Description:Portrait of a man and woman. The man is believed to be the photographer, William John Bailey Blake (1874-1957) of Longton, photographed at the back of a house on Chaplin Road in about 1906.
William Blake was born in the United States in 1874, but at an early age emigrated to England with his sister and widowed mother, who was originally from Newcastle-under-Lyme. By the early 1900s the family had settled in Longton, where William set up a stationer’s shop on Stafford Street (now the Strand). Blake was a skilled and talented photographer and published many of his views as postcards, selling them in his shop. He was also interested in local history and natural history, and was for many years a key member of the North Staffordshire Field Club, acting as librarian for the society’s photograph collection.