Month: May 2014

Captain Edward Goldsmith in Davey Street Hobart 1854

May 17, 2014

Paternal uncle and benefactor of Thomas J. Nevin’s wife, Elizabeth Rachel Day was the much respected master mariner and merchant Captain Edward Goldsmith (1804-1869), who first arrived in Van Diemen’s land in 1830 and departed never to return in 1856. He retired to his estate at Gad’s Hill, Higham, Kent, UK, where novelist Charles Dickens became a neighbour in 1857 when he purchased a house at No. 6 Gadshill Place.

Captain Goldsmith did not become a colonist, nor did he profit directly from convict transportation. His many and varied services and contributions – some at his own expense – during those years to the mercantile, horticultural and shipping development of the colony were inestimable. He built a patent slip on the Queen’s Domain and a vehicular steam ferry,  the Kangaroo, n 1854, sat on civic committees, established a marine insurance company, and set up a permanent residence for his family at lower Davey Street, Hobart, although he was away at sea for most of every year. The playwright and journalist David Burn who met him in Sydney in 1845, noted in his diary that Captain Goldsmith’s turnaround was eight months … More Captain Edward Goldsmith in Davey Street Hobart 1854

Captain Edward Goldsmith and the land at Lake St Clair 1841

May 17, 2014

The land at Lake St Clair in the county of Lincoln, VDL, conveyed by Captain Goldsmith in February 1841 to George Bilton was bounded on the south by land allocated to Lieutenant Thomas Burnett, who had drowned four years earlier, on 21 May 1837 while conducting hydrographic surveys of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel aboard the colonial cutter Vansittart. Lieutenant Burnett had accompanied the newly-appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, Captain Sir John Franklin on the voyage to Hobart on board the Fairlie just months before he (Burnett) drowned, arriving on 6th January 1837. He was buried with full naval honours in St David’s cemetery, where his monument still stands. Designed by John Lee Archer, Colonial Architect, the monument stands on the stone plinth intended as the main stand for an observatory for Burnett. … More Captain Edward Goldsmith and the land at Lake St Clair 1841

The Trial of Joshua ANSON 1877

May 12, 2014

Joshua Anson did not take the two photographs of himself that were pasted to his criminal sheet, the first (on left) in 1877 when he was 23 yrs old, and the second (on right) in 1897 when he was 43 yrs old, nor did he photograph any of the other prisoners for gaol records while serving time at the Hobart Gaol. His abhorrence of the company of convicts was extreme, as his statement testifies. His 1877 prisoner mugshot was taken by Constable John Nevin in situ, and unmounted. Thomas Nevin may have printed another for the Municipal Police Office Registry at the Town Hall, Macquaries St. Hobart where he was the Hall and Office Keeper, but it is yet to be identified among the Tasmanian prisoner cdvs held in public collections. Joshua Anson was certainly the beneficiary of Thomas Nevin’s stock and commercial negatives when Samuel Clifford acquired them in 1876 and then sold them on to Joshua Anson and his brother Henry Anson in 1878. The Anson brothers reprinted Clifford & Nevin’s Port Arthur stereoscopes for their highly commercial album, published in 1890 as Port Arthur Past and Present without due acknowledgement to either Nevin or Clifford. … More The Trial of Joshua ANSON 1877

Ex prisoner James Cronin 1880s

The Anson Bros photograph of ex-convict James CRONIN

May 12, 2014

This is the only extant image of former convict James Cronin (1824-1885). It was taken by the Anson brothers, photographers, as a portrait in their studios in the 1880s, i.e. it was therefore a privately commissioned portrait, and this is evident from both the street clothes and the pose of the sitter. It is not a police photograph, ie. a mugshot pasted to a criminal record sheet, unlike those taken by Thomas J. Nevin for the express use of police authorities, because James Cronin was not an habitual offender, at least, he was never convicted and sentenced under his own name in the decades 1860s-1880s or up to his death in 1885 at the Cascades Hospital for the Insane, Hobart. The Tasmanian Police Gazettes of those decades registered no offence for James Cronin, nor even an inquest when he died of pulmonary apoplexy on July 16, 1885. … More The Anson Bros photograph of ex-convict James CRONIN