Arthur Frank Healey

Peterborough photographer and presumed publisher of some good quality real photographic cards of Harting, Milland, Trotton, Butser Hill and Wax Down in West Sussex that are signed "A. F. Healey" in their bottom right corners. The sepia photographs have white borders and neat, handwritten captions. Other cards of the same area are known that share the same design features as the Healey cards (and in one case share the same photograph) but are signed Watson.

The Healey cards probably date from the mid to late 1920s because women in the photographs sport cloche hats and the car that appears in the photograph shown above is typical of the period. A 1929 postmark has also been noted.

Sussex Directories for the 1920s and 1930s make no mention of either Healey or Watson. There is good reason to suppose, however, that A. F. Healey was Arthur Frank Healey, younger brother of Henry Thomas Healey, who from 1904 to 1906 had a photographic studio at Horsham. Arthur was born in 1874 at Bath and in 1900 married Emmeline Hall, who had been born in about 1867 at Langford in Essex. The marriage was registered at Colchester. The couple then went to live in Peterborough, at 92 Taverners Road. Arthur was the proprietor of the Cathedral Studio in the city from 1901 to 1920 or later. His signature on the 1911 census form quite closely matches that on the Sussex postcards. As far as is known, he and Emmeline had no children.

More research is needed to determine why Arthur Healey chose to produce postcards of such a remote and rural area of West Sussex and whether he was still living in Peterborough at the time. Perhaps he took holidays in Sussex. His death was recorded at Petersfield in 1932, when he was 57.

If anyone has more information about Healey and his career as a photographer, please get in touch with this website.

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