Born in Wandsworth in London, in 1809, Henry was the son of a Suffolk miller named Abraham Norman and his wife Sarah née Cousins. As a young boy he and his brothers were trained as watchmakers and jewellers in London. When His father returned to Suffolk after the death of his wife not long after the Napoleonic Wars, Henry joined him there and was trained to be a flour miller. In West Wich in Norfolk in 1830 he married Harriet née Chapman. The marriage produced four sons (Henry Abraham, William Chapman, Edward Augustus and Abraham John) and a daughter, Harriet. After his wife Harriet died at Norfolk in 1847, Henry married Sarah Cason, a single mother of a daughter named Louisa, at Kings Lynn, in June of 1851. Returning to London prior to immigrating to Australia, Henry completed a course in photography at the Royal London Polytechnic Institute under Richard Beard, after which he and his family immigrated to Portland in Victoria, Australia. Arriving on 25 August 1852, they travelled to the Ballarat goldfields and after returning to Portland opened a small shop on Julia Street where he traded as a photographer, watchmaker and jeweller. When his wife returned to England with his youngest son Samuel in 1854. After his eldest son Henry Abraham Norman lost a court case with a builder in Portland in 1855 and moved back to London, Henry senior and his other children relocated to Hamilton in Victoria, where he opened another photographic studio. In 1860, he relocated to Mount Gambier in South Australia, where he established Norman’s Photographic Studio. Besides photography, the family traded as a watchmakers, jewellers and millers. A carte-de-visite from 'H. Norman / Photographic Artist’ is in the R.J. Noye Collection at the Mortlock Library in Adelaide. Ennis included four of Henry Norman’s cdvs (c.1867-c.1877) in Mirror with a Memory. Most of the children worked in the business, with Abraham , William , Harriet and Henry junior (1833-96) each for a time running the photography studio while Norman returned to full-time horological activities. The Norman photography studio continued to operate at Mount Gambier into the twentieth century {Ennis says to 1899} although Henry Norman is not known to have been involved beyond the mid 1872. He died at Mount Gambier on 14 March 1887.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2023
