b. 1809; d. 1886
Laroche (his real name was William Henry Sylvester) was a Canadian photographer who opened up a studio in Oxford Street, London, working with the collodion process. He is particularly remembered as the defendant, in 1854, in a test case pressed by Fox Talbot, who was claiming that the collodion process came under his own calotype one. On 20 December the case was thrown out. Later, Fox Talbot wrote to his wife Constance: "The jury understood little of the subject, trusting to the judge"
whilst the judge, in summing up, had commented "It is....difficult to understand the subject, particularly as I know nothing about it...I am sorry to say the case kept me awake all last night...."
The court's decision was significant, for it meant that the process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer, and made freely available by him, was now available for all to use either in an amateur or commercial capacity. Fox Talbot decided not to appeal against the decision and, now recognising that the collodion process was not only free but faster, did not renew his patent for the calotype process; from this time onwards another restriction to the development of photography had been removed.
© Robert Leggat, 1999.