Henry Satchell worked as a photographer in Southampton under the name H. Sache, proprietor of The Universal Photographic Establishment at 5 Above Bar. He was born and grew up in Birmingham, and started his working life as a coach maker alongside his father. In 1851 the census recorded him as a coach maker from Birmingham visiting another coach maker in Bloomsbury, London.
Satchell married in about 1857 and the couple had 2 sons, both born in Birmingham in 1858 and 1859. In 1861 the census recorded him as a pawnbroker in Birmingham. Satchell's wife died in the late 1860s and he moved to Southampton with his younger son, while his older son was at boarding school in Kings Norton, near Birmingham. The 1871 census recorded Photographer Henry Sache at 5 Above Bar, Southampton, with his son, one servant and his half sister, whose occupation was given as housekeeper.
Cox's Street Directory 1871
Some time in the early 1870s Henry Satchell returned to the Birmingham area. The Birmingham Post Office Directory listed Henry Satchell, Photographer at 36 Cannon Street, Birmingham. At the time of the 1881 census Henry Satchell was visiting an elderly widow in Kings Norton, who may have been his late wife's mother. Henry's occupation was given as Photographic Artist.
By 1891 Henry Satchell had married again, and settled down to retire at Kings Norton, where he died in 1909. Henry Sache's studio at 5 Above Bar had previously been the studios of photographers George Edmonds, and the Brown and Wheeler partnership. Henry Sache was the last Victorian photographer to have a studio at that address. A watchmaking business occupied 5 Above Bar from the mid 1870s to the early 1900s, after which time the building was a bar and hotel. The yard attached to number 5 was large enough to accommodate an early motor vehicle business, and then in the 1930s a poster, ticket and show card printers. In the mid 1930s 5 Above Bar was one of the buildings, (along with sections of the medieval walls), to be demolished to allow road traffic to go around the Bargate.