The concertina player 1860s

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN'S TREE, KANGAROO VALLEY
MUSICIANS GEORGE and GRACE CASE





Group including Mrs and Mrs George Case at Sir John Franklin's Tree, Kangaroo Valley, Tasmania.
Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca.1867
Recto and verso: Scans from TMAG Ref: Q1994.56.31



Half of double image stereo, (TMAG Ref: Q1994.56.31)
Maker: T. Nevin , Concertina player with group of friends at New Town Creek ca. late 1860s.
Photos taken at the TMAG 10 Nov 2014 © KLW NFC Imprint 2014 -2015 ARR.

This untitled stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, taken ca. 1868 of a group of 19 people sitting by a stream, including a woman holding a concertina, is held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Ref: Q1994.56.31. Photographed together with its blank verso on 10th November, 2014 at the TMAG (by this weblog), the stereo is one of a series, some bearing Nevin's New Town stamp, some blank, originally attributed and sequenced by Specialist Collections librarian G. T. Stilwell at the State Library and Archives Office of Tasmania in the 1970s while preparing an exhibition of Nevin's portraits of convicts (at the QVMAG with John McPhee 1977).

A possible title for the stereograph  might be "Concertina player with group of friends at New Town Creek". The location of the capture could be decided by the large tree with a notice nailed to it. Given the family association with the area around Ancanthe, Nevin most likely took this - and many other similar scenes in the series - at Kangaroo Valley (now Lenah Valley,Tasmania) where groups were regularly taken on a tour to see Lady Franklin's Museum and offered photographs as a souvenir of their day out. In 1872, for example, Thomas Nevin chaperoned a group of day trippers to Adventure Bay. They were informed a few days later by Nevin's notice in the Mercury (on 2nd February), that the photographs were ready for viewing (and buying).

Perhaps the tree was "Sir John Franklin's Tree" located in the upper reaches of the New Town Rivulet at Ancanthe where "15 people had once sat down for lunch". It was felled by the great storm which hit Hobart causing the landslide at Glenorchy in 1872, per this report (Location Plan New Town Rivulet, Archives Tas.)



Nevin photographed another concertina player accompanied by a wind instrument player in a group portrait at the Rocking Stone on top of Mount Wellington which he exhibited at the Wellington Park Exhibition, 1870.



Rocking Stone Party with musicians
Maker T. Nevin Hobart Town
Photographed at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
Ref: Ref: Q1994.56.4 and Ref: Q16826.4
Photo © KLW NFC Imprint 2014 -2015 ARR

This stereograph of another group picnicking in the bush, also featuring a musical instrument, a banjo, was tentatively attributed to Thomas Nevin's partner Samuel Clifford when offered for sale at the Hobart Book Fair 2011 by Douglas Stewart Fine Books, but on acquisition through donation to the National Library of Australia, the word "attributed" was dropped, creating yet another whimsical but questionable attribution to Clifford despite the lack of any photographer's mark, studio stamp or impress.



DOUGLAS STEWART FINE BOOKS 
HOBART BOOK FAIR
Selected highlights from our display
Hobart • February 12 - 13, 2011
Catalogue link here



nla.pic-vn5057636
Clifford, Samuel, 1827-1890. NB: The NLA should include the word "ATTRIBUTED" but doesn't.
A bush picnic with a banjo player, Tasmania, ca. 1860 [picture]
186-? 1 photograph : stereograph, albumen ; 7.2 x 15.5 cm on mount 8.3 x 17.2 cm.

Similar groups were photographed by Nevin at Lady Franklin's Museum, although by the late 1860s, the building housed fruit and potatoes rather than items of natural history and the science library which Jane Franklin had intended it should when built in 1843.



Group at the Lady Franklin Museum Kangaroo Valley (Tas)
Stereograph c.a. 1871 by Thomas J. Nevin
Royal Society ePrints University of Tasmania No. 18-9

Kangaroo Valley was a convenient spot for Nevin as he was still a bachelor until 1871, and periodically resided with his two siblings and parents at the house his father John Nevin had built on land above the Museum in the mid 1850s. The Museum sat adjacent to the Wesleyan Chapel where John Nevin and his daughter Mary Ann Nevin taught school. Although Thomas Nevin had acquired a fully functioning commercial studio in the business district of Hobart Town by 1867 from his partner Alfred Bock, he always maintained a separate small commercial studio in the New Town area close to Ancanthe until the birth of his last child in 1888.



Detail of stereo by T. Nevin , Concertina player with group of friends at New Town Creek ca. 1868.



