Jessie Mann

• Name — Jessie Mann • Birth Name — Janet Mann • Born — 20 January 1805 • Birthplace — Perth, Scotland • Died — 21 April 1867 • Place of death — Edinburgh, Scotland • Employer — David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson • Occupation — Photographer and assistant • Known for — Pioneer in photography

Mann was born on 20 January 1805, in Perth, Scotland, the daughter of Alexander Mann, a house painter. She grew up there with her four sisters and one brother, opposite the house of David Octavius Hill. When her father died in 1839 she moved to Edinburgh with her two unmarried sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret, to live with their brother Alexander, a solicitor, who eventually became Hill's solicitor.

Mann moved to Leopold Place, when Alexander married. This was near where the Hill & Adamson studio, "Rock House" Scotland's first photographic studio on Calton Hill, Edinburgh. She became an assistant to David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, probably working on photographic processing and printing. Hill was an established painter who collaborated with Adamson, who was an expert photographer using early photographic techniques. Miss Mann was employed to help them photograph the 450 ministers of the Church of Scotland who broke away from the church to establish the Free Church of Scotland. This was known as the Great Disruption. She worked with Hill and Adamson for at least three years, until it closed after Adamson's death in 1848. She went on to become a school housekeeper in Musselburgh. She returned to Edinburgh and died there of a stroke on 21 April 1867. She is buried at Rosebank Cemetery.