Anthony Trollope's Port Arthur interviewee 1872

ANTHONY TROLLOPE novelist
DENIS DOGHERTY prisoner
THOMAS J. NEVIN at Port Arthur 1872



Anthony Trollope, English novelist, ca. 1875 / photographers Elliott & Fry, 55 Baker St, London | P1/1803.State Library of NSW Ref: 900754

Thomas J. Nevin - T.J. Nevin - took many hundreds of identification photographs of prisoners at the Hobart Gaol and courts, including the court and prison at Port Arthur 60 kms from Hobart, and at the Municipal Police Office Hobart Town Hall between 1872 and 1886. The 300 or so items to survive in public collections are estrays from this larger corpus. Several original prisoner photographs survive as cartes-de-visite pasted to prison records (QVMAG, PCHS), and some survive as uncut sepia prints from Nevin's 1870s glass negatives (TMAG and QVMAG) which were displayed at Beattie's "Port Arthur Museum" in Hobart  by John Watt Beattie and Edward Searle who also reprinted a handful again as vignetted cartes ca. 1900s-1920s for sale as tourist tokens of Tasmania's convict "stain".

Albums and loose copies of these mugshots are held at the National Library of Australia, Canberra; the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the State Library, NSW, and originals and duplicates such as this one of Killeen at the Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart.

The National Library of Australia's catalogue has a standard entry for all of these convicts' cdv's (a batch edit), despite discrepancies and anomalies pertaining to Nevin's actual date of photographing the convict, the photograph's accession history by the NLA (1964, 1985, 1995), and the photographer attribution, correctly assigned in the modern era (1920s, 1976, 1977 etc) to government contractor, commercial photographer T. J. Nevin from primary historical evidence.

Many of the convicts, including those with a history of transportation prior to 1853 whose distinctive photographs have survived as visual documents from their later criminal careers, were repeat offenders who served short terms and were arrested again and again. When they were arrested, a booking photograph was taken at the Hobart Gaol on being received if their sentence was to extend beyond three months. And when they were discharged, a further mugshot was taken by Nevin for prison records and the Habitual Criminals Register held at the Hobart Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall.

Of all the convicts pictured in the NLA collection, this one - prisoner Denis Dogherty - achieved international fame through the travel writings of British author Anthony Trollope.



Convict Denis Dogherty
Photo by T.J. Nevin taken at Port Arthur 1874
NLA Collection nla.pic-vn3096343

Denis Dogherty was interviewed by Anthony Trollope while on a visit to Port Arthur in the first week of February 1872. The trip was reported in The Mercury, 2 February 1872.



The Mercury 2 February 1872

TRANSCRIPT
VISIT TO PORT ARTHUR.- Mr. Trollope and the Hon. Howard Spensly, Esq., Solicitor-General of Victoria, accompanied the Hon. the Premier, J.M. Wilson, Esq., and the Hon. the Attorney-General, W.R. Giblin, Esq., embarked in the Government schooner late last night, some time after Mr. Trollope had concluded his lecture on "Modern Fiction, as a recreation for young people," and left for Port Arthur. Their visit to the Peninsula will be a very hurried one, and will afford them only scant opportunity of inspecting the penal establishment, it being the intention of Messrs. Trollope and Spensly to leave Hobart Town for the North, en route for Victoria in a few days ...
Anthony Trollope was accompanied by the Tasmanian Premier, the Hon. J.M. Wilson, and two lawyers: the Victorian Solicitor-General Howard Spensly and the Tasmanian Attorney-General W.R. Giblin. Also in the party at the request of W.R. Giblin was photographer Thomas J. Nevin. Giblin had acted as Nevin's family solicitor since the dissolution of the firm Nevin & Smith in 1868. The Victorian Solicitor-General's interest in prison security at Port Arthur extended to suggesting the photographing of prisoners by commercial photographers. In South Australia and Victoria, commercial photographers such as Frazer Crawford and Charles Nettleton respectively were engaged part-time on contract in prisons.

Shortly before Trollope's visit, a group of prisoners including Dogherty had absconded. The notice "Absconded" appeared in the police gazette on November 3rd, 1871, with a full physical description. The same issue carried the notice of Dogherty's subsequent arrest:

POLICE RECORDS



Denis Dogherty, George Fisher and John O'Brien absconded, notice of 2 November 1871. All three men were arrested the following day:



Source:Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police
1865-1885, J. Barnard, Govt Printer
Absconders Dogherty, Fisher and O'Brien were arrested 3 November 1871.

