We are sharing some research about working lives in Bath in the 1890s and 1900s, using the portraits in our collection of glass plate negatives from the Bath studio of Tom Carlyle Leaman.
Charles Linom Moutrie (1858-1926) is the perfect late 1890s gent, with immaculate oiled hair and moustache, stiff stand-up collar, tweed jacket and bold checked waistcoat. His parents were Professors of Dancing, Deportment and Exercise in George Street and he started professional life as an auctioneer and land agent. He was very active in Bath life with connections to the Conservative Association and Weston Horticultural Society.
Through his auctioneering business he became associated with Bath Race Course. In the Bath Chronicle & Weekly Gazette 12 May 1892 there is a notice from the management of Bath Races:
To Innkeepers and Others: Mr Charles L. Moutrie is favoured with instructions to Let by Auction on Friday May 13th 1892, at Two for Three o’Clock, at the Grand Stand, Lansdown, the Ground for Booths, Marquees, Horses, Gingerbread Stalls, Cocoa Nut Sheets and Swings.
This means that he was managing tenders for concession stands at race meetings. ‘Cocoa Nut Sheets’ is an error, for Coconut Shies. I think someone from Bath Race Course went into the Chronicle office and dictated this to a stenographer (shorthand typist) who mis-heard – the advert was re-printed several times with the same mistake. It continues:
The Auctioneer begs to give notice that no Shooting Galleries or other Shows will be allowed near the Stands or the Paddock
because of course gunshots from air rifles would alarm the horses.
Charles Moutrie became Hon. Secretary to Bath Race Course from around 1901 (date uncertain). The portrait photograph was taken at this time, dating it by dress and styles in facial hair: the rather ‘loud’ check waistcoat is probably the sort of thing that the horse-racing crowd wore at this period.
In 1911 Moutrie resigned as Hon. Secretary and was employed as General Manager of Bath Races, staying in this post until his retirement in spring 1921.
And remember his warning about the sound of gunshots? It was fortunate, then, that he had retired a few months previously by the time of the “Bath Race Course Feud” in August 1921 between London bookies and men from Birmingham gangs. We will cover this in a separate article – one for Peaky Blinders fans.
Thanks to Alison Phillips for her research into Moutrie’s life, which was done for the Museum’s 2023 exhibition of the Leaman Studio portraits. You can buy a book with all the portraits and biographies of those we have been able to identify.