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March 1895: Ten Years Lasts Six Weeks
It seems that the partnerships forged by the pioneer film-makers were little more than relationships of convenience on either side of the Atlantic. While Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat were falling out in the States, in Britain Robert Paul and Birt Acres were busy calling an end to what was planned to be a ten year business agreement after just six weeks.
Birt Acres was a rather remote figure by all accounts, but he had a background as unlikely as it was colourful. Born in Richmond, Virginia on the 23rd July 1854 to British parents who died during the American Civil War, Acres was taken in by his aunt, who sent him to Paris in 1872 to study fine arts at the Sorbonne. Four years later, Acres returned to the States and lived the life of a frontiersman for almost a decade. He became quite wealthy during this period and, sometime around 1885 decided to move to Britain, where he met and married a Tasmanian girl.
Settling in the Devon coastal resort of Ilfracombe, Acres established a studio for the ‘production of portraits by painting and photography’. He quickly earned an enviable reputation and, in addition to working as a photographer, Acres not only lectured but contributed articles to photographic journals. He also managed to find time to invent an apparatus for washing prints, and another for copying stereoscopic photographs.
Acres joined Elliott and Son, a major manufacturer of photographic plates and printing papers, as General Manager in 1890. Four years later, he was introduced to Robert Paul by a colleague – and friend of Paul’s – Henry (Harry) W. Short (who would later go on to invent the Filoscope – a flip book viewer manufactured by the British Mutoscope & Biograph Company).
By March 1895, Paul and Acres had successfully constructed a camera with which they could make films for presentation in Paul’s replica Kinetoscopes. While Acres designed the camera, Paul constructed it in his Hatton Garden workshop (and charged Acres £30). It was based on Marey’s Chronophotographe but adapted to use the 35mm sprocketed film used by Edison’s Kinetoscopes. The first film shot on their new camera was of Harry Short, dressed in cricket whites, presumably to stand out from the background. It was filmed by Acres outside his home in Park Road, Barnet, north London (next door to the factory of Elliott & Sons), sometime in March before the 29th and was called Incident at Clovelly Cottage. Paul wrote to Edison immediately, enclosing sample frames of the film, and offering to supply films for the Kinetoscope, but Edison declined his offer (although two of Acres’ and Paul’s films would be shown at Edison’s first public demonstration of his Vitascope projector the following year).
Other films quickly followed Incident at Clovelly Cottage. The day after writing to Edison, the pair filmed the Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the 30th March, and the Derby on 29th May. They also made a short narrative-based sketch entitled Arrest of a Pickpocket, the first to be made in Britain . Other titles included Comic Shoe Black, Boxing Kangaroo, Performing Bears, Boxing Match, Carpenter’s Shop, Dancing Girls, Rough Sea at Dover and Tom Merry, Lightning Cartoonist. Most of these films were shown at the Empire of India Exhibition at Earl’s Court from May to October 1895, where a number of Paul’s Kinetoscopes were on display
It was shortly after these early successes, however, that the relationship between Acres and Paul began to sour. On the 27th May, Acres secretly took out a sole patent for the Kineopticon camera, which the pair had designed and built together. Shortly after doing this, Acres, (who had by now resigned from his position at Elliott’s) received an invitation from a German chocolate manufacturer named Ludwig Stollwerck of Cologne, who required a supply of films with which to exploit the Edison Kinetoscopes that he was attempting to introduce into Germany. Throughout June, Acres travelled around Germany, visiting Hamburg, Berlin and Kiel, where he filmed the Kaiser opening the Kiel canal (Inauguration of the Kiel Canal by Kaiser Wilhelm II). Meanwhile, while Acres was busy in Germany, Paul was promoting himself as the ‘sole European manufacturer’ of the films.
Upon Acres’ return to England, the pair’s brief partnership finally collapsed amid acrimonious accusations from both men – and the rift between them was one that would never heal, even though both would go on to further success in the field of cinematography. [ADD]
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