This gallery contains 34 photos.
MR LIPSCOMBE and CAPTAIN GOLDSMITH
Elizabeth Nevin’s uncle, Captain Edward Goldsmith, master mariner of merchant ships from London to the colony of Van Diemen’s Land from 1830-1853, and local businessman and nurseryman Frederick Lipscombe, had maintained a friendly and profitable business relationship over twenty years until one day in June 1853, they had a very public falling-out over the Mammoth Strawberry, or so it seemed at first blush. Continue reading
This gallery contains 27 photos.
DISAMBIGUATION: Three James Day names
Right at the outset we stress that this James Day was not a relative of photographer Thomas Nevin’s wife Elizabeth Rachel Day, nor was he related to her father by the name of Captain James Day, master mariner, who was born on 6 June 1806 in Yorkshire and died in Hobart on 17 November 1882, nor to Captain James Day’s first cousin, Captain Henry James Day of the 99th Regiment, guard captain of the Candahar 1842.
However, while researching the name “James Day”, the Old Bailey trial records and the transportation records of another “James Day” surfaced, a Londoner aged 52yrs old, who was transported for seven years to VDL on board the ship Sarah in 1836. Not many men of his advanced years were transported. These are his records and his story up to his death in 1863. Continue reading
This gallery contains 29 photos.
The patent slip at the Queen’s Domain in Hobart was established by Elizabeth Rachel Nevin’s uncle, Captain Edward Goldsmith, in 1854 from machinery he brought out from London on his favorite trading barque The Rattler. He obtained a long lease on the foreshore of the Domain to lay the slip on the condition that the terms of the lease were fulfilled. When he withdrew from the lease in 1855 due to the death of his 25 yr old son Richard Goldsmith only months earlier, among other reasons to do with costs and prison labor, Captain Alexander McGregor bought Captain Goldsmith’s interest. Continue reading
This gallery contains 31 photos.
Photographer Thomas J. Nevin’s father-in-law was Captain James Day (1804-1882), father of his wife Elizabeth Rachel Day and her younger sister Mary Sophia Day (m. Axup). Thomas Nevin’s wife Elizabeth Rachel Day was named after Captain James Day’s sister, Elizabeth Day, who had married master mariner Captain Edward Goldsmith in 1829 at St George, Liverpool, England. Continue reading
This gallery contains 6 photos.
THE ODD FELLOWS’ HALL – A very fine photograph of the Odd Fellows’ Hall (corner of Davey and Harrington-streets) has been taken for the Society by Mr. Nevin, of Elizabeth-street. The view is taken from Davey-street, opposite the corner of the Freemasons’ Hotel, and thus shows the entrance to the rooms, with the whole front and side of the buildings. A well-known member of the institution, and a less known youth, have come within the range of the camera, and their presence greatly assists in conveying an idea of the dimensions of the hall. The picture is undoubtedly creditable to the artist. Continue reading
This gallery contains 17 photos.
The eight rioters “were charged with riotously injuring a building”, “riotously injuring the Town Hall” and specifically – “the breaking open of the ante-room of the Town Hall” . The charges would have incurred a severe penal code punishment of seven years’ imprisonment and a trial at the Supreme Court. However, Attorney-General Giblin sought to substitute the charge with the lesser one of disturbing the peace, and at this sitting, reported in The Mercury on 11th July 1879, the charges were withdrawn entirely because of Giblin’s concern with excessive costs involved in such a trial.
This gallery contains 14 photos.
Samuel Page held the government contracts for the Royal Mail coach deliveries between Hobart and Launceston, and contracted Nevin for photographic advertisements of his coachline. Samuel Page lived at Belle Vue, New Town, a villa with stables, paddocks and gardens. He transported prisoners under government contract from regional stations and courts to be “received” at H.M. Gaol, Hobart, accompanied by constables. Continue reading
This gallery contains 13 photos.
MOTTO of the ROYAL SCOTS
“Nemo me impune Lacessit”. “No-one touches me with impunity” (or “Dinna mess wi’ me!”)
While research into the life and times of photographer Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923) in Tasmania has uncovered many fascinating aspects of Australian colonial history, the life and times of his father John Nevin (1808-1887) opens up many more vistas on key world events. Here are details of his service with the Royal Scots 1st Regiment in Canada. Continue reading
This gallery contains 25 photos.
On a dry Spring afternoon, a day or so before 19th September, 1879, a reporter at The Mercury newspaper office looked out his window and across the street to the Hobart Town Hall, sized up the state of the saplings struggling to survive in front of the portico, and sat down to pen a vituperative paragraph about the “caretaker” who, he insinuated, considered himself above a task as trivial as watering the trees. Continue reading
This gallery contains 5 photos.
Mr Nevin, photographer, Elizabeth-street, appears in this advertisement as an agent able to take orders for the delivery of coal from the Excelsior Coal Mine which was located on Mr Ebenezer Sims property at Kangaroo Bottom (Kangaroo Valley New Town), in close proximity to the home of Nevin’s parents. This coal was for domestic use but may have been included in the coal specimens which were exported to the Royal Colonial Institute, accompanied by James Boyd on board the Ethel in 1874. Continue reading
This gallery contains 5 photos.
On February 2, 1872 Thomas J. Nevin placed an advertisement in The Mercury informing the public and visitors (tourists) that his photographs, taken on a Colonists’ Trip down the River Derwent to Adventure Bay on the eastern side of Bruny Island, were ready and for sale. Continue reading
This gallery contains 7 photos.
