Photo for Dating - Gideon & Maggie Brown

[Gmac101]

Dear All
Can anybody advise a date for this photo.  Birth Dates are 1851 for Gideon and 1854 for Maggie.  They lived in the Scottish Borders, he was a successful woollen manufacturer and she was mother to 8 children and did a lot of work for charity and bred dogs.  They married in 1877.  The photo is rather unusual as it's printed on very thin paper and the original is rather creased and torn (I've cropped and tidied this up) The photo is taken outside their house "Eastfield" in Galashiels, which they bought in 1881, could it have been taken to celebrate the purchase?

Thanks in anticipation

[Seoras]

Just bumping this up as it's going down the list. Hi Gmac, for what it's worth, I think this is later than 1881.

[AJ100]

Agree with Seoras, given the birth dates I would put it around 1890.

Regards

AJ

[jim1]

Their dress styles suggest the early part of the 1890's.

jim

[Gmac101]

Thanks Seoras for keeping it near the top - When I looked again their faces, despite the fact they moved during the exposure, they look older than their early thirties / late twenties.  Jim, was there anything specific about the clothing that put the date into the early 1890's

[jim1]

His waistcoat with the separate button-hole for his watch chain dates it after 1888.
Her jacket with the raised shoulder dates it 1889-93.

jim

[Gmac101]

Thanks everybody - and Jim those details are fascinating - With access to as much cloth as they fancied I suspect they kept up with fashion

Gavin

[jim1]

As this doesn't appear to be a CdeV taken professionally by the way you describe it & as their faces are slightly blurred my guess is that this was taken by a friend.

[Gmac101]

Their eldest son - William Brown was a keen amateur photographer - He was born in 1878 so if this was 1890-2 he would have been 12-14 - it is possible but maybe unlikely that he took it.

He was a doctor and worked for a while on the Shetland Islands.  My grandfather donated a lot of the slides he took in the early 1900's to the Shetland Museum and they are now online.  This is William

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=advanced&s=item&key=XYToxOntzOjEyOiJQSE9UT0dSQVBIRVIiO3M6ODoiQnJvd24sIFciO30=&pg=134

Gavin