Showing posts with label Police Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Police Records. Show all posts

Prisoner James MARTIN: criminal career 1860s-1890s

THE RADCLIFFE MUSEUM Port Arthur
CONVICT TATTOOS
EXHIBITIONS and photographer misattribution

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery copy
Number on recto: this mugshot of prisoner James Martin, mounted as a carte-de-visite, was numbered "183" on the recto when it was removed from the John Watt Beattie Collection at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston in 1983 for an exhibition at the Port Arthur prison heritage site on the Tasman Peninsula. It was not returned to the Beattie Collection at the QVMAG in Launceston, as it should have been, it was deposited instead at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, along with at least fifty (50) more cdvs of prisoners similarly numbered. The original photographs of these men were taken by professional photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s on contract for daily use by police and prisons administration. The QVMAG list (2005) showed a total of 199 mugshots, but only 72 were physically held at the QVMAG when the list was devised. At least 127 mugshots were missing by 2005.

Number on verso: this cdv was numbered "243" on the verso much earlier, in the early 1900s when it was removed from the Hobart Gaol and Municipal Police Office registry and inscribed verso by Beattie et al with the wording "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" along with more than a hundred of these original mugshots taken by government contractor T. J. Nevin in the 1870s. J. W. Beattie, as the government photographer by 1900 who was contracted to promote Tasmania's penal heritage, sent this mugshot of James Martin - among many dozens more - for inclusion in travelling exhibitions associated with the fake convict hulk Success at Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide. On Beattie's death in 1930, the QVMAG acquired this travelling set of Tasmanian mugshots, removed each from the cardboard to which they were pasted, and exhibited them in 1934 at Launceston as part of the estate of John Watt Beattie's convictaria collection.



Prisoner James MARTIN
Photographed on 24th October 1874 at the H.M. Goal, Hobart
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin
Numbered "183" on recto in 1983
Numbered "224" on verso in 1915
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery:
TMAG Ref: Q15614



Verso: Prisoner James MARTIN
Photographed on 24th October 1874 at the H.M. Goal, Hobart
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin
Numbered "183" on recto in 1983
Numbered "224" on verso in 1915
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery:
TMAG Ref: Q15614

The verso of this cdv shows evidence of removal from thick grey paper or board. Transcribed subsequently over the grey scraps with "James Martin per Ld Petre, Taken at Port Arthur 1874" is incorrect information, written in 1916 after this cdv of Martin was exhibited by Beattie, using the terms "Types of Imperial Convicts", "Port Arthur" and the date "1874" to appeal to local and interstate tourists by association with Marcus Clarke's novel of 1874, For the Term of His Natural Life, which was filmed at the Port Arthur prison site (1927). Renamed as Carnarvon, the old prison grounds and buildings were promoted as Tasmania's premier tourist destination, then as now. In short, the transcription of the verso of this prisoner mugshot, as with hundreds more from Beattie's estate acquired by the QVMAG on his death in 1930, is tourism propaganda which reflects neither the actual place and date of the photographic capture nor the prisoner's criminal history.

Archives Office of Tasmania copy
This paper copy is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania,


Photographic portrait of James Martin, copy at Archives Office of Tasmania, dated incorrectly as 1870 for no apparent reason.



PH30/1/2023
Title: Portrait of James Martin
Subject: convicts, people, portraits
Locality: not identified
Date: 1870
Photographic portrait of JAMES, Martin

In the letter (below) addressed to the National Library of Australia from the Archives Office of Tasmania, dated 3rd December 1982, this black and white copy of T. J. Nevin's portrait of prisoner James Martin was mentioned as one of a set of ten mounted photographs "which came from the Ratcliffe [sic - Radcliffe] Museum at Port Arthur" [held in NEVIN file, NLA - see link below].

The Archives Office of Tasmania recorded the acquisition of ten mounted cdvs of prisoners ca. 1975 from William Radcliffe's convictaria museum called The Old Curiosity Shop, which was located at Port Arthur in the 1930s. The ten cdvs were mugshots of prisoners George Willis, James Merchant, George Leathley, Daniel Murphy, Alfred Doran, Ephraim Booth, James Martin, Henry Sweet, William Harrison and Alfred Maldon. William Radcliffe may have salvaged as much as was possible from John Watt Beattie's museum prior to Beattie's death in 1930 in order to set up his own convictaria museum, naming it with a Dickensian flourish no less.

The Archives Office of Tasmania gives this information:
Agency Number: NG946
Title: WILLIAM MONTAGUE RADCLIFFE AND FAMILY (COLLECTORS)
Start Date: 01 Jan 1920
End Date: 01 Jan 1970
Description:
The Radcliffe family ran a museum at Port Arthur that contained a collection of Tasmanian memorabilia and records. It was known as 'The Old Curiosity Shop'. The 'Radcliffe Collection' was acquired by the National Parks & Wildlife Service in the 1970s. William Radcliffe died in September 1943.
Information Sources: Glover Papers Vol 1 Page 66



Photo © KLW NFC 2010 ARR with callout corrections.

This is a letter from the Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart to the National Library, Canberra in response to the NLA's query about the whereabouts of T. J. Nevin's photograph of convict James Martin. The typing errors are numerous, and the information about the photographer is misleading: T. J. Nevin was not a "convict photographer", he was a free settler arriving at Hobart with his parents and three siblings as a 10 year old child in 1852. The letter is one of several accession records held at the National Library which has correctly attributed T. J. Nevin as the photographer of their collection of 84 cdvs, catalogued as "Convict portraits, Port Arthur 1874". The recent prevarications regarding Nevin's attribution by a former employee at the PAHSMA who begged the NLA to cite her "essay" about the Port Arthur commandant A. H. Boyd, are best ignored as fantasy.

TRANSCRIPT
Ref: 450/2/182
Archives Office of Tasmania
91 Murray Street
Hobart 7000

3 December 1982

Mrs Barbara Perry
Pictorial Librarian for Principal Librarian
Australian Reference
National library of Australia
CANBERRA  A.C.T.  2600

Dear Mrs Perry
Your enquiry to the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts has been referred to our office as the photograph of James Martin is located in the Archives Office of Tasmania Collection (see reference to acknowledgements under Archives).
It has been mistakenly entered also among the Allport references.
The photograph of James Martin is part of a set of ten mounted photographs which came from the Ratcliffe [sic - Radcliffe] Museum at Port Arthur. Copies of these photographs are [located?] at 52/11/1-10 and include photographs of George Willis, James Merchant, George Teatbley [sic- Leathley], Daniel Murphy, Alfred Dovan [sic - Doran] Epheian [sic - Ephraim] Booth, James Martin, Henry Sweet, William Harrison and Alfred Waldon [sic - Malden or Maldon]. The photographs are dated between 1872-1874.
I also enclose a list of archive photographs reference 30/3184-3263 which are copies of T. J. Nairn [sic - Nevin] convict photographer held at the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston. Further copies from this photographer, provenance not known, are at archives reference 30/4111-30/4116. I enclose brief notes on the photographer T. J. Nairn [sic - Nevin] compiled by a researcher Chris Long who visited our office last month. I have no additional information to add to these notes.

Yours sincerely
[signature]

IAN PEARCE
ACTING PRINCIPAL ARCHIVIST
Source: National Library of Australia
Nevin, T. J. : photography related ephemera material collected by the National Library of Australia.
Physical Description 1 folder of miscellaneous pieces.
Series Australian photographer files
Contents File contains material such as accession sheets, listings of works biographical material and correspondence related to convict portraits.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/25412530

Court records and press reports

1857: transportation record and freedom
James Martin was convicted at the Barbados Court Martial, transported for 14 years, departing on the Lord Petre on 3 July 1843, arriving at Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, on 15th October 1843 in the company of 237 other convicts.

