Clifford and Nevin: the journey from Hobart to Port Arthur 1873-4

Photographers Samuel CLIFFORD and Thomas J. NEVIN 1870s
Misattribution Chris LONG and Warwick REEDER 1995
Charles A. WOOLLEY and A. H. BOYD

The notice below was published in Walch's Tasmanian Almanac in 1873, at a time when the Port Arthur prison site on the Tasman Peninsula, 60 kms south of Hobart, was still in operation. The traveller from Hobart faced a frequently interrupted, long and uncomfortable journey, alternating between road and sea transport and an overnight hotel stay.



The Government schooner Harriet in foreground at Port Arthur 1874 and the Southern Cross in background.
Description: Photograph - View of the Port Arthur settlement the ship, Southern Cross, and the Government schooner Harriet, as seen from across the Bay
Item Number: PH30/1/3335
Start Date: 01 Jan 1874
Source: https://stors.tas.gov.au/PH30-1-3335
Archives Office Tasmania

Entry to the Tasman Peninsula depended on the issue of a pass, signed by the Colonial Secretary, by prior arrangement, which was collected by the armed guard at Eagle Hawk Neck, 14 miles distant from the prison itself (so the story goes, though many visitors on government business arrived without the pass).



TRANSCRIPT extract
FROM HOBART TOWN TO PORT ARTHUR
Communication is kept up between Hobart and Port Arthur by the Government schooner,a vessel of about 40 tons burthen. The passage is generally made in a day, and seldom if ever exceeds two days; and as a rulethe schooner makes the trip weekly. It is necessary that persons wishing to visit the Peninsula should obtain authority to do so from the Colonial Secretary....
Source:Walch's Tasmanian Almanac, 1873

By 1874, however, the traveller could take an alternative route. In 1874, at a cost of £27,000 the 5km causeway across Pittwater linking Sorell to Midway Point and Midway Point to Hobart was completed. It had taken six years and was primarily designed to link Port Arthur with Hobart.

Hobart photographers including Alfred Bock and Thomas J. Nevin in the 1860s, and Thomas J. Nevin and Samuel Clifford in 1871, 1873 and 1874, used the government schooner Harriet. Thomas Nevin may have travelled along the causeway to Port Arthur at some time later than 1874, and travelled by sea as well with his father-in-law, master mariner Captain James Day. He was on police business when he travelled to Port Arthur on board the schooner Harriet on May 8th, 1874, one week after the official tenure began of the new Commandant, Dr. Coverdale. In reality Dr. Coverdale had already replaced A. H. Boyd in January 1874 with A.H. Boyd's sudden dismissal from the position under allegations of corruption and nepotism levelled at him and his brother-in-law Attorney-General W.R. Giblin in the Parliament in July and continuing through 1873.

Samuel Clifford and Thomas Nevin at Port Arthur
On May 8th 1874, government contractor Thomas J. Nevin arrived at Port Arthur on the Harriet accompanied by the prisoner William Campbell who was hanged as Job Smith one year later. It was at the insistence of Dr. Crowther in Parliament and Dr. Coverdale that no more prisoners be sent to Port Arthur and those still remaining be removed to Hobart asylums and gaols in the immediate future, a process begun in 1871. Thomas Nevin was contracted to photograph the transferees on their arrival back at the Hobart Gaol if he had not photographed them earlier on their committal to the Supreme Court and adjoining Hobart Gaol. Those especially transferred back from Port Arthur after being sent there after 1871 on short term sentences were the concern of the Parliament.

By mid-1874 the majority of prisoners still under sentence arrived back at the Hobart Gaol. The hundreds of extant mugshots of named "convicts" held in the public collections at the QVMAG, TMAG, AOT and SLNSW are the same men listed as inmates at the Hobart Gaol in the 1875 document tabled in Parliament on Penal Discipline, the Nominal Return of all Prisoners whether under Remand or Sentence, in the Gaol and House of Correction for Males at Hobart Town, on the 8th December 1874.





Prisoner SMITH, Job alias CAMPBELL alias BRODIE
TMAG Ref: Q15572
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin 1874

Photographed by Nevin as William Campbell from the Supreme Court trial, and recorded as Campbell on being received and photographed at the Hobart Gaol by Nevin, March 1872. This carte is hand coloured, probably by Nevin's studio assistants for display in his shop window when Campbell was tried again at the Supreme Court Hobart 11-14 May 1875 and executed.



