John Henry Bray was born in Fulham in 1863. In his teens he entered domestic service and at the time of the 1881 census he was working as a footman to an Egypt-born member of the Stock Exchange named Emanuel Pinto. In 1889 he married Mary Jane Hyland a dressmaker in her late twenties and found employment as a Butler in Lodsworth.
Around 1900 he began taking photographic portraits in Lodsworth. A single cabinet portrait of a young girl sitting on a fur-covered bench alongside a pet dog provides evidence that he was working as a photographer around 1905. The cabinet portrait carries an embossed trade plate mark which reads “J. H. Bray, Lodsworth, Petworth”.
In the 1911 Census he is widowed, living in as butler to the Hollists in Lodsworth House.[1]
[1] From www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk and the 1911 Census