This cdv was originally held at the QVMAG. The number "94" was written on the front under the image in 1983 for an exhibition at the Port Arthur Historic site. The cdv was thereafter deposited at the TMAG.
This is one example of hundreds of prisoner cdv's taken in the 1870s which were numbered verso in the same hand that wrote a sequence number above the prisoner's name, name of the ship on which he arrived in Van Diemen's Land (before 1856 when transportation ceased - VDL was named Tasmania on 1 January 1856) and the phrase - "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" - purely in the name of 1900s dark tourism. John Watt Beattie exhibited and offered them for sale at his "Port Arthur Museum" in Hobart to tempt the Edwardian tourist to visit the ruins of the Port Arthur prison 60 kms south of Hobart, renamed Carnarvon on the Tasman Peninsula. His exhibitions coincided in the first decades of the 20th century with the release of two film adaptations in 1908 and 1927 of Marcus Clarke's 1870/1874 novel For The Term of His Natural Life. The visitor might even be offered a part as an extra at locations around Port Arthur while the films were in production.
Neither the date 1874 nor the location, Port Arthur written on this cdv and on the versos of other prisoner cdv's reflects the actual occasion, circumstance, offence, prison, court or date of each of these prisoner's one and only sitting with photographer T. J. Nevin for police and prison records in the years 1872-1876 (his contracts of 14 years ended in 1886). The inscriptions were written by John Watt Beattie and his assistant Edward Searle on more than 300 similar mugshots which they "salvaged" from the Hobart Gaol; most but not all were acquired by the QVMAG soon after on Beattie's death in 1930. A dozen or more were acquired ca. 1907 on the death of private collector David Scott Mitchell which are now held in the Mitchell Collection, State Library of NSW, Sydney (SLNSW PXB 274). Every one of the 12 (plus two more identifiable as prisoner cdv's taken by Nevin at the Hobart Gaol) luckily escaped the wording on verso "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" which may help in dating the event which inspired that inscriber's mistaken diligence.
Prisoner BOOTH, Ephraim
TMAG Ref: Q15589
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin, Hobart Gaol, 1875
Verso: Prisoner BOOTH, Ephraim
TMAG Ref: Q15589
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin, Hobart Gaol, 1875
The NLA copy
There is no number on the front underneath the image on this copy. It was sourced before the 1930s by John Watt Beattie for travelling exhibitions associated with the fake convict hulk "Success" in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart. The NLA acquired this cdv of Ephraim Booth from government estrays in the 1960s by donation from the Gunson collection.
NLA Catalogue (incorrect information)
Ephriam [i.e. Ephraim] Booth, per Ld. [Lord] Auckland, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture]
Call Number PIC Album 935 #P1029/52
Extent 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm., on mount 10.4 x 6.4 cm.
Police Records
Ephraim Booth was convicted of rape in the Supreme Court Launceston on 13th February 1868, sentenced to death. He was transferred to the Hobart Gaol and photographed there in 1875 by T. Nevin, sentence commuted to life, discharged 28th February 1885.
Transferred from the Port Arthur penitentiary during the year 1875 to the Hobart Gaol, photographed by government contractor Nevin on being received.
Penal Discipline Report of Commission (House of Assembly)
https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/31035/ha1875pp49.pdf
Ephraim Booth per Ld Auckland to be executed for rape, SC Launceston 13 Feb 1868.
Residue remitted: 28 February 1885. Ephraim Booth was discharged in 1885, aged 75 years. The prisoner's photograph by Thomas Nevin was taken in 1875 at the Hobart Gaol when Booth was in his late fifties (born ca. 1810).