Two young ‘Great Grimsby Street Tramways Company’ conductors 1920s.

An original photograph, by Lowthian Bros, from the Jeff Beedham Collection. Jeff’s dad’s brother Charles is on the left (marked).

Great Grimsby Street Tramways Company, a subsidiary of the Provincial Tramways Company, operated from 1881 until 1936.

The abbreviations ‘GTC’ and ‘Tramway’ on the caps were used rather than the full company initials i.e. ‘GGSTC’.

The photographers, Harry (1860-1947) and Charles Lowthian (1861-1898), were born in Manchester. They were sons of Jabez Lowthian, artist, of Keswick, Cumberland. They moved to Grimsby in the 1880s and set up as Lowthian Bros., professional photographers, in Freeman Street. Charles Lowthian later set up a photographic studio in Cleethorpes. He married Harriet Charles in Grimsby on 1887. Sadly, he died in 1898, aged just 37. (Studio photographs by C. Lowthian, as opposed to Lowthian Bros., are rare as he died at such a young age.)