sketcher and professional photographer, was born in South Australia, only son of William Henry Belcher, a tailor, and his wife Elizabeth. He began working as a photographer with the newly arrived George Freeman in 1861; their studio was at 97 Hindley Street, Adelaide. He seems to have had his own firm in 1865; E.W. Belcher & Co.'s photograph of the architect G.S. Kingston’s neo-Gothic monument to Colonel Light was published as an engraving in the Illustrated Sydney News on 16 July. He was again listed in partnership with Freeman in 1866-67 at the Town Hall Photographic Gallery ('opposite the Adelaide Town Hall’). He seems not to have moved to Rundle Street with Freeman in the 1870s, working on his own until at least 1885 from various Adelaide addresses, as well as at Port Adelaide, Prospect and Wallaroo. Davies and Stanbury also note an undated carte-de-visite produced by E.W. & W.H. Belcher as 'Belcher Brothers’.
Belcher married Catherine Elizabeth Moulder(?) at North Adelaide on 26 September 1877; they had at least two children. He died on 10 November 1936 and was buried in the Congregational section of the Mitcham Cemetery. An album of 76 drawings by Belcher dating from about 1869 to 1902 is in the Dixson Galleries at the State Library of New South Wales.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
