Thomas J. Nevin | Tasmanian Photographer

Prisoner Charles DOWNES 1872-1875

Prisoner Charles DOWNES, photograph by T. J. NEVIN, 1870s
Original prints and cdvs of 1870s Tasmanian mugshots in QVMAG, NLA & AOT COLLECTIONS

ORIGINAL PRINT FROM GLASS NEGATIVE (QVMAG)
This print was produced by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin from his glass negative taken in the one sitting with Charles Downes ca. 1872 at the Hobart Gaol. Scratches, cracks and grime are visible on this print from handling of the negative when reprints were made for prison and court records between 1872 and 1875.

Prisoner Charles Downes
Original print by T.J. Nevin 1872-1875
Displayed on one of three panels for exhibition and sale by Beattie & Searle, 1916
Downes' print is second row, second from right.

Forty prints of 1870s Tasmania prisoners in three panels
Original prints of negatives by T. J. Nevin 1870s
Displayed by J. W. Beattie for sale, catalogued in 1916
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176

CDV in OVAL MOUNT (QVMAG)
In 1985 at the QVMAG, for reasons best known to them alone, these forty sepia prints were reprinted as black and white copies with scratches and grime removed (fogged out).

Prisoner Charles Downes, mugshot printed as a black and white copy made in 1985 from T. J. Nevin's original uncut sepia print. QVMAG ref: 1985_p_0161downes1

Black and white reprint of Nevin's negative cleaned of cracks etc created at the QVMAG in the 1980s and printed as a cdv in an oval mount. (QVMAG ref: 1985:P:92). The sepia cdv's in oval mounts held at both the QVMAG and the NLA are the original 1870s prints used by the 19th century prison administration.

CDV in OVAL MOUNT (NLA )

NLA Catalogue online 2005
Title Charles Dawnes [sic] per Rodney 2, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture]
Creator: Nevin, Thomas
Ref: PIC P1029/6 LOC Album 935
NB: Incorrect information on the NLA notes; surname was DOWNES

Charles Downes was photographed by T. J. Nevin between incarceration at the Hobart Gaol in 1872 and reprieve from a death sentence in May 1875. See this article: Carnal Knowledge of Children: convictions 1860s-1880s

ARCHIVES OFFICE of TASMANIA copy
A copy of the QVMAG mounted cdv print is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania, bearing the same number, 44 on front. The QVMAG copy was numbered 44 because it was one of about seventy (70) cdvs of prisoners photographed by Nevin which were removed from the Launceston collection in 1983 for exhibition at the Port Arthur Heritage Site south of Hobart. The National Library of Australia's copy has no number on recto: it was donated in the 1960s from government estrays by Dr Neil Gunson:

NEWSPAPER REPORT

LAW INTELLIGENCE. (1872, February 16). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 2.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8916981

TRANSCRIPT

Charles Downes was found guilty on a charge of feloniously assaulting Dorothy Smith, aged 9 years, in Stacey’s revolving circus in the Queen’s Domain, and remanded for sentence.

POLICE RECORDS

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

Charles Downes' death sentence recorded in the Supreme Court Hobart on 13th February, 1872, was remitted to life imprisonment in May 1875.

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Prisoners Michael GILMORE and James KILPATRICK at the NLA

Michael Gilmore was a career criminal, or so it seems His convictions included burglary, larceny, indecency, idle and disorderly, feloniously wounding etc. He was in and out of prison on a regular basis from 1869. In October 1874 Thomas Nevin photographed him at the Hobart Gaol. These records include his convictions and discharges from 1874 to 1885. His aliases were Terence or Michael Moore.

Prisoner Michael Gilmore
Photographed by Thomas J. Nevin on 15 October 1874 at the Hobart Gaol.
Photos taken at the NLA, 16th December 2016
Copyright © KLW NFC 2016 ARR

Versos: Prisoner Michael Gilmore
Photographed by Thomas J. Nevin on 15 October 1874 at the Hobart Gaol.
Photos taken at the NLA 16th December 2016
Copyright © KLW NFC 2016 ARR

NLA Catalogue (incorrect information)
nla.pic-vn4269935 PIC P1029/17a LOC Album 935 Micheal Gilmore, per Prince Regent, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture] 1874. 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm. on mount 10.5 x 6.3 cm.

