It’s usually impossible to identify people in 19th century street photos of Newcastle upon Tyne, but a bit of detective work reveals the pair in this one are almost certainly Mary Bruce and her daughter, who was also called Mary.
There is no information with the photo so the first step is to work out where and when it was taken. The location is easy. It’s behind the Black Gate in Newcastle where there was a group of 17th century timber-framed houses, they were dilapidated and had an air of Dickensian squalor that attracted many Victorian photographers. Edgar G Lee won a medal for this particular photo at the Royal Photographic Society’s Exhibition in 1895.
The two women are chatting outside a shop, and according to the 1895 edition of Wards Street Directory, its address was 6 Castle Garth. The Castle Garth was the area within the castle’s defensive wall; it remained part of Northumberland when Newcastle became a town and county in 1400, because the King wanted to retain ownership of his castle. Neither Northumberland Council or Newcastle Corporation were interested in the upkeep of the castle’s surrounding buildings, and their poor condition attracted a poorer type of occupant.
Wards Street Directory also tells us that the shop in the photo was occupied by a boot maker called James Bruce. According to the 1891 Census he was born in Ireland and so was his wife, Mary. The couple lived above the shop with their five sons and one daughter who was also called Mary. The mother would have been 53 years old when the photo was taken and the daughter was eighteen.
We also learn from the 1891 Census that young Mary was working as a servant in a household elsewhere in the town. The next Census in 1901 Census shows James Bruce still living in the Castle Garth behind the Black Gate, this time on Dog Leap Terrace.
Young Mary was also there with her parents but she was married by now and her surname was Moody, the Census says she was employed at a “rabbit down works”. This was probably at Messrs R&W Wilson’s premises near Sandgate where 350 women skinned rabbits and hares, the fur was used for clothing and bedding. It was a huge enterprise, they processed around four million of these a year.
She died in 1948 at the age of 72 in South Shields, by which time the shop in the photo was long gone. The area behind the Black Gate underwent big changes at the turn of the century when most of the ancient buildings were demolished, as part of a tidying up operation carried out by the railway company who widened the nearby Dean Street Railway Viaduct. The Black Gate is still there.