William Henry Ashurst
1 portrait of William Henry Ashurst
© National Portrait Gallery, London
William Henry Ashurst
by Camille Silvy
albumen print, 26 July 1862
Purchased, 1904
Photographs Collection
NPG Ax60627
Artistback to top
- Camille Silvy (1834-1910), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 14313 portraits, Sitter in 24 portraits.
Placesback to top
- Place made: United Kingdom: England, London (photographer's studio, 38 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, London)
Events of 1862back to top
Current affairs
The Lancashire cotton famine, a depression in the north-west textile industry brought about by the American civil war, reaches its climax. With large numbers of mills closing after Confederate blockades halted cotton supplies, many Lancashire families were in receipt of relief.Art and science
Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard carry out the first pasteurisation tests, the process of heating liquids at 55 degree Celsius or higher for short periods of time, destroying viruses and harmful organisms such as bacteria and yeast. .Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables is published, covering the Napoleonic wars. It traces the ex-convict Jean Valjean's character against wider questions of social and political justice, duty and love.
International
Otto Eduard Leopold Bismarck becomes Minister-President of Prussia, appointed by Wilhelm I after the liberal Diet refused to authorise funding for a proposed reorganisation of the army. Bismarck, intent on maintaining royal supremacy, engineers the Unification of Germany during his time in office.John Hanning Speke claims to have found the source of the Nile, proving that the Victoria Nile issued from the north end of lake Victoria, over Ripon Falls.
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JS Brennan
31 December 2019, 20:22
See previous contact earlier today re this subject
This William Henry Ashurst was solicitor to the Post Office, it would seem. Your general catalogue identifies his father who died in 1855.
JS Brennan
31 December 2019, 13:12
Probably (1819 -1879) solicitor son of Willian Henry Ashurst, solicitor and anti-slavery campaigner and radical reformer who had died in 1855, with, like JDP or TDP Hodge, also possibly photographed by Silvy, connections with the Orsini plot of 1858 for the assassination of Napoleon III.
Question asked out of pure ignorance - What exactly were Silvy's politics? Could he have been in London for more than photographic reasons?
Allison Belzer
22 July 2021, 22:21
Silvy also took a portrait of the wife of William Henry Ashurst, junior - Elizabeth "Bessie" Ogle Ashurst - held in the collection of the Museo Risorgimento in Rome.
The entire Ashurst family was very close with Giuseppe Mazzini (see 3 vols - "Mazzini's Letters to an English Family"). WHA jr was the treasurer of the Garibaldi Fund. He also served on the General Committee of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage.
WHA jr.'s brother-in-law was the politician James Stansfeld.