These three absconders underscored the need for photographic documentation of prisoners. Attorney-General Giblin engaged Thomas J. Nevin for the task within weeks of this trip to Port Arthur. The task extended to working at the Hobart Gaol where all prisoners were first incarcerated, and to the Town Hall Police Office for prisoners on discharge. Dogherty was among those prisoners photographed by Nevin in 1873, and photographed again by Nevin at the Hobart Gaol on being transferred on or before 30th January 1876. George Fisher was discharged with a TOL on 15th April 1874, and arraigned in December 1874. See this article for Fisher's  police record. Fisher's release photograph is one of Nevin's better prisoner portraits evincing his commercial studio technique probably because Fisher was photographed in the more civilising atmosphere on release from the Police Office at the time of his TOL, rather than at the Hobart Gaol on his arrest.



Prisoner George Fisher
Photo by T.J. Nevin, 15 April 1874
NLA Collection



Prisoner John O'Brien
Photo by T.J. Nevin 1874
Original held at the QVMAG
Copy held at the Archives Office Tasmania

ONE SMALL GRAY EYE
Anthony Trollope later wrote in his publication Australia and New Zealand (1872) that Denis Dogherty was tall, heavily tattooed, with a large cleft chin and one small gray eye:

"In appearance he was a large man and still powerful, well to look at in spite of his eye, lost as he told us through the miseries of prison life. But he said that he was broken at last."









Snippets re convict Doherty [sic] from Trollope's Australia and New Zealand pp 148-151.

When seated for his pose - probably with a headrest - we can assume that in the course of steadying himself and waiting for Thomas Nevin to prepare the equipment, Dogherty told the photographer of his miseries and rebellions, and probably drew attention to the lost eye: the old "my best side" routine. Which eye is it - the left or the right? The police gazette noted that he had lost sight of his right eye. The cdv printed from the negative would be the mirror image of the glass negative, in which case, Dogherty's original pose was reversed for the positive print carte, and his left eye would have been closer to the photographer and the camera than his right. This cdv, however, hides his most recognisable feature, and that is because it has been reprinted by a copyist such as Beattie for sale to tourists. The original carte printed by Nevin from his negative would have shown the image flipped to accentuate Dogherty's eye for police records:



Mirror image of Dogherty's pose

Dogherty's selfhood was no doubt inflated by such attentions from a famous writer. It cannot be assumed that he was inhibited, intimidated, violated and cowered by the presence of the camera and the police photographer, as the postmodern Foucauldians would have it (e.g. Helen Ennis, Mirror with a Memory, Catalogue for the NLA Exhibition 2000). When a prisoner such as Fisher was photographed on discharge, he was facing freedom. Why would he cower?

On the contrary, we need to pay closer attention to what Peter Doyle calls "the hot zone of exchanged looks" - the moment where the subject - here, the 1870s convict - displays his role as cohabitor of the space shared with the police photographer.

Admittedly, little exhibitionism was possible in an era when perfect stillness was required by the sitter, when headstands were the norm in private studio portrait practice, and recording the image on the plate required exposure to light. But there are nuances aplenty, vast differences in facial expressions and posture, as well as in small details of dress,of the arrangement of the coat and scarf, and in the grooming of hair and whiskers. The booking photograph, taken on arrest, often depicted the offender in civilian clothing; and in the case of absconders, their clothing varied according to the class of their assignment to an employer.

Prisoners were relocated from the Port Arthur prison site to other prison and asylum sites in Hobart in a steady stream from 1871 onwards. The transfer of paupers (but not criminals) to asylums in Hobart was undersigned by A. H. Boyd in the police gazettes, but his name disappears abruptly from any association with criminal police and procedures from February 1873. Boyd was not a photographer, nor involved in any way with the photographing of prisoners for the Tasmanian Police by the time the transfer began en masse in January 1873. Of the 109 prisoners listed there in 1871, sixty had already returned to Hobart by July 1873. From May 1874 prisoners were transferred in large numbers from Port Arthur to the Hobart Gaol, for two reasons:

(a) Parliament was urged to close Port Arthur because of serious corruption during A.H. Boyd's incumbency (Mercury reports 18-30 July 1873). Prisoner numbers were being artificially inflated to ensure the continuance of the site and the well-heeled existence of its Commandant A.H. Boyd.

