Marianne Rolleston

Identified on the album page as ‘Mary Rolleston,’ this is possibly Marianne Rolleston, the eldest daughter of Reverend George Rolleston and his wife Anne née Nettleship.

George Rolleston was the Vicar of Maltby and Stainton, near Bawtry, Yorkshire (The Clergy List, 1866).

Marianne was born on 18 February 1819 and was baptised on 28 March 1819 at Stainton in Yorkshire.

She never married. She appears on the 1871 census, living with her sister Rosamund, also unmarried, at Maltby in Yorkshire. The two women gave ‘Income from Dividends’ as their rank or profession. The household also included one female domestic servant.

Marianne Rolleston died, aged 78, at Maltby on 8 May 1897, leaving an estate valued at £6441.

[The often very useful website thepeerage.com lists 9 children of Reverend George Rolleston, including a Marianne (born 1819) and a Mary Frances (born 1827) but the latter was in fact named Margaret Frances, not Mary Frances. Margaret also remained a spinster her whole life; she died in Streatham on 3 March 1906, leaving an estate valued at £18,885.]

Photographed at the Regent Street studio of Colonel Stuart Wortley, who had purchased the British patent of the Wothlytype process from its German inventor, Jacob Wothly.

According to one report, the 'chief excellencies' of the Wothlytype were 'that it works with exceeding ease; that it is certain in its results, the impressions being all alike; that the sensitive paper will keep for weeks ready for use; and that when it has received the printed image it will stand an amount of tear and wear, and wind and weather, which no other photographs will bear. The process has been purchased from its German inventor by a photographic company of which Colonel Stuart Wortley is the chairman. Colonel Stuart Wortley has long been known as one of our foremost amateur photographers. Some of his instantaneous pictures, especially his pictures of clouds, are among the finest things yet achieved in photography. As the chairman of a company which calls itself the United Association of Photography (limited), he advised the purchase of the "wothlytype" and has secured the patent rights of it as far as this country is concerned' ('A New Step in Photography,' The Times, 30 September 1864, page 4).