projectors (Magic Lantern Society, 2022).
Then, in 1896, as suddenly and unexpectedly as his meeting Douglas Blackburn and being spotted by Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research had altered his life fourteen years prior, Smith underwent another life-changing event: he went to the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, which was exhibiting the first commercial theatrical showings of a projected film in the UK—a program exhibition by the Lumiere Brothers (British Pathe, 2022).
Sources
Braude, A. (2001). Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
British Pathe. (2022). 1890s Traffic Scenes. Retrieved from British Pathe: https://www.britishpathe.com/gallery/1890s-traffic/5
Conrad, L. M. (1892). Leon Marillier. The Athenaeum, 50-51.
Department of Psychology. (2022). William James. Retrieved from Harvard University: https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/william-james
Editors of The Athenaeum. (1892). The Congress of Experimental Psychology. The Athenaeum Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama, 229.
Fisher, D. (2022). The history. Retrieved from Brighton & Hove, film and cinema: https://www.brightonhistory.org.uk/film/film_history1.html
Fletcher, T. (2013). Laura Bayley. Retrieved from Women Film Pioneers Project: https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-laura-bayley
Gray, F. (1998). Smith the Showman: The Early Years of George Albert Smith. Film History, 8-20.
Gray, F. (2014). Smith, G.A. (1864-1959). Retrieved from BFI Screen Online: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/449633/index.html
Key, F. (2014, March 22). The Demon of the Air. Retrieved from Hooting Yard: http://hootingyard.org/archives/12531
Macknik, S. L., & Martinez-Conde, S. (2015, November 1). How Ghostbusting Became a Victorian Pastime. Retrieved from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-ghostbusting-became-a-victorian-pastime/
Magic Lantern Society. (2022). Illumination Used in Magic Lantern Projectors. Retrieved from Magic Lantern Society: https://www.magiclanternsociety.org/about-magic-lanterns/illumination-used/
Middleton, J. (2019). A History of Women's Lives in Hove and Portslade. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books.
Middleton, J. (2022). Hove in the Past. Retrieved from St. Ann's Well Garden, Hove: Judy Middleton, http://hovehistory.blogspot.com/2015/04/st-anns-well-gardens-hove.html
Myers, F. W. (2022). Fragments of Inner Life (1961 reprint edition). Retrieved from Esalen: https://www.esalen.org/ctr/fragments-of-inner-life
Oppenheim, J. (1995). A Mother's Role, a Daughter's Duty: Lady Blanche Balfour, Eleanor Sidgwick, and Feminist Perspectives. Journal of British Studies, 196-232.
Radovančević, L. (2009). Contribution of the pioneer of hypnotherapy - Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer in the history of psychotherapy and medicine. Acta medico-historica Adriatica: AMHA, 49-60.
Rayner-Canham, G., & Rayner-Canham, M. (2009). Chemistry Was Their Life: Pioneer British Women Chemists, 1880-1949. London: Imperial College Press.
Rosen, G. (1946). Mesmerism and Surgery: A STRANGE CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF ANESTHESIA. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 527-550.
Secord, J. A. (2002). Quick and Magical Shaper of Science. Science, 1648-1649.
Stanbury, P. (2012). Reflections of mesmerism in literature. Anaesth Intensive Care, 10-17.
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (2022). limelight. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/art/limelight-theatre-lighting
Wong, K. (2016, October 28). The Science Behind the World's Most Convincing Ghost Effect. Retrieved from Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/aekye5/the-science-behind-the-worlds-most-convincing-ghost-effect
And Tony Fletcher's article on Laura Bayley is dated 2013, not 2022. More information on her can be found here: https://tomruffles.blogspot.com/2011/06/laura-smith-film-pioneer.html
You have got one of the captions above wrong. The five gentlemen are, in order: Frederic Myers (not Frederick Meyers), Edmund Gurney, Frank Podmore, Douglas Blackburn, G A Smith.