Postcard of the Month: November 2022
/The Alice V. Goodhue at Arundel
This card was posted in London, 9.15am, May 27th, 1904, just two days after a press report noted her arrival in Littlehampton on 25th May. Assuming the photographer needed some time to develop and print the card, perhaps he took the picture the day before and then travelled back to London almost immediately, presumably by train. Alternatively, he may have taken the picture on a previous visit.
Posted to “Dear Kate”, Miss H. Felton, 96 Cazenove Rd., Stoke Newington, the text on the back says it is Dick's first attempt at postcards. The sender and picture taker was Richard (Dick) Henry James Hughes of Islington, London. He was variously recorded in the census as a ‘Photographic Apparatus Maker and Camera Maker’. As he writes that this was his “first attempt at a postcard”, he was presumably using equipment he might have made himself.
Kate and Dick were married on 5th August 1905.
This is the only picture that I have seen of this craft. A press report notes her arrival in Littlehampton on 25th May 1904. She did not appear to leave again before her sale in 1907.
The moorings by which she is attached are chains which might be standard for here, given the powerful tidal flows in the river. It also suggests that they are designed for a long period of residence.
As the Alice V. Goodhue arrived from South Shields, the cargo would have been coal which would have taken a while to off-load, probably into Arun barges for onward shipment. Judging by the waterline she was still loaded at the time of the photograph, possibly not with a full cargo.