A FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHER TELLS HOW IT WAS DONE
I recently discovered an autobiography by the Australian society photographer Jack Cato 'I can Take It', first published in 1947, 11 years after the Raynham Hall ghost photograph. As a West End photographer's assistant in London he knew all the successful portrait photographers (which would have included 'Captain Provand'). He spent some time trying to devise a method of having a stock of different negatives which could be used as backgrounds to a portrait, so he took an interest in the blossoming of ' psychic photography' after the First World War.
He describes how a plate could be seen while developing to have a ghost next to the sitter - thus apparently proving that the image had not been manipulated. This is so close to 'Indra Shira's' published description of calling the chemist from the floor below to witness the developing 'Brown Lady' image that I think it must be a comment on that, carefully phrased to be non-libellous. It is useful also as it confirms that two plates together could be put in a dark slide
p 115
"I could have bought a picture of him for half-a-guinea from any of the Illustration Bureaux. It would have been easy to cut out the figure, paste it on a black card and re-photograph it very much out of focus and develop the the plate to a faint image. This plate I would then put in a (dark) slide in front of the one used (to take the picture). After taking the picture I could show there was no fake about it by letting him watch the development in the dark room, where he would see this picture of himself and the "wraith" develop together on the one plate without any contact or control of any kind. He would think it was very wonderful and believe in it all his life, and he would be every grateful to me and tell the world that I was marvellous".