Tag: convict portraits by T. J. Nevin

Convict mugshots by T J Nevin 1870s

The Poulter album: “Weekly Courier” reprints 1900s of 1870s photographs by T. J. Nevin

May 3, 2023

The photographs in this album certainly belonged to Reginald Clifford Poulter by the time he compiled the album in the early 1900s, but none were taken by him, none are personal portraits of him or his family, and none are attributed to the original photographers, with the exception of one featuring the government photographer John Watt Beattie. Although several date from the early 1860s, very few are “real” photographs originating from the era in which they were produced. The majority are reprints which Poulter sourced from tourist destinations such as John Watt Beattie’s shop, photographic studio and convictaria museum in Murray Street, Hobart (and not at Port Arthur). Poulter’s other source was the Hobart Weekly Courier which published a Pictorial edition on Saturdays featuring beautifully reproduced photographs of contemporary events by living photographers. To save space, the Weekly Courier cropped each photograph to fit as many as possible on each page, only crediting their contracted studios, called their “Representatives” such as Beattie’s, or Spurling’s & Son, or Harvey and Sutcliffe’s, at the bottom of each page. Those photographs which Poulter cut from the Weekly Courier and pasted into his album were clearly already cropped of their cdv frame and mount and any accompanying photographer attribution. Instead, on each page of Poulter’s album there are pencilled inscriptions next to each  item giving information about the content or subject of each photograph and no more, written by an anonymous hand. … More The Poulter album: “Weekly Courier” reprints 1900s of 1870s photographs by T. J. Nevin

Prisoner John Williams photo by T. J. Nevin 1874

Prisoner John WILLIAMS and his scar 1874

May 5, 2021

The police gazette description on discharge of this prisoner John Williams noted a scar – “cicatrix on right side of chin”. A strong black mark running from the prisoner’s mouth down his chin on his left side rather than his right in the positive print looks to be an ink mark over the scar, possibly drawn by a viewer years or decades later. The scar appears on the viewer’s right and therefore on the prisoner’s left when facing the photograph, perhaps because the police gazette notice was written from the photograph in the absence of any prior record –  note the lack of detail on the conduct record below. Then again, the glass negative might have been used by the writer of the police gazette notice, fresh from the sitting, in which case the writer was probably the photographer Thomas Nevin or his assistant, his brother Constable John Nevin at the Hobart Gaol. The glass negative would therefore show the black mark extending from the prisoner’s mouth to his chin on his right side, correctly so as the police gazette states, as in this flipped version … More Prisoner John WILLIAMS and his scar 1874

Prisoner James Martin, mugshot by T. J. Nevin 1874

Prisoner James Martin: criminal career 1860s-1890s

January 11, 2021

On the top right-hand corner of prisoner James Martin’s convict record, to the right of the words “Transported for” is a sketch of a bird pecking at crumbs on the ground, and below it, the letter “D” enclosing a cross and diamond, signifying James Martin was a (Catholic?) deserter from the army. The note on his Port Arthur record of earnings (CON94/1/1 Folio 143) records the date of his desertion, 8 November 1842, the place, Barbados, and the sentence, court martial, 14 years. But what does the bird signify? … More Prisoner James Martin: criminal career 1860s-1890s

Prisoner Henry CLABBY

“Hair inclined to be curley”: prisoner Henry SMITH aka Clabby aka Cooper

June 17, 2020

Prisoner Henry CLABBY alias Cooper, 22 yrs old, and locally born (“native”) in Tasmania was photographed by Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart Gaol for the Municipal Police Office Hobart, between 4th-24th January 1874. This photograph of Henry Clabby was originally held at the QVMAG, numbered “142” on recto and transcribed verso in 1915 for display at convictarian John Watt Beattie’s Port Arthur Museum, located in Hobart. It is now held at the TMAG Ref: Q15600. More than sixty photographs taken by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s of Tasmanian prisoners – or “convicts” as they are labelled in tourism discourse – are held at The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. See 56 copies from the TMAG Collection, acquired by this weblog in 2015. Unlike the majority of those prisoner mugshots mounted as cdvs from the QVMAG and TMAG collections which show verso evidence of having been pasted to paper or cardboard and then removed, this cdv of Henry Clabby is clean apart from the curator’s number recto “142”, suggesting it was reprinted in recent times, or even composed entirely as a new artefact for exhibition in the late 20th century. … More “Hair inclined to be curley”: prisoner Henry SMITH aka Clabby aka Cooper

