Adventure stories; City and town life -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
Very few of those who had made the trip could resist the fascination of
a photograph of themselves in a real lifeboat, manned by real heroes,
and real Norwegians on real waves, especially if they had worn the gear
appropriate to lifeboats. The windows of the shop were beset throughout
the day with crowds anxious to see who was in the lifeboat, and who had
come out well, and who was a perfect fright. The orders on the first
day amounted to over fifteen pounds, for not everybody was content with
one photograph. The novelty was acute and enchanting and it renewed
itself each day. "Let’s go down and look at the lifeboat photographs,"
people would say, when they were wondering what to do next. Some
persons who had not "taken nicely" would perform a special trip in the
lifeboat and would wear special clothes and compose special faces for
the ordeal. The Mayor of Ashby-de-la-Zouch for that year ordered two
hundred copies of a photograph which showed himself in the centre, for
presentation as New Year’s cards. On the mornings after very dull days
or wet days, when photography had been impossible or unsatisfactory,
Llandudno felt that something lacked. Here it may be mentioned that
inclement weather (of which, for the rest, there was little) scarcely
interfered with Denry’s receipts. Imagine a lifeboat being deterred by
rain or by a breath of wind! There were tarpaulins. When the tide was
strong and adverse, male passengers were allowed to pull, without extra
charge, though naturally they would give a trifle to this or that member
of the professional crew.
Denry’s arrangement with the photographer was so simple that a child
could have grasped it. The photographer paid him sixpence on every
photograph sold. This was Denry’s only connection with the
photographer. The sixpences totalled over a dozen pounds a week.
Regardless of cost, Denry reprinted his article from the _Staffordshire
Signal_ descriptive of the night of the wreck, with a photograph of the
lifeboat and its crew, and presented a copy of the sheet to every client
of his photographic department.
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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