Hamilton Toovey

Hamilton Toovey

Toovey took many photographs of visiting artistes,
which were sold as postcards
These were the Adeler, Sutton and Allendale Entertainers in 1909

Hamilton Toovey was in business as a photographer in Jersey from 1894 to 1914

Although Ernest Hamilton Toovey was in business as a photographer in the Parade for 20 years, from 1894 to 1914, very little is known about him, and surprisingly few of his images appear to have survived.

He was always known professionally as Hamilton Toovey. It is not known whether he was born in Jersey but it is possible that he was the son of William Parkinson Toovey and Jane Louisa Steen, who married in St Saviour in 1851. We have not found a birth or baptism record for Hamilton Toovey, but he married Ellen Le Seelleur in St Helier in 1893. The marriage record gives his birth year as 1870. He and Ellen had four children, Ernest Villiers, Kennedy St Clair, Hamilton and Henry Hamilton, between 1894 and 1900.

He was first in business with a partner as Toovey and Snow, but this lasted only a few months before he became a sole trader. It is likely that his partner, who has not previously been named, was Villiers St Clair Snow, because the baptism record of the first of his children, in 1894, shows Villiers St Clair as godfather and Emily Catherine Snow as godmother.

Only 75 of Toovey's images are listed in La Société Jersiaise's online catalogue, and just 63 are visible to website visitors. The majority of these are photographs of Jersey coastal towers and there is only a handful of portraits, although he is known to have taken many studio portraits, only five of which can be viewed on the Société Jersiaise website.

Fifth three of his photographs appeared in the Jersey Heritage online catalogue in 2024, as part of a collection of some 7,500 postcards acquired the year before. Some are included on this page together with ten Toovey portraits which have been in this website for a number of years. Although Toovey commonly printed his 20th century photographs on postcard backs, compared with the cartes de visite used in his early years in business, and many were undoubtedly sold, and are valued by collectors, it is not believed that he was actually a postcard publisher with a catalogued collection.

There are other Toovey photographs throughout the site which are not all attributed to him and are not currently being added to this page.

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  1896 portrait
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  Minnie Love
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  The Sisters Love
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  Triangle Park
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  The Dragonets
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  The Dandies
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  The White Coons Banjo Team
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  The White Coons, 1904
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  Royal Comedy Entertainers
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  The Dandies
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  Harbourmaster R H Larbalestier
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  Premier Pierrots
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  A women's hockey team
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  Portrait of an unknown girl
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  Foresters' Arms, Beaumont
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  Bride portrait
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  Dorothea Vincent
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  King's Own Regiment band in 1910
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  King's Own Regiment band
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  Lucy Kipling
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  Toovey and Snow carte de visite. Cards with the dual imprint are rare because the photographers' partnership lasted less than a year in 1894, before Hamilton Toovey went it alone ...
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  ... and another rare portrait from the partnership, only the third we have come across