IDNO

N.26766.WHI

Description

Captain Whiffen and a Trinidadian “bearer” standing outdoors. Both are wearing similar “European” style clothing. Whiffen is wearing a hat, smoking a pipe, holding a stick and has a pistol holdster and a knife in his belt. The other man is holding a ?knife and his clothing is ragged. [TC 09/06/1999]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon

Cultural Affliation

English; British; European; Trinidadian; West Indian Peoples

Named Person

Thomas William Whiffen

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Date

1908 - 1909

Collection Name

Whiffen Collection

Source

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

The man on the right is one of Whiffen’s “carriers”, as described in Whiffen, T. W., 1915 (pp. 2-4). He explains that at the beginning of his expedition he “collected eight Indian carriers, two half-castes, and eight “rationales”, or semi-civilised Indians, armed with Winchesters, together with three Indian women, wives of three of the rationales” (ibid: 3). West Indians came to the area as employees of the Peruvian Amazon Company, to supervise the gathering of wild rubber.

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36161, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse with "Self and Bearer (Trinidadian)."
Photocopies of Whiffen prints at the RAI are held in the UCMAA archive, reference W19/1/3. See Whiffen Collection record for further details on RAI collection. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 02/10/2019]

The glass negatives in the Whiffen Collection were previously stored in two wooden trays numbered “Trays 105” on Shelf 3. Some of the glass negatives were found by the cataloguer in one of these trays, which was numbered C59/ by the cataloguer. The others were loose in piles on the shelf. An address label found in C59/ is addressed to a member of the Whiffen family and dated 1960. The label is now in the UCMAA archive, reference number W19/1/1. Each glass negative was stored, with duplicate glass negatives if any, in a museum archival bag. The bags containing images for which there is a corresponding mounted print in the Haddon Collection were marked with the original number of that print. A note by Gwil Owen which distinguished the printed and unprinted piles of glass negatives is now in the UCMAA archive, reference number W19/1/2. For full details see the Whiffen Collection record.


For source details, see the Museum Annual Report, CUMAA 1934. See also1934 correspondence between Louis Clarke and Nöel Whiffen. For full details see Whiffen Collection record.