The record below is an odd document as all the details pertaining to the prisoner James Martin's date of conviction, date of arrival at Hobart, and physical description are missing. On the top right-hand corner to the right of the words "Transported for" is a sketch of a bird pecking at crumbs on the ground, and below it, the letter "D" enclosing a cross and diamond, signifying James Martin was a (Catholic?) deserter from the army. The note on his Port Arthur record of earnings (see below - CON94/1/1 Folio 143) records the date of his desertion, 8 November 1842, the place, Barbados, and the sentence, court martial, 14 years. But what does the bird signify? Details of his various offences  in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), mostly for absconding, theft and insolence, terminate on this record in 1857 when he was granted freedom.



Detail of record below: top right-hand corner, "Transported for" and sketch of a bird pecking at crumbs on the ground. Below the wording, the letter "D" enclosing a cross and diamond, sign of a Catholic [?] deserter.



CON33-1-45_00243
Archives Office Tasmania

According to Simon Barnard, illustrator of Convict Tattoos (2016), "of the 1051 deserters transported to Van Diemen's Land, 800 are recorded as branded".



Barnard, Simon Convict tattoos : marked men and women of Australia.Melbourne, Vic.
The Text Publishing Company, 2016.
Website: https://www.simonbarnard.com.au/product/convict-tattoos/

1865: fresh from Port Arthur
BELLERIVE POLICE COURT.
SATURDAY, 30th SEPTEMBER, 1865.

There were present at the sitting of the Court the Warden, and Messrs. Strachan, Maum, Stanfield, Young, and Morrisby.

The following was the only case to be brought before the Bench:--

Housebreaking.-James Martin was charged by Mr. Bellette, Superintendent of Police, with having, on the 26th day of September, feloniously broken into the dwelling-house of Charles Jones, and stealing thereout a pair of boots, a coat, a pair of trowsers, one pair of blankets, two pairs of socks, and other articles, his property.

Charles Jones, the prosecutor, stated that he was in the service of Mr. Josephs, Single Hill, and resided in a hut on his master's premises. On the night of the 25th instant, the prisoner, by the permission of his master, slept in the hut, and left the next morning after breakfast, and just before sunrise ; witness then went to work, and saw a man soon afterwards whom he took to be prisoner about the hut ; witness then went to his master in the garden, and they both noticed the man about the hut, who "planted'' himself behind some trees, and appeared to be watching their movements. Witness went down to the hut, which he found had been broken into. The flannel blankets produced were lying at the front of the hut, and the other articles mentioned had been taken from the inside with a shilling in money. Witness next saw the man almost immediately afterwards in the custody of his master.

Mr. George Joseph stated, that on the day named he saw a man walking about near the prosecutor's hut ; witness fetched his gun and accompanied by a man named Brindley went down to the hut; the man witness had seen came out of the hut and then went into the stable; the man came out of the stable shortly after, with a bundle ; he looked up and down the road, and then came away trying to hide himself in the bushes, and after coming a short distance laid down ; witness went up and took hold of him; prisoner at that time had prosecutor's coat on ; witness also took from prisoner the other property produced; witness gave the prisoner and property into the custody of Constable Swifte.

James Brindley, carpenter gave evidence corroborative of that of last witness.

Constable Swifte, in the municipal police, stated that he received the prisoner in custody with the articles produced ; on examining the hut he found the staple on the door check twisted and the padlock produced lying broken on the floor ; on the road to the station the prisoner said, " I came up from Port Arthur on the 6th of this month from doing eight years; I am a miserable man and the devil must have tempted me to commit this crime."
The prisoner made no defence.
Committed for trial.
The Court then rose.
Source: Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954) Mon 2 Oct 1865 Page 2 BELLERIVE POLICE COURT.

1865: back to Port Arthur
For the theft of flannel blankets etc James Martin was tried at the Supreme Court, Hobart, on 24 October 1865 and returned to the Port Arthur prison on 26 November 1865 to serve a sentence of ten years. This document states that earlier he was transported for 14 years on 8th November 1842 for "Breach of Articles of War", i.e. he was court martialled for desertion.



Conduct register - Port Arthur
Item Number: CON94/1/1 Start Date: 01 Jan 1868 End Date: 31 Dec 1869
James Martin per Lord Petre, Folio 143

1870: absconded



TRANSCRIPT
PENAL ESTABLISHMENT
Secretary's Office, 4th April, 1870.
ABSCONDER. for whose apprehension in the Colony within a period of twelve months from the date of his absconding a Reward of Two Pounds or such lesser sum a may be awarded by the convicting Magistrate, will be paid: -
From Port Arthur, under sentence, on the 29th March, 1870.
James Martin, per Lord Petre, tried S. C. Hobart Town, 24th October, 1865, 10 years imprisonment, trade, stonemason, complexion fresh, hair dark brown, eyes dark brown, height 5 feet 7½ inches, eyes dark brown. Remarks - Marks of punishment, slightly pockpitted on face, scar on thumb and forefinger left hand, scar right side of nose
C. T. BELSTEAD, Secretary

1875: discharged
This discharge notice of 1875 relates to the original Supreme Court conviction of 1865 when James Martin was sentenced to ten years for breaking and entering a dwelling house. In October 1874, when his record was reviewed, he was photographed by Thomas J. Nevin pending discharge a few months later, in January 1875, having served his full term. When he was discharged during the week ending 6th January 1875 from Hobart Town, James Martin per Ld Petre, native place County Meath, was 55 yrs old, 5ft 8 inches tall, with brown hair and a mole in the corner of his left eye.



Prisoner James MARTIN per Lord Petre was discharged from H. M. Gaol, Hobart during the week ending 6th January 1875.
Source: Tasmania Information for Police J. Barnard Gov't printer

1876: second thoughts about being a constable
Apparently James Martin did not like the job of police constable or he was forced to resign. He joined the constabulary in April 1876, and resigned three months later, in August. However, there were many men called James Martin in Tasmania in these decades, so this record might not pertain to the James Martin who arrived in VDL on the Lord Petre, the prisoner T. J. Nevin photographed in 1874.



TRANSCRIPT
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION
RETURN of Appointments, &c. in the Police Force: -
Municipal. - Richmond
James Martin, to be a Constable from the 1st instant, vice William Brooks, resigned.
Source: Police gazette notice of 28 April 1876



TRANSCRIPT
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION
RETURN of Appointments, &c. in the Police Force: -
Municipal. - Richmond.
Peter Smith, Constable, from the 15th ultimo, vice James Martin, resigned.
Source: Police gazette notice of 4 August 1876

1876-1884: housebreaking



Rough Calendar Hobart Supreme Court GD70-1-1 1870-82
TAHO Ref: GD70-1-1 James Martin
Rough Calendar for the Supreme Court for 1876: guilty, ten years with hard labour.

On the 6 June, 1876 James Martin was tried at the Supreme Court, Hobart for housebreaking and larceny, sentenced to another ten years, and discharged in the week ending 6 February 1884.



James Martin was discharged from another lengthy sentence for housebreaking in 1884, now 63 yrs old, and one whole inch taller at 5'9" (ha ha, that's a joke, see discharge notice above, for 1875, but thanks Hamish Maxwell-Stewart all the same). He re-offended again soon after release and was incarcerated once more at the Hobart Gaol where he died in 1892.

1892:death
James Martin died at the Hobart Gaol, Campbell Street, while still under sentence in 1892. He was 72 years old, born ca. 1820. He was buried in a pauper's grave, Catholic Section. Supposed cause of death was senility.



AF70-1-18 (BU 8966)
Cornelian Bay, Pauper, Section A, Number 232
Martin, James
Record Type: Deaths
Age: 72
Description: Last known residence: H. M. Gaol, Hobart
Property: Cornelian Bay Cemetery
Date of burial: 23 Aug 1892
File number: BU 8966
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1557291

Exhibitions 1983 and 2000



Top, from left to right: John White, Daniel Murphy, James Harrison
Bottom from left to right: Daniel Davis, George Willis, James Martin
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery constructed four wooden-framed collages under glass from their collection of Thomas J. Nevin's prisoner mugshots for an exhibition titled Mirror with a Memory, held at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, in 2000. James Martin's image was placed bottom row, extreme right in this frame. However, for reasons best described as blind-sided, the TMAG staff who chose these mugshots sent the four frames to Canberra, five cdvs in the first, six per frame in the other three, with labels on the back of each wooden frame stating quite clearly that the photographs were attributed to A. H. Boyd, the much despised Commandant of the Port Arthur prison who was not a photographer by any definition of the term, nor an engineer despite any pretension on his part and especially despite the social pretensions of his descendants who began circulating the photographer attribution at the Port Arthur prison tourist site as a rumour in the 1980s to compensate no doubt for Boyd's vile reputation.