(b) young males were being sent from Hobart and the regions to be incarcerated there with hardened criminals. Leonard Hand was such a case. This practice ceased at the compassionate urgence of A. H. Boyd's replacement, Surgeon-Commandant Dr John Coverdale from the time of his incumbency in January 1874. Identification photographs were taken when reconvicted, on arrest, arraignment and discharge.

Charles Downes (listed as Dawnes in the NLA records) is one example of a convict who was photographed on a further conviction of rape in the Supreme Court on February 13th, 1872, while in custody. His sentence - execution - was stayed with a reprieve in 1875. He later died in custody in 1879. See this article on his inquest.

All these inmates had been exposed to the worst the system could dish out over their life-time; a photograph would have been a sign to them of "graduation" when discharged. In some cases, they were "freed" soon after (eg. Michael Murphy). In another instance, of a man hanged for murder, James Sutherland, a final photograph was taken seven days before his death.

History, however, has kept these men in their place. Whether through the reproduction of their image for the tourist trade by John Watt Beattie and Searle in the 1910s, or by their resurrection as ethnographic artefact on the walls of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in 1977. But the encounter is nonetheless partially on their terms, and we feel compelled to scan the image for the performative sign of individuality.

As the curator's press release for the 1977 QVMAG exhibition stated:
"Despite their original use, these photographs possess a quality far beyond that of records. Just once rascally, occasionally noble, always pathetic, these photographs are among the most moving and powerful images of the human condition."
Curator of Fine Art, John McPhee, 9th March, 1977.

FURTHER READING
Edwin Barnard claims to be the author of a recent publication sponsored by the National Library of Australia titled Exiled: The Port Arthur Convict Photographs (Edwin Barnard, NLA 2010). Yet Barnard’s primary source of information about Dogherty was from a page copied from Geoff Lennox (1994), held in Thomas J. Nevin’s Photographer File at the National Library of Australia:



NLA CATALOGUE
[Nevin, T. J. : photography related ephemera material collected by the National Library of Australia]
Bib ID 3821234
Dogherty’s photograph attributed to T. J. Nevin
Held at the NLA in Nevin’s file
Photo taken at the National Library of Australia, 6 Feb 2015
Photos copyright KLW NFC 2015 ARR

Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1860s-1880s. J. Barnard, Government Printer

Peter Doyle's recent article online: "Public eye, private eye: Sydney police mug shots, 1912-1930" Journal of Media Arts Culture Vol 2, No. 3 December 2005

City of Shadows by Peter Doyle (Historic Houses Trust of NSW 2005)

Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore 1986. pp591ff

Anthony Trollope Australia and New Zealand Melbourne, 1874 (London: 1872)



Mugshots removed: Edward Searle's album 1915

Edward Searle (1887-1955) was a Tasmanian photographer who worked with John Watt Beattie between 1911-15 at Beattie's studio in Elizabeth St. Hobart, opposite the small Wellington Bridge which provided access across the open Hobart Rivulet

The "Tasmanian Views" Album
The National Library of Australia holds an album titled Tasmanian Views, catalogued in Searle's name and dated ca. 1915. The album contains a series of contemporary snapshots taken of the Searle family while visiting the Tasman Peninsula, Maria Island, Norfolk Island, and New Norfolk, possibly accompanying Beattie on his various and highly productive photographic excursions. The family photographs are mixed in no particular order with scenic postcards bearing Beattie's trademark of views and portraits of Antarctic expeditions and of Beattie in the South Pacific, together with reprints of 1870s photographs representing Tasmania's troubled convict and Aboriginal past, all of which Beattie and Searle supplied in quantity for the 1900s tourism market, The inclusion of many family photographs in this album suggests it was intended for private viewing rather than public display, put together by Searle for his family as a memento of his four years' employment at Beattie's studio.



Photos taken at the National Library of Australia, 7th Feb 2015
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR


CAUTION: THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE ALL WATERMARKED

[Top right]: Mrs Edward Searle holding her son Allan, Port Arthur [Tasmania], Easter 1913
[Lower right]: Portrait of Truganini by Charles A. Woolley Tasmania, ca. 1866.
Inscription around the photograph: "The last of the Tasmanian Blacks" and "'Trucanini', died 1876.",
Part of the collection of photographs compiled by Australian photographer E. W. Searle while working for J. W. Beattie in Hobart during 1911-1915.
NLA Catalogue
nla.pic-an20595833
Tasmanian views, Edward Searle's album of photographs of Australia, Antarctica and the Pacific, 1911-1915 [picture].
1911-1915. 1 album (245 photographs) : b&w, sepia toned ; 31 x 25.5 cm.
Part of Searle, E. W. (Edward William) 1887-1955. E.W. Searle collection of photographs [picture]. between ca. 1900 and ca. 1955.

