John Thomas

• Name — John Thomas • Born — 14 April 1838 • Birthplace — Llanfair Clydogau near Lampeter, Wales • Died — 14 October 1905 • Place of death — Liverpool, England • Occupation — Photographer John Thomas (14 April 1838 – 14 October 1905) was a Welsh photographer, specialising in landscape images of Wales and Welsh chapels, and portraits of notable Welsh people, particularly church and chapel ministers.

Thomas was born at Glanrhyd, in the parish of Llanfair Clydogau, near Lampeter, Cardiganshire in 1838, the son of David, a labourer, and his wife Jane. Thomas was educated in the village of Cellan, first as a pupil and then a pupil-teacher. For a short time he worked as an assistant in a draper's shop in Lampeter. While still a teenager, in May 1853, he travelled to Liverpool, walking to Tregaron and then for 40 mi to Llanidloes via Pontrhydfendigaid, Devil's Bridge and Plynlimon, before completing his journey by canal boat and train. He worked for ten years in Liverpool, in a draper's shop, starting in 1853, but was then obliged to change his way of life due to poor health. Before 1870 he got a job travelling, selling writing materials and selling photographs which enabled him to work in the country. Thomas realised that he was selling the very fashionable pictures called carte-de-visites that were of well known people, but few were from Wales. In 1863 he became manager of Harry Emmens' photographic studio in Liverpool, where he specialised in photographing non-conformist ministers. In 1867 he established The Cambrian Gallery in Liverpool, a photographic business where he produced carte-de-visites and In memoriam cards. He ran a conventional studio photography business but he also took thousands of photographs of people and landscapes on long journeys through Wales at a time when a photo took time to both prepare and develop. Thomas faced many technical challenges, particularly the difficulty of transporting his bulky photographic equipment in rural Wales, and in finding suitably dark spaces to undertake the development of the photographs. In his memoirs he reports: "I used many sorts of places for the purpose – a chicken coop, a stable many times, and once a cave when I took the group of Bards in Ruthin Eisteddfod..." The darkest place he claimed to have found was a uncompleted grave in Liverpool's Smithdown Lane Cemetery, where he was to take a photograph of the grave of Rev Pearse. Thomas placed his equipment in the bottom of the empty grave, and made it light-proof with the use of curtains. Before his death, Thomas selected 3,113 glass plate negatives which were bought by the educationalist and historian Owen Morgan Edwards to illustrate his Welsh language magazine Cymru. The negatives are now in the collection of the National Library of Wales. Edwards commented "that no-one has such a complete collection of views of Welsh historic sites". Thomas's second child was Professor William Thelwall Thomas MBE, Ch.M., FRCS (1865–1927), president of the surgery section of the British Medical Association. Thomas died on 14 October 1905 at the house of his son Albert Ivor (1870–1911) and was buried at Anfield Cemetery in Liverpool.