The recto and versos of these particular photographs of prisoners under glass bear numbers which were transcribed before they were removed and dispersed from the QVMAG's collection. Some of these numbers on the front of the mount and back of the photograph correspond to the number registered in the Hobart Gaol Photo Books, which were constructed separately from the criminal record sheets where another copy of the prisoner's photograph was pasted. Every pencilled number of a photograph in the QVMAG list was removed from the QVMAG in 1983-4, taken to the Port Arthur prison site for exhibition and returned to the Archives Office of Tasmania collections stored at Rosny, Hobart. When the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery moved into the Rosny site, the museum acquired this particular collection which should have been returned to the QVMAG with the rest of the prisoner mugshots salvaged by Beattie from the Hobart Gaol. The Photo Books from the 1870s apparently have not survived intact, perhaps because they were dismantled by Beattie for display and sale in the 1900s. but the references to numbered photographs in separate photo books are to be found on prisoner's record sheets, especially the later rap sheets wherever the photos are still attached. Read more in these related posts ...

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Thomas Nevin, his studio carpet, and pauper William Graves

WILLIAM GRAVES transportation and police records
MISIDENTIFICATION with Brother PAYNE
THOMAS J. NEVIN studio decor

William Grave or William Graves?
A prisoner by the name of William GRAVE arrived at Hobart on board the convict transport Lady Montague in December 1852. He was already lame when he arrived. His records stated "A cripple walks with a crutch." When photographer Thomas J. Nevin assisted the New Town Territorial Police police in the arrest of a well-known identity in the Glenorchy area called William GRAVES in May 1875 , the warrant described the man as "lame of right leg, walks with a crutch". One month later, when he was discharged from Hobart, his left leg, not the right, was recorded by police as "crippled". So who was this man, photographed standing on Thomas Nevin's carpet?



Wrong identification at the Archives Office of Tasmania
This man was William GRAVES, not Brother Payne
Photographed by T. J. Nevin 1875-1880s
Source: ARCHIVES OFFICE of TASMANIA
Reference: PH30/1/221

Transportation Records of William Grave
There was no "s" on the end of this prisoner's name when details were recorded on his arrival aboard the transport Lady Montague at Hobart, VDL (Tasmania) in 1852, although the description of this man "William Grave" and the description of the prisoner subsequently recorded as "William Graves" per Ly Montague in the police gazette warrants, arrests and discharges of the 1870s accord with his single salient feature: "a cripple walks with a crutch".

CONDUCT RECORD
The conduct record of prisoner "Grave William" gives the following details: -
He was tried at Carlisle QS on 3rd July 1849, transported for 7 years. He arrived at Hobart on 9th December 1852. His religion was C.E. (Church of England) and he could read and write. He was transported for larceny. The prison report noted - "very good". His marital status was single, a widower. He stated that this offence was for stealing (other details are illegible). His age either at trial in 1849 or on arrival at Hobart was 34 yrs old, his height just over 5 feet 5 inches, and his occupation was shepherd. On 13 June 1854 he was granted a ticket of leave.

Thereafter, a number of dates for the same offence or period spent as an inmate of an invalid depot are recorded on this page, starting with 1858 and repeated (as ditto) through to his last in 1886: see Health and Welfare Records further below.

4 Aug 1858 PA (Paupers) Port Arthur Prison
10 June 1867 PB Brickfieds Depot; 2 Aug 1867 PA Port Arthur
16 July 1875 PA Port Arthur Prison
26 April 1878 Cas (Cascades Invalid Depot)
28 February 1879 Cas (Cascades Invalid Depot)
29 September 1883 N. Town (New Town Charitable Institute)
13 May 1884 N. Town (x2) (New Town Charitable Institute)
5 May 1886 N. Town (New Town Charitable Institute)
26 May 1886 N. Town (New Town Charitable Institute)
7 April 1893 "Died at the Invalid Depot New Town 7 April 93"



Conduct Record
Grave, William
Record Type: Convicts
Departure date: 9 Aug 1852
Departure port: Plymouth
Ship:Lady Montague
Voyage number: 356
Index number: 27726
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1396535
Source online: CON33/1/110

DESCRIPTION LIST
The same facial features as those on the conduct record were recorded in this list (top left entry) with the same name " William Grave" and the same remark:
"A cripple walks with a crutch"



Description List
Source online: CON18-1-58 Image 28

INDENT RECORD
The indent record still lists the prisoner as William Grave, not Graves (first page on left, second entry from top). Details added to this record show that when convicted for larceny of victuals at Carlisle he was a widower and had a daughter called Anne at Windermere UK (second page on right, second entry from top).



Indent
Source online: CON14-1-43 Images 287 and 288

Police Records for William Graves
William Grave or Graves' offences and misdemeanours between his arrival at Hobart in December 1852 and this warrant for his arrest for larceny committed on 24 August 1874 are not detailed here. Only Thomas Nevin's involvement is of interest, firstly because he assisted police in the arrest of this man William Graves and secondly, because the photograph Nevin took of him at his studio has been misidentified at the Archives Office of Tasmania as a photograph of a street knife-grinder called Brother Payne.

At some point during those years 1852-1875 William Grave's surname acquired the "s": officially, he became William Graves, sharing the name incidentally with a famous Hobart family whose patriarch John Woodcock Graves the elder became universally acclaimed as the author of the song "D'ye Ken John Peel".

WARRANTS
Two warrants were issued in March and April 1875 for the arrest of William Graves, one for burglary committed in August 1874 at Robert Osborne's store at the railway bridge, Bridgewater, and the other in 1875 for unlawful entry to the premises of Richard Rodda, publican of the Black Snake, Bridgewater.



Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police, 19 March 1875 p.42
Warrant for the arrest of William Graves

TRANSCRIPT
HOBART TOWN. - On the 10th instant by W. Tarleton, Esq., J. P. for the arrest of Williams Graves, charged with having, on the 24th August 1874, at Bridgewater, broken into and entered the dwelling-house of Robert Osborne, and feloniously stolen 1 black cloth coat, value £1, 1 pair black cloth trousers, value £1, and other articles, the property of Robert Osborne.
Description
About 60 years of age, about 5 feet 5 inches high, lame of right leg, walks with a crutch. Well known in the Glenorchy district.



Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police, 16 April 1875 p.58
Warrant for the arrest of William Graves

TRANSCRIPT
NEW NORFOLK.- On the 14th instant, by James L. Turnbull, Esquire, J. P. for the arrest of William Graves, charged with having, on the 20th ultimo, at Bridgewater, been an idle and disorderly person, in that he was found in the dwelling-house of one Richard Rodda for an unlawful purpose. For description see Crime Report of the 19th ultimo, p. 42

ARREST
William Graves was arrested by P. C. Badcock of the New Town Territorial Police,"assisted by Thomas Nevin" on 21st May 1875.



Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police 21 May 1875 p. 78.
Arrest of William Graves assisted by Thomas Nevin
Elijah Elton alias John Jones and Flash Jack who was suspected of robbery in this notice was photographed by Thomas Nevin on May 14th 1874 at the Hobart Gaol.

TRANSCRIPT
Vide Crime Report of the 19th March, 1875, page 42, and 16th ultimo, page 58.
William Graves has been arrested by P.C. Baldock, of the New Town Territorial Police, assisted by Thomas Nevin.