T. Nevin, stereo of concertina player and group ca.1868 (TMAG
Ref: Q1994.56.31)
Photos © KLW NFC Imprint 2014 -2015 ARR.

Thomas Nevin photographed day-trippers, school children, farmers and their fields, the Museum, ferns with and without snow, rushing water and glistening rocks at Kangaroo Valley quite regularly while developing skills in outdoor stereography. Taken on a warm day, this group sat close to the edge of a stream, the man closest to the camera holding a cup about to dip it. The boy leaning against the tree also holds a cup, and a water can stands ready near the picnic basket. Nevin photographed his sister Mary Ann dipping a glass close to the same spot.

The Musicians and the Music
Nineteen people excluding the photographer are present in this image; twelve women and seven men, including two teenage boys and an elderly man. The women range from early 20s to middle age. However, it is the concertina player slightly right of centre who draws the eye. She is a young, attractive woman with bushy hair, seated next to the group of men. She may have been Mrs George Case (nee Grace Egerton) who sang to the accompaniment of her husband playing the concertina while touring Tasmania in concerts held at the Mechanics Institutes in Hobart and Launceston. Her husband George Case is possibly sitting just below her in a hat, arms resting on upbent knees. A full-length portrait of the couple taken by Alexander Fox & Co. ca, 1864 is held at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, listed in the current exhibition Sideshow Alley, Infamy, the macabre & the portrait, (Saturday 5 December 2015 until Sunday 28 February 2016):



Mr and Mrs Case, 1864
by Alexander Fox and Co
carte de visite photograph on card (10.2 x 6.3 cm)
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
Purchased 2010
Accession number: 2010.39

Notices of the Case concerts appeared regularly in the press from 1865 to the early 1870s.
George Case and his concertina were not without criticism. In this letter to the editor of the South Australian Register (9 March 1865), he responded angrily to a poor review of the previous' evening's performance:



MR. CASE AND THE CONCERTINA. (1865, March 9). South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), p. 3. from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39135172

TRANSCRIPT

MR CASE AND THE CONCERTINA.
to the editor.
Sir— In your report of our entertainment last evening you have made some rather severe remarks upon the concertina and my performances on that instrument. In justice to myself I claim a short space in your valuable journal, to place before you and the public a few facts, which I think will prove that I am entitled to a better place in your estimation and theirs than is conveyed in your criticism.
I received my first instructions on the concertina, when only a boy, direct from the inventor (Professor Wheatstone), and was taken by him continually to the various conversaziones of the scientific world for the purpose of displaying its powers. At that time, and for some period afterwards, there were only two performers on this instrument. Signor Begondi and myself. Since then I have travelled all over England, Ireland, and Scotland with the celebrated Jullien, performing nightly fantasias on the concertina at his concerts never without an unanimous encore. I was engaged by Signor Costa as solo concertinist at Her Majesty s Theatre, accompanying Catherine Hayes with my concertina on the stage of that theatre, and for many years at most of the principal concerts in London. I have travelled through England with Sims Reeves, John Parry, Arabella Goddard, Miss Dolby, Anna Thillon, and other first-class artistes, and have been engaged to perform at the evening parties of the Duchess of Somerset, the Earl of Westmoreland, the Earl of Wilton, and a host of nobility I could name, including in my audiences the late Duke of Cambridge and the Duchess, Lord and Lady Palmerston, Lord John Russell, &c., &c.
My annual concert at Exeter Hall was one of the features of the day, being invariably attended by about 3,000 persons. Three-fourths of the music published for the concertina have emanated from my pen, and after receiving during 20 years nothing but flattering testimonials of my ability as a performer on the concertina, and being able to say without egotism that no one is better known as a concertinist than myself. I feel it is, to say the least of it, odd to find myself for the first time in my life told that I have still so much to learn before I can secure the approbation of your critical reporter. Apologizing for intruding so long on your space, 

I am, Sir, &c. GEORGE CASE.

MR. CASE AND THE CONCERTINA. (1865, March 9). South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), p. 3. from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39135172

Rather different reviews appeared two years later while touring Tasmania. A rendering of the National Anthem at their final performance at the Town Hall (see last review below) elicited "a perfect storm".