T. J. Nevin’s mugshot of John FINELLY taken at the Police Office Hobart March 1874

July 25, 2018

When captured, escapee John Finlay or Finelly was sentenced at the Mayor’s Court, Hobart Town Hall, to six months to be served once more at the Port Arthur prison. He was photographed by Thomas J. Nevin at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall [P.O. Hobart] on 17th March 1874 as soon as the conviction was recorded. Finelly was received at Port Arthur on 29th March 1874. In December 1874 he was committed twice to spells of 24 hours and seven days in solitary confinement at Port Arthur for disobedience and insubordinate conduct respectively. He was transferred back to the House of Corrections for Males (the Hobart Gaol, Campbell Street) on 17th April 1877 on the closure of the Port Arthur prison. John Finelly was discharged in January 1879 and returned to Launceston where he died on 8th March 1883. … More T. J. Nevin’s mugshot of John FINELLY taken at the Police Office Hobart March 1874

Sideshow Alley: Thomas Nevin at the NPG exhibition 2015

January 4, 2016

The National Portrait Gallery (Australia) at Canberra is currently displaying this wooden frame containing ten “convict portraits” under glass at the exhibition, Sideshow Alley: Infamy, the macabre and the portrait, 4th December 2015 – 28th February 2016. The National Library of Australia has repeatedly chosen the same set of photographs from their collection of 85 Tasmanian prisoners’ mugshots (catalogued as “convicts”) for loan to the National Portrait Gallery because they are clean examples of the professional photographer’s use of the albumen process. Other examples in the NLA’s collection are damaged and dirty, and some are unmounted, e.g. Searle’s album. Most of the NLA’s collection is online, yet the versos of these photographs, which can provide researchers with valuable information. have not been digitised. The NLA believes that the absence of a photographer’s studio stamp on the versos – of police mugshots no less – is reason enough to engage in puerile political games of re-attribution, despite historical documentation, expert curatorial validation, and the presence of T. J. Nevin’s government contract stamp on several of these mugshots held in other national collections. … More Sideshow Alley: Thomas Nevin at the NPG exhibition 2015

Prisoner James BRADY 1873-1874

December 30, 2015

James Brady was photographed at the Hobart Gaol by Thomas J. Nevin on two different occasions. Three extant images from those two sittings are held in three public collections, viz. the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and the National Library of Australia. James Brady was a soldier of the 2/14 Regiment, 31 years old, when he arrived in Tasmania on board the Haversham in August 1867. He was branded with the letter “D” as a deserter and sentenced to 8 years for forgery and uttering in 1868. … More Prisoner James BRADY 1873-1874

Prisoner William KELLOW 1872

August 25, 2015

This carte-de-visite of William Kellow, one of the extant hundreds of Tasmanian prisoners taken in the 1870s and printed in an oval mount, is held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart. It was originally held in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, together with another three hundred or more 1870s mugshots taken at the Hobart Gaol by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin which were acquired by the QVMAG as part of the bequest from the estate of John Watt Beattie in the 1930s. When this cdv, along with 55 more now at the TMAG, were removed from Beattie’s collection and taken down to Port Arthur for an exhibition in 1983, it was not returned to the QVMAG. It was deposited instead at the TMAG . The QVMAG list (2005) showed a total of 199 mugshots, but only 72 were physically held at the QVMAG when the list was devised. A total of 127 mugshots were missing by 2005. This carte-de-visite of William KELLOW is one of those listed as missing, number 143. … More Prisoner William KELLOW 1872

