Ruff’s beach photographs

This fabulous photograph of Brighton Beach was taken nearly 130 years ago by George Reuben Ruff, commonly referred to as George Ruff junior, He was born around 1858, and appears to have inherited his father’s interest in painting and photography - his father had turned professional a year two after George was born. As a young man Ruff Junior studied painting in London, producing mainly landscapes and still life. At the time of the 1881 Census, he is recorded as an ‘Art Student (Painting)’.

By the early 1890s, Ruff was back in the Brighton area taking photographs as a so-called Gentleman Amateur (with independent means). He made his home in the Preston area of Brighton but, by 1893, was living at Cambridge Villa, not far from Thomas Booth’s Natural History Museum on Dyke Road. In the 1901 Census, he was recorded at that address living with his wife Mary. In 1903, the couple adopted a young girl named Dorothy, and then they also had a son.

In the 1890s and the early 1900s, Ruff junior wandered along the beach and esplanade of Brighton’s seafront, armed with the recently introduced portable camera, snatching pictures of children paddling in the sea, boys and girls playing on the beach and other animated scenes. He also captured seaside entertainers in action. One photograph, taken in 1904, shows Professor Reddish entertaining holidaymakers on the West Pier by ‘flying the foam’ , a stunt which involved diving from the pier head on a bicycle. 

In 1905, the Ruffs moved from Coventry Street to a house a few streets away in Chatsworth Road, near Dyke Road Park. Ruff is assumed to have died in 1913 - as, thereafter, only his wife’s name appears on the voting lists.

Spartacus-Educational has an excellent history of Ruff Senior and Junior along with many examples of their work. This snap of Ruff Junior himself can also be found at that same website. However the photograph above, taken in 1896, of children on the beach - with a crisply realised image of a bathing machine and its reflection - comes from the book Palace Pier, Brighton by Albert Bullock and Peter Medcalf.