MR. AND MRS. GEORGE CASE. (1867, November 26). Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 - 1899), p. 5.from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36647474

TRANSCRIPT

MR. AND MRS. GEORGE CASE. The reappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Case at the Mechanics' Institute last evening, after their visit to Hobart Town, was greeted by a large number of admirers, by whom both were cordially welcomed. The programme consisted of three parts, each of which had some new feature,and it is almost superfluous to any that the whole was rendered with admirable fidelity. The Spanish Dance with which the first part concluded was exceedingly pretty, and elicited prolonged applause. In Mrs. Case's imitation of Sims Reeves she sang " The Death of Nelson," and an encore being demanded she gave " Fair shines the Moon." 'A fantasia on the baritone concertina by Mr. Case was also encored. The entertainment concluded with an amusing comolioetta [?], entitled " Married and Settled. or D.u',lo [?] Dummy." Before the curtain fell Mrs. Case thanked the audience for their patronage, and expressed a hope that there would be a full house on Thursday; and as she was about to retire a perfect shower of bouquets fell around her and nearly covered the stage.
On Thursday night these favorite artistes appear for the last time in Launceston, when they have kindly consented to give an entertainment in aid of the Free and Industrial School. On this occasion a real explanation will be given of the Protean Cabinet illusion, which has baffled the comprehension of so many hundreds. Tomorrow evening Mr. and Mrs. Case give a farewell performance at Longford ; at Evan dale on Wednesday evening; Westbury on Friday; ard Deloraine on Saturday.

Mr and Mrs George Case, Launceston Examiner, 30 November 1867
MR. AND MRS. GEORGE CASE. (1867, November 26). Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 - 1899), p. 5.  from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36647474



MR. AND MRS. CASE'S ENTERTAINMENT. (1867, November 14). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 2. from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8848979

TRANSCRIPT

MR. AND MRS. CASE'S ENTERTAINMENT.
Mr. and Mrs. George Case closed their season at tho Town Hall last evening, when there was again a crowded audience to witness their performances. The programme embraced a number of Mrs. Case's best and most amusing characters, all of which, however, have been before noticed by us. The only especial feature of the evening was the duett on popular melodies, for violin and piano, by Mr. Case and Mr. F. A. Packer. The duett embraced several very popular melodies, and concluded with the National Anthem. It was beautifully played by both performers, and elicited a perfect storm of applause, and an unanimous encore, to which Messrs. Case and Packer replied by repeating a portion of it. Mr. Case's solo on the barítone concertina was another item of the programme to which we have not previously called adequate attention. This instrument is far more rich in tone than the ordinary tenor, and its manipulation by Mr. Case was something wonderful. He played a fantasia on popular melodies which was very loudly applauded. At the conclusion of the entertaiinuout Mr, and Mrs. Caso thanked the public for their very liberal support which has been accorded to them during their stay. To-night they appear at Cavey's Hotel, Brighton.

1860s Wheatstone concertina
metmuseum.org Ref: DP225644

If indeed the young woman holding the concertina in Nevin's steregraph was Mrs George Case, the instrument was probably an English made Wheatstone concertina with square ends, and there may have been more musical instruments present - a violin or flute. On the lower left of the photograph in front of the group of women and next to the open picnic basket lies a bag possibly containing bagpipes. Then again, the young woman seated with the men may have taken the concertina from one of them nearby just to strike a pose, a not uncommon choice, as it happens -



RobStevensMusic: Concertina
www.robstevensmusic.com 621 × 750
Woman with concertina, daguerreotype ca. 1850 (source)



Source: Portrait Of A Young Lady And Her Concertina



1860s Ambrotype of man playing concertina
https://www.stereographica.com/

Added to the classic and comedic repertoire for the concertina were familiar tunes renamed after local personalities. This local tune was titled "Sir John Franklin near the North Pole" and written or assigned to Arctic explorer and governor of VDL, Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Franklin.



ADRI: NS548-1-1
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Copies of Manuscript Music, 1863 (NS548) page 25
Notes: Manuscript music presented to Robert Rollings of Forcett by Alexander Laing. Comprises Scottish folk tunes (e.g. by Nathanial Gow) and some music titled to local identities.

Noel Hill and his 1860s concertina
This is the sound of a Jeffries concertina made in the 1860s, played by Noel Hill in 1995.
At YouTube:https://youtu.be/OVU3pSHQcFE



Also, watch Noel Hill, aged 14yrs, give a virtuoso performance in 1972. At YouTube: https://youtu.be/MWosPa3SuNM

RELATED POSTS main weblog

• Thomas Nevin's stereo of sister Mary Ann at New Town rivulet
• At Lady Franklin's Museum, Kangaroo Valley
• The Colonists' Trip to Adventure Bay 1872
• The Kangaroo Valley House and Museum
• Rocking Stone parties on Mount Wellington

Heads of the People exhibition NPG Canberra 2000

John Watt Beattie located his museum in Hobart but called it the "Port Arthur Museum" where he sold any fragment of any item as historical artefact of Tasmania's convict and aboriginal past, including reproductions.



