Some history I have found
Robert Hellis founded a photographic studio in Notting Hill in 1870. This enterprise was perpetuated by one of his three sons and his son-in-law William Morgan long after his death. Hellis & Sons opened more branches than any other studio in 19th century London before being dissolved in 1928. Hellis was also well known as a magician and conjuror.
Hellis was born in Clerkenwell and married there in 1853. He was a ‘shop man’ in a grocer’s shop and his bride, 20-yr-old Gertrude Gosling came from a grocer’s family. In the early years of their marriage they lived in a number of different towns, and Robert followed a variety of occupations. Their first child Edward Charles was born in Buriton, near Petersfield on 19 September 1857. At the time Robert Hellis was a journeyman grocer living at Golden Ball Street, Buriton. His employer was a man named James Meeres, who also had a grocer’s shop in the Market Square.
The 1861 census shows Gertrude Hellis as a photographer at 14 Bridge Street, Usk. In view of her husband’s later occupation, it is frustrating that nothing further is known about how or why she became a photographer. With Gertrude are the couple’s son Edward Charles Hellis, one-year-old Robert Maplesden Hellis, and a Clara Fanny Hellis. Robert had been born in December 1859 in Usk. At the time of his birth, his father was shown as a ‘gaol officer’. Clara Fanny was described in the census as ‘wife’s sister’, but was in fact eleven year-old Clara Fanny Gosling, whose role was presumably to look after the children while Gertrude was taking photographs. Robert Hellis is shown as a ‘schoolmaster’ at the Usk House of Correction.
In 1861 the family moved to Cheltenham, where they had both tragedy and joy. Robert Maplesden Hellis, the youngest child, died, but William Henry Hellis was born on 4 December 1861. At this time, Robert Hellis was an auctioneer. He was not in business in his own right, but working for a Cheltenham firm, Engall & Saunders. By 1870 the family had settled at 13 Silver Street, Notting Hill. The premises were those of a photographer and Robert and Gertrude took over the business. Silver Street was to remain the family home for the next 20 years.
In 1871 five children are shown as part of Robert and Gertrude’s household in Silver Street. This was the first census to show Robert Hellis as a photographer, the career he was to follow for the rest of his life. In 1875 Edward Charles Hellis, the eldest
child, enlisted for a ten-year engagement in the Royal Navy. He saw service on ten different ships and in February 1880 bought himself out for £12. His conduct reports while in the service varied from ‘good’ to ‘exemplary’. He does not appear in any later UK records, and so probably settled abroad. Robert Hellis joined The Royal Jubilee masonic lodge (founded 1810) in 1877. This met at Andertons’ Hotel in Fleet Street. A masonic insignia was displayed on the back of his photographs and on other sales
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literature. The 1881 census again shows Robert Hellis as a photographer, with one employee, his son William Henry Hellis. Christopher Hastings Hellis, the youngest son of Robert and Gertrude, was not a photographer, but a ‘ticket writer’, i.e. he wrote out the tickets for goods sold in shops.
Besides his photographic activities, Robert Hellis was a conjurer. ‘Professor Hellis’ gave performances in London and elsewhere, and also ran, from 13 Silver Street, a business supplying conjurers with tricks and props (a ‘magical athenaeum’). He also gave paid instruction to aspiring conjurers. Hellis’s performance venues were mainly ‘institutes’ or clubs. Professor Hellis had two performing engagements at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, 309 Regent Street in the spring of 1880 and the spring of 1881. He does not seem to have performed in theatres or music hall. He was involved in the 1876 prosecution at Bow Street Magistrates court of a Dr Slade, an American spiritualist medium, for deception.
Towards the end of his career Hellis gave lectures with a Diorama, a type of illuminated painting. His slides included some of Canada and in March 1887 at the Southampton Polytechnic Institution he suggested that any farmers in the audience might like to escape the UK’s agricultural depression by moving there! Hellis was a friend of the well-known Victorian writer Angelo Lewis (‘Professor Hoffmann’) and many of the conjuring secrets revealed in his books came from Robert Hellis (see Hellis in Wonderland, available at: willhoustoun.co.uk/shop.html).
In 1887 a new enterprise, Hellis & Sons, was formed and premises were acquired at 213 Regent Street, alth- ough these lasted for only a year. However, the new firm expanded rapidly in the early 1890s, when 18 studios were established in London. About this time Robert and Gertrude Hellis moved from West London to Lewisham. The rapid growth in the business was probably due to a partnership involving William Henry Hellis, the son born in Cheltenham, and William Henry’s brother-in-law William Morgan, who had married the youngest daughter Mabel Gertrude; Blanche Beatrice, the other daughter, married Henry Harvey, who dealt in poultry.
Norwood: Hellis Family vault (grave 26,426, square 95)
Robert Hellis died on 18 June 1895 and left some £7,100 (£830,000 today). No portrait of him is known. After his death Gertrude is identified in street directories as a photographer in Silver Street, a return to her occupation of 35 years before. She died in 1898 and is buried with her husband. William Henry Hellis’s son, Robert William Hellis (b. Wandsworth, 1889) was for a short while a partner in the firm, but that relationship ended in 1928 and the business seems to have ceased trading shortly afterwards, probably reflecting the growth of personal camera ownership among erstwhile customers.