Photography was a very lucrative trade in the 1860s and '70s with people queuing up to have their photographs taken, and this despite its being expensive. A visiting card sized picture would cost 101- which was a week's wage in those days. "Cabinet" portraits, which were twice this size, cost one guinea. There was no electricity then, so everything had to be done in daylight and people had to sit very still as the exposures were long by today's standards. Fidgety customers were sometimes put in a discreet neck clamp to keep them still! The cameras did not have shutters. The photographer took the lens hood off, counted the seconds and then replaced it. Mr. Mitchell showed a slide of the 1867 "darkroom" originally used by Robert D. It was an ordinary room but with red glass in the window. The studio and darkroom were housed in sheds with big windows and skylights beside his own home. (1 KW. lights were installed only in the 1920s). The studio had a number of painted backcloths for the portraits such as a country or lakeside scene. One was of the Forth Bridge and there were props to make it look as though the subject was rowing under it.

Mr. Mitchell said that he had an archive of thousands of glass negatives and this despite the fact that in Victorian and Edwardian times glass negatives were cleaned and recoated after use as one could not go out and buy new ones. Unfortunately the archive was totally unstructured and unrecorded. He wished that someone with five years to spare would volunteer to take on the task so that it was properly organised like the Old Gala Club's collection is. Mr. Mitchell then showed a selection of slides that he had managed to make from the old glass negatives.

Firstly there was a selection from the 1900s when post card photography was very popular and very lucrative. There were family portraits, the Ettrick Forest Bowling Club (whose members would not have looked out of place in an old cowboy movie!), rugby and tennis teams, gamekeepers with their gun dogs, and farmers showing off their prize bulls. Next came the Great War with pictures of soldiers on horseback and French war cemeteries in Picardie. There then followed agricultural scenes including a man and two horses pulling a single furrow plough, boys as young as 13, having just left school, harvesting, building stooks which were then built into stacks, horses being used in forestry, and a traction engine powering a threshing machine before the grain was bagged in two hundredweight sacks.

Next came people, the then Duchess of Dalkeith with the then Crown Prince now Emperor of Japan, Anthony Eden, Maurice Chevalier at Abbotsford and Princess Margaret at St. Boswells. These were followed by a selection of pictures of the Scottish Borders including not only standards like the bridges at Leaderfoot, Kelso bridge and abbey and the Tax Collector's house at Melrose abbey but also of things that are no more, like the otter hunters with their huge dogs, the Lauderdale hunt in the rain, the Buccleuch hunt on Denholm Green and the men of Hawick playing hand ball in the river (weird or what?). Lastly there was a selection of photos of the very first Braw Lads Gathering in Galashiels in 1930. Norman Houldsworth gave a warm vote of thanks.

Reported by D.R.T. 27th October 2005