John Watt Beattie ca. 1920
Archives Office of Tasmania Ref:30-430c

A visitor to Tasmania in 1916 with the South Australian Commission became so affronted by John Watt Beattie's commercialism when he "wandered into the Port Arthur Museum" in Hobart, the visitor was moved to write a letter to The Mercury newspaper. His letter was published on 3rd February, 1916:

He wrote:

"There are three rooms literally crammed with exhibits ... The question which pressed itself on my mind time and again was, how comes it that these old-time relics which formerly were Government property, are now in private hands? Did the Government sell them or give them away? The same query applies to the small collection in a curiosity shop at Brown's River. Whatever the answer may be, I hold the opinion that the Government would be amply justified in taking prompt steps to repossess them, even though some duplicates may be in the State Museum. Today the collection is valuable and extremely interesting. A century hence it will be priceless. It would surely be unpardonable to allow it to pass into the hands of some wealthy globe-trotter which is the fate awaiting it, unless action be taken to secure it to the State."

The Mercury 3rd February 1916, letter to the editor
from Edward Lucas, MLC, Legislative Council, Adelaide.

This visitor on government business in Tasmania could hardly have envisioned that the State itself would never be able to do the collection justice, because Beattie had already violated the integrity of the originals, despite making "some duplicates" and lodging them in the "State Museum", by which he meant the institution now known as the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This was one means whereby the TMAG acquired duplicates of Nevin's prisoner photographs. Two other sources are likely: estrays from the central police registry at the Hobart Town Hall (next door to the TMAG) where Nevin worked as a full-time civil servant in the years 1876-1880 and which housed the Municipal Police Office, cells in the basement and Office of the Inspector of Police, in addition to the Public Library upstairs. Beattie also sourced a number of prisoner photographs from the Sheriff's Office at the Hobart Gaol when the old photographers' room was demolished in 1915. The other source is the "borrowing" of originals and duplicates by staff at the TMAG in Hobart from Beattie's donated collection at the QVMAG in Launceston for an exhibition held at the Port Arthur prison site in 1983-1984. The TMAG acquired hundreds of stereographs, cartes-de-visite portraits of private clientele, and Hobart Gaol prisoner mugshots by Thomas J. Nevin from these sources.



Beattie's Port Arthur Museum in Hobart
QVMAG Ref: 1986_P_1223

The rooms in Beattie's Port Arthur Museum, 51 Murray St. Hobart,  looked like this:



Room 1: the red arrow points to prisoner records with photos by Nevin attached.



Room 2; Death masks at John Watt Beattie's Port Arthur Museum, Hobart, Tasmania (TMAG Collection)

Beattie offered for sale a number of original mounted and unmounted 1870s cdvs of "Types of Imperial Convicts" as he styled them in his 1916 Catalogue which looked like this:



The Catalogue for Sale of items from
John Watt Beattie's Museum, ca. 1916
(photographed from the NLA Microfiche, September 2007)

From the catalogue below in which this advertisement appeared, the tourist and collector could choose from a range of relics, curios, and photographs salvaged from across the State. The curiosity about Tasmania's convict past in these early years of the 20th century ensured that Beattie's business flourished. His photographic reproductions, as both cartes-de-visite prints and lantern slides from negatives of prisoner ID photographs taken for the police and prison authorities by the Nevin brothers in the 1870s-1880s was a lucrative niche market. Those extant cartes from his museum which are now in public collections may well be those which he did not manage to sell, or which he donated as Nevin's duplicates to the TMAG and QVMAG. What needs to be underscored here is that John Watt Beattie was never the original photographer of the Tasmanian prisoners portrayed in the extant "convict portraits" taken by Thomas Nevin and his younger brother Constable John Nevin between 1871 and 1886 at the Hobart Supreme Court, Hobart Gaol and the Port Arthur prison. Beattie arrived in Tasmania in the late 1880s as an amateur photographer, primarily of landscapes, and did not become a commercial photographer with government endorsement until he joined the Anson Bros. in 1892.