Hobart Gaol rap sheets
Blue forms were used by the Hobart Gaol until the 1890s to record the offence(s) for a particular sentence, sometimes added to a list of other offences on the same criminal sheet when not a first offender, onto which at least one photograph was pasted. These records for prisoners Cohen (1878), Ford (1886) and Neal (1888) are examples of the blue forms used from 1870s-1880s by the Hobart Gaol.



Blue form, with the prisoner's photo, and with the photo removed.
From the Hobart Gaol records books
TAHO Ref: GD6719: Cohen, Ford and Neal

By 1892, when John Watt Beattie was commissioned by the Tasmanian government to promote the tourism industry through photography, he had ready access to prison documents held at the Sheriff''s Office, Hobart Gaol (Campbell St.). Pasted to a single album leaf in Searle's album are three unmounted prisoner mugshots of William Meagher, Charles Rosetta and William Lee, Tasmanian prisoners - termed "convicts" in tourism discourse - originally photographed by Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s for gaol records. These three photographs of Meagher, Rosetta and Lee bear traces around the edges of the blue paper from which they were removed.

Mugshots removed
These three prisoner photographs (below) of [l to r] of William Meagher, Charles Rosetta and William Lee were individually removed by Searle and Beattie from the Hobart Gaol's register of the 1870s, which contained the original blue criminal record sheets bound in book-form. The 1870s register, according to the Archives Office of Tasmania, is not extant. The obvious reason for its non-existence - at this point in time - is that it was partially destroyed by Searle and Beattie, paradoxically, it seems, while they were trying to save the photographs. The photographs they did manage to save in quantity from the early to mid 1870s were T. J. Nevin's fixed or loose duplicates in carte-de-visite format with oval mounts, which he produced from his negatives to make these same prints. Forty (40) or more similar loose and unmounted photographs of prisoners - i.e. those not printed in oval or oblong mounts - are located in Beattie's collections at the QVMAG, Launceston, acquired on his death in 1930.

It must be remembered that Edward Searle may have devised this album decades after 1915. He died in 1955, and he was just 28 years old in 1915 when he worked with Beattie. He was NOT a contemporary of the photographer Thomas J. Nevin who took these prisoner/convict photographs decades earlier, so the actual veracity of his caption on this album leaf next to the photographs - "Official Prison Photographs from Port Arthur" - may be construed to have any generic meaning at such an historical and chronological distance from Nevin's work. The caption DOES NOT STATE the original photographs were actually taken at Port Arthur. The inscription "Taken at Port Arthur 1874", transcribed on hundreds of Nevin's carte-de-visite prints of convicts is notably missing here, although the date for Nevin's attendance at Port Arthur is correct because he was absent from Hobart, working with Commandant-Surgeon Dr Coverdale at Port Arthur, when the birth in April 1874 of his second child, Thomas James "Sonny" Nevin, was registered in May 1874 by his father-in-law, Captain James Day. On the other hand, evidence of Beattie and Searle's use of Nevin's old studio materials, whether from Nevin's New Town studio, closed in 1888, or earlier via Samuel Clifford's reprinting of Nevin's commercial negatives from 1876 to 1878, which were then bought by the Anson Bros when Beattie joined them, subsequently acquiring the stock of all three photographic studios, is right there on the album cover. Its title "Tasmanian Views" just happens to be the same title used by Thomas Nevin in his advertisements, for example, on this label dated ca. 1868:



Above: Tasmanian Views, title used by Nevin & Smith 1868
Below:Tasmanian Views, title of Searle's album 1915
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR



It is not surpising in the least, therefore, that prints from Thomas Nevin's negatives of prisoners taken in the 1870s should be found in the possession of Searle and in this album. Other photographers used variations on the title Tasmanian Views for their commercial stock sold to the public. Both Samuel Clifford and the Anson Brothers sold albums with the title "Tasmanian Scenes".



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.

