Photo of Sheffield Flood Damage by Laurence Peacock – his portable darkroom can be seen bottom right. Source: Picture Sheffield.
Laurence Peacock was born in Leeds but in 1851 was living in Paradise Square in Sheffield with his father Thomas, a dealer in cutlery, mother Ann and two sisters. Peacock married Arabella Turner in 1859 and the couple had at least five children.
As a photographer Laurence Peacock is now best known for the photographs he took after the Sheffield Flood in March 1864.
Taking photographs at the time of the Flood was very different to what it is now, it was called the wet process and we had to take a dark room or workshop with us, wherein we prepared the plates and also developed them, for we had to take sundry bottles of chemicals, a stock of glass, grooved boxes to put the plates in, wash leather, cistern of water, measures, cups and various other things. There were not many amateurs in those days it was too hard work and too dirty, for a photographer could always be told by the black stains on his hands. However, in the bottom corner at the right-hand side of the picture you will see my dark room with the youth who pushed it along, it ran on four wheels.
Peacock’s first wife Arabella died in June 1883 and later that year he married Henrietta Wildgoose. Peacock and his second wife had at least five children before Henrietta’s death in December 1885. Peacock married Eliza Botfield in March 1894. Eliza had been a 21-year-old domestic servant in Peacock’s household in 1891.
Laurence Frederick Peacock died in May 1900 aged 61 and was buried in the Nonconformist area of the Cemetery in plot T 109, a public grave.
You can read more about the photographers in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication Beyond the Lens and about the Great Sheffield Flood in Drowned Voices . There is also a self-guided trail Drowned Voices – Stories of The Great Sheffield Flood.