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

19th century Australian police and commercial photographer

Vintage blogging

Selection about women

Posts featuring women (forty most recent)

Alfred Barrett and wife Harriet Biggs playing chess 1870s Thomas Nevin and Alfred Barrett Biggs 1872-1876
Prisoner James Blanchfield poster at Hobart exhibition 2019 Exhibition 2019: T. J. NEVIN’s mugshot of prisoner James BLANCHFIELD 1875
prisoner John Nowlan alias Dowling Prisoner John NOWLAN alias DOWLING 1870-1876
Prisoner William SAWYER or SAYER(s) 1875
Shipowner Joseph Somes Joseph Somes, Captain Edward Goldsmith and the “Angelina” 1844-46
A distinguished forelock: Henry Dresser Atkinson on board the “City of Hobart” 1872
Captain Goldsmith, AWOL seaman Geeves, and HMS Havannah
Captain Edward Goldsmith and wife Elizabeth’s land deals in VDL
Thomas Nevin’s photographs mounted on calico 1870s
Thomas Nevin at the Canary and Cage Bird Show 1869
Bleak Expectations: Captain Goldsmith’s will in Chancery 1871-1922
1854: a year onshore at Hobart Tasmania for Captain Edward Goldsmith
John Nevin snr and family 1851-1854: shipping documents
Captain Edward Goldsmith and the conundrums of the Ethiopian Serenaders 1851
The Will of Richard Goldsmith snr (1769-1839)
Treasures passed down from Captain Edward Goldsmith and Captain James Day
Thomas Nevin and the Terpsichoreans, New Norfolk 1867
Portraits and landscapes from T. J. Nevin’s cohort
Amy Bock’s bid for marriage equality in 1909 in New Zealand
One session, two poses
Recent Hobart Publications 2016 and Thomas J. Nevin 1870s
Convict photographs by T. J. Nevin at the Art Gallery NSW Centenary Exhibition 1976
Serious money: Captain Edward Goldsmith and shipowner Robert Brooks
Captain Goldsmith, James Lucas and Peter Fraser: 500 acre leases 1853
Marriage breakdown: Elizabeth Amos v Alfred Threlkeld Mayson 1879-1882
Captain Edward Goldsmith and the gold mania of the 1850s
Tom Nevin and father-in-law bandmaster Walter Tennyson Bates
Captain Goldsmith, Captain Clinch, & the Tasmanian Steamship Navigation Co.
Prisoners William SEWELL and Ralph NEILL 1867-1874
Trout and salmon ova for New Zealand 1873
Captain Goldsmith & death at sea of Antarctic circumnavigator Captain John Biscoe 1843
The desecration of Minnie Carr’s grave 1898
Woman with pink ribbons by T. Nevin NGV Woman with pink ribbons by Thomas Nevin 1870s
Captain Edward Goldsmith, the diarist Annie Baxter and a death at sea 1848
Captain Edward Goldsmith’s cargo ex London Docks per Rattler 1850
Captain & Mrs Elizabeth Goldsmith: Rattler’s maiden voyage 1846
Captain Goldsmith, the Parrock Hall & playwright David Burn 1844
Captain Edward Goldsmith’s grave at Chalk Church, Kent
Captain Edward Goldsmith: Falkland Islands 1839
Prisoner James BRADY 1873-1874

 

 

Hobart Town Hall with Thomas Nevin, keeper

Contractors Thomas J. Nevin and “dog on the chain” James Spence 1872

September 24, 2019

Thomas Nevin had operated as a commercial photographer and government contractor since 1868, when W. R. Giblin acted on behalf of his interests in the dissolution of his partnership with Robert Smith advertised as the firm “Nevin & Smith” at 140 Elizabeth St.Hobart. In June 1872, for example, Nevin provided the Lands and Survey Department with a series of stereographs recording the damage caused by the Glenorchy landslip. As likely as not, he also provided lengthy witness reports to the officials at the Municipal Council, to reporters at the Mercury, and to Public Works Department contractors who regularly gathered at James Spence’s hotel The Royal Standard, next door to Nevin’s studio, 142 -140 upper Elizabeth St. Hobart Town (looking south from the corner of Patrick St.). As a contractor himself, he would have taken a keen interest in the meetings at which James Spence’s cohort of contractors’ aired their “grievances received at the hands of the Public Works Department”. … More Contractors Thomas J. Nevin and “dog on the chain” James Spence 1872

Alfred Barrett and wife Harriet Biggs playing chess 1870s

Thomas Nevin and Alfred Barrett Biggs 1872-1876

September 11, 2019

A rare pose, this photograph of Alfred Barrett Biggs, his head down contemplating his next move in a game of chess with his wife Harriet née Burville who observes the photographer almost obliquely under her lashes, was taken about the same time as the full-length portrait of Alfred’s mother Eliza Coleman Biggs. Harriet chose to wear a voluminous dress of  the sheerest ribbed silk, pin-tucked at the bodice and overlain with a transparent gauze shawl across her shoulders. The tall chess pieces were commonly made from ivory. … More Thomas Nevin and Alfred Barrett Biggs 1872-1876

Prisoner James Blanchfield poster at Hobart exhibition 2019

Exhibition 2019: T. J. NEVIN’s mugshot of prisoner James BLANCHFIELD 1875

July 29, 2019

The large wall poster (on right) at the exhibition titled “Photographs of Australian and British Convicts” which opened at the Hobart Penitentiary (the former Hobart Gaol and House of Corrections, Campbell St.) in July 2019 features the mugshot of James Blanchfield taken by Thomas Nevin in 1875, together with a jolly japes biography of the prisoner, finishing with the sentence:

“…at the age of fifty he found himself sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and was packed off to Port Arthur where this photograph was taken.”

Actually, no: as the police gazette states, James Blanchfield was 48 years old on release in 1875, not 50 years old on sentence in 1873, and he spent less than two months at the Port Arthur prison, from 21st February 1873 to 20th April 1873. He served just twenty-six months of a three year sentence, not a five year sentence when he was discharged in April 1875. Additionally, he was photographed, not at the Port Arthur prison as claimed by the exhibition poster but at the Hobart Gaol, the very same site where Thomas Nevin’s photograph of him taken for police in 1875 now looms over visitors to the current exhibition, exactly 144 years later. … More Exhibition 2019: T. J. NEVIN’s mugshot of prisoner James BLANCHFIELD 1875