Misattribution: the "Harriet" way bills
The misattribution to the commandant at the Port Arthur prison, Adolarious.Humphrey Boyd, Dr Coverdale's predecessor, as a photographer in any genre, let alone the photographer of prisoners who are invariably termed "convicts" whenever "Port Arthur" is invoked in the same narrative, was argued as a "belief" by Chris Long in the 1980s and 1990s, despite all evidence available to him pointing to the use of commercial photographers in prisons by governments in the colonies of South Australia, Victoria and NSW. There were also readily available newspaper, police and treasury documents of the period detailing Thomas J. Nevin's contractual work in the courts and prisons with the Municipal and Territorial Police .

Chris Long's argument (TMAG, 1995:36) centered on three points:

1. photographic materials were sent to Port Arthur in 1873, and a tent and stand were returned in 1874 to Hobart.

2. a descendant of Boyd told a story in the 1930s about cameras at the Government Cottage.

3. the wet collodion process must have been used, and the Government Cottage must therefore have been the place where the "darkroom" was situated.

None of these pieces of information is factual nor adds up to anything close to proving attribution. The cargo lists of photographic materials indicate nothing more than cargo. The descendant's story was a fictional children's tale about a holiday at Port Arthur called The Young Explorer (E.M. Hall), an unpublished 3 page piece written from imagination which mentions neither Boyd nor the photographing of prisoners. The mention of a "room" with cameras in this children's tale was turned into a "darkroom" by no-one else, just Chris Long. It was a story told in the 1930s by a woman in her sixties to give her young readers a taste of the old days, yet Long incorrectly ascribed it to an article by Margaret Glover in 1979. The same hearsay was embellished in the 1990s at the Port Arthur Historic site for the tourists visiting the Government Cottage. The third point is also unfactual: the dry plate process, or "Russell's Tannin Process" rather than the wet collodion process was already in use by Samuel Clifford and Thomas J. Nevin in the mid 1860s (Kerr 1992, entry on Samuel Clifford).

It was Samuel Clifford, partner of Thomas Nevin, who travelled on the Harriet in 1873 with the cargo of one case of photographic plates; he was listed as a passenger on the way bill, accompanying 288 photographic glasses which allegedly arrived there on board the government schooner Harriet on July 30th, 1873. The case was intended for the prison storekeeper from government stores in Hobart. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that the photographic plates arrived at Port Arthur: see this article here.



Photographic glasses as cargo to Port Arthur 30 July 1873
Tasmanian Papers Ref. 320, Mitchell Library, SLNSW

The detail (above) of the first page of the Way Bill from Hobart Town for goods conveyed to the Port Arthur prison storekeeper on the government schooner Harriet, is dated July 30th 1873. These "photographic glasses" were intended to be used by Samuel Clifford and Thomas Nevin to photograph the neglected state of the prison buildings and the deforestation of the surrounds at the request of Parliament as allegations of A. H. Boyd's embezzlement of funds and theft of timber were raised.



Photographic material to Port Arthur on the way bill of August 12, 1873.
Tasmanian Papers Ref. 320, Mitchell Library, SLNSW

This second way bill (detail above), dated August 12th, 1873, delivered "Photographic Material - 1 case" to the Port Arthur government stores. Included on this way bill is "Bunting Red" and "Braid Red", suggesting preparations for a festive or official occasion, such as the visit by the Governor of South Australia whom Clifford photographed there in 1873. On 1st December 1873, Samuel Clifford returned to Hobart as a passenger on the Harriet with some very large boxes.

Nowhere on these way bills is there evidence that A.H. Boyd personally used these plates and equipment to take the photographs of the few remaining convicts of the criminal class at the Port Arthur prison.

The third way bill cited by Chris Long (TMAG, 1995:36) - dated 2nd April, 1874 - which details two photographic items - a tent and stand - shipped back to Hobart, is offered by Chris Long as pivotal proof that Boyd was the "Port Arthur photographer." Nothing more substantial than that, and unproven in every detail. Examination of the third waybill showed that this same tent and stand were NOT the possessions of A.H. Boyd; a Mrs Boyd travelled on the Harriet on that date, with only a few personal items such as a hat box and pram. See the extended discussion on this site about the use of this argument.



