Departures of note

Władysław Małachowski, a Polish civil engineer and revolutionary, fled the Russian Empire in 1863 after an arrest warrant was issued for his role in the January Uprising. Using a false passport, he escaped to Great Britain and reinvented himself as Leon Warnerke, a name under which he would become a pioneering inventor in photography. In 1875, he constructed a camera that used a roll of paper-backed collodion emulsion, allowing 100 photographs to be taken on a single load—years before George Eastman's roll film. His camera featured an orange window in the rear to read frame numbers, a design later common in modern cameras.

Warnerke's inventive work extended beyond cameras. In 1880, he developed a sensitometer, the first practical device for measuring the speed of photographic plates, which was adopted as a standard by a commission the following year. He also discovered the tanning effect of pyrogallic acid on collodion and improved dry collodion emulsions, producing his own photosensitive materials in sheets and rolls. His later camera model, from 1881, used perforated film and an electrical alarm bell to signal frame advancement, an idea later adopted by Eastman's company.

Beyond photography, Warnerke was also a successful forger of Eastern European currencies, particularly Russian roubles. He was charged in Marseilles but not convicted. His death in 1900 at age 63 may have been faked to avoid arrest. In the 1990s, a hidden archive of his correspondence, forgeries, and personal documents was discovered during a demolition in London, and the collection was auctioned in 1991 and 2008. Warnerke was awarded the Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1882.