In 1910, an event happens that ends Reinhold’s career as a press photographer.

The Daily Express sues Reinhold, purporting that he has committed fraud by fraudulently selling them a photograph of the funeral of William Gladstone, which he had taken in 1898, and passed it off as an image of the preparations for the lying in state of the recently deceased King Edward VII.

“In the City of London court yesterday, an application was made in an action bought by the Daily Express (1908) (Limited) against Messrs. Reinhold, Thiele, and Co., photographers, Chancery-lane. To recover £100 damages for alleged fraudulent misrepresentation in having sold them as genuine for publication in their newspaper what purported to be a photograph of the “preparations for the Lying-in-State at Westminster Hall,” but which the defendant knew did not represent the scene suggested.

Mr. Profumo, the plaintiff’s counsel, stated that instead of the photograph being a representation of the scene of King Edward’s Lying-in-State it was a photograph of the preparations at Westminster Hall for the Lying-in-State of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. W. Cresswell, the defendant’s solicitor, said that they had never asserted that the photograph was a portrait of King Edward’s Lying-in-State.

He asked that an order for the interrogatories which the Registrar had made should be set aside. The plaintiffs had given no particulars as to the alleged misrepresentation nor of the damages.

The defendants were photographers and having in their possession a photograph of Mr. Gladstone’s Lying-in-State they sent the photograph round to the daily papers. The Daily Express published the photograph and added words implying that it was the Lying-in-State of King Edward. They added a lot of the matter. Mr. Profumo observed that the defendants’ present application was both novel and most unusual, and their admission that the photograph did not refer to Kind Edward’s Lying-in-State was astounding.

The defendants’ photograph was stated to represent “preparations for the Lying-in-State at Westminster Hall.” Who on earth would think that those preparations were for the late Mr. Gladstone? The interrogatories ought to be answered.

Judge Lumley Smith, K.C., said that what might be a difficulty was that the parties did not deal directly with each other. The photograph was sent in. He allowed some interrogatories with alterations but not others but gave the plaintiffs the costs in the cause.”

Morning Post – Wednesday 29^th June 1910. The British Library Board. All rights reserved.

Whether this was done intentionally or an error made by someone in his studio, the impact was almost immediate. With the story being carried by multiple paper, beyond a few sporting images later appearing in The Sketch, not another photograph by Reinhold’s was ever carried by another Fleet Street publication.

Although no doubt a major blow to his business and was the beginning of a decline in his business; his large and diversified studio at Cheapside would continue trading until 1913, taking him almost to the dawn of the First World War.

During this time Reinhold continued both exhibiting his work, an example being his contributing of several works for the “Penrose’s Pictorial Annual” for 1911-12, and travelling around the world. A photograph in the Hulton Archive dated to 12^th December 1912 places Reinhold in Mexico City, during the Mexican Revolution and less than two months before the coup d’état that became known as the Ten Tragic Days. It is not known what bought Reinhold to Mexico City during this time, if it was to cover the conflict then sadly no other photographs or records are known to survive from this visit.  

It would be shortly after this visit that Reinhold would make the decision to let go of his Chancery Studio of almost twenty years and downsize to a smaller one out in Clapton. This was likely down to finances. Cheapside was known as “the greatest thoroughfare in London” and no doubt expensive to keep; and with him no longer doing presswork, he no longer needed a studio in such close proximity to Fleet Street. With the closing of his studio, he would also move the family out to Clapton to be closer to his new workplace.

The true beginning of the end came in 1914, on 24^th May that year, his wife Lily would suddenly pass away aged just 50, they had been married for 30-years. One of the great tragedies of this is that of thirty years of marriage, we know extraordinarily little of Lily’s life, she is almost left as a shadow in the background of her husband’s life.

Combining with the grief of Lily’s death was the outbreak of the First World War just two months later. This meant that their son Carl, who was in the reserves, was immediately called up and fought in the Battle of Mons that August. With a household in mourning and family split up by war, the eldest son Percy, who was invalided out of the navy that November, would move in with his father and helped in the running of the Clapton Studio.

With this in mind, we know little about Reinhold’s work during the war, not even where his Clapton studio was located. It would be reasonable to assume that the studio was a smaller affair, likely focusing on more classic portraiture, although a 1917 science publication with his works in it shows her was still active in other fields. What is known is that his daughter Dora Elizabeth Pauline Thiele (1889-1960), who had previously worked in his Chancery Lane Studio, continued to work at his Clapton Studio. Dora appears to have been a major figure in her father’s studio and would later move on to work for the celebrated portraitist, Lallie Charles (1869-1919), who was described as the “foremost female portrait photographer of her day.“

With the outbreak of the war, Reinhold war also affected by his German status, and would subsequently apply for a certificate of naturalization under “The British Nationality & Status of Aliens Act, 1914”. He would be granted this and receive a letter from the Home Office dated 12^th October 1915.

“I am directed by the Secretary of State to say that he has under consideration your application for exemption from deportation as an alien enemy, and after consulting the Advisory Committee has decided that you may remain in this country,

This decision has not the effect of releasing you from any of the provisions of the Aliens Restriction Orders applicable to your case and is liable at any time to revocation.” (No: 289023)

Thiele Family Papers

It is likely that Reinhold was then required to register with his local police station and was issued with an Alien Registration Card. He would have also been restricted in his movements and not been allowed to access certain parts of London.

As a passionate anglophile, this sense of distrust towards German immigrants such as himself would have been heartbreaking. We get a sense for this through how his son Carl would during the war anglicize his name to avoid discrimination, changing it from Carl Arthur Reinhold Heinrich Thiele to Charles Arthur Henry Thiele. The scars that the war inflicted on the family would persist for decades to come, with Reinhold’s granddaughter Ella Mai Rose being cut off from her German identity and prevented from learning the language despite her pleas.

We are aware that from about 1916, Reinhold’s health starts to decline with chest pains and dizziness. No doubt not helped by the stress of losing his wife and decline of his business with the outbreak of the war, he is then diagnosed with Aortic Valve Disease.

With declining health and his children moving on, Reinhold surrenders the family house, setting himself up at 66 Park Lane (now called Clissold Crecent), Stoke Newington. Having given up his Clapton Studio, he would initially live and work there, before later fully converting the house into a studio and taking lodgings at 107 Highbury Quadrant, just a ten-minute walk away. He would remain active, trading as a “master photographer” all the way up until his sudden death on 21^st April 1921, aged 64.

On his passing, his eldest son Percy would take care of the funeral, having him buried at Willesden Cemetery on 27^th April 1921.

In one of the last acts of that day, family papers captured Percy jotting down the costs of the funeral on a piece of his father’s old letterhead paper. A batch of letterhead printed almost a decade earlier and still recalling his father as the “Reinhold Thiele: Press Photographer” of old and encouraging you to visit him at his long-since lost studio on 66 Chancery Lane.