Page 36 citing the three way bills and attribution to T.J. Nevin with mention of A.H. Boyd
Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940 : A Directory (TMAG 1995:36)

Nonetheless, these way bills are cited by Chris Long in Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940 : A Directory (TMAG 1995:36) as evidence that the commandant of the Port Arthur penitentiary, Adolarious Humphrey Boyd, "may have been" the photographer rather than Thomas J. Nevin, an opinion adopted by Warwick Reeder without substantiation and without checking the Glover reference or descendant's story (MA sub-thesis, ANU 1995). Chris Long's speculation was summarily dismissed by authoritative photohistorians Geoffrey Stilwell and Joan Kerr (1992), and by John McPhee (1977) who curated the original QVMAG exhibition of Nevin's convict portraits. The misattribution is best termed a PARASITIC attribution, circumstantial and without substance or basis in fact. At worst, it is a personal fantasy.

Exhibitions 1934-1995
The 300 or so extant "portraits" of Tasmanian prisoners taken by T. J. Nevin in the 1870s were "discovered" in the basement of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. Launceston, in the mid 1970s among the 20 tonnes of materials which John Watt Beattie transferred there in 1927 from his Port Arthur Museum in Hobart (David Young, 1996). J. W. Beattie had acquired the photographic "convict portraits" from government sources such as the Sheriff's Office at the Hobart Gaol, sources readily available to him as official government photographer in the 1900s, and from his purchase of the Anson Brothers photographic studio in 1892. The Anson Brothers in turn had acquired stock from Samuel Clifford's sale of his studio in 1878, stock which included materials from Thomas J. Nevin's partnership with Samuel Clifford in the 1870s.

Between 1927 and the exhibition of Beattie's collection in 1934; the cataloguing of the photographs at the QVMAG in 1958; the 1977 exhibition with attribution to Thomas J. Nevin as the photographer of the "convicts"; and another cataloguing event in 1985 through to 1987, the original bundle of photographs, some still attached to the prisoner's rap sheet, was split up, and in some instances the photographs were copied, reproduced from the original sepia cdvs as black and white cdvs for online display; 80 or so remained at the QVMAG; 50 or more were sent to the TMAG (1983-4) after an exhibition at the Port Arthur Heritage site instead of being reunited with Beattie's collection at the QVMAG; a dozen or so were copied and used for book publications at the Archives Office of Tasmania (1982); and another 80 or so copies were donated to the National Library of Australia (1965; 1982-1995).

Warwick Reeder stated clearly in his thesis (1995:69) that the Boyd attribution arose from hearsay about a story circulating at the Port Arthur Historic Site where a Boyd descendant recalled seeing a camera at the Commandant's house:
Boyd's niece, E. M. Hall, nee Giblin, recalls that while Boyd was in charge of Port Arthur, he "had a room fitted up in the garden [of the Commandant's house] and was always on the lookout for sitters, [she being] a proud and constant occupant of the only available chair."
Footnote 65, Ibid, Reminiscences of E. M. Hall,
Crowther Library, State Library of Tasmania in Glover, Margaret, Report on the Physical Fabric of Port Arthur) 1979.

But Margaret Glover makes no such reference to either E.M. Hall or A.H. Boyd and cameras in her article (1979). That piece of hearsay, derived purely from a story scripted in fictional form for children by E.H. Hall in 1933, is the sole evidence put forward by Chris Long (1995) and Warwick Reeder (1995) wishing to claim A. H. Boyd, a career accountant with a prior history of abuse of employees (dismissed from the Orphan School in 1865 for misogyny), to be the one and only (proficient and professional) photographer involved. Boyd had no reputation in his lifetime as a photographer, no training or extant works, and no document exists that can attest to his personal use of cameras to photograph prisoners. Chris Long and Warwick Reeder had nothing more to offer than a sentence in a fictional children's story.

