Photographer Robert John Welch (b.1859 d.1936 - v1

Robert John Welch M.Sc. (b. 22 July 1859 d.28 Sept 1936) was an Irish photographer interested in natural history, particularly mollusca. Born 19-21 Main Street, Strabane, County Tyrone, the oldest of five children and the eldest of the three sons of David Welch (b.1831 d.1875) and Martha Welch, née Graham (b.1840 d.1908), who was the daughter of a local shoemaker from Strabane, she was aged 17 in 1857 when she married David.
David & Martha’s siblings:
1. Robert J. Welch (b.1859 d.1936).
2. Sara Elizabeth Welch (b.1860 d.1915).
3. Catherine M Welch (b.1861 d.1945).
4. David Alexander Welch (b.1864 d.1884) aged 19.
5. William Hunter Welch (b.1865 d.1952) photographer lived in Alberta, Canada.

David Welch was an accomplished Scottish amateur photographer from Kirkcudbright, who had come to Ulster to work as ‘agent’ for a Strabane shirt manufacturer, possibly Grosvenor Shirts aka, Porter’s Mills, Derry Road, Strabane.
In the early 1860s, he set up as a professional photographer, enjoying the patronage of the leading landowner of the Strabane area, James Hamilton (b.1811 d.1885), 2nd marquess and (from 1868) 1st duke of Abercorn. Hamilton’s appointment as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1865 enabled his protégé to call himself photographer by appointment to the viceroy.
In 1863 David moved to Victoria Terrace, Enniskillen, and then in 1868 to Newry. A short spell in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire in the early 1870s was followed by a return to Ireland. David Welch eventually settled in Bangor, where he died suddenly in 1875 when Robert was aged 16. In the same year, the family made a decision to move to Belfast and Robert took up employment with a local photographer called E.T. Church (b.c1870 d.c1879) who had a studio at 53, Donegal Place, Belfast. Although Robert joined as an assistant, this was the beginning of his training to become a professional photographer.
Robert established his own business in 1883 at 49, Lonsdale Street, Belfast making his home above it. Much of his time was spent taking pictures that reflected the life of the people and the contemporary landscape. The Ulster Museum, Belfast, houses the majority of these.

His mother Martha and sister Sara are said to have helped in the studio hand tinting photographs while Robert stated that his mother was interested in shells and flowers, she was also decribed as a publisher of photography highlighting her infulence on the buisness. Sara was a photographic assistant and managed the buisness accounts. From the death of his sister Sara in 1860 Robert sufered a nervious breakdown and his other sister Catherine came over from Leeds and spent 2 years helping look after Robert.

Many of his “Irish views” were used in railway carriages, hotels, transatlantic liners, and as illustrations in tourist guides and travel books. Over the period from the 1880’s to the 1930’s Welch built up a fine collection of negatives of Belfast street scenes, which today provides a valuable record of the changes over the period of 50 years. William Alfred Green (b.1870 d.1958), another noted Belfast photographer, was an apprentice of Welch, and photographed many of the same subjects and sites as his mentor.

In 1900, he was awarded a Royal warrant for his work from Queen Victoria, one of only 10 photographers outside the British Isles to receive this honour. He was commissioned by the Royal Commission of Enquiry in 1886 to record the damage caused in Belfast after the anti-Home Rule riots of that year. He was appointed official photographer to the shipbuilding firm of Harland & Wolff (c1894-1920) and the Belfast Ropeworks Co. He lectured and contributed many papers and illustrations to a variety of natural history publications throughout his life. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) from 1904, President of the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, and President of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1923, Queen's University, Belfast awarded him an honorary M.Sc. degree. In 1927 the Northern Ireland Parliament granted him a civil pension of £100 a year. He died on 28 September 1936 at the age of 77, leaving an estate valued at less than £500.

After his death his friends acquired, by donation or by purchase from his executors, a collection of some 5,000 of his glass plate negatives, along with many lantern slides, original prints, and various memorabilia. This ‘Welch Collection’ was presented to the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (now the Ulster Museum) as a memorial to the man and his work. A selection of these photographs, with commentary, were published in 1977. The glass negatives of the photographs taken for Harland & Wolff are held in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

An Ulster History Circle, also known as a Blue plaque was unveiled in Welch's honour on the 26 March 2010, at the home in which he was born in a house betweebn 19 to 21 Main Street, Strabane, County Tyrone.