Not White Enough
How Victorian Racism Contributed to the Destruction of a Photographic Genius
by Muriel J Morris

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She’s sixteen, shunned, isolated and possibly pregnant. This is Marie who thought she had the world by the tail a few months ago. She had married a handsome, professional European man who adored her. She is Eurasian, but her European status in Indonesia had been earned through careful education, European dress and mastery of a European language, Dutch. But she finds herself in dank, grey Manchester where her husband’s family won’t accept her and never really will, she’s half a world away from the blue skies, tropical fruits, colourful fabrics, familiar languages and house full of servants that she grew up with. Her husband, Walter Woodbury, is on a mission to patent his invention, which is why they’ve returned to England, a country which will be civilly hostile to Marie and her eight children, so that, when her husband dies, within a few years, seven of the eight and Marie herself will has fled England, which deems them Not White Enough. You probably don’t know who Walter Bentley Woodbury is, but you should.  He’s the reason this book is in your hands.  Woodbury invented and patented the first photographic printing press so that thousands of copies could be made from a single negative—enough for a book or an illustrated magazine. But he’s unknown.  In fact, he died in so much debt that a collection had to be taken for his funeral and he left his wife and eight children £246. His obscurity is due to two factors.  One is Woodbury himself—his mercurial mind caromed on to the next project, whether it was an aerial observation camera for the military or a train signal that used sound for foggy weather or paper-backed film, before he had secured the business side of his existing inventions.  The second was that he and his family were ostracized because Marie Woodbury, his Eurasian wife, was visibly biracial and so were most of their children.  The scientific community accepted Woodbury as an inventor, but the wider community never accepted his wife and family, virtually all of whom left England after Woodbury’s tragic death.  This book tells a story that needs telling in our modern world. Not White Enough is largely dedicated to Woodbury’s career and travels, but the author also sheds some light (sometimes speculative) on his wife, their eight children, and other little-known Woodbury family members in an effort to piece together the puzzle of her family’s fascinating and often tragic past.

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"Walter Woodbury was typical of ambitious young men of technical aptitude in the industrial revolution who left home for greater opportunities abroad. He was extraordinary however, in establishing a long running top quality studio in Indonesia the output of which is inestimable historical value, and for pioneering a beautiful photomechanical process to revolutionize illustration. Both genres are his legacy." —Gael Newton: Senior Curator (Retired) of Australian and International Photography for the National Gallery of Australia, author of multiple books on photography. "As a direct descendant of Walter Bentley Woodbury, Muriel Morris’ perspective is an extraordinary one: she combines family lore with scholarly genealogical research and adds her very personal view on the impact of the all-pervading racial prejudice at that time." —Dr Gerlind-Anicia May, photographic historian

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For more than 43 years, Muriel Morris taught English, English literature, journalism, and creative writing, among other subjects. She has double degrees in English and previously published Shakespeare Goes to the Dogs (later re-issued as Shakespeare Made Easy: an Illustrated Approach), a dozen Shakespeare plays acted out by cartoon dachshunds. "Merry Dachshunds of Windsor" was a part of the 2000 Shakespeare: Man of the Millennium exhibition put on by Britain's National Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Bard’s birthplace.  Like her great-great grandfather and other Woodbury relatives, Morris has “travelling feet,” having visited the UK, Europe, South America, North Africa, India, and China, where she rode a Bactrian camel in Inner Mongolia. She’s also ridden a dromedary on the Sahara, an elephant in the teak forests of India and gone down the Amazon in a large canoe.  Morris lives in Chilliwack, British Columbia, in the company of two dachshunds, Portia and Smashing Pumpkin, referred to as “The Dachshund Princesses.”

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Contributors

Author

Muriel J Morris

Photographer

Michael Spencer

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