The 'Collodion Chemist from Hertford‪'‬

The tale of Frederick Scott Archer the ‘Collodion Man from Hertford’ is one of injustice, hardship, poverty, an early death and the ultimate insult of total obscurity. His only crime was to give freely to the world an invention which dominated Photography for over three decades; which made others vast fortunes, saved his Government millions of pounds, enabled astronomers to capture stars the eye could not see, and brought his ‘Art’ within the reach of the ordinary man. Today his name is known to none except a few aficionados of Photography. Even historians did him no favours - not even being able to get right  - when and where he was born; or bothering finding out who his parents were; and failing miserably  to accurately document his life and work. The year 2014 marks the real two hundredth anniversary of his birth - let him be remembered once more as one of the truly great Pioneers of Photography.


The chroniclers of History often have a bad habit of doing injustice to the people whose story they tell, whether by design, omission, prejudice, accident or even worse - incompetence. The Roman Politician and Orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC -54 BC), once set down a set of rules for the writing of history, which sadly are sometimes never applied:

 

“It is the first and fundamental law of history that it should neither dare to say anything that is false, nor fear to say anything that is true, nor give any just suspicion either of favour or disaffection; that, in the relation of things, the Writer should observe the order of time, and add also the description of places; that in all great and memorable transactions he should first explain the counsels, then the acts, lastly the events; that in the counsels he should interpose his own judgment on the merit of them; in the acts he should relate not only what was done, but how it was done; in the events he should show what share chance, or rashness, or prudence had in them; that in regard to persons he should describe not only their particular actions, but the lives and characters of all those who bear an eminent part in the story.”

 

The story of Frederick Scott Archer (1814-1857), the ‘Collodion Man from Hertford', is such a case - where Cicero’s rules of history were completely ignored to the point of both indifference and blatant falsehoods. Not only have historians got the date and place of his birth totally wrong, but his parental background is at best inaccurately documented, furthermore his work is poorly chronicled and most serious of all - his place as one of the great Pioneers of early Photography improperly neglected.