Ansons Bros. – Tasmanian photographer | Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923)

The LONG con: our comments on Julia Clark’s fraudulent thesis

May 17, 2018

In 2015 this individual Julia Clark (b. 1949) submitted a thesis to the University of Tasmania in the hope of being awarded a PhD degree. The award, in our opinion, should be revoked. The many instances prior to this thesis where she has claimed – by means both fraudulent, deceitful and abusive – that A. H. Boyd photographed prisoners in Tasmania in 1874 when no evidence has ever existed, nor ever will – is examined in great deal across these weblogs about the life and work of Thomas J. Nevin. Without these Nevin weblogs, Julia Clark would have no thesis. … More The LONG con: our comments on Julia Clark’s fraudulent thesis

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

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

Improprieties: A. H. Boyd and the Parasitic Attribution

January 17, 2010

The root of the notion that A.H. Boyd had any relationship with photography arose from this children’s story forwarded to the Crowther Collection at the State Library of Tasmania in 1942 by its author, Edith Hall. It was NEVER published, and exists only as a typed story, called “The Young Explorer.” Edith Hall claimed in an accompanying letter, dated 1942 and addressed to Dr Crowther that a man she calls the “Chief” in the story was her uncle A.H. Boyd, and that he was “always on the lookout for sitters”. Hopeful Chief! The imaginative Edith and her description of a room where the child protagonist was photographed (and rewarded for it) hardly accords with a set-up for police photography. The photographing of prisoners IS NOT mentioned in either the story or the letter by Edith Hall. In the context of the whole story, only three pages in length, the reference to photography is just another in a long list of imaginative fictions (many about clothes and servants) intended to give the child reader a “taste” of old Port Arthur, when both the author and her readers by 1942 were at a considerable remove in time. Boyd is not mentioned by name in the story, yet Reeder 1995 (after Long, 1995) and Clark (2010) actually cite this piece of fiction as if it contains statements of factual information. A.H. Boyd has never been documented in newspapers or validated in any government record of the day as either an amateur or official photographer. … More Improprieties: A. H. Boyd and the Parasitic Attribution

Apprentices: The Good, The Bad and The Careless

September 18, 2009

Among photographers’ apprentices in 1870s Hobart was the notable Joshua Anson. He stole cameras, photographic equipment, mounts, chemicals and albums from his employer Henry Hall Baily over five years between 1872 and 1877. He ordered the importation of glass negatives and mounts from London and Paris on H. H. Baily’s account and without Baily’s consent. He also reprinted albums by Samuel Clifford as his own work. The value placed on the goods far exceeded the court valuation of £180. Chief Justice Francis Smith informed the jury that theft on this scale warranted a sentence of 14 years. The Law Digest (1897) recorded the event with the normative 14 year sentence, and the refusal of bail. Joshua Anson was sentenced to just two years because he was young, 22 years old at the time of the trial in June 1877, and pleaded to be kept apart from the others prisoners on incarceration because he felt he was above them. He was photographed on incarceration at the Hobart Gaol in 1877 by the Nevin brothers… … More Apprentices: The Good, The Bad and The Careless

Fraudulent pretensions

August 29, 2009

This image of a building is not a vignetted carte-de-visite photograph of a man in prison clothing, yet the curator of photographs at the State Library of NSW, Alan Davies, is proposing it is sufficient evidence to warrant a claim that A.H. Boyd was a photographer, and to extend that claim to a proposition that Boyd was also the photographer of the “bulk” of the 300 extant prisoner cartes, despite all the available evidence of attribution to Thomas J. Nevin. As recently as August 2009, Alan Davies maintained that proposition, which is founded in the cliched equation “Tasmania + convicts=Port Arthur” … … More Fraudulent pretensions