"Baby Face Norton" Is Baby-Faced — But Not Norton

UPDATE 6 April 2023 — The carte de visite that is the subject of this article is part of the Carl Mautz Collection of Carte-de-visite Photographs Created by California Photographers that is located in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. When the Library acquired the collection, it titled this card “[Photograph of Emperor Norton [?]].”

In September 2016, The Emperor Norton Trust sent the Beinecke Library the counter-analysis detailed below — but, as can happen, the request fell through the cracks.

In April 2023, the Trust tried once again — this time, with a more gratifying result. Based on the Trust’s analysis, the Beinecke has removed the “Emperor Norton” title and changed both its metadata and its catalog description for the card to disassociate the card from Emperor Norton or Joshua Abraham Norton.

Many thanks to Lucy Mulroney, Director for Collections, Research, and Education; Matthew Mason, Archivist of Visual Resources; and their colleagues at the Beinecke Library for responding to our request and correcting the erroneous information. — JL

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TUCKED INTO a few corners of the Internet — mostly on Pinterest boards linking back to this 2012 Tumblr — is the following photograph labelled as being Emperor Norton (or at least possibly so).  Every now and again, someone will send us this photo in the hope of having stumbled across a hidden treasure.

We've had doubts of our own about the authenticity of this photograph — but we've discovered new evidence that would seem to confirm any hopes as wishful thinking.

[Photograph of Emperor Norton [?]]. Carte de visite, c.1860, by Jacob Shew (1826-1879). Part of the Carl Mautz Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Full catalog entry.

The image here is of a carte de visite mounting of the photograph, which was taken by Jacob Shew (1826-1879). The card is in the collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale University.  

Pencilled on the verso (back) of the card is the inscription "Emp Norton" [see image here]. But the library's title for the card — "[Photograph of Emperor Norton [?]]" — indicates Yale's recognition that there is reason to doubt that Emperor Norton is who is depicted in the photograph. 

We agree. For some time, in the Campaign's* gallery of photographs of the Emperor, we have had this photo at the bottom of the page, as one of two "persistent outliers" for which "there's not enough information to confirm the authenticity."

I long have felt that the figure in this photo is much too young, fresh-faced, slightly built and closely groomed to be Norton. Indeed, click to enlarge the photo and you'll see that the beard and moustache appear to be fake — a theatrical prop provided by the photographer, perhaps?

From the following photograph — part of the same Yale collection that includes the photo we're considering here — one can guess that photographing young boys in military regalia was, in fact, a "thing" during this period.

Note the similarity of the costumes and props — the military "top," the sword and the carefully staged tall fur hat — in the two photographs. As though the parents of each boy had browsed the catalogue at the studio and requested the "Military Officer" option. 

[Photograph of a boy in a uniform]. Carte de visite, c.1855-1895, by Bradley & Rulofson studio. Part of the Carl Mautz Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Full catalog entry.

ln doing a bit of extra digging recently, I discovered something that would seem to further disqualify Emperor Norton as the subject of the Shew photograph.

The Beinecke catalogue listing dates this carte de visite as "ca. 1860."

But the studio address on the front of the card is 612 Clay Street in San Francisco. According to Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn in their extensively annotated book Pioneer Photographers of the Far West (Stanford, 2000), Jacob Shew didn't move his studio to 612 Clay until mid 1867 — and Shew remained at 612 Clay until moving his studio to 513 Montgomery Street in 1871 [see page 494, column 2, here].

Assuming that Shew took this photograph while he was at 612 Clay, as the card indicates, i.e., between 1867 and 1871...

A comparison of this photo to the established photographs of Emperor Norton from this same period — see rows 1 and 2 in our gallery here for photos of the Emperor dated between c.1859 and March 1869 — would seem to confirm that the person in Shew's photograph is not Emperor Norton. [Update 4/4/2023: In October 2020, we dated the earliest extant photograph of Emperor Norton to between late September 1859 and late May 1860. This would put the photo in the same time frame as the ca.1860 date claimed for the photo under discussion here. But, it’s evident that the subjects are two very different people. See our article here.]

Cute kid, though.

[Many thanks to Julie Driver and Judi Leff for a very productive online brainstorm about the Jacob Shew photograph back in September. —JL]

* In December 2019, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign adopted a new name: The Emperor Norton Trust.

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