Donation of Nevin graphica from private collector to the NLA

April 1, 2015

We are delighted to announce that a private collector and American resident has generously donated to the National Library of Australia, Canberra, a total of 45 photographs of Port Arthur convicts taken by Thomas J. Nevin, including the photograph of John Gregson, 1874 (pictured), together with original records, prison logs, prison ephemera and realia, and letters written to Thomas J. Nevin from the adiministration regarding his government commissions at both the Port Arthur penitentiary and Hobart Gaol, Tasmania during the 1870s-1880s. The donation was bequeathed from a large collection of 19th and early 20th century Pacifica, the bulk of which will remain in the United States. … More Donation of Nevin graphica from private collector to the NLA

Julia Clark must face up to academic fraud

February 7, 2015

Julia Clark must face charges of academic fraud sooner or later. She has thrown essays and articles in the face of librarians and museum workers since 2007, assuring them that her belief in the existence of a photographer attribution to A. H. Boyd is hypothetically possible – but then, anything is hypothetically possible until proven otherwise. So what proof has she found during the last ten years? Nothing. Not one single iota of evidence, except the fake inscription on a photograph of a prison building, which we documented at length on these blogs in 2009-2010 . … More Julia Clark must face up to academic fraud

Prisoner John NORMAN or MORRISON

November 10, 2013

This young locally-born (“native”) 19 year old John Morrison or John Norman was photographed on being received at the Hobart Gaol on February 16, 1884 by Constable John Nevin. The National Library has included the photograph among the collection of the earlier 1874 convict photographs taken by Thomas J. Nevin, and retained the prison location as Port Arthur despite the simple fact that in 1874 the prisoner would have been only 9 years old, and clearly he is not a child in his photograph. As for the place of imprisonment, he could not have been imprisoned to serve his 12 month sentence at the Port Arthur prison because it was well and truly closed by 1877, and by 1884 it was in ruins. … More Prisoner John NORMAN or MORRISON

Prisoner James GEARY: mugshots and rap sheet 1865-1896

July 16, 2013

James Geary was born in Hobart to Ellen and Stephen Geary, a labourer, on 12th March 1844. His career in convicted crime began with horse-stealing in 1865, at 20 yrs old. He was photographed by Thomas J. Nevin in 1874 on discharge from the Hobart Gaol when he was 30 yrs old. His next extant mugshot was taken by Constable John Nevin at the Hobart Gaol in 1877, now 33 yrs old. His last police photograph was taken (by unknown) at the Police Office, Hobart in 1893 when he was 49 yrs old. Date of death unknown, possibly 1897 … More Prisoner James GEARY: mugshots and rap sheet 1865-1896

Prisoner Thomas Riley as Spenser 1892

Mugshots removed: prisoner Thomas RILEY or Ryley/Reilly 1875 and 1892

July 16, 2013

In 1877, Thomas Riley was 61 years old. His last offense – larceny on this rap sheet – was recorded at the Police Office, Hobart in 1890. The photograph taken at that time was removed. It may not have been a fresh photograph; instead it may have been a reprint from Thomas J. Nevin’s original glass negative of the cdv printed in 1875 since Riley was only two years older since his release with a TOL. Its removal from the Hobart Gaol and Police Office record (TAHO Ref: GD 6719) and its accession into the National Library of Australia’s collection of 84 “Convict portraits, Port Arthur, 1874” at an unknown date by an unknown person was an act of defacement of Tasmanian government records. … More Mugshots removed: prisoner Thomas RILEY or Ryley/Reilly 1875 and 1892

Captain Henry James Day of the 99th Regiment

March 21, 2013

Captain Henry James Day first cousin of Thomas Nevin’s father-in-law, master mariner Captain James Day, was Guard Captain of the 3rd detachment of 99th Regiment of Foot on board the convict transport Candahar when it arrived in Hobart in 1842 with 60 troops under his command, and 249 male convicts. Also on board were a “lady and four children”, several soldiers’ families and government stores. The Candahar was a 4 gun barque of 642 tons built in Shields in 1840, class A1 which departed Spithead, England on the 2nd April 1842, docking in Van Diemen’s Land on the 21st July 1842. Captain Day’s arrival was noted in the Hobart Town Courier. The regiment was stationed at the Anglesea Barracks, Hobart. … More Captain Henry James Day of the 99th Regiment

