Ron Cosens

Born in Handcross, Sussex in 1942, Ron attended Collyer’s Grammar School at Horsham before joining Lloyds Bank in Crawley. After switching to Barclays Bank DCO he worked in London, Northern Rhodesia, Zambia, Nigeria and the Bahamas. Following a move to the Trust Corporation of the Bahamas in Nassau he returned to the UK to enjoy a career in banking and organisation and methods with National Westminster Bank and the Trustee Savings Bank as well as setting up a family business running a residential home for the elderly in Shropshire. He subsequently held various jobs including debt counselling and business consultancy and spent 5 years with the government at Business Link assisting small businesses to survive and grow.

A keen researcher of cameras and images, Ron was the founder member of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain in 1977.

Ron currently spends all of his retirement time managing the Victorian Image Collection and researching into Victorian cartes de visite and cabinet cards. The collection currently holds well over 100,000 Victorian/Edwardian photographs, over 10,000 of which were dated at the time that they were taken.

Ron has written many articles on cartes de visite and on dating photographs and has had them published in specialist magazines. Some are available on this website at Free Downloads.

Additionally, projects have involved providing Victorian photographs and related information for many published books, magazine articles, TV programmes and company advertisements including images for the BBC  series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ – the Fiona Bruce story.

 

Articles Published

  • Photographic Collectors Compendium, page 5,  – A short history of the first 10 years of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain PCCGB (1987)
  • Photographica World no. 104, page 34, Cartomania – collecting cartes de visite (2003/issue 2)
  • Photographica World no. 107, page 34, Cartomania – Victorian photographer marketing techniques (2004/issue 1)
  • Photographica World no. 110, page 12, Cartomania – photographic studios illustrated on Victorian photographic mounts (2004/issue 4)
  • Photographica World no. 113, page 36, Cartomania – dating cartes de visite (2005/issue 3)
  • Photographica World no. 114, page 20, Cartomania – prize medals illustrated on Victorian photographic mounts (2005/issue 4)
  • Photographica World no. 117, cover and page 29, Cartomania – backgrounds in Victorian photographic studios (2006/issue 3)
  • Photographica World no. 120, page 41, Cartomania – humour on Victorian cartes de visite (2007/issue 2)
  • Collect It! magazine no.117, page 103, Your Collections – Victorian photographs (April 2007)
  • Photographica World no. 124, page 40, Cartomania – photographic studio furniture (2008/issue 2)
  • Discover your Ancestors bookzine no. 1, page 34, Victorian photographs explored (December 2011)
  • Discover your Ancestors bookzine no. 2, page 114, A trip to the Studio (December 2012)
  • Photographica World no. 143, page 44, Charles Cheetham Vevers – a photographic man ! (2013/issue 1)
  • Photographica World no. 145, page 145, Victorian Tissues – on photograph mounts (2013/issue 3)
  • and others.

 

Publications contributed to and/or mentioned in

  • Photographers in Mid Nineteenth Century Scarborough, pages xi and 82, by Anne & Paul Bayliss ISBN 0-9506405-3-0 (1998)
  • Lyme’s First Photographers, pages 33 and 63, by Jo Draper (2006)
  • Website re Edinburgh photographers – http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/index.htm
  • Family History magazine no. 143, page 59, article by Jayne Shrimpton (September 2009)
  • Website re Derbyshire photographers – http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~brett/photos/dbyphotos.html
  • Family Tree magazine, page 50, article by Jayne Shrimpton (February 2011)
  • Manchester from the Robert Banks collection, page 6, by James Stanhope-Brown ISBN 978-0-7524-6013-0 (2011)
  • My Ancestor Was a Studio Photographer, pages 30 and 83, by Robert Pols ISBN 978-1-907199-06-6 (2011)
  • Whitby Photographers – their lives and their photographs from the 1840s, page 202, by Ruth Wilcock  ISBN 978-0-9511711-1-0  (2011)
  • How to get the most from Family Pictures, pages vi and 351, by Jayne Shrimpton ISBN 978-1-907199-04-2 (2011)
  • The Search for Eugenia Fynch by the Acle Community Archive Group (2011) – see http://my.opera.com/norfolkhistorian/blog/2012/02/15/review-the-search-for-eugenia-finch
  • Irish Family & Local History Handbook, page 35, illustrations for article by Jayne Shrimpton (2011)
  • Family Tree magazine, cover and page 34, article by Jayne Shrimpton (December 2011)
  • Photographica World no. 139, page 44 re Walton’s Patent Commercial Camera by David Gardner ISBN 0953-4067 (2012)
  • Photographica World no. 142, page 2 re Large Opalotypes from Sauvy by John Marriage ISBN 0953-4067 (2012)
  • Photographica World no. 142, page 26 re The Unloved Studio Camera by Roger Sharpe ISBN 0953-4067 (2012)
  • British Working Dress – occupational clothing 1750-1950, page 2 – by Jayne Shrimpton ISBN 13: 978 0 74781 197 8 (2012)
  • Family Tree magazine, page 22, article on baby clothes by Jayne Shrimpton (August 2013)
  • Family Tree magazine, page 38, article on school photographs by Jayne Shrimpton (September 2013)
  • Greatrex – Forger and Photographer, page 198, by David Bruce ISBN 9780954396145 (2013)
  • Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs, page vi, by Jayne Shrimpton ISBN 978 1 78159 280 9 (2014)
  • Discover Your History, front cover and page 14, article on weddings by Jayne Shrimpton (May 2014)
  • and others.