Port Arthur Museum (Beattie ca 1916) ,
Catalogue, Room 1.
John Watt Beattie's Port Arthur Museum, Hobart.
Catalogue dated ca. 1916
SOURCE: National Library of Australia
Author: Port Arthur Museum (Tas.)
Title: Catalogue of exhibits [microform]
Edition: [2nd ed.]
Publisher: [Hobart? : The Museum?, 1916?]
Printer: (Hobart : Critic Print)
Description: 15 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Cover title.
Reproduction: Microfiche. Canberra : National Library of Australia, 2004.
Call Number: mc N 2225 JAFp HIST 3072

TRANSCRIPT: Catalogue of Exhibits

ROOM NO. 1
1. Frame Containing Relics of Rev. R. Knopwood (20 exhibits),
2. Harmonium, bought at Sir Wm. Denison's sale.
3. Oil Painting of Old St. David's Church, Hobart, 1825.
4. Oil Painting of Macquarie Street, Hobart, 1825.
5. Frame of Needlework Figure Picture, from Rev. R. Knopwood.
6. Water Colour Picture, "Hobart from River," 1828.
7. Water Colour Picture, "Sandy Bay, Hobart," 1849.
8. Music Stand made by Convict for Rev. R. Knopwood.
9. The Organ used at the Church, Port Arthur.
10. Chair from Capt. Jas. Kelly's Residence (bought at Governor Arthur's sale, 1836).
11. Coloured Picture, Hobart from Kangaroo Point, 1856.
12. Ship's Figure Head, from a China Trader, broken up at Hobart.
13. Crayon Portrait of J. E. Bicheno, Colonial Secretary, under Governor Franklin.
14. Engraving of Hobart in 1822.
15. Engraving of Road to Richmond, by French artist.
16. The Port Arthur Church from the Avenue.
17. The Ground Plan, Port Arthur Church, 1835.
18. Longitudinal Elevation, Port Arthur Church, 1835.
19. Portrait of Bishop Nixon, First Anglican Bishop of Tasmania
20. Portrait of Bishop Wilson, First R.C. Bishop of Tasmania.
21. Brass Ornament from Port Arthur Church.
22. Picture of The Pulpit, Port Arthur Church.
23. Picture of the Tasmanian Rural Police, 1870.
24. Pottery Made at Port Arthur (40 exhibits).
25. Musical Clock brought to Australia is the very early times.
26. Key Stone Head, carved by a Convict. 1830.
27. Picture Frames, made at Port Arthur (7 exhibits).
28. Wood Moulds for Picture Frames, carved by a Convict (7 exhibits).
29. Bedstead from Doctor's Quarters, Port Arthur
30. Desk Top from Charge Room, Old Gaol, Hobart.
31. Despatch Box from Colonial Office, carved by Convict in Tasmania
32. Box from Port Arthur, the property of Captain Booth, the Commandant.
33. Wooden Bowl from the Hospital, Port Arthur
34. Chair from "Exile Cottage" Port Arthur, used by Mr. Smith O'Brien while confined at Port Arthur (3 exhibits).
35. Carved Ebony Desk, the property of Comptroller-General
36. Writing Desk, made at Port Arthur.
37. Tea Caddy, bought at Sir Eardley Wilmot's Sale

etc etc etc



Port Arthur Museum Catalogue (Beattie, ca 1916)

68. Glass Case containing -
1. Skull of the Macquarie Harbour Cannibal, Alex Pearce (Marcus Clarke's "Gabbet.")
2. Two Sketches made of Pearce after execution.
3. The Axe Pearce Carried, and with which the murders were committed.
4. Bolts and Lock Taken from the Cell where Pearce was confined, Old Gaol, Murray street.
5. "Sling Shot" taken from Matthew Brady, the celebrated Tasmanian Bushranger, when captured by John Batman in 1820.

69. Three Frames containing 40 photographs taken at Port Arthur, showing types of Imperial Prisoners there.
etc etc etc







Forty prints of 1870s Tasmania prisoners in three panels
Original prints of negatives by T. J. Nevin 1870s
Reprints by J. W. Beattie ca. 1915
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176

The originals of these forty (40) individual prints of Tasmanian prisoners photographed at the Hobart Gaol by the commissioned photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s, were intended to be pasted to the criminal record sheet of each prisoner. It was customary to photograph a person before conviction and after it, and again on discharge, by order of the Tasmanian Attorney-General from 1872 onwards, and since the men whom Nevin photographed were repeat and habitual offenders, the same glass negative was used again and again. The plates were handled repeatedly to produce duplicates for distribution to regional prisons and police stations, and for the many administrative copies required by the central Municipal Police Office at the Town Hall, the Supreme Court and the Hobart Gaol.

