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

Tragedy at Dickens’ honeymoon cottage, Goldsmith’s Plantation, Chalk, Kent (UK)

November 4, 2021

When Walter Mullender was found dead in Goldsmith’s Plantation with a gunshot wound to the head on Friday 7th March 1930, the inquest was conducted by Deputy Coroner Mr. F. V. Budden, the purchaser of Charles Dickens’ house for a time (Kitton, Dickensiana, 1886:492). The cottage tenanted by the unfortunate Walter Mullender at Goldsmith’s Plantation in the parish of Chalk was referred to in contemporary press reports of the suicide as the Dickens Cottage and Honeymoon Cottage. Walter Mullender was buried at ST MARY THE VIRGIN CHURCH, known as Chalk Church, where Captain Edward Goldsmith was buried in July 1869. … More Tragedy at Dickens’ honeymoon cottage, Goldsmith’s Plantation, Chalk, Kent (UK)

Young man at Nevin & Smith's studio, Hobart 1868

NEVIN & SMITH, 1868: the client with white fingernails

October 21, 2021

Robert Smith was known to Mrs Esther Mather. She was not happy about the colouring he had applied to a portrait of her brother when he visited the studio she called “Smith’s” in Hobart. She said so in a letter to her step-son, dated 1865. Nothing was known about this partner of Thomas J. Nevin called Robert Smith until recently when portraits and stereoscopes bearing the business name NEVIN & SMITH came to light. Robert Smith may have been an independent photographer prior to forming a partnership with Thomas J. Nevin at Alfred Bock’s former studio. The partnership lasted less than a year and was promptly dissolved in February 1868 following the Royal visit to Hobart, Tasmania of Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, in late 1867 on his first command, H.M.S. Galatea. Thomas J. Nevin continued the photographic business in his own name at Alfred Bock’s former studio, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town, while Robert Smith departed for Goulburn NSW where he set up a photographic studio before taking to farming and politics. … More NEVIN & SMITH, 1868: the client with white fingernails

Best of friends: Emma PITT and Liz O’MEAGHER 1866

September 24, 2021

The verso inscription on this carte-de-visite – “I say Captain Mackie is not to show his face in Nelson without you Liz O’Meagher” – signed by Emma Pitt, dated 6th June 1866, has created differences in perception as to the identity of the young woman in the photograph, first by the seller (DSFB) on the one hand, and second by the purchaser (KLW NFC Imprint) on the other. Is it a photograph of Emma Pitt’s addressee “you Liz O’Meagher”, or does it represent the sender Emma Pitt herself? The cdv as a multimodal message is quite complex in tenor and text. Emma’s single sentence is a powerful theatrical gesture. She uses the deictic “you” as a cataphoric pointer forward to the name “Liz O’Meagher” without reference to the photograph itself or to the name of the woman it portrays. “This is you” or “this is me” are absent pointers which could identify the subject of the photograph. Liz O’Meagher is clearly intended as the receiver, the addressee, the “you” in script, in textual form on the verso of the cdv but there is the addition of a visual signifier in the message, the photograph of a young woman on the recto of the cdv, whose identity is not altogether straightforward despite comparisons with extant photographic records taken in the same decade and into the 1880s of (potentially) both young women … More Best of friends: Emma PITT and Liz O’MEAGHER 1866

Thomas Nevin 1886: assistant bailiff to Inspector Dorsett

February 2, 2010

Reported in the press during December 1880 and January 1881, the Mayor’s Committee expressed deep regret at Thomas Nevin’s dismissal from the position of Town Hall keeper (an archaic term which included the duties of keeper of public archives). Mindful of Nevin’s growing family, the Hobart City Council retained his government contract with warrant and photographic duties as assistant bailiff to the Municipal Police, Hobart and the New Town Territorial Police. Working principally in the City Police Court and Hobart Supreme Court as assistant to Sub-Inspector John Dorset(t), Nevin continued to provide identification photographs of prisoners up until 1886, a service commenced in 1872 under a 14-year contract to the colonial government’s prison administration. Many of these mugshots were collated with warrants issued by the Municipal Police Office. For example, two death warrants with T. J. Nevin’s photographs of the condemned man attached (e.g. James Sutherland 1883; Henry Stock 1884) now survive intact in the Mitchell Collection at the State Library of NSW. … More Thomas Nevin 1886: assistant bailiff to Inspector Dorsett