POLICE RECORDS

Michael Gilmore absconded 9 October 1874

Michael Gilmore alias Terence Moore was arrested and photographed by Thomas J. Nevin on 15 October 1874 at the Hobart Gaol.

Gilmore discharged 4 June 1879

Gilmore discharged 12 November 1879

Gilmore discharged 28 May 1880

Gilmore arraigned 17 June 1880

Gilmore discharged 17 December 1884

Gilmore discharged 9 July 1885

Gilmore discharged 9 December 1885

The other Micheal [sic] Gilmore; photograph of James Kilpatrick
A second carte is held at the NLA of a different man, with the name spelled as Micheal Gilmore. Thomas Nevin photographed two men whom the transcriber - probably Beattie in 1915 - later named Michael or Micheal Gilmore, but Nevin would have known the identity of this man. The transcriber/copysist ca. 1915 was trying to match the physical description of a man with a bald(ish) head - "crown of head bald" - from the police gazette notices to loose mugshots removed from their criminal record sheets, and came up with two choices. This man was possibly James Kilpatrick, photographed by Thomas J. Nevin between imprisonment at the Hobart Gaol in October 1874 and discharge from the Hobart Town Gaol in the week of 30 August, 1876.

NB: This is more likely to be James Kilpatrick

NLA Catalogue (incorrect information).
nla.pic-vn4269951
Micheal Gilmore, per Prince Regent, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [2] [picture]
1874. 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm. on mount 10.5 x 6.3 cm.

"Kilpatrick is at present in H.M. Gaol at Hobart Town undergoing sentences, two years and five months of which are unexpired."

Thomas Nevin photographed James Kilpatrick in late October 1874 soon after arrest at the Hobart Gaol.This warrant was issued on 26 March 1875 while he was currently serving sentences for other offences.

James Kilpatrick, photographed by Nevin at the Hobart Gaol again on discharge from Hobart Gaol, 26 August, 1876. Kilpatrick was convicted again on 17 October 1876.

Addenda and Update
The information about Gilmore's criminal activities from the police gazettes, called Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police, James Barnard, Gov't Printer, is easily obtainable, so why was nothing but basic transportation records about this prisoner, Michael Gilmore (and the second man with a similar name) included in the National Library of Australia's publication of their Tasmanian "convict portraits", titled Exiled, The Port Arthur Convict Photographs (NLA 2011)?

Above: The two convicts called Gilmore, printed here on page 206 of Exiled (2011). Basic information from the transportation records, nothing more, just the photographs.
Below: frontispiece, with the misleading sub-title.
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2012 ARR

The reason is simply this: the NLA rushed into print with this book to regain copyright of their collection of "Port Arthur convicts" which currently numbers 84 photographs, seemingly under threat of a digital audience using weblogs such as this one. Sadly, the authors of Exiled had no interest or expertise in examining the PHOTOGRAPHS themselves as artefacts, despite the sub-title of the book. Furthermore, their attribution to Thomas J. Nevin as the photographer was compromised - not surprisingly - with Port Arthur tourism propaganda and fallacies about the non-photographer A.H. Boyd by the author's historical advisor, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, as required by the masters who feather his nest with hefty grants and gullible students who otherwise might fail. Tropes and whole chunks of text were plagiarised by Barnard and Stewart from these weblogs, and whatever information we chose not to display online, those gaps also appear as lacunae in the publication Exiled, yet no request for permission was received to liberally use our weblogs for their commercial purpose. The evidence is indicative here, for example, regarding this prisoner Gilmore. The information about Michael Gilmore which we had not published to accompany his photograph by 2011- but publish now in 2014 - is also missing from Exiled (see page 206 above). With all that government assistance entails, in terms of NLA staff, hours, funding, and glossy publishing, plus free research assistance provided by Maxwell-Stewart's students at the University of Tasmania, one could reasonably expect a better product and better practice from the National Library of Australia. Instead, they have politicised this particular collection of "convict portraits", and defamed those who question their ethics.

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IN HIS OWN WORDS...

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

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

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

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

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

Click here for KEY DATES 1842-1923

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Important Notices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Anthony Trollope at Port Arthur

Thomas Nevin's VIP commission 1872

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

Source: The Mercury 2 February 1872