Photographs from the glass negatives were produced in various formats, first as uncut and unmounted prints as in these 40 prints, and again in carte-de-visite format within an oval mount, a practice which persisted in Tasmania through the 1870s, 1880s and into the1890s. The same cdv was sometimes overlayed again in an oblong mount when the glass plate became too damaged for further use. All three photographic formats appear on the criminal record sheets of prisoners bound together as the Hobart Gaol record books dating from the late 1880s onwards, held at the Archives Office Tasmania. Some of the earlier gaol record books of the 1870s have survived, now mysteriously missing the prisoners’ photographs. One possible explanation is that convictaria collector John Watt Beattie and his assistant Edward Searle removed the photographs or even destroyed the sheets in the early 1900s while trying to save the photographs, the bulk of which ended up at the QueenVictoria Museum and Art Gallery from their acquisition in 1930 of John Watt Beattie’s estate.

The glass plates themselves seem to have been disappeared altogether. They may have been shipped to Sydney, NSW, in March 1915 for an exhibition held at the Royal Hotel, Sydney to be displayed – reprinted and even offered for sale – as Port Arthur relics, alongside relics and documents associated with the convict hulk, Success. This newspaper report of the exhibition clearly states that the exhibitors – and this would have included John Watt Beattie as the Tasmanian contributor – collated original parchment records with duplicates, and also photographed original documents when duplicates were not available. Amongst the one ton of Port Arthur relics were dozens of original 1870s mugshots taken by Nevin, still attached to the prisoner’s rap sheet; many more were removed for re-photographing in various formats as Beattie prepared for this exhibition. The association of Marcus Clarke’s notes and novel with these photographic records for the exhibitors was de rigeur by 1915.



TRANSCRIPT

CONVICT RELICS. DOCUMENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS.
MEMORIES OF THE SYSTEM,
There is at present at the Royal Hotel, Sydney, an interesting collection of relics of early convict days. It has been brought over here by Mr. Fred McNiel, a member of a very old West Maitland family. Those relics are not exactly heirlooms, though they were handed to the family by a gentleman who had much to do with showing the world the social conditions of Australia 70 or 80 years ago. Mr. McNiel's uncle was Mr. John McNiel, who was associated with the infamous hulk Success when it was turned into a floating exhibition. It will be remembered that on the old convict ship many of the most notorious men who left England for England's good were caged like wild animals in a menagerie, and treated with a greater degree of severity by men who were more inhuman than the creatures they were called upon to guard. After a checkered career in Australia the hulk was taken to London and anchored in the Thames, when many people got their first ideas of Australian history from a visit to it. From there it was taken to America, and sank in New York Harbor.
Mr. John McNiel foresaw what would be the ultimate end of the old craft and its historical relics, so he gathered together all the duplicate copies of documents in the collection, and what were not duplicated he had photographed, He left this secondary collection with his nephew, together with a great mass of material relating to those early days which were the first links in our chain of history.
Included in this collection are innumerable instruments of discipline used in the penal establishment at Port Arthur, Tasmania, now a crumbling mass of ruins. These relics weigh almost a ton. Less awful in their construction than those of mediaeval ages and the days of the Inquisition, they are nevertheless evidence of the barbarism which existed a hundred years ago. Not the least interesting items in the collection are a number of absolutely, original parchments, age-stained, convict transportation notes, signed by the officers in charge of the ships. They were originally tied with blue tape-a material which is never used now either on legal or Government documents. It is interesting to read these documents and to note the triviality of the offences for which men and women were transported to penal servitude. There is one which tells of a man who got 14 years for poaching a rabbit! There is another which shows that an unfortunate housemaid was sent out for seven years for picking up a sovereign and claiming that finding was keeping. These documents were supplemented by others on the arrival of the ship at Van Diemen's Land....
 ... Marcus Clarke's book, "The Term of His Natural Life," originally appeared in serial form in the "Australian Journal" in 1870. The complete story in a bound volume is in this collection, and readers will find much to interest themselves in it, for it contains a mass of material which does not appear in the book. Some of the notes and many of the chapters do not attempt to conceal the characters of the story. In this connection it is interesting to point to relices of Martin Cash, who served long periods of time in Port Arthur and at Norfolk Island. The adventures of this man without doubt gave the material to Marcus Clarke for the chief character in his story. Cash died in 1877, a highly respected member of a community among which he lived the last years of his life as an orchardist ...etc etc

Source: CONVICT RELICS. (1915, March 13). Preston Leader (Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 5. Retrieved August 5, 2015, from https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92072991

HEADS of the PEOPLE EXHIBITION
National Portrait Gallery (Australia) 2000
These three frames of 40 photographs in total were included in the exhibition Heads of the People, held at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, June to October, 2000, with a doubly erroneous attribution. Beattie's name appears as the source, giving the impression that these are indeed his photographs, and that they were re-created by him "after" an earlier source, Adolarious Humphrey Boyd, the accountant and Commandant at the Port Arthur site from 1871-1873.



