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Think of Derby's famous photographers and the names that might first spring to mind are Richard Keene (1825-1894) and William Walter Winter (1842-1924).

But neither of these two influential men could match the prolific output of Francis William Scarratt (1876-1964) who is regarded as the pioneer of picture postcard publishing in the city.

There are 1,846 recorded photographic images attributed to F. W. Scarratt - who was always referred to as "Frank" rather than "Francis" - and they provide a rich source of information about Derby and Derbyshire's social history and changing landscape.

Born in Allestree he had an artistic flair and was a keen watercolour painter and sketcher. As a young man he worked as a wallpaper designer for a firm on St Peter's Street, Derby, called Wilkins & Ellis. The influence of these days later showed up on his postcard designs which sometimes had ornate, framed borders surrounding the central photographic image.

In 1897, at the age of 21, he married, and about six years later he went into business for himself as a stationer working out of a small shop off Uttoxeter Road where he also lived with wife Mary.

Soon afterwards he moved on to a shop on Abbey Street near the Vine pub at the corner of Wilson Street and by 1905 he was in bigger premises on the oppiste side of Abbey Street which is where he first started to take his own photographs with a view to publishing the images on picture postcards.

Between 1906 and 1910 he produced about 400 images and the first 200 were published as colour or tinted postcards between 1906 and 1908. His early postcards were printed abroad, usually in Germany.

Some time in 1910 he moved again this time to 115 Normanton Road and about another 700 postcards were published from this base. The same year he also expanded and started a second postcard publishing business from the balcony in Derby's indoor Market Hall.

Between 1906 and 1914, Scarratt's usual mode of transport was a bicycle. Later he progressed to a motorbike and finally, in the late 1920s, a two-seater motor car. It was a regular feature of Scarratt's work that the transport on which he'd arrived at the photoshoot was often to be seen somewhere in the finished image. He also regularly used members of his family in the pictures when they accompanied him on his photographic expeditions. Frank and Mary had three children: Winnie, Annie and Alec. He was also close to his brothers, Thomas and Albert. Albert had a bicycle repair business in Peet Street where their father Thomas, a horse-drawn cab driver, had stabled his horses.

During the 1920s, Frank and Mary left Normanton Road and moved to North Avenue, Mickleover, where they lived out their days. Mary died in 1959 some five years before Frank.

In the early 1930s Frank left the Market Hall and moved to premises in Lock Up Yard near the Tiger pub and traded here until he sold the business to his son-in-law Edwin White around 1938.

• Francis William Scarratt

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County:  Derbyshire

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