Personal friendships, mutual business support and Lodge affiliations ensured priority and preference, and in Nevin’s case, his family solicitor, Attorney-General W.R. Giblin, and his Loyal United Brothers membership played a key role in the offer to provide the Municipal and Territorial Police, and the Prisons Department with identification photographs of convicted criminals. “A first-class faithful likeness” is exactly what the police wanted of the prisoner and ex-convict population. Continue reading
This gallery contains 11 photos.
Thomas Nevin, photographer, 140 Elizabeth-street, Hobart, inserted an advertisement in The Mercury which appeared over several weeks during September 1875, soliciting applications from the medical profession for services to members and families of the Loyal United Brothers’ Lodge. Continue reading
This gallery contains 10 photos.
The credit which has been denied to photography on the score of art capacity must be conceded to its literal fidelity in rendering facts. That it is not imaginative, that it cannot modify or omit details from its presentments, becomes, in many cases, its cardinal virtue. If it nothing extenuate, it sets down naught in malice, and when it enters the witness-box, its evidence leaves little room for doubt. Hence it has taken an important place as an auxiliary to the administration of justice, both in civil and criminal cases. In multiplying indisputable fac-similes of important documents, in indicating pictorially the relative positions of disputed territory, its use is obvious. But it is in its aid to the discovery of identity in persons charged with crime that its legal use is most important … Continue reading
This gallery contains 25 photos.
Jack Nevin was his elder brother’s assistant at the Hobart Gaol, Campbell Street during Thomas’ commissions as police photographer in prisons and police courts. He helped maintain one of their photographic studios in New Town, assisting in the production of stereographs and studio portraits on cartes-de-visite intermittently from the 1860s. He was employed at the Hobart Gaol under the supervision of the keeper Ringrose Atkins from 1874, and became a Constable on salary at the male prison at Cascades and H.M. Prison, Hobart in 1875, serving until his untimely death at age 39 in 1891. Continue reading
This gallery contains 15 photos.
On or about the 1st December 1874, Thomas J. Nevin pledged his support in the upcoming Hobart Municipal Council elections for Alderman candidate John Perkins Junior Esq. The Mercury newspaper customarily printed these formal pledges as a discursive solicitation by the supporters, and then provided a lengthy list of their names every week until the close of the election. Continue reading
This gallery contains 13 photos.
William Meaghers was transported to NSW in 1838 on board the Bengal Merchant. Originally from Dublin, he was court martialled in Quebec, Lower Canada on 26 September 1836. In Paramatta, NSW, he was sentenced to 14 years for housebreaking on 10 December 1842 and transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) on board the Sir J. Byng, arriving on 23 September 1843. He was married with two children. No date of birth appears on his arrival record, however, police records show he was 56 yrs old in 1871, so he was born ca. 1815, and was ca 59 years old in 1874 when Nevin photographed him. The NLA misattribution to Searle and the date of photographic capture catalogued as 1915 would mean that the prisoner William Meaghers, born in 1815, had to be a 100 year old man; clearly, the prisoner was photographed in his fifties on the occasion of his release, in 1874. Continue reading
This gallery contains 10 photos.
Seasons Greetings 2009 to all our readers, researchers, contributors and extended family.
Visitors to Thomas J. Nevin’s weblogs on 2nd January 2010 at midday:
On Christmas Day, 25th December 1874, The Mercury newspaper (Tasmania) published a notice which served the dual purpose of praising Nevin’s photographic talents and suggesting by way of praise that the “literary curiosity” would make a great gift as a Christmas card: Continue reading
This gallery contains 17 photos.
When Thomas Nevin sat down to read The Mercury on the morning of 24th October 1872 and turned to an article reprinted from the London papers on “the valuable working of the Prevention of Crimes Act, or as it is better known, the Habitual Criminals Act” of 1871, he was more than aware of the use of photography by police. He had already taken photographs of prisoners at the Hobart Gaol at the behest of his solicitor and mentor since 1868, Attorney-General William Robert GIBLIN.. Continue reading
This gallery contains 12 photos.
TRAVELLING PHOTOGRAPHERS 1874 On this tour, Clifford and Nevin travelled on the main road north from Hobart to Launceston. Courtesy State Library of Tasmania Samuel Clifford ca. 1874 Melton Mowbray from the Bothwell Road Ref: AUTAS001124850124 Tasmanian professional photographers Thomas … Continue reading
PLEASE OBSERVE:
Copyright © The Nevin Family Collections & KLW NFC Imprint 2003-2013 ARR. All research is original and in press. Theft of our online intellectual property is actionable under the Moral Rights Act 2000, the Digital Agenda Act 2000, and the Digital Millenium Act (USA).
Thomas J. Nevin | Tasmanian photographer (1842-1923) by The Nevin Family Collections & KLW NFC Imprint is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Australia License.
ACADEMICS & PUBLISHERS please note:
Our stats show heavy and repeated downloads pertaining to Nevin's prison photography. Please consult your institution's guidelines on student plagiarism and Amendments to the Copyright Act 2000. Take care to consult the URL of the post/article you wish to cite, especially if you are using RSS, caches and readers, as every entry is subject to UPDATING at any time. Do not make hard copies. Librarians please note: do not archive as preserved pages. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
