Whiskers Gallery

Captain Collins of Brighton, with his family

Captain Fred Collins of Brighton, who ran three pleasure boats called the Skylark and was a familiar figure on Brighton Beach for sixty years. His cry of Any More for the Skylark became so famous that it became a national saying for pleasure boats. It is believed that the novelist Charles Dickens knew Collins, and went for a trip on the Skylark in 1867, commenting later on the captain's witty chatter to the trippers. Collins is seen here on the right, with his son, grandson and great grandson. The fleet continued to sail until just after the Second World War under his son, also named Fred Collins, although two of the three boats were lost at Dunkirk in 1940

© Mary Evans Picture Library

Old man with beard, Stoke

An old man with a white bushy beard, looks directly at the camera and poses for a photograph in the street. He wears a black beret and has smiling eyes. Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire Date: 1987

© Philip Dunn / Mary Evans Picture Library

Beard, Camera, Clothes, England, English, Grey, Happy, Hat, Heavy, Man, Old, Pensioner, Photography, Portrait, Portraiture, Potteries, Smile, Smiling, Staffordshire, Stoke, Stoke On Trent, Street, Trent, Whiskers, Winter

Lord Dundreary proposing, Our American Cousin

Lord Dundreary proposing - a scene from the play by Tom Taylor, Our American Cousin, first performed in 1858. The role of this brainless English aristocrat was created on stage by Edward Askew Sothern, on whom this illustration is probably modelled.
circa 1860s

© Mary Evans Picture Library

1860s, America, American, Aristocrat, Askew, Brainless, Courting, Courtship, Cousin, Dundreary, Edward, English, Illustration, Lord, Love, Man, Marriage, Men, Monocle, Play, Proposal, Propose, Proposing, Role, Scene, Sideburns, Sothern, Stage, Taylor, Tom, Twit, Usa, Victorian, Whiskers, Woman, Women