William Ralston was born in Milton, Dunbartonshire, in the summer of 1841, the elder son of Peter Ralston, a pattern designer for a calico printer, and Catherine McLaren, a calico printer’s daughter. By 1845, the family had moved to Glasgow, and was living at 475 Gallowgate, Peter Ralston continuing to work as a pattern designer. Subsequent addresses included 143 London Street (1848) and 30 Charlotte Street (1851).
Ralston attended the Normal School until the age of 12, when he left to serve as a cabin boy on one of the Clyde Steamers. He soon moved to work at the wholesale warehouse of Messrs William Gilmour & Sons.
At the age of 17, he began to show signs of delicate health, and so was sent on a voyage to Australia, leaving Greenock in November 1858 and arriving in Victoria four months later. During his three years in the country, he worked as a gold digger and a vineyard worker. Nine of his sketches of Victoria would appear in The Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil in 1879 as ‘Digging Life 25 Years Ago’.
In 1856, Ralston’s father and younger brother, John (or Jack) McLaren Ralston, had set up as professional photographers at 195½ Argyle Street, Glasgow, initially under the name J Ralston, but from 1861 as Peter Ralston. When a branch establishment opened, at 11 Jamaica Street, Ralston was invited to return home and take charge of it, and this he did, in about 1862, the company then becoming Ralston & Sons. He seems to have worked as a photographer and also a designer of bindings for books through the 1860s. During this time, he is likely to have lived in the family home, which was probably at 73 Sauchiehall Street. In 1871, he married the Glaswegian, Grace Sutherland Hilliard.
At some point, Ralston began classes at the Glasgow School of Art, but quickly abandoned them in favour of teaching himself drawing with the support of his brother, Jack, who was ‘embarking on a career as an artist’ and would produce some illustrations (Jones and Brown 2003, page 175). At the end of the 1860s, William was designing bindings for London publishers, including Frederick Warne, and beginning to produce his first illustrations. He befriended the wood engraver, Joseph Swain, who, in 1870, sent two of his sketches to Shirley Brooks, editor of Punch, one of which was then published in the weekly magazine. Many commissions followed, and the fruitful relationship led Ralston to name his third child Shirley Brooks Ralston (1874-1952). He continued to contribute to Punch until 1886.
In 1870, Ralston also began to contribute to The Illustrated London News (1870-73) and The Graphic (1870-1911). The founder of The Graphic, William Luson Thomas, encouraged him to move to London, and this he did in about 1875, spending ‘the happiest fourteen years of his life’ (according to Who’s Who in Glasgow in 1909, Glasgow: Gowan & Gray, page 176), and ‘in Hampstead and Islington had five further children’ (Jones and Brown 2003, page 176). Arguably, his best work was produced for The Graphic and The Daily Graphic, for which he was a founding artistic contributor in 1890. This shows him to have been a master of episodic illustrations and strip cartoons.
Through the 1880s, Ralston established himself as a book illustrator with such volumes as John Strange Winter’s Bootles’ Baby. A Story of the Scarlet Lancers (1885) and Houp-la (1889); three collaborations with his friend, Charles W Cole: Tippoo. A Tale of a Tiger (1886), Messrs Kamdene, Barnesburie and D’Alston’s Tour in the North (1888) and The Demon Cat. A Naval Melo-Drama (1889); and George Outram’s Legal and Other Lyrics (1887), illustrated with Alexander Stuart Boyd.
In the wake of the deaths of his brother (1883) and his father (1888), Ralston returned to Glasgow in 1889, and attempted to manage the family photography business (becoming W Ralston Ltd at 259 Sauchiehall Street) while still working as an illustrator. If he contributed less frequently to periodicals, he still illustrated books, mainly with comic subjects, including further collaborations with Charles W Cole, and also produced some collections of sketches.
In 1906, Ralston sold the photography business to James W Robertson, who retained the Ralston name, and in the following year returned to London. He died there, at 73 Roderick Road, Hampstead, on 26 October 1911.
Further reading:
G V Jones and J E Brown, ‘Victorian Binding Designer WR: William Ralston (1841-1911), not William Harry Rogers’, The Book Collector, Vol 52, 2003, pages 171-198