TMAG Collections offline 2006

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holdings

September 5, 2010

This Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery notice about their photographic collections appeared in November 2006. It is now September 2010, and the promised website with viewable databases of their vast photographic holdings is still not up and running. The TMAG holds a sizable collection of rare works by Thomas J. Nevin, including 1860s stereographs, studio portraits of private clientele, and mugshots of “convicts” taken in the 1870s. … More Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holdings

From Thomas Bock to Thomas Nevin: Supreme Court prisoner portraits

August 27, 2010

Police artists worked in the Supreme Court of Tasmania from as early as 1824. An album of portraits of “prisoners taken in the dock” (Dunbar, QVMAG catalogue 1991:25) by Thomas Bock, the father of photographer Thomas Nevin’s close associate Alfred Bock, was on sale at the Sydney booksellers Angus and Robertson in 1910 when collector William Dixson bought it and bequeathed it eventually to the State Library of New South Wales. Alfred Bock also worked on commission as a police artist, producing sketches of prisoners in the dock. The earliest photographs to survive of prisoners taken at the Supreme Court and adjoining Hobart Gaol which were produced by Thomas J. Nevin date from his first contract issued in February 1872. … More From Thomas Bock to Thomas Nevin: Supreme Court prisoner portraits

The Supreme Court mugshots taken by T. J. Nevin from 1871 onwards

August 7, 2010

Who were they? They were T.J. Nevin’s sitters for police records, mostly “Supreme Court men” photographed on committal for trial at the Supreme Court adjoining the Hobart Gaol when they were isolated in silence for a month after sentencing. If sentenced for a long term at the Supreme Court Launceston, they were photographed, bathed, shaved and dressed on being received in Hobart. These procedures, past and present, were reported at length by a visitor to the Hobart Gaol and Supreme Court in The Mercury, 8th July 1882 … … More The Supreme Court mugshots taken by T. J. Nevin from 1871 onwards

Aliases, Copies, and Misattribution

July 18, 2010

Cataloguists, librarians, archivists, students, photo historians and others in public service have made a real mess of storing and recording the accession history, numbering, and data collation on these Tasmanian prisoners’ identification photos: obliteration, reinvention, fads, guesses, fashions, and personal agendas have managed to obliterate valuable data and thus the traces of facts from their past. … More Aliases, Copies, and Misattribution

Cardboard convict Hyde Park barracks, Sydney, NSW

Julia Clark: A Question of Stupidity & the NLA

May 22, 2010

Thomas J. Nevin and descendants are apparently one of the more recent examples in a long line of Clark’s personal targets. See this article on her MO in Hobart museums by M. Anderson. Clark’s attack on the “Georgian splendour school of history” is deeply ironic, given that this Commandant A.H. Boyd she so firmly wants to promote as the prisoners’ photographer at Port Arthur was just that – a Georgian middle-class gent revelling in the spoils of his own corruption, a renowned bully reviled by the public in his own day. In Kay Daniel’s words, Clark’s analytical method is hypocritical – it’s “the view from the Commandant’s verandah school of history” – which she prescribes while pretending solidarity with her target, whether Aborigines or convicts. … More Julia Clark: A Question of Stupidity & the NLA

Tricks of the prison limner and sitter 1866

February 11, 2010

“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 …” … More Tricks of the prison limner and sitter 1866

Port Arthur albums SLNSW

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

Prisoners Wm MEAGHER, Wm LEE and Chas ROSETTA 1870s

January 7, 2010

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. … More Prisoners Wm MEAGHER, Wm LEE and Chas ROSETTA 1870s

Poster boys 1991 of Tasmanian prisoners 1870s

November 12, 2009

Who were they? They were T. J. Nevin’s sitters for police records, mostly “Supreme Court men” photographed on committal for trial at the Supreme Court adjoining the Hobart Gaol when they were isolated in silence for a month after sentencing. If sentenced for a long term at the Supreme Court Launceston, they were photographed, bathed, shaved and dressed on being received in Hobart. These procedures, past and present, were reported at length by a visitor to the Hobart Gaol and Supreme Court in The Mercury, 8th July 1882: … More Poster boys 1991 of Tasmanian prisoners 1870s

