Frederick Henry Coldrey

Born in the United Kingdom Frederick Coldrey probably had married Eleanor Louisa Lloyd (1828–1901) of Clerkenwell, by the time of the first record of him in Australia which was in Melbourne. There they lived in Collingwood where a son Henry Thomas Coldrey was born in 1854.

Coldrey joined Charles Wherrett and his assistant W. G. Cearns in Castlemaine as an ‘operator’ at a studio known for its ‘spirit photographs’, until 1874 and likely departing on the death of Cearns and Wherrett's relocation to Hobart in 1871, before taking up management of Kerr's Portrait Rooms a few doors away in Barker St. which he rented from H. Winks. There he made a living from cartes-de-visite portraits, which he sold at 7s 6d per dozen copies, "ivory" type copies being 10 shillings per dozen, and portraits on glass from one shilling each. He offered life size enlargements of cartes de visite then being achieved with the solar enlarger. To his studio business he added an employment agency and secured a wine licence. He enjoyed minor celebrity for his ‘glee’ singing around town. He acted as auditor for Mount Alexandershire Co., Boatswain's Gully mine, and he took interest in municipal affairs and the Independent Order of Oddfellows benevolent society, to which he was appointed guardian in 1887. • Illustration — Frederick Coldrey (1881) Castlemaine Pioneers and Old Residents Association members In 1882 Coldrey was awarded a prize for a case photograph at the town's agricultural show and in 1881 had produced a framed composite of eighty-one portrait cameos of members of the Castlemaine Pioneers and Old Residents Association, which is archived in its offices in the heritage Telegraph Office. He also made one for the Maldon branch in 1883. In the last decade of his career, portraiture was being offered more cheaply in the form of tintypes. At Castlemaine Market an itinerant franchisee of the American Gem company offered their tiny prints on metal. At 20mm to 25mm wide and 30mm high, like the carte de visite they were exposed in a multi-lens camera but directly on a single metal photographic plate that was then cut. Special albums for the miniature portraits were also being marketed. It had become the most prolific form of photograph in 1860s America. Their local manifestation presented competition for Coldrey and he raised futile objection at a borough council meeting, but capitulated and advertised in Melbourne for one of the Gem cameras for his own studio. A successor to Coldrey as photographer in Castlemaine was Adolphus Verey, who took over Wherrett's studio in 1883.

The family lived in rented accommodation in Bull and then Bowden streets Castlemaine where in 1869 the second last of their six living children, Albert George was born. Coldrey Street, on the corner of which the family lived, is a short lane that runs between the northern stretches of Bowden and Farnsworth streets, and is named for him. Coldrey's sons played cricket for Castlemaine and at least one was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and when in 1886 son Henry was admitted to Castlemaine Hospital with typhoid fever, Coldrey tended to him there despite his own injury from an earlier fall at the railway station. Coldrey died at Castlemaine Hospital on Sunday 19 May 1889, after taking ill on the Friday. Following his death, his wife Eleanor lived at 51 Farnsworth St Castlemaine with their only daughter, who was unmarried (also named Eleanor). The three are buried in lot 120 EE in Castlemaine Cemetery, Campbells Creek.

• Illustration — Frederick H. Coldrey (c. early 1870s) Carte de Visite portrait of a young woman. • Illustration — Frederick H. Coldrey (c. early 1870s) Carte de Visite portrait of a woman. • Illustration — Frederick H. Coldrey (c. early 1870s) Carte de Visite portrait of a man. • Illustration — Frederick H. Coldrey (c. early 1870s) Carte de Visite portrait of a man (verso).