A carte-de-visite showing the premises of Samuel Rees, chemist and druggist of Hayle in Cornwall.

Born in Swansea in 1853, Samuel Lawrence Rees was the son of a master mariner. He appears on the 1881 census, aged 27, a 'chemist' living in Chapel Row, Phillack (a village about one mile north of Hayle) with his wife Elizabeth and baby daughter Ethel.

When the 1891 census was taken ten years later, Samuel had returned to Wales with his family and was now a 'chemist and hotel proprietor' at the Old Swan Inn in Languick, Glamorgan. In 1911 he was a 'chemist and druggist' in Swansea.

He died in Swansea in 1911.

Photographed by Edward Ashton of St Ives and Hayle, Cornwall. According to his backplate, Ashton was in attendance at St Ives on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and was at Hayle on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.