[1] For a century, the firm's core business was taking and publishing photographs of the Victorian public and social, artistic, scientific and political luminaries.

In the 1880s, the company operated three studios and four large storage facilities for negatives, with a printing works at Barnet.

The studio employed a number of photographers, including Francis Henry Hart and Alfred James Philpott in the Edwardian era, Herbert Lambert and Walter Benington in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently William Flowers.

[2] Joseph John Elliott (14 October 1835 Croydon[3] – 30 March 1903 Hadley Heath, near Barnet) the son of John and Mary Elliott, married Clarence's sister, Elizabeth Lucy Fry (24 June 1844 Plymouth – 23 February 1931), in Brighton on 20 August 1864, eventually producing 4 sons and 3 daughters.

In 1865 Clarence Edmund Fry (Plymouth 1840 – 1897) married Sophia Dunkin Prideaux (*1838 Modbury, Devon), who was a photographic colourist.