DISCHARGE



William Graves, aged 65, tried at New Norfolk, sentenced to one month for being found in a dwelling house, left leg crippled, discharged 23 June, 1875 at Hobart Town. The left leg, not the right, is recorded here as crippled. Less than a fortnight later, on 10 July 1875, William Graves was admitted to the Cascades Invalid Depot where he remained until 31 January 1878. He was discharged at his own request, recorded as "Able to work". From 1878 to 1885 he was admitted and discharged at invalid depots up to his death in 1893 at the New Town Charitable Institute.

HEALTH and WELFARE RECORDS



Graves, William
Record Type: Health & Welfare
Description: Pauper or invalid
Property: Cascades Invalid Depot
New Town Charitable Institute
Admission dates: 10 Jul 1875 to 31 Jan 1878, 16 Apr 1878 to 20 Jan 1879, 04 Jul 1879 to 13 Feb 1882, 16 Aug 1883 to 04 Mar 1884, 22 Apr 1884 to 23 Feb 1885
Ship to colony: Lady Montague
Paupers & Invalids no.: pi0693700
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1605001
Source online: https://stors.tas.gov.au/NI/1605001

Sources online:
William Graves recorded at Cascades Invalid Depot
https://stors.tas.gov.au/POL709-1-15$init=POL709-1-15p34
https://stors.tas.gov.au/POL709-1-16$init=POL709-1-16p26

William Graves recorded at New Town Charitable Institute
https://stors.tas.gov.au/POL709-1-19$init=POL709-1-19_1882p43
https://stors.tas.gov.au/POL709-1-20$init=POL709-1-20_1884p53
https://stors.tas.gov.au/POL709-1-20$init=POL709-1-20_1885p48

This last record dated February 1885 adds the initial "L" to William Graves name, i.e. "William L. Graves". A large number of paupers were discharged with approval at the same time to go hop-picking.

DEATH and CONFUSION



Graves, William
Record Type: Deaths
Gender: Male
Age: 63 [incorrect - should be 83 yrs old]
Date of death: 07 Apr 1893
Registered: Hobart
Registration year: 1893
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1139290
Source online: Image 39
https://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD35-1-14$init=RGD35-1-14p39

This record (above) identifies a man named William Graves who died of senile decay on 7 April 1893 with an incorrect age: 67 instead of 83. One day later the same man identified below as William Graves, 83 yrs old, pauper of New Town, was buried at the Hobart Public Cemetery with the funeral date of 8 April 1893.



Graves, William
Record Type: Deaths
Age: 83
Description: Last known residence: New Town Charitable Institution, New Town
Property: Cornelian Bay Cemetery
Date of burial: 08 Apr 1893
File number: BU 9245
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES: 1549499
Source online: AF70-1-19 (BU 9245)
Cornelian Bay, Pauper, Section A, Number 544

The photograph
William Graves was photographed standing on the same carpet which features in dozens of Thomas Nevin's studio portraits of family members and private clientele. The photograph could be dated between May 1875, taken soon after William Graves' arrest, and June 1875 when he was discharged from Hobart. Then again, Thomas Nevin may have photographed William Graves at his New Town studio in late 1879 when he resumed working for the New Town Territorial Police as photographer and assistant bailiff to police constables (Badcock) and detectives (Dorsett and Connor).

By 1880, William Graves was an inmate at the New Town Charitable Institute, formerly the Queen's Orphan Asylum (1833 - 1879), located at St. John's Park, New Town Road and close to the Nevin family home at Kangaroo Valley. William Graves was “well-known in the Glenorchy district” according to the warrant issued in March 1875. Perhaps because of his physical disability, his age and obvious destitution and because Nevin took an active interest in the man from assisting police with locating him, the occasion warranted a photograph, though not the standard prisoner mugshot as William Graves was detained for only a month, fined with being idle and disorderly. Who would have paid for such a studio photo? Not the poor man himself. It is likely to be Thomas Nevin’s souvenir of the event, a token and gift of friendship.



Photograph - Brother Payne, sawyer [incorrect - this was William Graves, photo by T. J. Nevin, 1875]
Item Number: PH30/1/221
Start Date: 01 Jan 1880
Unidentified Creating Agency (XX1)
Series: Miscellaneous Collection of Photographs. (PH30) 01 Jan 1860 31 Dec 1992
Source online: https://stors.tas.gov.au/PH30-1-221

The original print of this photograph would have been sepia, very similar to Thomas Nevin's full-length portrait of Alfred Barrett Biggs (below). This black and white print was most likely reproduced for a 20th century book publication and in the process, the book's author confounded this man's identity with that of knife-grinder Brother Payne.

The same carpet on which William Graves stands while posing for his portrait by Thomas Nevin is clearly visible in this photograph (below) by Nevin of Alfred Barrett Biggs, taken at Nevin's studio, The City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart, in the early to mid 1870s. The studio was built by Alfred Barret Biggs' father Abraham Biggs in 1854. The premises consisted of two house-and-shop properties at No's 138-140 Elizabeth St. Hobart constructed with his son, builder Abraham Edwin Biggs. By 1857 they had let the premises at No. 140 Elizabeth St. to photographer Alfred Bock which he operated as a studio with his (step) brother William Bock until 1865. On Alfred Bock's departure to Victoria, commercial photographer and government contractor Thomas J. Nevin continued the business with the firm's name, The City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town, vacating the shop, residence, glass house and studio a decade later, in 1876, to take up his appointment in full-time civil service with residency at the Hobart Town Hall.

It is the same carpet lined up against the same wall in the same studio in both portraits, indicating clearly that Thomas Nevin photographed the man who answers to the description of William Graves, but who is misidentified by the Archives Office of Tasmania as Brother Payne.



Alfred Barrett Biggs ca, 1872-4 (ca. 45 yrs)
Photographer : Thomas J. Nevin, City Photographic Establishment, Hobart (verso stamp)
Source:Archives Office of Tasmania
View online:LMSS754-1-9

This full-length portrait of Alfred Barrett Biggs was taken by Thomas Nevin in the early to mid 1870s at the City Photographic Establishment. The same decor of a backdrop sheet painted with a vista of tiles on a patio terrace, an Italianate balcony, and a cart path or river meandering through a valley in the distance, partially obscured by a damask drape foregrounded to the left of the client, all feature in dozens of Nevin's full-length portraits. That particular dining chair appears in his portrait of a woman with bonnet and pink ribbons held at the National Gallery of Victoria, and in another of Mrs Elizabeth Bayley, second wife of Captain James Bayley, held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The carpet pattern of lozenges and chain links, darker in some portraits or heavily tinted in others with green or red, is also present in many of these full-length portraits. In this portrait of Alfred Barrett Biggs, where the carpet meets the wall is as clearly visible as the same carpet meeting the same wall in the portrait of William Graves.



Verso: Description: Photograph - Portrait - Possibly Alfred Barratt Biggs [photographer - City Photographic Establishment, Hobart, T. Nevin, late A. Bock]
Item Number: LMSS754/1/9
Start Date: 01 Jan 1858
End Date: 31 Dec 1876
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
View online: LMSS754-1-9

William Graves or Brother Payne?
The Archives Office of Tasmania has misidentified the pauper in the photograph (above) who fits the description in transportation and police records of William Grave or Graves, photographed by Thomas ca. 1875-1880, as another well-known identity, a man called Brother Payne, who was a sawyer and knife-grinder by trade. He sharpened knives from a trolley cart around the streets of Hobart. The term "Brother" may be a courtesy title of Methodist origin. This man was probably photographed ca. 1900.



(NB: flipped horizontally here to read the inscription on glass negative)
Photograph - Payne, Knife Grinder
Item Number: NS1013/1/1278
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Creating Agency: Pretyman Family (NG1012)
Photographs and Glass Plate Negatives collected by E R Pretyman (NS1013)
View online:NS1013-1-1278



Photograph - Brother Payne working as a knife grinder
Item Number PH30/1/744
Series Miscellaneous Collection of Photographs. (PH30)
Start Date 01 Jan 1900
View online PH30-1-744

This cdv portrait of the same man, identified as the sawyer Brother Payne was recorded with a start date of 1880 at the Archives Office of Tasmania, which is unlikely to be the date of photographic capture. The date 1900 is more plausible but without any attributable information to a studio or photographer, it must be left to the researcher to discover when and where this carte-de-visite was produced, by whom it was created and for what purpose.



