Reinhold returned to London in 1880 at the age of 23, finding in the Merifield Household at 61 Herbert Street, with the promise of a new role as a water-colour artist, tinting photographs for the London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company.

The company had first been founded in 1854 by cousins George Swan Nottage (1823-1885) and Howard John Kennard (1829-1896). It reputedly started as a shop to sell bronzes from Howard’s foundry, but then gradually transitioned into selling everything from steroviews and stereoscopes to photographs, photographic equipment, telescopes, microscopes, phonographs, and even pre-prepared microscopic slides.

By the time Reinhold joined as a water-colourist to tint and add colour to their monochrome photographs, the business had expanded to two locations: 54 Cheapside and 108 & 110 Regent Street.

An opportunity came in 1884, when Chief Operator Ladislas Nievsky (d.1901) left the Regent Street Studio to focus on the Cheapside Studio, and the role was offered to Reinhold. This was significant, as a chief operator was the most senior position in a studio like this after the proprietor, being the skilled technician who ensured a large site like Regent Street could run. He had big shoes to 

fill, his predecessor, Nievsky, real name Ladislas Wisnevsky, was the designer of several types of ferrotype cameras, and had been linked to the Parisian studio of the famed French photographer, Nadar (1820-1910), which had also been the location of the First Impressionist Exhibition.

Some of this success may have been linked to a close relationship with the company owner Nottage, who had also recently become the Lord Mayor of London. On Nottage’s death in 1885, Reinhold would be sat in the second coach in his funeral procession to St Paul’s Cathedral.

With his promotion to Chief Operator, Reinhold would propose to the love of his life, Eleanor Mary Harriet Lily Rowbothom (1864-1914), marrying on 29^th June 1884 in the Leytonstone Parish Church.

Where Reinhold was oft described by those who knew him as “not very tall, but well built, [and] robust”, Lily was tall, with high cheekbones and a head of thick, dark wavy hair. She was both well-educated and extremely well-travelled, being the daughter of the old Quartermaster-Sergeant of the 1^st Battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, she had spent much of her childhood first in Aden and then India, moving between Pune, Belagavi, and Mumbai.

With her mother missing from the records and her father passing in 1882 at Aldershot, it’s not clear what had led her to London or how she met Reinhold, but she was living on the outskirts of the busy Rotherhithe docks when they met. On marrying, they would move in together at 2 Elm Villas, Hainault Road, London, and a little over a year later, they would welcome Percy, the first of nine children.

Lily would actively travel with Reinhold; their second son Carl being born on a trip to Germany in 1892. It would seem likely, although no records survive, that the family would take trips to visit Lily’s siblings in India. Their daughter Dora would later stay with her maternal uncle and his family, Major Charles Stuart Rowbothom, in India from 1912 to 1919.

With a young family on the way, Reinhold remained active in the arts and photography community. The earliest references of this come from news coverage on an essay of his on “The Moral utility of Aestheticism” that he read aloud to the Fillebrook Mutual Improvement Association on Wednesday 4^th February 1885.

“On Wednesday, Mr. Reinhold Thiele read an essay entitled “The Moral utility of Aestheticism,” in which he maintained that a pure sense for the beautiful has most assuredly the happiest influence on moral life, that anything that destroys the resistance of inclinations against the good promotes morality, and that the tendency of some of our powers to rule the will directly, and without regard to higher laws, lies in abeyance with our moral aim and its highest adversary which man has to conquer.

He said crude minds deficient of moral or aesthetic culture receive their laws from passion and only act in accordance with their desires. Moral minds deficient of aesthetic culture receive their laws from reason, and it is only the regard for duty that makes them conquer temptation.

With aesthetically cultivated minds we find another factor, which often replaces virtue where it is deficient or facilitates it where it exists. This factor is ‘good taste’.”

Leytonstone Express and Independent – Saturday 7 February 1885. The British Library Board. All rights reserved.

This essay acts as an excellent window into the mind of a 29-year-old Reinhold, where he talks take inspiration from the Aestheticism art-movement, and how he believes that art and beauty could be used to improve on the moral character of an individual.

In his time as Chief Operator at the LSC’s Regent Street Studio, Reinhold would steer the studio, leaning heavily into the “amateur photographer” market, opening specially reserved darkroom and studio space specially for free lessons and amateur photography.

At some point in the next few years, Reinhold is known to have left the Regent Street Studio and moved across to the Cheapside Studio. Whilst this move had been attributed to him surrendering his senior position at Regent Street to become a watercolourist at Cheapside, the true reason may reside in the surprise resignation of Ladislas Nievsky.

In 1890, Nievsky would leave the Cheapside Studio to take up a new role as director and technical advisor to the Automatic Photographic Company Ltd. This was one of the first ever photobooth companies, and was incorporated to great fanfare, boasting dignitaries on its board and an enormous £100,000 in raised capital. Although he would later deny allegations of fraud before its collapse in 1891, the company was paying 50% of all sales to Nievsky in return for him being their sole supplier of ferrous plates; whilst enticing investors in with promises of an astronomical 30% return on their investments.

A sporting article from later that year had Reinhold working in the Cheapside Studio as a portrait photographer when heavyweight boxer Frank “Paddy” Slavin (1862-1929) and sporting journalist William Swillington Shifter visited the studio.