Prisoner Samuel PAUL

November 10, 2009

Samuel Paul was probably photographed twice, first on his incarceration at the Hobart Gaol as soon as Thomas J. Nevin began the systematic documentation of prisoners in 1871, and again by Nevin at the Hobart Gaol on the prisoner’s release, 20 March 1878. The original verso has a transcription added at some time in the 1900s by archivists with the error in time and date of photographic capture. … More Prisoner Samuel PAUL

19th century prison photography: Tasmania 1872

October 1, 2009

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. … More 19th century prison photography: Tasmania 1872

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

T.J. Nevin’s prisoner mugshots,  Mitchell Library NSW

August 11, 2009

THOMAS NEVIN’S ELEVEN The Mitchell Library at the State Library of NSW has catalogued eleven prisoner photographs so far which were taken by Thomas Nevin and his younger brother Jack Nevin at the Hobart Gaol between 1875 and 1884. All of these men were habitual offenders with long criminal records who spent as much if … More T.J. Nevin’s prisoner mugshots,  Mitchell Library NSW

Nevin’s mugshots: the transitional pose and frame

August 1, 2009

Between 1876 and 1886, transitional years in the history of 19th century prison photography, changes took place in the way Thomas Nevin posed the prisoner and printed the final mugshot. The technology changed too. Lenses after 1875 enabled a closer or larger image of the face. The prisoner was also posed closer to the camera in a full frontal position facing the photographer, and although the oval mount was still the preferred format for printing, square frames were also used. The formalised front and profile pair of portraits using the methods of Bertillonage did not appear in Tasmanian prison photography until the late 1890s, by which time Thomas Nevin had ceased professional photography and his younger brother John Nevin was deceased. … More Nevin’s mugshots: the transitional pose and frame

Prisoners Sutherland and Stock: photos and death warrants 1883-1884

July 31, 2009

“To the SHERIFF of Tasmania and to the Keeper of her Majesty’s Gaol at Hobarton jointly and severally.
Whereas at a Session of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery of the Supreme Court of Tasmania holden at Hobart in Tasmania aforesaid on Tuesday the fifteenth day of May James Sutherland was convicted before the [blank] of the murder of William Wilson and thereupon for that Offence received Sentence to be hanged by the neck until he should be dead – NOW IT IS ORDERED that execution of the said Sentence be accordingly made and done upon the said James Sutherland on Monday the fourth day of June at the Usual Hour and Place of Execution and that his body when dead be buried privately by the Sheriff –
Given under my Hand and Seal at – Hobart in Tasmania aforesaid this twenty third day of May in the year of Our Lord One thousand eight hundred and eighty three.
Francis Smith [JP initial, Justice of Peace]” … More Prisoners Sutherland and Stock: photos and death warrants 1883-1884

Two histories, one execution: Job SMITH & Emanuel BLORE

July 7, 2009

Job Smith aka Wm Campbell was photographed by Thomas Nevin either when Smith was one of sixty prisoners who had transferred back to the Hobart Gaol from Port Arthur before July 1873 (see W.R. Giblin’s and the Inspector of Police report of convicts tabled in the Parliament on July 17th, 1873), or just before Smith as William Campbell was returned to Port Arthur on May 8th, 1874 to complete his 8 year sentence, accompanied by Thomas Nevin in his role as police agent and photographer. Both were listed as passengers on the schooner Harriet’s way bill. … More Two histories, one execution: Job SMITH & Emanuel BLORE

Prisoners Chas ROSETTA, Wm LEE and Wm MEAGHER 1870s

May 4, 2009

By 1892, when John Watt Beattie was commissioned by the Tasmanian government to promote the tourism industry through photography, he had ready access to prison documents held at the Sheriff”s Office, Hobart Gaol (Campbell St.). Pasted to a single album leaf in Searle’s album are three unmounted prisoner mugshots of William Meagher, Charles Rosetta and William Lee, Tasmanian prisoners – termed “convicts” in tourism discourse – originally photographed by Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s for gaol records. These three photographs of Meagher, Rosetta and Lee bear traces around the edges of the blue paper from which they were removed. … More Prisoners Chas ROSETTA, Wm LEE and Wm MEAGHER 1870s