Photograph - Portrait of 'Brother Payne', sawyer
Item Number: PH30/1/220
Start Date: 01 Jan 1880
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania

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Exhibition 2019: T. J. NEVIN's mugshot of prisoner James BLANCHFIELD 1875

Barrister ROBERT BYRON MILLER
Prisoner JAMES W. BLANCHFIELD
Private Collection of JEAN PORTHOUSE GRAVES
Photographer THOMAS J. NEVIN
Exhibition at HOBART July 2019 PHOTOGRAPHS of Australian and British Convicts



Prisoner James Blanchfied
Photographed on discharge from the Hobart Gaol by Thomas J. Nevin, April 1875.

"The prisoner, a most unfavorable specimen of the genus homo, seemed to take his trial in good part, and on leaving the dock favored his victims and Mr. Scarr in particular, with a low bow." The Tasmanian (Launceston) Sat 26 Oct 1872 Page 11
Prisoner James William Blanchfield
Prisoner James W. Blanchfield was charged on 23rd September 1872 with obtaining goods by false pretenses. In the dock he implicated barrister Robert Byron Miller in his crime by telling the judge that he had paid Mr. Byron Miller a sum of seven guineas to transfer a very large amount of money, which he claimed was an inheritance, from a bank in Melbourne to a bank in Hobart where he said he had an account. The inheritance did not exist, of course, and it was not the first time James Blanchfield had tried unlawfully gaining goods by pretending he had credit. Robert Byron Miller (1825 - 1902) was a barrister who served the colony of Tasmania as Attorney-General for four years (1863-1866 - see Addendum below). He was photographed on several occasions by Thomas J. Nevin, as indeed were the prisoners he represented in court, including James Blanchfield who suggested at trial in his defense that Mr. Byron Miller was to blame for the confusion which led to his crime (see newspaper report below):

NEWSPAPER REPORTS



James Blanchfield charged with false pretences
The Tasmanian (Launceston, Tas.) Sat 26 Oct 1872 Page 11 TORQUAY.

TRANSCRIPT
OBTAINING GOODS BY FALSE PRETENCES.
James William Blanchfield was charged by Mr. C.D.C. Reynolds with having, on 23rd September, obtained from Mr. G. Scarr, of the River Leven, goods to the amount of £16.9s.8d through false pretences.
C. Scarr deposed - I am a storekeeper and reside at the Leven; I know the prisoner; he was at my place on the 18th of last month; he wanted to know about some goods; he told me, that he had had £4,500 left him in cash and an estate with a yearly rental of £350; he had two females named Davidson with him, and he told me to let them have whatever they wanted and he would pay for them; on the faith of his representations I let him have goods to the amount of £16.9s.8d; the goods were calico, blankets, dresses; boots; trousers, &; he gave me a cheque on the Union Bank as payment; that is the cheque (produced), it is dated 18th September, is drawn in my favor and signed by the prisoner in the name of James W. Blanchfield; he had a cheque book with him which he said he got from the Union Bank, Launceston; he said he had a large amount of money sent to the Savings Bank and that Mr. Pullen had written to him saying the amount was too great to be there and requesting him to come to town and that Mr. White, of Melbourne, had written to Mr. Byron Miller to withdraw the money from the Savings Bank, and deposit it in the Union Bank, and that Mr. Miller had done so; he also said that he had signed his name in the book at the Union Bank and that he had a bank-book which with his other papers were in the hands of Mr. Miller, to whom he had paid seven guineas for transacting his business; I ... the bank at the Union Bank and sent the cheque there, it was dishonored and marked "no account"; I swear that the prisoner defrauded me of my goods by his false representations and valueless cheque ...
The Cornwall Advertiser (Launceston) Fri 10 Jan 1873 Page 2 reprinted most of the article from the Tasmanian newspaper of 26 October 1872 when James Blanchfield appeared again, this time in the Hobart Supreme Court when he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
See also:The Tasmanian (Launceston) Sat 4 Jan 1873 Page 2.

PRISON and POLICE RECORDS for James Blanchfield
James Blanchfield was a British Army Corporal in the 70th Regiment. He was tried for striking his superior officer and court martialled at Leeds on 10th June 1844, sentenced to 14 years. He was transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), arriving at Hobart on the Cornwall, 11th June 1851.





 Detail, right column last entry, return to Hobart H.C. 20 April 1873. James Blanchfield's transportation record
Source: CON33/1/103, James Blanchfield, Names Index, Archives Office Tasmania)
This record includes details of the crime for which the prisoner was transported to VDL on the Cornwall, 1851 and subsequent misdemeanours before imprisonment in January 1873.

James W. Blanchfield was charged on 23rd September 1872 at Launceston (Tas) with obtaining goods by false pretenses. He was sent to the Port Arthur prison, 60 kms south of Hobart on 21st February 1873 and within eight weeks was removed back to the Hobart Gaol, arriving on 20th April 1873. As a result, his name does not appear in the Port Arthur Conduct register of prisoners' earnings 1868-1876 (CON94-1-2 TAHO). He was among the sixty prisoners already returned to the Hobart Gaol when the Attorney-General W. R. Giblin in Parliament, July 1873, tabled a list of 109 prisoners' names to be returned to Hobart by October 1873. Blanchfield was already back at the city gaol in Hobart when photographic materials allegedly arrived at Port Arthur in August 1873 to be used by visiting photographers Clifford and Nevin for documenting the dilapidated state of the prison buildings. James Blanchfield petitioned the Attorney-General on 13th March 1875. His transportation record (last entry in right column in the transportation record above) indicated he was to be discharged on 8th April -
"... if conduct continues good. Discharge accordingly."(Source: CON33/1/103, James Blanchfield, Names Index, Archives Office Tasmania)
James Blanchfield's name appears on page 2 (below) in the list of a total of 109 prisoners who were sent to the Port Arthur prison from 1871 and tabled in Parliament to return by October 1873 as the process of closing Port Arthur gained momentum . The complete list was prepared by Thomas Reidy, Inspector for H.M. Gaols etc for Males, Hobart, 9th June, 1873 and was published in July 1873. The Attorney-General W. R. Giblin stated in Parliament that sixty prisoners had already been removed back to the Hobart Gaol in Campbell St. and the remainder on the list would also be removed from Port Arthur back to Hobart -
"... as soon as arrangements for the proper custody and control of the Prisoners can be made on the Main Land"[i.e. Hobart].



Above: Parliament of Tasmania: NOMINAL RETURN of all Prisoners sent to PORT ARTHUR since its transfer to the Colonial Government, showing their Ages, dates of Conviction, where Convicted, Crimes, and Sentences. Memo from the Hon F. M. Innes June 10th 1873 to J. Forster, Inspector of Police, June 11th, 1873.

COURT RECORD
This record shows James Blanchfield's name was entered three times against a trial date of 23rd October 1872, with a pencilled superscript note "put up" inserted into the plea "Not put up guilty"



Blanchfield, James
Record Type: Court
Status: Free by servitude
Trial date: 23 Oct 1872
Offense: False pretences
Verdict: Guilty
Prosecutions Project ID: 112598
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1520867
Resource: AB693-1-1 1872
Archives Office Tasmania

POLICE GAZETTE RECORD
James Blanchfield was discharged from the Hobart House of Corrections (the Hobart Gaol, Campbell St.) during the week ending 14th April 1875. He was 48 years old on discharge, originally from Waterford (Ireland), 5 ft 5 ins tall, with dark brown hair and a tattoo of a mermaid on his left arm. He was tried at the Supreme Court, Launceston (northern Tasmania) on 9th January 1873 for obtaining goods by false pretences, to serve a 3 year sentence but he served just over two years. He was photographed by Thomas J. Nevin in early April 1875 during the fortnight preceding discharge together with another prisoner, James Merchant.



Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police, J. Barnard Gov't printer



Prisoner MERCHANT, James
TMAG Ref: Q15587
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin
Taken on James Merchant's discharge from the Hobart Gaol, April 1875

THE MUGSHOT at the QVMAG
The verso of this cdv of James Blanchfield (below) - and at least 200 more which were acquired by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tas) from convictarian John Watt Beattie's estate in the 1930s - was inscribed by Beattie and his assistant Edward Searle in the early 1900s with the wording "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" to encourage the sale of postcards bearing these prisoner photographs as part of a concerted campaign by the Tasmanian government to promote the ruins of the Port Arthur prison as a key tourist destination. It is a fake claim, a lie, which the current management of the Port Arthur prison theme park (PAHSMA) has opportunistically upscaled with a lightbox wall displaying dozens of these 1870s mugshots, claiming they were all photographed at the Port Arthur prison and by none other than its Commandant A. H. Boyd. The suppression of Thomas Nevin's work and name as the real photographer arose as a whim and fantasy by A. H. Boyd's descendants in the 1980s, viz. Kim Simpson who were - and still are - most anxious to propel their ancestor into the history books as some sort of gifted photographic artist. But while Boyd's reputation for corruption and misogyny has persisted and is easily measured from authentic historical records, no photographs by him have ever surfaced for the very simple reasons that he never photographed a single prisoner or any other person in the known universe. He was NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER. Those Chinese tourists currently pouring off cruise liners at the Port Arthur prison heritage site might be none the wiser, nor even care when they read the lies about A. H. Boyd taking these mugshots - that is, today they might not, but the future is another country as the past will prove.



Prisoner James Blanchfield
Photographed on discharge from the Hobart Gaol by Thomas J. Nevin, April 1875.



Verso: Prisoner James Blanchfield
Photographed on discharge from the Hobart Gaol by Thomas J. Nevin, April 1875.
Inscriptions: Numbered 186.
J. W. Blanchfield per Cornwall 1851
Taken at Port Arthur 1874 [incorrect information]
QVMAG Ref:1985:P:117


The Archives Office of Tasmania in Hobart has a black and white paper copy of the same cdv. Thomas Nevin printed at least four duplicates, both uncut and mounted as a cdv from the glass plate negative produced at this, the one and only sitting with the prisoner James William Blanchfield.



Photo copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2005

The cdv of James Blanchfield, number 57, appears in this list because it was not removed from the QVMAG in 1983 when fifty and more were taken to the Port Arthur heritage site for an exhibition, i.e. those bearing the numbers shown as missing in pencil. Those fifty and more were not returned to the QVMAG, deposited instead at the TMAG. This is the first page of three pages showing that only 72 Tasmanian prisoner "portraits" in the Beattie Collection (QVMAG) remained when this list was drawn up in the 1990s.

Exhibition at the old Hobart Penitentiary, July 2019
In case the reason for our emphasis on just the incarceration and discharge records of prisoners here in our research is not self-evident, we underscore again the need to expose the deliberate falsification in recent decades of the photographer attribution of those prisoners' mugshots to an official at the Port Arthur prison by the name of A. H. Boyd who was not a photographer by any definition of the term, nor are there any extant works by him in any genre.

If Thomas Nevin's official involvement in providing mugshots for the police, the judiciary and the government has not been demonstrated clearly enough by our inclusion in this research of primary sources and extensive historical documentation - as distinct from the endless obfuscations and attitudinal interpretations in chatty prose posing as research in recent publications, theses, and exhibitions - the point of not providing lengthy bleeding heart biographies of these prisoners is simply this: with the accretion of fact upon fact, we are consolidating the evidence again and again as to when the mugshot was taken, who took it, how it was taken, and why was it taken because Thomas J. Nevin's legacy as the photographer of prisoners in Hobart in the 1870s has been violated by a confederacy of fools and fraudsters currently spurred on by the laissez-faire politics of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (Sharon Sullivan), in collusion with the University of Tasmania's History Department (Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Stefan Petrow and student acolyte Julia Clark) and a gaggle of apparently dyslexic librarians and their advisers at the National Library of Australia, the latter appearing to have delighted in playing a political game of collusion with the former, regardless of the long-term parasitic effect on this unique national heritage collection (Helen Ennis, Margy Burn, Sylvia Carr et al).

With so much vested in the careers and reputations of these hard-bitten civil servants, it is no surprise that the last sentence accompanying the mugshot and biography of James Blanchfield on this large poster (at right) fixed to the wall of the old Hobart Penitentiary, Campbell St. Hobart Tasmania for the current exhibition (July 2019), states that the photograph of the prisoner was taken at the Port Arthur prison. This is incorrect. Whether a deliberate lie or the result of lazy research, it is used today just as effectively as spin for the tourist trade as when it was first devised in the 1900s by Beattie et al for the government's campaign. James Blanchfield was not photographed at Port Arthur: government contractor Thomas J. Nevin photographed him for police and prison administration records on discharge from this same building, the Hobart Gaol, in the fortnight preceding 14th April 1875.



Above: the large wall poster at right displayed at the exhibition titled "Photographs of Australian and British Convicts" which opened at the Hobart Penitentiary (the former Hobart Gaol and House of Corrections, Campbell St.) featuring the mugshot of James Blanchfield taken by Thomas Nevin in 1875, together with a jolly japes biography of the prisoner, finishing with the sentence:
"...at the age of fifty he found himself sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and was packed off to Port Arthur where this photograph was taken."
Actually, no: as the police gazette states, James Blanchfield was 48 years old on discharge in 1875, not 50 years old on sentencing in 1873 and he spent less than two months at the Port Arthur prison, from 21st February 1873 to 20th April 1873. He served just twenty-six months of a three year sentence, not a five year sentence when he was discharged in April 1875. Additionally, he was photographed, not at the Port Arthur prison as claimed by the exhibition poster but at the Hobart Gaol, the very same site where Thomas Nevin's photograph of him taken for police in 1875 now looms over visitors to the current exhibition, exactly 144 years later.

According to the Hobart Penitentiary Facebook page, July 23, 2019, the exhibition "Photographs of Australian and British Convicts" was launched by professors Hamish Maxwell-Stewart (University of Tasmania) and Barry Godfrey (University of Liverpool, UK);
This Exhibition has been organised by the AHRC Digital Panopticon, the University of Liverpool, Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Tasmania and National Trust Tasmania.
Funded by AHRC as part of their Digital Transformation programme in 2014 the project explores the lives of 90,000 men and women sentenced at the Old Bailey between 1750 and 1925.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/hobartconvictpenitentiary/

All the money financing this and other ventures where Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is involved would better serve the local population if spent wisely, but this exhibition appears to be another project where misinformation abounds and where Tasmanian history is compromised yet again. For example, the website Founders and Survivors, funded in a grant sought by Maxwell-Stewart to an astounding amount ($800,000 - see screenshot below), lies in digital ruins. That site actually encouraged visitors to create a face for a prisoner regardless of the existence of a real photograph.



Screenshot: the ruins of convictism,Founders and Survivors website.

What is it about these mugshots taken by the very real photographer Thomas J. Nevin - as distinct from the fantasy photographer-artist the PAHSMA has constructed for their A.H. Boyd prison official - that Hamish Maxwell-Stewart appears consistently to feel the need to undermine and violate the photographer Thomas J. Nevin (e.g. by proxy via his student Julia Clark), or to modify, re-invent and re-create the photographs that result in fake visual images and disidentification of the subject? Or indeed, why the need even to medicalise them which Maxwell-Stewart is proposing in another project whereby he will use these mugshots to inject a reading of maternal foetal alcohol syndrome into the prisoners' adult faces? Seriously, nothing could be more wasteful of university staff time and research funding.

