He became friends with William Slater. According to William’s son, Tom, the family had been in Romsey for at least two generations when William was born. In about 1850 he bought Mr Jackson’s business as a druggist in 2 Church Street where he was a “Pharmaceutical Chymist”.
Slater’s premises were owned by John Bartlett, and then his son Samuel. They also owned Mead Mill, which they sold to William Overbury Purchase, the grocer. At some stage, Slater, or a successor bought the premises.
Slater and Frost added commercial photography to the chemist’s business in about 1858. A studio was erected in the garden in the Abbey, rented from Mr. Lordan, and furnished with a table, back-cloth, and chairs etc. The high-backed chair of French design is still in my (Tom’s) house. High-back gave posers something to hang on to during the long exposure. During the conversion of the premises the workmen found a full set of a female’s teeth but these were destroyed by Tom’s sister ‘as not being elegant exhibits in a small house by my sister’.
One of his customers was Frances Jocelyn, Countess Jocelyn, a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen, and a step-daughter of Lord Palmerston. Apart from arranging for photos by Slater or Frost to be taken at Broadlands, she was a competent photographer in her own right who benefited from advice as well as the supplies she could obtain at Slater’s shop.
In the 1850s, Mr Frost produced and raffled an album of photographs. It was won by Alfred Elcombe, of the nursery garden business, who was then a young man living with his father James, greengrocer, next to my father’s. He was very proud of its possession till his death. These were the first photographs, and certainly those of views, produced in Romsey. Tom Slater does not say what became of this gem.
Amongst the digital photographs in the collection of the local history society, are a number of copies of the work of Frost and Slater. This includes one of the Market Place, which, in my ignorance I had dated to about 1900. Charles Burnett rescued the society from my error when he recognised the source of the picture and dated it to the 1850s.
Phoebe Merrick
Romsey Local History Society