The A. H. Boyd descendant's story was falsely attributed to statements which do not appear in Margaret Glover's article, effectively fabricating photohistory for the next three decades. Yet this story, coupled with the way bills, form the cornerstone of Chris Long's "belief" that A. H. Boyd took the extant mugshots of Tasmanian convicts which bear the inscription on verso "Taken at Port Arthur, 1874". Many were copied again and inscribed uniformly with this misleading statement by John Watt Beattie for sale from his catalogue in 1916, purely in the name of commercial tourism. Subsequently catalogued by archivists decades later, both the date 1874 and the prison location Port Arthur written on the versos of 200 or so cdvs were assumed to be factual, when in reality the circumstances of each photographic capture of each prisoner varied from sitting to sitting. Most of those mugshots were taken by Thomas Nevin over a decade or more, from 1872-1886, at the Hobart Gaol, the Supreme Court, Hobart, and the Mayor's Court at the Hobart Town Hall.

The original commission was requested by the Office of the Attorney-General W.R. Giblin, endorsed by Chief Justice Francis Smith, supervised at the Hobart Gaol by Ringrose Atkins, and managed by tender at the Office of the Superintendent of Police at the central Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall. The work done by Thomas J. Nevin while under contract until 1876 was commercial and consistent with his family portraits and his portrait of Judge W.R. Giblin which bears T. Nevin's stamp on verso. Warwick Reeder noted (1995:70) that -
Chris Long was the first to suggest that they [Port Arthur cartes 1874] might have been taken by A.H. Boyd.
He is also the last, and should be the last (any redux of this issue is an echo effect, nothing more). Neither Chris Long nor Warwick Reeder, the only two to hypothesize the Boyd attribution with such spurious logic and lack of proof, followed the history behind the movement of the photographs from location to location to location. In none of the debate has mention been made of Thomas J. Nevin's brother, Constable John Nevin at the Hobart Gaol nor to the fact that the Sheriff's Office held the records from 1887 to 1951.

Samuel Clifford's presence at the Government Cottage, Port Arthur in 1873 was recorded on this image of the gardens, with the date on mount:



The Government Cottage at Port Arthur
Publication Information:[ca. 1873]
Physical description:1 photograph : sepia toned ; 11 x 19 cm.
Notes:Title inscribed in ink below image ; date noted in pencil at lower right of image on album page ; item number noted in ink at centre left of image on album page.
Exact size 105 x 184 mm.
"Tasmanian scenes" also known as "Clifford album 1".
Alternate Title: Clifford album. 1.
In: Tasmanian scenes P. 52, item 103.
Digitised item from: W L Crowther Library, State Library of Tasmania.
https://stors.tas.gov.au/AUTAS001124075854w800

Mitchell Library, SLNSW records
Samuel Clifford's partnership with Thomas Nevin has not been examined by the ardent "mystery solvers" of the "authorship" of the convict cartes held in both public and private collections. Clifford reprinted many of Nevin's commercial studio portraits, stereos and landscapes for Nevin's clients over many years into the 1880s. The "mystery" is compounded by the fact that records kept at the Port Arthur Historic Site are incomplete and therefore unreliable; several valuable record books are held in NSW public collections.

For example, the Mitchell , State Library of NSW holds the Port Arthur "Officers' visiting book, 1873" (Location No.: Tasmanian Papers Ref: 308). The Giblin contract issued to Thomas Nevin and held at the Allport firm of lawyers where Giblin was an associate was located by G.T. Sitwell in the Allport Bequest, State Library of Tasmania in 1978, and the portrait of W. R. Giblin taken by Thomas Nevin ca. 1876 was located in The Pretyman Collection, Archives Office of Tasmania.