As noted already, Maxwell-Stewart is too disengaged to contribute value to this area of Tasmanian history. He is causing harm by playing with these mugshots, despite his several collaborations with British academics to justify the enormous grants. Incorporating Caroline Wilkinson's work on forensic facial reconstruction, included in the current exhibition Photographs of Australian and British Convicts, just isn't logical. There is no need to play old Lombrosian games with these mugshots: they are unique, leave them alone as testimony to the skills of T. J. Nevin, the real photographer of the day. Anyone who wishes to mutilate them and disparage not only the original photographer Thomas J. Nevin but his family and descendants as well, has to be viewed as unfit for the academic position he holds in the first instance, and in the second instance, as mentally disturbed by whatever it is about these 1870s mugshots that triggers his need to subjugate them. No doubt our post on the criminal type and anthropometry in 2008 and the paragraph below which we quoted in this post in 2007 from a section by Jens Jaeger on “Police and forensic photography” published in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (2005) woke up the History Department at the University of Tasmania regarding our ancestor Thomas J. Nevin; the response, though, has diminished all involved.
Research on ‘criminal physiognomy’
Scientific examination of picture collections from an anthropological or physiognomical perspective was not actually done by the police themselves. Significantly, the two best-known users of criminal portraits, the Italian Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) and the Englishman Francis, began their work before Bertillon’s reform of police photography. Lombroso, a doctor and eventually professor of forensic medicine and hygiene in Turin, attempted in his book L’uomo delinquente (1876) to prove both that criminal tendencies were hereditary and that they could be identified from particular physical characteristics. To this end he had visited prisons, made body measurements of prisoners, and collected pictures of criminals. After the appearance of his book he continued to work on the subject, and by the turn of the century had a large collection of criminal portraits obtained from governments in Europe and overseas. Although his theory was heavily criticized, and was never accepted by experts, it became popular. So too with Galton, who began his research a few years after Lombroso. He too believed in the heritability of mental traits, grappled with the phenomenon of criminality, and used official pictures. His method was to make composite copies of portraits of different people in order to arrive at an ‘average’ deviant physiognomy. His major work, Inquiries into Human Faculty, containing papers written since 1869, appeared in 1883. But his theories also failed to convince his peers, and there were no further attempts to examine criminals or criminality on the basis of police portraits. Undeniably, however, a certain image of ‘the’ delinquent did emerge in the popular imagination, and persists as a visual code identifying certain characters as criminals in literature, comics, films, and tabloid newspapers.
Source: “Police and forensic photography.”
The Oxford Companion to the Photograph.
Oxford University Press, 2005.

The homogenised "Port Arthur offenders"
Also on display at the Hobart Penitentiary 2019 Exhibition, "Photographs of Australian and British Convicts, " were these four photographs of so-called "AVERAGE PORT ARTHUR MALE OFFENDERS". The photographs were printed as wall posters and included in a large pdf scroll which Maxwell-Stewart donatedto the University of Tasmania SPARC repository. The information conveyed by this display is incorrect and misleading. For example, under the heading of Convict Photography, this statement appears:
At Port Arthur, in the 1870s,
some of the ‘old lags’ still
left in the penal colony also
had their photographs taken some
of which we use here for
this exhibition.
This is a statement from the 1950s-60s. It is crude, vague, and ignorant, as if nothing has been learnt from the vast trove of primary sources available to researchers and exhibition curators since the era of digitisation. Few prisoners were photographed at Port Arthur; just four photographs so far can be identified and those were taken there by Thomas J. Nevin in May 1874. The majority of prisoners with active outstanding sentences still to be served - 109 men in all were named in Parliament in July 1873 - who were sent to Port Arthur after 1871 were returned to the Hobart Gaol from October 1873 to December 1874. On arrival back at the Hobart Gaol, they were photographed by contractor Thomas J. Nevin, as were all other prisoners received in Hobart and from regional lock-ups with sentences longer than three months.





Where is the accompanying text to these four faces to alert the viewer that this Lombrosian experiment of layering one real mugshot of a convicted criminal upon another real mugshot of a convicted criminal three or four times over had failed to provide police with anything useful. Those 19th century experiments which were created because of ideation about stereotypes are now paraded again pointlessly in a 21st century exhibition, legitimised by "cognitive bias" and nonsensical computations around the word "average".

The differences between these four faces are minimal, yet the compositors fail to give any reason as to their uniformity, or any indication as to their methods. Information vital to understanding why and how these composites were produced from the 1870s original mugshots - the so-called "Convict Portraits Port Arthur 1874" held in Australian national and state public collections is missing, for example:

How many original mugshots from the 1870s were used to make one composite? Three? Five? Ten?

What were the names and ages of the prisoners in the original mugshots from the 1870s?

What were the dates on which the original mugshots were taken? 1872? 1874? 1875? 1880?

Why assume the same type of crime attracted similar looking men, especially when crimes such as larceny and assault covered a variety of offences and circumstances?

Why promulgate the fiction that men in the original mugshots taken in Tasmania in the 1870s were "Port Arthur offenders"? They were not photographed before 1853 at Port Arthur when transportation ceased to Tasmania. They did not offend at the Port Arthur prison, they offended at large. They were ordinary criminals who offended in the 1860s-1870s and were photographed on incarceration as a result of a Supreme Court trial next door to the Hobart Gaol by police contractor Thomas J. Nevin.

Compare these four composites with any dozen original mugshots used to compose them. Anyone familiar with the 300 plus extant original mugshots of Tasmanian prisoners taken in the 1870s by Thomas J. Nevin for police and prison authorities would immediately protest that those original mugshots show a wide diversity of individuals, men of all backgrounds and ages with very distinct facial features and body shapes. Regardless of their groupings according to an assumed similarity of criminal offenses, they are immediately identifiable as INDIVIDUALS.

In our present era (2019) when unique differences among populations, termed DIVERSITY, is the major force informing humanist policy at all levels of society, here we have an enclave of eugenicists, led by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart playing with expensive technologies on large research grants because they believe they have something to achieve by forcing SIMILARITY onto a tranche of historically identified individuals.

Take a look at the differences between the men in these three collections of mugshots of Tasmanian prisoners taken by Thomas J. Nevin in the courts and prisons of the 1870s (note: a good number are duplicates from Nevin's glass negative produced at a single sitting with the prisoner):





 Addendum: Robert Byron Miller (1825 - 1902)
Robert Byron Miller was a barrister who served the colony of Tasmania as Attorney-General for four years (1863-1866). He was photographed on several occasions by Thomas J. Nevin, as indeed were the prisoners he represented, including James Blanchfield who implicated Byron Miller as complicit in his crime at trial in his defense (see newspaper report above):



Barrister R. Byron Miller (1825 - 1902)
Photographer George Cherry (1820 - 1878) taken in late 1860s
Inscribed verso by Miller family member "My Father ... Judge in Chambers Essex St ..."
Photo © copyright KLW NFC Imprint KLW NFC Private Collection

The wording "My father ..." was inscribed on the verso of this photograph of Robert Byron Miller by his daughter-in-law, Jean Porthouse Graves (1858-1951) probably in 1947 when she compiled an album of photographs taken of herself and family members, now in our private collection. As her own father John Woodcock Graves the younger had died in 1876, she regarded her father-in-law as "father". The earliest photographs in her album date from the late 1860s such as this one taken by George Cherry of R. Byron Miller. A series of stereographs with Jean Porthouse Graves as a teenager were taken by Thomas J. Nevin on the excursion by boat of VIPs to Adventure Bay in January 1872. The most recent photos in the album were taken of herself and her apartment in London in the late 1940s. Jean Porthouse Graves married solicitor Francis Knowles Miller, son of Robert Byron Miller, at Melbourne, Victoria in 1885. She was extensively involved with betterment and welfare organisations in the Emu Bay area (Burnie, Tasmania) from her marriage through to the 1920s. She was 91 yrs old when she died at Rembrandt Square, London on 30 July 1951.

This carte-de-visite of Robert Byron Miller was just one of several cdvs and stereographs housed in Jean Porthouse Graves' album which Thomas J. Nevin had taken of her with her father John Woodcock Graves (the younger), her future father-in-law Robert Byron Byron Miller, the Graves' family friend Lukin Boyes, and her three sisters Mathinna, Trucaninni and Mimi between 1872 and 1876. For example, the series photographed with Jean in her mid-teens on the VIP excursion to Adventure Bay in 1872 included the Hon. Alfred Kennerley, Mayor of Hobart and Police Magistrate, R. Byron Miller, barrister, Sir John O'Shanassy, former Premier of Victoria, Hugh Munro Hull, Parliamentary librarian, her father John Woodcock Graves the younger who organised the excursion, James Erskine Calder, former Surveyor-General, Lukin Boyes, Customs Officer, Hon. Mr. James Milne Wilson (Premier of Tasmania), and the Rev. Henry Dresser Atkinson.





