Mrs [Robert?] Penhall [nee Margaret Balfour] and her daughter

1873
Glass photonegative

Dressmaker Margaret Penhall and her eldest daughter Martha have been photographed smartly dressed and well-groomed and then re-photographed in an unkempt state. Possibly the images were reversed and used for advertising by the studio as an example of their ‘before-and-after’ skill, but this pair of portraits, on consecutively numbered photographic plates, remains a puzzle. Mrs Penhall is pregnant with her third child, a few months after losing her second.