Although the contributor of these 40 images, Warwick Reeder, was fully aware that the A. H. Boyd attribution was merely idle speculation on the part of researcher Chris Long, originating as a rumour spread by Boyd's descendants and without substance, and to this day, without proof of any kind, his deference to Chris Long at that time (Reeder, MA thesis ANU 1995; Long, TMAG 1995) ensured that A. H. Boyd joined the ranks of photohistory, to be credited as the reputed photographer of convicts, and clearly that is a false premise based in deception.

Neither Beattie, who was a photographer nor Boyd who was not, was the original photographer who stood there in front of these men who were all photographed in the 1870s. Their photographs came into existence at the behest of the Attorney-General W.R Giblin, Thomas J. Nevin's family solicitor, as well as the Inspector of Police Richard Propsting at the Hobart Town Hall, and the Superintendents at the Hobart Gaol, John Swan, Thos. Reidy and Ringrose Atkins. Prisoners were photographed not because they had once been "Imperial Convicts" per se back before 1853, but because they became known as "Supreme Court Men" (The Mercury, 8 July 1882), active criminals with convictions in the Supreme Court who re-offended on a regular basis. They were photographed again on discharge with various conditions. They had become the responsibility of the Colonial Government by 1871, not the Imperial Government. Beattie selected their photographs on the basis of their notoriety with an eye to the tourist trade. He used Supreme Court convictions records in the first instance but the person who transcribed the wording "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" onto so many of the extant cartes originally taken by Nevin, merely used a generic date for all the versos, and Port Arthur as the generic prison, neither date or place according with the facts of each prisoner's date of conviction or place of incarceration at the time of the sitting for his photograph.

These photographs, one of which was pasted to the criminal's record (a blue form) were kept in a bound Hobart Gaol Records books, with duplicates circulated to police stations on the prisoner's discharge. More duplicates from Nevin's original negative taken at a a single sitting with the prisoner were kept in the Photo Books as a supplement to the police gazettes, called Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police. It was Beattie who salvaged these records from the Sheriff's Office at the Hobart Gaol in the 1900s, saw their commercial potential and reprinted an unknown quantity. In doing so, he divorced the original photographs from their contemporaneous references to the prisoner's criminal record sheet and references to other registers used by police, displaying them in his museum them with the verso transcription "Taken at Port Arthur" to enhance their historic appeal to tourists visiting his museum and the Port Arthur prison site where the film of Marcus Clarke's 1874 novel, For The Term of His Natural Life was in production.

Some of his acquisitions remained intact as complete records bearing the prisoner's carte, many were loose duplicates of cartes or became loose once he had removed them from the paper criminal sheet, and some were Nevin's glass negatives.  A.H. Boyd had nothing to do with these photographs. He was not a photographer, he had no reputation in his lifetime as a photographer, nor subsequently, no works by A.H. Boyd are extant today, and no official documents exist which associate him with a personal mandate to photograph prisoners.

HEADS of the PEOPLE Exhibition NPG 2000



Wrong attributions: Heads of the People exhibition, National Portrait Gallery,
Canberra, June-September 2000. Titles and attributions by the NPG curators.

Only these 40 photographs of "Imperial convicts" appear in the 1916 catalogue for Beattie's Port Arthur museum, although more can be seen in the top photograph lining the walls. Those on the walls were still intact, pasted to prisoner record sheets. The collection was acquired by the Launceston Council ca. 1927, donated to the QVMAG and exhibited in 1934 at the Mechanics Institute; this set of 40 resurfaced as a doco-artefact at the NPG in Canberra, 2000. They were re-photographed at the QVMAG in 1985 as uncut black and white prints of copies reproduced by Beattie from Nevin's original negative. They are now online at the QVMAG (2010).

The phrase "Taken at Port Arthur" is Beattie's wording here in the 1916 catalogue, and it is also the wording of the inscription on the verso of dozens of surviving cartes of Tasmanian prisoners: the date "1874" which appears together with the wording on many of the extant cartes, however, is missing from the catalogue, which is unusual as other items are meticulously dated. This small detail of the missing date may prove to be significant: if not recorded by Beattie here for his display, when was it written on the verso of so many cartes? After 1916, it seems. Several cartes by Nevin in the QVMAG, NLA and Mitchell Library NSW collections lack the reference to Port Arthur on the verso (e.g. Nutt, Smith, Mullins, Ogden etc) probably because these were acquired by private collectors before 1907 (eg. Davis Scott Mitchell, SLNSW Mitchell Collection). After 1916, Beattie and others in the business of tourism such as William Radcliffe at his museum called "The Old Curiosity Shop" at Brown's River in the 1930s ensured these prisoner photographs were hyped as photographs of the original "convicts" transported to Port Arthur in the grim days before transportation ceased in 1853. The ordinary facts of the prisoner's criminal career in the 1870s would not have sparked the same fascination. In other words, the date "1874" is a generalised date written decades later on the verso of the Tasmanian prisoners' photographs known now as "Convict Portraits, Port Arthur, 1874" (the title devised by the NLA cataloguist).