One of four extant photographs taken on 31st January 1872 and printed in various formats from Thomas J. Nevin's series advertised in the Mercury, 2nd February, 1872, as "The Colonists' Trip to Adventure Bay" (Bruny Island, Tasmania).

[From lower left]: John Woodcock Graves jnr, solicitor; his daughter Jean Porthouse Graves; above her, R. Byron Miller, barrister; on her left, Sir John O'Shanassy, former Premier of Victoria;
[Centre top]: Lukin Boyes, son of auditor and artist G. T. W. Boyes, leaning on stone structure
[Extreme lower right]: James Erskine Calder, former Surveyor-General, Tasmania

Single unmounted carte-de-visite photograph of large group
From the Miller and Graves family album
Photos recto and verso: copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2015 Private Collection
Verso: One of four extant photographs taken on 31st January 1872 and printed in various formats from Thomas J. Nevin's series advertised in The Mercury, 2nd February, 1872, as the Colonists' Trip to Adventure Bay (Bruny Island).
Verso with T. Nevin late A. Bock , 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town commercial stamp
Verso inscriptions include these identifiable figures at the "Picnic":
Father = John Woodcock Graves jnr,
Sir John O'Shanassy = former Premier of Victoria,
Self = Jean Porthouse Graves, daughter of John W. Graves,
L. Boyes = Lukin Boyes (?), son of G.T. W. Boyes
From an album compiled by the families of John Woodcock Graves jnr and R. Byron Miller
Private Collection © KLW NFC Imprint 2015

The men in the series taken on the Adventure Bay trip in January 1872 were the lawyers and the legislators who were T. J. Nevin's patrons and employers throughout his engagement as photographer in Hobart's prisons and courts from 1872 into the 1880s. Commercial photographer Thomas J. Nevin worked on government contract with the judiciary for the police and colonial government during the years when Robert Byron Miller served the colony briefly as Attorney-General in the Whyte administration, succeeded by Nevin's patron, William Robert Giblin who served as Attorney-General under (Sir) James Wilson in 1870-72 and in Alfred Kennerley's ministry in 1873-76.



The Colonists' Trip to Adventure Bay
VIPs on board The City of Hobart, 31st January 1872
Stereograph in buff arched mount by Thomas J. Nevin
Private Collection KLW NFC Group copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2015

 From left to right:
Sir John O'Shanassy (seated), John Woodcock Graves the younger, Captain John Clinch, the Hon. Alfred Kennerley and the Hon. James Erskine Calder (seated). Standing behind Captain Clinch and Alfred Kennerley is R. Byron Miller.



VERSO WITH RARE NEVIN LABEL
The square royal blue label with T. Nevin's modified design of Alfred Bock's stamp from the mid-1860s and the wording in gold lettering, framed on a cartouche within gold curlicues, is unique to this item, not (yet) seen on the verso of any of his other photographs. Similar wording appeared on Nevin's most common commercial stamp from 1867 with and without Bock's name but always with the addition of a kangaroo sitting atop the Latin motto "Ad Altiora". Here, Bock's name is still included within the design although Nevin acquired Bock's studio five years earlier, in 1867: "T. Nevin late A.Bock" encircled by a buckled belt stating the firm's name within the strap, "City Photographic Establishment". The address "140 Elizabeth Street Hobarton" appears below the belt buckle and inside the badge motif.

The name "Graves" with a half-scroll underneath in black ink was most likely written by Thomas Nevin himself as a reminder of the client's name for the order. The handwriting is similar to his signatures on the birth registrations of his children in the 1870s.

The pencilled inscription "On board City of Hobart, Cap Clinch, Visitors Trip Jay 1872" and the deduction of the years "1947-1872=75 ago" was written by Jean Porthouse Graves who wrote "My Father" above the right hand frame on the front of the stereograph and a partial arrow pointing to John Woodcock Graves (the younger), She had pasted this photograph, and others taken by Thomas J. Nevin of the same group, into a family album (KLW NFC Private Collections 2015).

OBITUARY: Robert Byron Miller (1825 - 1902)

TRANSCRIPT
MR R. BYRON MILLER
Mr Robert Byron Miller, one of the oldest members of the legal profession in Tasmania, died at his residence, Elphin-road, at 9.30 yesterday morning. He has been in failing health for some months past, and the end did not come unexpectedly, he passing away surrounded by members of the family, who had been summoned to his bedside. Perhaps no one was more widely known in the State or more respected than the deceased, who was a member of the Executive Council and an ex-Attorney-General, and a colonist of over 50 years' standing. Born in London on April 19, 1825, he had thus reached his 76th year. . He was the son of the late Sergeant Miller, a London barrister of high repute, who had a large practice in common law, and was afterwards judge in the County Courts of Leicester, and who numbered among his personal friends the leading lawyers, literary men, and artists of the day, including Judge Talfourd, Dickens, Thackeray, Landseer, and Leslie. Educated at private schools and at King's College, London, deceased was a pupil in his father's chambers, and was admitted at the Middle Temple in 1848. After being in practice in London for several years he decided to come to Tasmania, and arriving in Hobart in January, 1855, he at once commenced the practice of his profession, and soon earned a name for himself as the leading criminal lawyer of the day. Coming straight from England, where he had been in constant practice, he found that some primitive customs prevailed in regard to the conduct of the business of the courts, and it was only after a stem struggle and facing the risk of displeasing those who held power at the time that he succeeded in bringing about changes more in accordance with justice and freedom. After a short stay in Hobart the deceased removed to Launceston, and, with the exception of three years spent in Melbourne, he resided in the northern city till his death. He entered political life in 1861, being elected as a member for Launceston. He accepted the Solicitor-Generalship in Chapman-Henty administration, which he held till 1863, when the feeling in Launceston being very strong against the proposed ad valorem duties, he resigned. The Government were shortly afterwards defeated. In the Whyte Ministry deceased occupied the post of Attorney-General, which he filled for a period of nearly four years, and during his tenure of office he was responsible for many important measures being placed on the Statute Book of the colony, while his administration of the department under his control was marked by vigor, honesty, and determination to do the right, resulting in changes not less marked than they were appreciated by the public. On the defeat of the Government on the income tax question, deceased resigned from Parliament and went to Melbourne, where he practised as a barrister for some three years. Returning to Launceston in 1871 he once more entered into partnership. He was in partnership with Mr Josiah Powell for four years, and later on his son, Mr Ernest Granville Miller, joined him under the style of Miller and Miller. The subject of this notice was an alderman of Launceston for three years, during which he war a strong supporter of improved drainage and local improvements; and he was for some years president of the Mechanics' Institute. He took an interest in ecclesiastical matters in the early days of his residence in Tasmania He was the senior member of the Executive Council, with the exception of Sir Francis Smith, who is absent from the colony. The deceased gave up Parliamentary life when in the height of his reputation, and since carefully eschewed politics, devoting .himself to his profession, of which though advanced in years and suffering slightly from the infirmity of deafness, he was, until his health gave way a few months ago an active and distinguished member. Deceased was associated with nearly all the prominent cases dealt with in the courts in Tasmania during the tame he was practising his profession, and of late years principally conducted prosecutions on behalf of the Government. He leaves a widow and two sons and two daughters, the sons being Mr Ernest Granville Miller, who was in partnership with deceased, and Mr F. Knowles Miller, who is also a member of the legal profession residing at Burnie. The funeral is appointed to leave his late residence at 4.30 this afternoon for the Church of England Cemetery.
Source: Source: Daily Telegraph (Launceston, Tas. Monday 6 October 1902, page 3
Link: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/153972075
See also entry in the ADB http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miller-robert-byron-4203

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