A post-mortem photograph of “Baby Sellar”, St. Kilda (Melbourne), 1862.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 110 x 68 mm (mount); recto with contemporary inscription in ink: ‘Baby Sellar’; verso with studio’s printed label: ‘Photographed by Davies & Co., Artists, 98, Bourke Street East, Opposite the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, and High Street, Junction, St. Kilda’; very light foxing to both sides.

According to Davies & Stanbury (The Mechanical Eye in Australia), 98 Bourke Street was Davies & Co.’s earliest address (1859-1862); while the firm only operated a studio in High Street, St. Kilda (now St. Kilda Road) in 1862-64. Since both these addresses appear on the printed label on the back of this carte de visite, we would be inclined to date the photograph to the year 1862 – the only year in which both studio addresses were current.

We believe there is a St. Kilda connection that helps to identify the dead child in this post-mortem photograph – who appears to be no older than twelve months – as a son of Mrs Matilda Charlotte Sellar (Swyer) and her husband Robert Sellar, of Tennyson Street, St. Kilda. Sellar was a successful merchant whose business partner was James McCulloch (later Premier of Victoria), and who around this time was Chairman of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. On 2 April 1859 Robert had married Matilda Charlotte Swyer at Christ Church, St Kilda – the church designed by her own brother, civil engineer Charles Robert Swyer. There is every likelihood that this sad photograph was taken in Davies & Co.’s St. Kilda studio – there would not have been a photographic studio more convenient to the Sellars’ home.

There are notices in The Argus (Melbourne) on 9 February 1861, and again on 12 August 1862, recording that Mrs Sellar, wife of Robert Sellar of St. Kilda, had given birth to a son. However, we have not been able to trace these two sons in genealogical records, which strongly suggests that both may have died in early infancy.