Carte de visite type photo of beautiful unknown woman taken by photographer Joseph Norris. The back of the card shows his address at this time as 52 New Street, Birmingham. The 1883 city directory for Birmingham, England shows both the former address of 5 Union passage and 52 New street, so it seems that Joseph Norris moved his business in that year. City directories for the 52 New Street address are found online for as late as 1892. Going by the city directories then, we can estimate that this photo was taken sometime between 1883 and 1892. The brooch the woman is wearing appears to be a horseshoe, and that looks like a rose, fastened below the brooch. (Many people hold to the practice of always displaying the horseshoe with the ends up, so the good luck won’t run out, but many other old photos can be found online with the horseshoe being worn ends down, so perhaps it was not a common idea at that time, among brooch-wearers. In either case we wish them all – and all everywhere the best of luck!)

Size:  About 4 x 2 and 1/2″

Price:  $10.00

Sources:  1883 and 1892 Kelly’s Directory of Birmingham. Online at:  Ancestry.com. UK, City and County Directories, 1766 – 1946 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.