When evacuation of inmates from Port Arthur was completed in September 1877,
" ... the central records were maintained in the office of the Administrator of Charitable Relief (within the Chief Secretary's Department), but in 1887 the Deputy Sheriff complained of their filthy condition and asked that they should be entirely under the Sheriff's care. This was evidently agreed to, for the great bulk of the records comprising this Record Group were still in the custody of the Sheriff when they were transferred to the State Archives in 1951."
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Link:https://www.archives.tas.gov.au/guides/Con_guide.pdf

"The great bulk "? Not so. The Mitchell Library at the State Library of NSW holds a vast collection of original documents from the Tasmanian colonial period - 368 volumes - bequeathed by D. S. Mitchell in 1907, including a later acquisition from photographer John Watt Beattie (1919) from whose bequest the T.J. Nevin portraits of convicts were drawn for exhibition at the QVMAG  (1977) and distributed piecemeal, whether as copies or originals, to other State and National institutions (e.g. Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart; National Library of Australia, Canberra,1980s;  and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1984).
Title : Tasmanian Papers, 1803-1890, re the administration of the Tasmanian convict system
Creator: Tasmania. Government
Date of Work: 1803-1890
Contents: Official records relating to the government and administration of Tasmania. The records relate to both free citizens and convicts and include material as diverse as jury lists, correspondence, supreme court records, police records, convict indents, convict returns and convict assignment lists, musters, land grants, financial records, Commissariat records, executive council minutes, stock and produce returns, magisterial records, marriage records, plans etc.

Title: Tasmanian Papers, 1821-1877, bequeathed by D.S. Mitchell, 1907
[87 vols. from a series of 368 vols.]
Date of Work :1821 - 1877
Type of Material: Manuscripts

Bequeathed by D. S. Mitchell, 1907 (Tas. Papers Nos 16, 21-30, 129-141, 161-174, 198, 209-211, 221, 229, 233, 247-251, 294-302, 305-308, 310-314, 316, 318-321, 332, D 2-D 13, D 23). Other volumes were acquired from Angus & Robertson, 1911,1913, Mr Beattie, 1919, Mr. Eldershaw, 1939, C.R. Fisher, 1946, C.L. Wilkes, 1949 and C.H. Lucas, 1954.
Any researcher on this question of "authorship" - which is a debate amongst art historians and fine art dealers founded on essentialist notions of the "artist" - needs to examine the Mitchell holdings: to imagine that the only extant records relevant to the period - and the debate - are held by Tasmanian institutions and Tasmanian historic sites such as the Port Arthur Historic Site, is indeed naive. The Mitchell papers also show that prisoners at Port Arthur were being relocated elsewhere to prisons in Hobart as early as 1871.

The Mitchell Library also holds eleven convict photographs, catalogued in T. J. Nevin's name, some bearing his government contract studio stamp. The prisoners in these photographs were repeat offenders whose mugshots were taken by Nevin as early as 1872 at Supreme Court committals at the request of the Police and Prisons Departments.

Charles A. Woolley
Just as with Samuel Clifford's partnership with Thomas Nevin, Charles A. Woolley's association with A. H. Boyd has not been examined by any commentators. Another non-sequitur by Chris Long appears on page 20 of the TMAG publication, Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940: A Directory (1995).

Under the entry for BOYD, Adolarious Humphrey, Chris Long writes:
Superintendent at Port Arthur, 1871-1874. Thought to have taken most of the extant Tasmanian convict photographs (MEA). See also Charles Woolley.
Notice the use of the passive construction "Thought to ...". No-one before Chris Long believed A. H. Boyd took these photographs; his "belief" is purely through idle speculation, not through documented proof. The entry for Boyd under "B" is as brief as this, and Chris Long gives no follow through to demonstrate that Charles A. Woolley had any association with these Tasmanian convict photographs, the reason being that Woolley in fact had no association with prison photography.

Notice also the slippage in exchangability between "Port Arthur convict photographs" and "Tasmanian convict photographs", as though they are synonymous, when they are not. The cdv printed on page 36 (TMAG 1995, above) on the left-hand side does not carry the inscription on the verso "Taken at Port Arthur, 1874", whereas the verso of the one on the right does bear that inscription. All of these convicts were photographed by the police and prisons' photographer contracted to do a specific job, and that photographer was Thomas J. Nevin working principally at the Supreme Court, the Hobart Gaol and Municipal Police Office Town Hall between 1872 and 1886 with his brother Jack Nevin. Constable W.J. (John or Jack) Nevin's service began in the early 1870s and continued until his untimely death, aged 39 yrs, during the typhoid epidemic of 1891.

In summary, Chris Long's research is a mess, and should NOT be used as a creditable source of information.



Carte-de-visite by Charles A. Woolley of A. H. Boyd, 1866
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Ref:  Q7661

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