The QVMAG convict photos exhibition 1977

April 27, 2009

Most of these prisoner ID photographs were acquired by the QVMAG in 1927, as part of photographer John Watt Beattie’s (1859-1930) collection from his estate and convictaria museum in Hobart. Beattie’s sources in turn were the police gazettes and prisoner registers held at the Town Hall Municipal Police Office, where Nevin worked full-time 1876-1880, and from the Sheriff’s Office and Supreme Court at the Hobart Gaol where his brother Constable John Nevin was his assistant. Beattie had ready access as official government photographer ca. 1900s to these documents. … More The QVMAG convict photos exhibition 1977

Prisoner Henry CAVANAGH

April 8, 2009

Henry Cavanagh was sent to Port Arthur in December 1873. His name does not appear in the House of Assembly Journals, Nominal Return of Prisoners sent to Port Arthur since its transfer to Colonial Government in 1871, tabled in Parliament on 11th June, 1873. He was discharged before that date, on the 14th June 1872 after sentencing of one month in Hobart, and arraigned in Launceston nine months later, on the 3rd September 1873. He was received at the Hobart Gaol, sentenced to 6 years, and photographed there on 17th September 1873 by T. J. Nevin. … More Prisoner Henry CAVANAGH

Prisoner Alfred MALDON or MALDEN 1874

April 8, 2009

The three identical mugshots featured here are duplicates mounted in carte-de-visite format produced on government contract by commercial photographer Thomas J. Nevin from his single negative, taken at a single sitting with prisoner Alfred Malden or Maldon either on Malden’s transfer from the Port Arthur prison, 60 kms south of Hobart to the Hobart House of Corrections, Campbell St. between July 1873 and January 1874, or on his discharge from the Mayor’s Court, Hobart Town Hall, in February 1874. Thomas J. Nevin produced and printed many hundreds of these studio cartes-de-visite prisoner identification photographs in oval mounts – with six or so duplicates – for police use in Hobart from the early 1870s. In a nutshell, recent arrivals from Melbourne, American seamen Maldon and Wilson were operating a pickpocket scam outside a theatre in Launceston when Wilson was caught by police. His fellow countryman Alfred Maldon confronted them, demanding they let Wilson go, then shot one of the constables called Eddie in the face. In the course of the long report of 29 April, 1871, the spelling of the shooter’s name changes from Maldon to Malden. The “American-ness” of the crime – shooting at police – was noted as “rare in British communities”. Alfred Maldon was tried at the Supreme Court, Launceston on 1st June 1871, sentenced to ten years, and discharged from Hobart Town in the week ending 25 February 1874, less than three years later on condition he leave the colony. His excuse for the shooting was that he was drunk, and because of a previous head injury caused by being struck by lightning, he was incapable of knowing what he was doing, a claim which amounted to a not-guilty plea, according to the trial judge. … More Prisoner Alfred MALDON or MALDEN 1874

“In a New Light”: NLA Exhibition with Boyd misattribution

April 1, 2009

The National Library of Australia had acquired 68 (84 total in May 2010) of these Tasmanian prisoner mugshots (catalogued as Port Arthur convicts) by 1982, some from Dr Neil Gunson as archival estrays deposited in the 1960s, many from the QVMAG as T. J. Nevin’s duplicates, and some as John Watt Beattie’s copies made ca. 1916, also from the QVMAG. Some of the NLA’s copies were also held as copies at the Archives Office of Tasmania, as the letters and other documents at the NLA in Thomas Nevin’s Australian Photographers Ephemera File clearly indicate in 1982, yet they were not accessioned, exhibited or catalogued until May 1995, and when they were catalogued, they were attributed correctly to Thomas J. Nevin as photographer. A. H. Boyd’s name was never mentioned in Chris Long’s letters sent to the NLA in 1982 (Sprod MS), which included a general statement about the prisoner cartes-de-visite collection and a brief summary about Nevin’s work. But Chris Long is now regarded as the eventual perpetrator of the Boyd misattribution. … More “In a New Light”: NLA Exhibition with Boyd misattribution

