Frank Jermyn:
Today I was reminiscing about the past and taking a look at several of my early works. I dug up one engraving I’d created for “The Illustrated Police News” of a break in at a local shop which I was particularly proud of. I’d made plenty of engravings, all using the same process with the end of a wood block carefully carved so that when dipped in ink it would create the desired image (History of Nineteenth-Century Periodical Illustration), but this was the one that really got my career started. Even though this was certainly my best engraving it was not the closest to my heart. That would definitely be the one I did to advertise my close friends -the Lorimers- photography studio. I was inspired to work harder than normal on this particular print which I have put in my scrapbook because I consider myself to be creative and the blending of styles used in the newspaper for which I created the print allowed me to have much more artistic freedom. All my friends know about my career in engraving but not as many know that this print in particular is the one that got my career started. I attribute this partially to the fact that my earlier engravings used the more outdated and inefficient method of engraving metal instead of wood. This sounds good in theory but the metal engravings actually wear out much faster so any significant buyer would have to commission multiple copies of the same engraving to be able to print his desired quantity.
21st century:
Frank Jermyn was a man in the Victorian era who was an engraver who did work for various newspapers. The scrapbook of Frank’s that I found contains mainly scraps from newspapers with his engravings but also some reference to his close friends, the Lorimers’ photography studio, which he was instrumental in opening. Frank was a man and had a pretty typical “man’s role” in society with his job and hobbies but he was clearly very progressive and strongly supported the new woman movement. This was demonstrated when he helped the Lorimers, who are all women, open their own photography studio which was definitely not in alignment with traditional gender roles of the time. Typically men would go out in the workforce and become the sole breadwinners for their families and women would become housewives and almost never work or own a business (Buzwell), but the Lorimers opened their photography and were independent and unmarried for a long time. Frank was, later in life, married to one of the Lorimers, Lucy, and he again demonstrated his progressiveness by still encouraging Lucy to run the photography studio, even after marriage which is very atypical of the time, women were societally encouraged to become housewives after marriage and have the husband be the sole provider for the family but Frank was clearly okay to ignore this social norm to allow his wife to continue her own career interests.
Buzwell, Greg. “Daughters of Decadence: The New Woman in the Victorian Fin de Siècle.” British Library, May 2014, www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/daughters-of-decadence-the-….
“History of Nineteenth-Century Periodical Illustration.” History of Nineteenth-Century Periodical Illustration - Nineteenth-Century Newspaper Analytics - NC State, ncna.dh.chass.ncsu.edu/imageanalytics/history.php. Accessed 12 Oct. 2023.