Thomas Sulman was an English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 architectural draftsman.

Sulman studied at The Working Men’s College between 1854 to 1858, where he was a student of, and later an engraver for, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

 ; he was influenced by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte

Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...

 and taught drawing classes at the Positivist Chapel Street School in London . Sulman was a follower of Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity

Religion of Humanity

Religion of Humanity was a secular religion created by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivist philosophy. Adherents of this religion have built chapels of Humanity in France and Brazil.-Origins:...

 and subscribed to the Positivist Society.

He became a specialist in using balloons to produce birds-eye views

Bird's eye view (disambiguation)

Bird's eye view may refer to:* Bird's-eye view, a view of an object from above, as though the observer were a bird, often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps** Bing Maps#Bird's eye view, the angled photographic views from Microsoft...

 of cities including London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 and New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. These views, as hand-coloured engravings produced with the help of London engraver Robert Loudan Sr.,were featured in The Illustrated London News from the 1860s, and were sometimes produced to a fold-out six foot length.

In 1891 he produced high-level views of major London thoroughfares for Herbert Fry's London: Illustrated by Twenty Bird's Eye Views of the Principal Streets
engraved by George William Ruffle (1838–1901).

Sulman drew and engraved images for newspaper and magazine advertisements, including one for Beethams Glycerine and Cucumber showing a young woman with toiletries. He illustrated for The Boy’s Own Annual

Boy's Own Paper

The Boy's Own Paper was a British story paper aimed at young and teenage boys, published from 1879 to 1967.-Publishing history:The idea for the publication was first raised in 1878 by the Religious Tract Society as a means to encourage younger children to read and also instil Christian morals...

in the 1880s.