Prisoner William Smith per Gilmore 3, photo by T. J. Nevin 1870s

Three significant prisoner photographs by T. J. Nevin, 1870s

March 30, 2009

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, holds a number of similar criminal record sheets with ID cartes attached, though the QVMAG has yet to digitise them online. The Tasmanian Archives and Heritage office (State Library of Tasmania) holds registers of prisoner photographs attached to the criminal record sheet with later dates of 1890 and 1892. This document, however, is held on display at the Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site, Hobart. It is a complete prison record on parchment of Allan Matthew Williamson, per the ship Maria Somes (2) , from his arrival in Van Diemen’s Land in 1850 right up to his death in 1893. Williamson’s photograph was pasted onto the parchment at the centre of the document, which was folded back on each side, rotated, and used for documenting Williamson’s criminal career for more than forty years. T … More Three significant prisoner photographs by T. J. Nevin, 1870s

About those photographic glasses 1873 …

March 21, 2009

A. H. Boyd had no reputation in his own lifetime as a photographer, none subsequently, and no works by him are extant, yet he suddenly entered photo history as an “artist” in 1995 due largely to a sentence in a children’s fictional tale, and a cargo list. Thomas J. Nevin, well-known within his lifetime as a contractual commercial photographer, civil servant, and special constable with the Municipal and Territorial Police, and with a sizeable legacy dating from the 1860s held in State, National and private collections, was effectively dismissed as a “copyist” by Chris Long. Authoritative commentators who were aware of the problem ensured Chris Long was named as someone in error on this matter when Nevin’s biographical details were published in 1992 ( Willis, Kerr, Stilwell, Neville, etc). … More About those photographic glasses 1873 …

From glass negative to print: prisoner Bewley TUCK

February 20, 2009

At least forty more unmounted photographs of prisoners taken by T. J. Nevin in the 1870s which were collated by John Watt Beattie in three panels ca. 1915 are held in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, together with seventy or so cdvs in oval mounts, the remainder of part of more than three hundred in oval mounts which were originally bequeathed  from the estate of convictaria collector and government photographer John Watt Beattie to the QVMAG in the 1930s. When several dozen mounted and unmounted cdvs were removed from Beattie’s original collection at the QVMAG and taken down to the Port Arthur prison heritage site for an exhibition as part of the Port Arthur Conservation Project in 1983, they were not returned to the QVMAG. They were deposited instead at the TMAG . Given the scratches, crossed out inscriptions and general damage, the glass negative from which this print was made would have been used extensively to reprint the prisoner’s photograph for prison records as each offense and charge was recorded. The print, unmounted such as this one, would have been pasted to his rap sheet, and more would have been reprinted from the original glass plate several times over the prisoner’s long criminal career. Examples of both types of prisoner mugshots – mounted and unmounted – attached to prisoners’ rap sheets are held at the Archives Office of Tasmania in prison photo books. … More From glass negative to print: prisoner Bewley TUCK

Prisoner Walter JOHNSTONE aka Henry BRAMALL or TAYLOR

January 19, 2009

Henry Taylor was tried at the Supreme Court Hobart on 4th July 1871, along with John Appleby, one of the first photographs of prisoners taken by T.J. Nevin at the Supreme Court Hobart. The photograph of Taylor aka Bramall or Johnston was hand coloured by Nevin’s studio and placed in his shop window to assist the public in recognition and recapture of the prisoner when he absconded on February 6, 1874 from a gang at the Cascade factory. … More Prisoner Walter JOHNSTONE aka Henry BRAMALL or TAYLOR

Prisoner William HAYES

January 19, 2009

William Hayes’ prison ID photograph was among the first taken by Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart House of Corrections when William Hayes was discharged from a 2 year sentence for indecent assault in the week ending 24 April 1872.

The same image in these two cartes was printed at different times from Nevin’s original glass negative. In the top carte, Hayes’ image was straightened, eliminating the lean to the right in the carte below. Haye’s petty minor offences between 1873-1875 after release from the Hobart Gaol  were tried in Launceston, where the reprint of his ID photograph was sent in 1874. … More Prisoner William HAYES