Mary Sophia Axup chair of the WPL 1913

IN THEIR SHOES

March is Women's History Month.

The Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office for this year 2013 at Flickr has featured an album of Founding Women and a page on women's suffrage at the State Library of Tasmania.

Mary Sophia Axup and the TWPL
Thomas Nevin's sister-in-law Mary Sophia Axup nee Day, chaired a meeting in 1913 of the Tasmanian Workers' Political League, the forerunner of the Australian Labor Party, seeking nominations for Labor candidates to stand for the seat of Bass in the forthcoming Federal election:

The Mercury 22 August 1913

TRANSCRIPT

Bass Divisional Council of the T.W.P.L. [Tasmanian Workers' Political League] met last week at the A.W.C. office, Launceston, Mrs Axup being in the chair. It was decided to invite nominations for Bass of those willing to stand in the Labour interests in the Federal campaign which may shortly be entered upon. The secretary Mr. J. Mooney was also instructed to advise all country branches to be in readiness for the campaign.

Mary Sophia Axup ca, 1940
Photo (detail) courtesy of © John Davis and Axup descendants 2007 ARR.

The New Labor 1913
If these women in army and police uniform one hundred years ago had something to blow their bugles about, it certainly wasn't about plain sailing towards leadership in the Services, let alone leadership of the Labor Party, or - dared they even contemplate it - leadership of the Nation as Prime Minister and Governor-General.

Title:Two women in army and police uniforms ca. 1912
ADRI:PH30-1-4981
Source:Archives Office of Tasmania

Extract from The Companion to Tasmanian History

CLASS
... A different segment of the middle-class provided the most effective challenge to landed power in Tasmania. In the 1880s a new generation of politicians, mostly lawyers and businessmen hostile to notions of landed privilege and critical of what they (and earlier criticis) deemed class legislation, established a reformist political class that reshaped the political landscape and hence class relations in Tasmania by replacing landed power with parliamentary democracy and centralised executive power.

Class relations were further rewritten after the west coast mining industry was established in the early 1880s. A Trades and Labor Council was formed in 1883. The rise of unions was a challenge to capital, pointed to distinct class interests, and was a focal point for collective identities based on work. The movement for reform was aided by the devastating impact of the 1891 Depression. Disputes in the shipping, pastoral and mining industries dispelled the liberal belief that labour and capital had shared interests, hastened working-class organisation, and ushered in a period of class conflict. The Tasmanian Workers' Political League, the Tasmanian forerunner to the Australian Labor Party, was formed in 1901 and represented workers' interests at a political level....

IN HIS OWN WORDS...

"T. J. NEVIN
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST,
Returns his sincere thanks to his friends and the public for past favours, and having made a considerable Reduction in his Prices to suit the times, he solicits a continuance of their patronage, and invites attention to his circulars, showing particulars of the small cost for a first-class faithful Likeness.
140 ELIZABETH-STREET"
Hobart Mercury, 1st February 1873

“I hope that you have not got it in your mind that I am implicated with the ghost“.
Hobart Mercury, 4 December 1880

"Defendant said that he was the father of a large number of children, and did not know which one was referred to. (Laughter.)"
Hobart Mercury, 11 August 1886

"Mr. Thos Nevin was under the impression that the police should be under stricter supervision."
Hobart Mercury, 19 July 1888.

BIOGRAPHY: professional photographer Thomas James Nevin snr (1842-1923) produced large numbers of stereographs and cartes-de-visite within his commercial practice, and prisoner identification photographs on government contract. His career spanned nearly three decades, from the early 1860s to the late 1880s. He was one of the first photographers to work with the police in Australia, along with Charles Nettleton (Victoria) and Frazer Crawford (South Australia). His Tasmanian prisoner mugshots are among the earliest to survive in public collections, viz. the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Tasmanian Heritage and Archives Office, Hobart; the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasman Peninsula; the National Library of Australia, Canberra; and the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Thomas J. Nevin's stereographs and portraits are held in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Switzerland.

Click here for KEY DATES 1842-1923

Try thumbnail SEARCHING here and

here BIOGRAPHICA thumbnail index

Important Notices

INDIGENOUS NOTICE:
lutruwita/Tasmania/Van Diemen's Land (loo-tru-wee-ta) always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

This weblog pays respect to the ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging of the first Australian peoples and acknowledges their continued connection to land, sea and culture as the traditional custodians of this country.

Irish-born Thomas J. Nevin would have been keenly aware that the residence and photographic studio he occupied at No's 138-140 Elizabeth St. Hobart in the 1870s were built on the traditional lands, nipaluna of the palawa people. It is no small irony that today, the very same property, which is renumbered as No. 198 Elizabeth St. Hobart and is occupied by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, has returned to its traditional owners.

Looking east from the corner of Patrick St., the Royal Standard Hotel, 142 Elizabeth St. then T. J. Nevin’s studio and residence, 140-138 Elizabeth St. Hobart, 1870s

We also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the City of Sydney, and the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the Kamberri/Canberra region on whose lands this site is maintained.

PLEASE NOTE: images on this weblog represent deceased people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Viewing such images may cause sadness and distress.

DISCLAIMER: We have not voluntarily contributed to any publication which supports the misattribution of T. J. Nevin's prisoner/convict photographs (300+ extant) to the non-photographer A. H. Boyd, nor do we condone any attempts by public institutions or private individuals to co-opt the work on these Thomas J. Nevin weblogs and associated sites to apply the misattribution.

Our 19th Anniversary 2005-2024

Click on image for full list tagged "About women"

NINETEEN YEARS ago (before 2005 actually) we started blogging about Tasmanian photographer Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923). We look forward to another year or so as the project draws closer to completion. Contributions and donations are most welcome, and many thanks for your involvement.

SABBATICAL 2023-24: We are taking a short break from regular posting through 2024 but will be available to answer queries.

Anthony Trollope at Port Arthur

Thomas Nevin's VIP commission 1872

VISIT TO PORT ARTHUR.- Mr. Trollope and the Hon. Howard Spensly, Esq., Solicitor-General of Victoria, accompanied the Hon. the Premier, J.M. Wilson, Esq., and the Hon. the Attorney-General, W.R. Giblin, Esq., embarked in the Government schooner late last night, some time after Mr. Trollope had concluded his lecture on "Modern Fiction, as a recreation for young people," and left for Port Arthur. Their visit to the Peninsula will be a very hurried one, and will afford them only scant opportunity of inspecting the penal establishment, it being the intention of Messrs. Trollope and Spensly to leave Hobart Town for the North, en route for Victoria in a few days ...

Source: The Mercury 2 February 1872