“One of the curses of the day is photography. My parents did me a bad enough turn in borning me – a worse in borning me ugly, and I don’t want to reduplicate the grievance by being portraited. There have been Comet Years, Earthquake Years, Jubilee Years, and for me, at any rate, this is a Photographic Year.

A certain truculent brigand of the name of Thiele, of the London Stereoscopic is ever on my trail, transferring my unattractive lineaments to bits of glass.

On Monday I was hauled off to Cheapside, this being still on the way to Newmarket, and made to climb about a million stairs.

At first, it looked as if we were going over the roofs to have a dig in at Sir John Bennett’s watches, which would have been sensible.

Next, that we were all to pitch base over apex into the traffic, which would have been uncomfortable; then Thiele produced the Parra-matts Merchant, all smiles after his aquatic triumphs, and one Craig, who has been making absolutely phenomenal scores at volunteer ranges and who is associated with Thiele in his dastardly calling; and then I tumbled to the fact that we were most infallibly going to be “shot” (this jest will be let out for me at juvenile parties on the three years’ system with a penny on the bottle.)

We are still, by the way, getting to Newmarket, but gradually, very gradually – no indecent haste of undignified hurry.

Our sweet little Australian pal and I were then grouped, and a most horrible free fight took place on the subject of what the result was to be called. “Mind and Matter,” I suggested; but I heard Thiele say, “no-matter; never mind.”

William Swillington Shifter. Sporting Times – Saturday 11^th October 1890. The British Library Board. All rights reserved.

It is whilst at the LSC that Reinhold would experiment with doing some of his earliest sporting photography whilst outside of the studio. The earliest reference to this being the newspaper Sports Life. It described how Reinhold covered the 1889 World Sculling Championship on the River Thames, possibly the same “aquatic triumphs” referenced in the above Sporting Life interview.

The Leytonstone Camera Club

A major turning point in Reinhold’s life, was his involvement in the Leytonstone Camera Club, giving him both connections and set the scene for his future success.

The club first started as a group of friends in 1891, calling it “our camera club”, before getting themselves a base at the local Assembly Rooms (previously the Old National School) and formally setting themselves up as the Leytonstone Camera Club.

Although little remembered today, the club was significant within its unfortunately short lifespan (1891-1898), with membership both ballooning up to 136 by 1893 and including some of the most significant names of its time. One of its most celebrated members was the club’s vice-president, Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863-1908), famed landscape photographer and member of The Linked Ring. But others include the prominent Indian photographer, Shapoor N Bhedwar (1858-1915) and the early movie producer George Howard Cricks (1861-1936).

News coverage of club meetings shows Reinhold as a passionate and active member, showing his passion for educating on the subject, and his belief in photography as a form of art, embodying the club’s motto of “Qui capit facit”, or in English, “he who takes, makes”.

“For almost an hour on Wednesday evening Mr. R. Thiele of the London Stereoscopic Company, lectured to his fellow-members of the Leytonstone Camera Club on “Re-touching: Its uses and it’s dangers.” Mr. Thiele urged upon amateurs to never re-touch beyond the necessary limits.

Beyond them, to re-touch was simply to pander to the vanity of their sitters. As amateurs worked for art’s sake, not for £ s. d., they should be above the temptation indicated.”

Chelmsford Chronicle – Friday 27 November 1891. The British Library Board. All rights reserved.

As an early member of the club committee, Reinhold was involved in the planning of their first annual exhibition in 1892, a three-day event running from the tenth to the twelfth of November at the Leytonstone Masonic Lodge, complete with music, drinks, music, and live demonstrations.

The exhibition was officially opened to much press excitement, by Francis Greville, the future Earl of Warwick, and his wife Daisy Maynard, a keen amateur photographer, socialite, and philanthropist, but perhaps best known as a mistress of King Edward VII.

This wouldn’t be the last time Reinhold would meet the Earl, both would later attending the first druidic ceremony held by the Ancient Order of Druids at Stonehenge, in 1905, an event Reinhold would capture on camera. Despite growing up in a Lutheran household and later converting to Catholicism, Reinhold showed an interest in spirits and the occult to match Arthur Conan Doyle, who he would meet in 1900. Reinhold’s children would pass down stories of him performing séances in the family home at 18 Acton Lane, Harlesden. One story passed down to his granddaughter Ella Mai Rose (1921-1994), would recount how the table they were seated at started to levitate, before violently flying towards the door.

In any case, the event was a success, with the club awarding gold, silver and bronze medals for submissions. The club would continue to hold these annual exhibitions until either 1895 or 1897, and they would continue to grow and scale, with more medals being awarded each year.

It was during his time at the club that Reinhold would get his first book credits, as the illustrator for his fellow camera club member Robert Overton (1859-1924), a prolific author of children’s books. Reinhold would go on to illustrate two of Overton’s books, those being “Lights Out” and “After School”. These 1893 and 1895 publications are Reinhold’s earliest surviving illustrations and were completed in watercolours and individually monogramed “RT”.

They feel quite different in style from later surviving examples of his work, including the watercolour currently held in the National Archives at Kew of the future King George V and his family. A bookplate he designed in 1901 for the Ex Libris-Society would again be quite different in style and was done in the German tradition of woodblock printing, showing his range of skills.

It must be said that out of all the connections he made through the club, the most consequential for his career would be a man best known as the ‘Dickens Engraver’, Thomas Symmons, his future business partner.