Cartes de visite and the first mass media photographic images of the English judiciary

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to explore the impact that the invention of a particular type of photographic image, the carte de visite, had on visual images of the judiciary in England from the 1860s. The carte de visite is widely regarded as an innovation that helped widen access to photography. It is also associated with the birth of photography as a form of mass media. Evidence that the English judiciary were caught up in the frenzy of production and consumption that accompanied these developments, what contemporary commentators called ‘carteomania’ and ‘cardomania’, is to be found in a number of sources. These include catalogues of carte portraits on sale to the public and examples of carte portraits in collections such as London’s National Portrait Gallery and archives such as the library of Lincoln’s Inn. The chapter examines some of the effects that the encounter between the English judiciary and the technological and media innovations that come together in this format had upon the visual representation of the judiciary in the nineteenth century. How if at all did this encounter affect what appears within the frame of judicial portraiture? What impact if any did it have on other pictures of judges? These questions will be answered by way of a case study, focusing on Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn. He became Chief Justice of Common Pleas in 1856, Chief Justice of Queens Bench in 1859 and in 1875 he took up the post of Lord Chief Justice in the newly reformed courts.