Verso of a cdv by Nevin of prisoner John Fitzpatrick
NLA Collection (carte inserted for display here).

THE PORT ARTHUR LABEL
With the intense promotion of Tasmania's penal heritage in the early 1900s, due largely to the release of the first of two films based on Marcus Clarke's 1874 novel, For The Term of His Natural Life (1908, 22 minutes), many Tasmanian prisoner ID photographs taken by Thomas J. Nevin on government contract to police and prison authorities in the 1870s were salvaged by John Watt Beattie and Edward Searle for display in Beattie's convictaria museum in the 1910s, called The Port Arthur Museum, although it was located in Hobart and not at Port Arthur.

Three prisoner photographs which were removed from the blue record sheets used by the Hobart Gaol were pasted into one of Edward Searle's family albums, devised as a memento of his work with Beattie 1911-1915. Searle captioned the images as "Types of Convicts - Official Prison Photographs from Port Arthur" such as this one of convict William Lee per the Neptune, taken on a prisoner discharge from the Brickfields Depot, Hobart, October 1873. He was regularly discharged thereafter as a pauper in 1874 and 1875.

The album leaf is labelled with  the wording - Official Prison photographs from Port Arthur - which both Beattie and Searle used to hype the commercial value they saw in promoting the penal heritage of both their museum objects and the State’s history. Just as they used the name of Port Arthur for the Hobart Museum, they used photographs such as this one of William Lee with the label “Port Arthur”. It had become a brand name, much as it is in today's aggressive promotion of the Port Arthur Historic Site as Tasmania's premier tourist destination. The very ordinary facts of Lee’s life as a prisoner and pauper in a city welfare depot would not have the same appeal without the caption, the brand name. The unspoken appeal to the tourist imagination, through their contemporary fascinations with character typologies, phrenology and eugenics, and the Tasmanian "convict stain", was to suggest that despite such humble beginnings, a transported felon could do well in the colonies, but a pauper's end-of-life story, if revealed, offered nothing.



Three unmounted prisoner mugshots of William Meagher, Charles Rosetta and William Lee,
Tasmanian convicts originally photographed by Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s for gaol records
From Tasmanian Views, Edward Searle's album ca. 1911-15
Photos taken at the National Library of Australia, 7th Feb 2015
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR Watermarked.

The National Library has photographed and catalogued as single items the three photographs which appear on a single page in Searle's album. The other two photographs pasted with William Lee's are of prisoner William Meagher and Charles Rosetta, The original photographs were taken by Thomas Nevin between 1874-1876. These three photographs, unmounted, were originally pasted to a Hobart Goal Records book of sheets which has been lost, according to the Archives Office of Tasmania. Perhaps Beattie and Searle destroyed the original criminal sheets while trying to save the photographs.



National Library of Australia
Portrait of William Lee [picture].
Date1911-1915.
Extent 1 photograph : b&w, sepia toned ; 9.4 x 6.9 cm.
Context Part of Tasmanian views, Edward Searle's album of photographs of Australia, Antarctica and the Pacific, 1911-1915 [picture].
Photographer is uncertain. Possibly E.W. Searle.
Part of the collection of photographs compiled by Australian photographer E. W. Searle while working for J. W. Beattie in Hobart during 1911-1915.
On the photograph held, the image including the name of the subject appears in reverse.
"Official Prison Photographs from Port Arthur" and "Types of Convicts"--Inscription on page of album, below photograph.

Nevin's carte-de-visite of William Lees' original 1870s photograph printed in an oval mount is not recorded in the holdings of the QVMAG, the NLA, the TMAG, or the Archives Office of Tasmania, and the reason is this: it may never have been printed by Nevin, because paupers, as William Lee was in the 1870s, were not a police priority. William Lee was a pauper, detained only for a short time in 1872 for being idle and disorderly, and thereafter housed at the Brickfields depot in Hobart where he was discharged every year because he was too old and unfit to work. The police gazette gave his age in 1872 as 78 yrs old.