Page 35 - pp-Suter-Miscellany

father may have owned it and passed it on. One thing
is certain – Suter cannot have bought it with his own
money from the Albermarle St. shop, since he was a
very young boy when it ceased trading.

Networking

It seems that the bulk of Suter’s work did not reach the
optical shops. His mounts continue to appear on eBay
in quantity, and only a few contemporaries rivalled his
output (the Flatters outfit springs to mind).
Interestingly, both John E. Barnett and Suter made the
move from central London to Tottenham: the two
men’s time there may have briefly overlapped, and
Suter could have inherited Barnett’s list of clients (and,
of course, the Solomons microscope) after the latter’s
death in 1882. Barnett’s mounts sold as far away as the
antipodes, and Suter certainly had global ambitions for
his own business. His catalogue claims that his
histology slides were

“used at almost every Science Class and Medical
School in the British Empire” –

a claim unlikely to have been based on substantial
evidence, but doubtless written in hopeful anticipation.

Given sparse sales via retail shops, what were Suter’s
commercial networks? There are some likely answers.
His 1900 catalogue features boxed sets of 72 histology
slides, aimed at science and medical students,
educational institutes, and presumably clubs such as
Mechanics Institutes, Schools of Arts, and the like.
Suter was a school teacher in both central London and
then in Tottenham, so would have had contacts in the
teaching profession, probably augmented when
William Peirce junior became a science teacher.
Tertiary educational institutes may have been
customers during his early mounting career, but from
th
the last quarter of the 19 century onwards these
increasingly satisfied their requirements internally by
appointing full time technical staff. That seems to be
borne out by a page from his 1900 catalogue, where the
sets are marked as cancelled, presumably by Suter
himself.