Mounted and unmounted examples
The two originals of these three photographs of prisoner Thomas Fleming were produced by Thomas J. Nevin for police in January 1874: the sepia uncut print and the portrait in an oval mount. The uncut photograph re-printed as a black and white copy and cleaned of marks and scratches was produced at the QVMAG, Launceston, in 1985 by Chris Long for reasons known only to himself. Both of the 1870s formats - the uncut sepia print and the print in an oval mount - were pasted to the prisoner's rap sheet for Hobart Gaol records and for the central registry, the Hobart Municipal Police Office, Town Hall where Nevin was contracted from February 1872 to the 1886.



Sepia uncut print of prisoner Thomas Fleming
Original print from Thomas Nevin's negative January 1874
Photos courtesy of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery 2015.
Copyright © KLW NFC 2015 ARR



Black and white copy of the original from the QVMAG Collection, 1985
Filename: 1985_P_0169flemingthomas193.jpg
Camera: Canon
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
ISO: 100
Exposure: 1/125 sec
Aperture: 14.0
Focal Length: 100mm

The small carte-de-visite in an oval mount of Fleming would have been the final print pasted to his criminal record sheet, had the sheet survived. The number "45" on the front is the numbering system used by copyists in the late 20th century at the QVMAG in Launceston to distribute copies of the photograph to local and interstate exhibitions.  The number on the unmounted print - "193" - also appears on the verso of the carte-de-visite. It is an archivist's number written in the 1900s at the same time as the transcribed information - the convict's name, ship and date of arrival in VDL. The additional script - "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" - a generic place and date which does not accord with each and every prisoner's actual criminal history - was supposed by the transcriber to be sufficiently informative when he/she wrote it on the versos for one sole purpose: the display of the photographs at Beattie's "Port Arthur" convictaria museum, located in Hobart, from the 1890s and later, for travelling exhibitions associated with the fake convict hulk, Success at Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane etc in the 1910s.



Thomas Nevin's cdv in oval mount of Thomas Fleming
Taken 7 January 1874
QVMAG Ref: 1985:P. 0067



Thomas Fleming per St Vincent was tried at the Supreme Court on 9 Sept 1867 for housebreaking and larceny, sentenced to seven years. He was born in Yorkshire , aged 38 yrs, 5ft 6ins, black hair, Free in Servitude. Two moles on left cheek. He was photographed on discharge from the Hobart Gaol on 7th January 1874 by police photographer Thomas J. Nevin

These 40 sepia, uncut and unmounted photographs were advertised for sale in John Watt Beattie's Port Arthur Museum catalogue (1916), which he listed as:
69. Three Frames containing 40 photographs taken at Port Arthur, showing types of Imperial Prisoners there.
The three frames containing 40 prints from Nevin's negatives taken in the 1870s were displayed as  "Types of Imperial Convicts" in 1916 when imperialism was at fever-pitch as Imperial Forces gathered in Europe. These items were on sale in 1916 and were not sold. They were acquired from Beattie's estate by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, where they remain. Individual cartes-de-visite in oval mounts of each of these prisoners, among several hundreds more of 1870s prisoners, were also acquired from Beattie's estate by the QVMAG in 1930, although dispersed piecemeal to national and state libraries, to museums and to heritage sites from the 1950s onwards.





QVMAG Collection
Top:Ref: 1983_p_0137-0150
Middle:Ref: 1983_p_0151-0162
Bottom:Ref: 1983_p_0163-0176

Beattie and Searle had removed these photographs from their original criminal rap sheets, displaying them in three frames in 1916. These same three frames with the 40 photographs were sent from the QVMAG to the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, in 2000, as part of the "Heads of the People" exhibition, captioned as "uncut cartes-de-visite mounted on board" of "Types of Imperial Convicts" attributed to J. W. Beattie "after Adolarious Humphrey Boyd". The curator responsible for this contribution to the NPG was Warwick Reeder (M.A.thesis, ANU, 1995) who was led to believe the furphy about Boyd from Chris Long (TMAG 1995). As a valuer at the National Library of Australia, Reeder was most anxious to promulgate the furphy to protect the error in his thesis. The mantra from Reeder to justify the abjection of Nevin's name as the real photographer of these mugshots is the lack of his studio stamp on the versos, save for three currently extant in public collections (at the QVMAG and SLNSW). Would Warwick Reeder have raised similar objections to the thousands of mugshots taken in other Australian colonies during the 1870s? Not if he had a sound knowledge of both copyright registrations and police photography in that decade. The extant mugshots were stamped verso with T. J. Nevin's Royal Arms government contractor stamp to register his copyright with the Customs and Patent Office and to access his commission from both the Hobart Municipal Council (HCC Lands and Survey Dept) and Municipal Police Office (Municipal Fund) at the Hobart Town Hall. Copyright endured absolute for 14 years on submission of two samples under the Merchandise Marks Act 1864. One photograph per batch of 100 was stamped for this reason while Nevin was still working from his studio in Elizabeth St. Hobart and visiting the Hobart Gaol and Supreme Court at Oyer sessions. After his appointment to full-time civil service with the HCC in 1876, the stamp was unnecessary. The fuss about a lack of studio stamps on mugshots, in short, is based in ignorance and perpetuated for personal advantage. This is the information created by Reeder to accompany the three frames of mugshots originally advertised by Beattie in 1916, originally photographed by Nevin in the 1870s.


