William Foster Brigham (1884-1968)

William Foster Brigham was the sone of William Dodson Brigham and Alice Kellaway (later Brigham). Alice was William Dobson Brigham’s photographic assistant and later became his wife following the death of William senior’s first wife, Mary in Staffordshire in 1902. William Foster Brigham worked both with his father and mother after his father’s death in 1909, working in the Scarborough studio in the Esplanade. At some point before World War One he set up a studio in Bridlington. He married Dorothy Gill Pagett (1883-1914) from Godlming in Surrey in 1910. During WWI he was enlisted in the Royal Naval Air Service in 1916, where he served as a Chief Petty Officer and photographer at the Battersea Experimental Workshop. Following the war he opened a new studio in Bridlington and soon after started the company “Snaps” who well known in the town for taking “walkies”. At it’s height Snaps employed eight photographers. Snaps finally closed in 1973 five years after Brigham’s death. He was a well known portrait photographer taking pictures of celebrities who visited his studio in Bridlington or his later studio in Middlesbrough. In 1923 William took a former employee, Richard Ayner, to court and won an injunction against him after he had started a rival business in Bridlington.

William and Dorothy’s son George Foster Brigham was born in 1911. Dorothy Gill Brigham died in child birth on the 30 November 1914, the baby girl also died. William married Dorothy Hayes (1892-1980) in 1916.