Henry James Burgess was born at Trinity Lane, Wareham, Dorset on 16 February 1867. His birth certificate shows that the informant was his mother, Jane Hordle of Trinity Lane, Wareham, and his father was Henry Conrad Cornelius Burgess, deceased; a police constable.

That rather exotic full name is a little surprising as he was just plain Henry Burgess when he married Jane on 1st January 1865; but then in that certificate his father appears to have been Henry Conwright Burgess. Perhaps middle names beginning with C were a family tradition. If so then he tried to continue it when he named his first son George Henry Cornelius.

Henry James Burgess spent his childhood in Wareham, but he had moved to London by the time he married Elizabeth Lucy Hely in 1890. He was working as a carpet planner at that time.

It seems unlikely that he owned the car in this photograph, but he and some of his family look quite at home in it.
From the left, the others in the car are sons Albert Henry and Harold William, their mother Elizabeth Lucy and their sister Lucy Elizabeth.

Harold was born in 1907 and that fits well with information provided by my cousin Nigel, whose father Reginald was missing from the picture. Perhaps he was holding the camera.

Nigel says that the photograph was taken in 1907/8 on an outing to Clapham Common and that the car was an Argyle 16 or 20 dating from about 1905/6. This convertible bodywork style for the passengers is called a landaulet or landaulette after the landau, a horse-drawn carriage with a similar folding top. Drivers had no such protection.

Jane HordleThe Payne family and the Parish