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

Chris Long's long con
Amateur historian Chris Long spent a few weeks at the QVMAG in Launceston in 1985 re-photographing as black & white prints the 40 uncut and unmounted sepia prints of prisoners taken by Nevin in the 1870s (those on the three panels, examples above), fogging out cracks and scratches on the sepia originals in the process for reasons only known to himself, since they serve no purpose, unless he single-mindedly decided to muddy their provenance as Nevin's, and their primary function as police mugshots, in order to cover up his stupid error in proclaiming that Nevin didn't take the photos, contradicting historical evidence and the experts in the field, and that they were taken by the Commandant at Port Arthur, A. H. Boyd, never before heard of as a "photographer" by anyone for the simple reason he wasn't one. No photograph of prisoners or of any other subject in any genre was ever attributed to the non-photographer A. H. Boyd prior to Chris Long's long game of gambling his reputation on this silly claim. Chris Long's impulse as usual was to satisfy his personal need to imprint his own fantasy on primary historical documents until the facts about them all but disappear under his gifted amateur touch (gifting himself and grifting others in the process). The originals of the 40 uncut and unmounted sepia prints had been removed from the prisoners' Hobart Gaol rap sheets of the 1870s by John Watt Beattie and pasted in three panels for exhibition and sale in 1916.

A selection of the QVMAG collection of these mugshots was exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1976 and at the QVMAG in 1977 as the work of Thomas J. Nevin . All of the prisoners in the photographs mounted as cdvs had been named by that date - some incorrectly - by archivists either for the 1934 exhibition in memory of John Watt Beattie and his convictaria collection, or by the curatorial staff at the QVMAG in 1958, in 1977, in 1983-5, and 1991 - dates which appear either on the versos or in the accession sheets of public institutions which received Nevin's originals, Nevin's duplicates, or Beattie's copies. The Archives Office of Tasmania holds similar images, both originals and copies, and some are of unidentified prisoners, although the same man in the same print is identified in the QVMAG collection. All men pictured in the mugshots held at the National Library of Australia in Canberra - and many picture the same men as those listed in the QVMAG collection and in the National Library's collection - were identified on accession in 1962, 1982 and 1985, including the identity of the photographer T. J. Nevin, indicating clearly that the NLA received its collection from Tasmania.

The prints below are typical of Chris Long's cleaned-up black & white reprints from Nevin's 1870s sepia prints which Beattie had pasted in three panels, and which Long reproduced in 1985 at the QVMAG, their purpose known only to Long himself. Most of these prisoners have been identified. With some patience, the prisoners in these reproductions at the QVMAG (1985) can be identified by collating the sepia uncut originals (1870s) with the original carte-de-visite prints inside oval buff mounts (1870s-1880s) held at the QVMAG, TMAG, and NLA, leaving a bundle who remain unidentified.







Black and white copies produced at the QVMAG in 1985 considerably cleaned of scratches and cracks of T. J. Nevin's original 1870 sepia prints.
Catalogued at the QVMAG as unknown or unidentified prisoners Tasmania 1870s
Originals by Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923)
QVMAG Collection Launceston Tasmania


