User:Monado/sandbox

John Topham (?? - 1992) was an English police officer. He carried a camera and made photographs of daily life around south-east London. A photograph of Mary Smith, a knocker-up, was his first known photograph. He sold it for five pounds to the Daily Mail, and decided to become a free-lance photographer.

John Topham worked steadily from 1931 to 1973, documenting the ordinary way of life of ordinary people" "the little things of life - the way it really was." He amassed 121,228 negatives including 20,000 glass negatives of his earliest work. The Topfoto collection in Edenbridge has 122,000 of his pictures. Topham worked closely with a Kentish Times photographer, Tom Fassam.

Topham died at his home in Edenbridge in 1992.