File:William Hitchcock with boy and pony, c. 1900.jpg

William Hitchcock, father of Alfred Hitchcock, outside his grocer's shop in London, probably Leytonstone, with a boy. The sign above the shop says "W. Hitchcock" and "Fruit Salesman" (see larger image). Above that sign, etched into the building itself, are the words "W. Hitchcock", which may suggest it was the grandfather's store; Hitchcock's paternal grandfather was also a greengrocer.

Both parties are wearing slouch hats turned up on one side and puttees, perhaps related to the Second Boer War (1899–1902). Several authors have said the boy is Alfred, born 1899, but it is more likely to be his brother, William, born 1890. Hitchcock biographers have studied the flags above the shop in an effort to determine the timing. Two of the rolled up flags appear to be Diamond Jubilee flags, which had pictures of Queen Victoria in the centre.

According to Hitchcock's friend and authorized biographer, John Russell Taylor (Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, 1978), writing in The Times, 19 May 1983, the boy is William, and the photograph was taken during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897. "[T]he first picture in the book, for example, is not, as claimed, of the young Alfred Hitchcock and his father, but, fairly evidently even from internal evidence, Hitchcock père and Alfred's elder brother William celebrating the Diamond Jubilee two years before Alfred was born."

According to Stephane Duckett (Hitchcock in Context, 2014, p. 312), the image was probably taken in 1900: "Seeing Hitchcock decontextualised can often contribute to the image of him as strange: the oft-reproduced photograph of Hitchcock on a pony with his father in identical uniforms is almost certainly a picture of his older brother at the time of the 'near hysterical' national celebrations for the relief of Mafeking in 1900. The uniforms they are wearing are Boer period and would not have been worn after the revelations of the deeply shameful Boer concentration camps at the close of the war."

Several biographers have published it as a photograph of Alfred Hitchcock as a boy, taken around 1906 outside the W. Hitchcock greengrocer's at 517 The High Road, Leytonstone. These include:

• Donald Spoto (1983). The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock;
• Ken Mogg (1999). The Alfred Hitchcock Story;
• Gene Adair (2002). Alfred Hitchcock: Filming our Fears, p. 10;
• Patrick McGilligan (2004) [2003]. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, between pp. 404 and 405; and
• Paul Duncan (2003). Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films.

According to the British Film Institute, the image was probably taken "between 1897 and 1902"; see BFI Collections Search.

"William Hitchcock and Son", The Hitchcock Zone.

Alfred Hitchcock

All

Yes

To illustrate the section about Hitchcock's family and their grocer's shop; the family would deliver groceries using the pony.

No

The earliest known publication is Michael Haley (1981). The Alfred Hitchcock Album. New York: Prentice-Hall. Haley credits the British Film Institute/National Film Archive/Still Library.