Some of these prisoners' photographs from the 1870s were probably reprinted by photographer John Watt Beattie for display in his convictaria museum during the tourist boom of the 1910s-1920s. Beattie selected hundreds of the so-called "Port Arthur convicts" images in all formats to cater to contemporary fascinations with criminal typologies, phrenology and eugenics, including a selection exhibited at the Royal Hotel Sydney in association with the travelling exhibitions of convictaria on board the fake convict hulk Success. They were reproduced in several formats from Nevin's original glass negatives and albumen carte-de-visite prints, either as lantern slides from the original glass negatives, which were salvaged from the photographer's room above the laundry at the Hobart Gaol before it was demolished in 1915, or as mounted and unmounted paper prints removed originally from the prisoner's criminal record sheet such as these three examples in Searle's album. Beattie also reproduced copies of the hundreds of loose duplicates from Nevin's albumen cartes-de-visite in oval mounts 1870s, noted by a South Australian visitor to his museum in 1916. These originals by Nevin, taken while he was contracted to the colonial government (1872-1886) to photograph prisoners at the Hobart Gaol and Supreme Court, at the Port Arthur prison, and at the Mayor's Court and Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall, are those now extant at the National Library of Australia, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the State Library of NSW Mitchell Collection, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Prisoner William Lee
William Lee, transported on Neptune 1, was first photographed by Thomas Nevin on discharge from the Hobart Gaol on the 12th September, 1874. Lee was subsequently admitted to various pauper institutions and released on several occasions over a period of ten years. Nevin's cdv of William Lee printed in his usual oval mount is not extant in current collections. One reason may be that it was either lost or destroyed by the Lyons government in the 1930s, or that Nevin never printed one other than this copy. By 1874 William Lee was a pauper, very old, detained for idleness only, and housed at the Brickfields depot. Circulating copies to police stations of such men was not a police priority.



Tasmanian convict William Lee, 1874, photographed by Thomas J. Nevin 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.



Mirror flip of photograph of prisoner William Lee (in Searle Album, NLA Collection)

The convict's name is written along the right hand edge. Mirror flip the image, and the convict's name is legible: William Lee. The number "213" also becomes legible (bottom left on image), An attempt at identifying the owner of the handwriting would simply lead to fruitless speculation. Any number of individuals may have been involved in the use of the original negative once it was produced by the photographer, from Nevin and his studio assistant, eg. his brother Constable John Nevin at the Hobart Gaol, for example, to other officials in prison administration. The number "213" added in a different hand may be one of several numbers applied to Lee. These numbers, published in the Tasmanian police gazette as "No. of Authority" for admittance and discharge from Brickfields and other Invalid Depots, appear regularly against William Lee's discharge as a pauper. Those numbers, however, were not unique to an individual prisoner.

POLICE RECORDS for William Lee



William Lee per Neptune 1, aged 78 years, serving a sentence of 5 yrs, discharged on 1st October 1873 from the Hobart Gaol,



William Lee, pauper, discharged from Brickfields Depot, Hobart 12 September 1874



William Lee, pauper, discharged from the Brickfields Depot, 29 January 1875
Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1871-1875. James Barnard Government Printer.

Prisoner Charles Rosetta
Charles Rosetta's image was sourced from Hobart Gaol prison records by Searle and Beattie in similar circumstances. The blue form from which it was removed is clearly visible around the edges in our photo. T. J. Nevin took the original photograph on Rosetta's discharge from the Hobart Gaol, 6th December 1876.



Tasmanian convict Charles Rosetta, 1876, photographed by Thomas J. Nevin 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.

Comparison with this image, of convict Charles Rosetta held in the same Edward Searle Album 1911-1915 at the National Library of Australia shows a different number on the print -"186" from the copy of the carte-de-visite in an oval mount which is numbered "162″ held at the Archives Office of Tasmania. The recto number "162" is the one used by the QVMAG at Launceston when copies were distributed to the Archives Office in Hobart.



Identifier nla.pic-an23784263Bib idvn1797087
Call number(s) PIC PIC/7485/115 LOC Album 947 *
Searle album ca. 1911 -15 of convict Chas Rosetta, with the number "196" on image




Thomas Nevin's cdv of Charles Rosetta with the number "162" written on mount.
Webshot: Archives Office of Tasmania: PH30/1/3201. Date: 1874-1876

POLICE RECORDS for Charles Rosetta



Charles Rosetta was received from Port Arthur on 6th December 1876 and photographed by T.J. Nevin on discharge from the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall.





Verso of cdv of prisoner Charles Rosetta
Original taken by Thomas J. Nevin, MPO, 1876
QVMAG Ref: 1985.12.125

Charles Rosetta's image was reproduced from the NLA Collection as a photo taken by John Watt Beattie, erroneously, for the cover of Michael Bogle's book, 2008:



Photo copyright © KLW NFC 2009 ARR

Prisoner William Meagher
The photograph (below) of prisoner William Meagher was taken by Thomas J. Nevin on or before February 6th, 1874 when Meagher(s) was granted a ticket of leave (TOL) at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall. It is the third photograph of a prisoner pasted to a leaf in Searle's album, ca 1915, held at the National Library of Australia. As with the other two, of William Lee and Charles Rosetta, this prisoner's photograph was removed by Searle from the prisoner's blue record sheet, visible at the edges in our photograph. Meagher's photograph from Searle's Album is held at the National Library of Australia with the prisoner's surname misspelt - "Meaghen" -and photographer misattribution to Edward Searle (1915).



