This is one of over 20,000 portrait photographs in the collection at Platt Hall. Many are middle- and upper-class studio portraits, but there are also more informal images taken outdoors, and documentary portraits recording occupational and working dress. They come in a range of photographic formats including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, stereoscopics, cartes de visites, cabinet photographs, postcards and prints.

These pictures are part of the archive built up by collecting couple Charles Willett and Phyllis Cunnington to accompany their collection of historic dress, purchased for Manchester in 1946 with funds raised by a public appeal.

​A tiny selection of images from this huge collection are shown below. The names - and lives - of almost all the people depicted in these pictures were not recorded and remain unknown.