On This Day 5th June 1939 Christina Broom died. A resident and shop owner at 87 Streatham Hill.
Christina Broom [née Livingston], [known as Mrs Albert Broom] (1862–1939), was a photographer born on 28 December 1862 at 8 King's Road, Chelsea, seventh of the eight children of Alexander Livingston (1812–1875), a master bootmaker, and his wife, Margaret, néeFair (1826–1884).
On 15 August 1889 Christina Livingston married Albert Edward Broom (1864–1912), who worked in the family ironmongery business at Brompton. They lived with his parents in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and when Winifred, their only child, was born they moved to Napier Avenue, in Fulham. Albert's sport was cricket and he became captain of Battersea Cricket club. In 1896 he was hit by a cricket ball and suffered serious disablement. At about the same time the family business failed and Albert and Christina invested in a stationery and toy shop in Streatham; Albert's trade card described him as an 'accountant and auditor, specialising in laundry accounts'. By 1903, however, the shop had failed to thrive.
While producing postcards Mrs Broom had become an established press photographer.
Unusually for a woman, Christina Broom became official photographer to the household brigade, with a darkroom in Chelsea barracks.
Because she lived near the Thames, Christina Broom also became the regular photographer of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Her most memorable pictures, however, are probably those of the women's suffrage movement taken between 1908 and 1913, which comprise a virtually unique record of the less flamboyant moments of their campaign. These include photographs of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst, and Louisa Garrett Anderson in the Women's Sunday procession and meeting in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908, in which a quarter of a million women took part, and of Christabel Pankhurst at the International Suffragette Fair, 1912 (both Museum of London collection).
(Shirley Neale)
Christina Broom [née Livingston], [known as Mrs Albert Broom] (1862–1939), was a photographer born on 28 December 1862 at 8 King's Road, Chelsea, seventh of the eight children of Alexander Livingston (1812–1875), a master bootmaker, and his wife, Margaret, néeFair (1826–1884).
On 15 August 1889 Christina Livingston married Albert Edward Broom (1864–1912), who worked in the family ironmongery business at Brompton. They lived with his parents in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and when Winifred, their only child, was born they moved to Napier Avenue, in Fulham. Albert's sport was cricket and he became captain of Battersea Cricket club. In 1896 he was hit by a cricket ball and suffered serious disablement. At about the same time the family business failed and Albert and Christina invested in a stationery and toy shop in Streatham; Albert's trade card described him as an 'accountant and auditor, specialising in laundry accounts'. By 1903, however, the shop had failed to thrive.
While producing postcards Mrs Broom had become an established press photographer.
Unusually for a woman, Christina Broom became official photographer to the household brigade, with a darkroom in Chelsea barracks.
Because she lived near the Thames, Christina Broom also became the regular photographer of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Her most memorable pictures, however, are probably those of the women's suffrage movement taken between 1908 and 1913, which comprise a virtually unique record of the less flamboyant moments of their campaign. These include photographs of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst, and Louisa Garrett Anderson in the Women's Sunday procession and meeting in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908, in which a quarter of a million women took part, and of Christabel Pankhurst at the International Suffragette Fair, 1912 (both Museum of London collection).
(Shirley Neale)