Tasmanian convict William Meagher, 1874, photographed by Thomas J. Nevin 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.



This image is a flipped version (to render the name visible) of the item held at the National Library of Australia, which is incorrectly catalogued with the name "Meaghen". The number on the print is "144".

William Meagher(s) was transported to NSW in 1838 on board the Bengal Merchant. Originally from Dublin, he was court martialed in Quebec, Lower Canada on 26 September 1836. In Paramatta, NSW, he was sentenced to 14 years for housebreaking on 10 December 1842 and transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on board the Sir J. Byng, arriving on 23 September 1843. He was married with two children. No date of birth appears on his arrival record, however, police records show he was 56 yrs old in 1871, so he was born ca. 1815, and was ca 59 years old in 1874 when Nevin photographed him. The NLA misattribution to Searle and the date of photographic capture catalogued as 1915 would mean that the prisoner William Meagher, born in 1815, had to be a 100 year old man; clearly, the prisoner was photographed in his fifties on the occasion of his TOL, in 1874.

Archives Office of Tasmania:
Record 2854
Meagher William



A duplicate of Thomas Nevin's cdv of William Meagher printed in his usual oval mount is held at the Port Arthur Historic Site. There would have been at least four produced by Nevin when Meagher was firstly granted a ticket of leave in February 1874 after serving a 14 year sentence, and secondly, when he was remanded and imprisoned for fraud at the Supreme Court, Hobart on Tuesday, 11th May, 1875, sentenced to 10 years at the Hobart Gaol.



William Meagher, guilty of fraud, 10yrs
Supreme Court Rough Calendar, 11th May 1875
TAHO Ref: GD70/1/1

POLICE RECORDS as William Meagher



William Meaghers absconded, notice of 24 November 1871



William Meaghers arrested, notice of 8 March, 1872.



TICKETS-OF-LEAVE.
THE Governor has been pleased to direct that the
under-mentioned person be enlarged on Ticket-of-
Leave :-
William Meaghers, per Sir J. Byng, from 6th instant.
Wm Meaghers' Ticket of Leave, notice of 6 February 1874, photographed by Nevin on release at the Police Office, Hobart Town Hall.



William Meagher was arraigned in the Supreme Court on 11th May 1875, and photographed again by Nevin on remand: the notice also appeared in the Tasmanian newspaper,The Mercury on 9th May 1875 detailing his crime, together with Job Smith's (aka Wm Campbell) crime and conviction of rape. Job Smith was executed.



Wm Meagher remanded
The Mercury 15 May 1875
In the same court William Meagher pleaded guilty to forging and uttering a cheque with intent to defraud .. remanded for sentence.
On sentencing for forgery at the Hobart Supreme Court, William Meagher was sent to the Port Arthur prison, 60 kms from Hobart, arriving there on 9th August 1875. His trade was listed as "Butler". He remained at Port Arthur until transferred back to the Hobart Gaol on 17th April, 1877 to serve the remainder of his 10 year sentence. His photograph taken by Nevin, printed in an oval mount, followed him to Port Arthur, but the half plate print from Nevin's negative which Searle pasted into his album was reproduced on his arrival back at the Hobart Gaol in 1877, the source of Searle's copy.



William Meagher's record 1875-1877 from the Port Arthur Conduct Registers
TAHO Records ref: CON94-1-2_00110_S

Edward Searle and John Watt Beattie
Edward Searle spent four years (1911-1915) working with John Watt Beattie fl. 1892-1927 at Beattie's studio and convictaria museum in Hobart. Beattie lectured extensively around Tasmania using lantern slides prepared from the work of earlier photographers. The dates of the original photographic captures of William Meagher, Charles Rosetta and William Lee are missing from this album leaf in Searle's album, as is the attribution to the original photographer Thomas J. Nevin. Another example of an unmounted prison photograph by Nevin, that of Bewley Tuck, is held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. See this entry here on convict Bewley Tuck.



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

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