Henry Singleton aka Harry the Tinker who pinches books

April 19, 2014, 8:53 pm

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Who was Henry Singleton aka Richard Pinches aka Harry the Tinker aka Henry Salterton, really? And who was his companion Elizabeth Wilder aka Mrs Poole or Singleton aka Elizabeth Singleton - his mistress, his wife or his daughter? And how old was he when Thomas Nevin photographed him twice in the 1870s?

The Photographs
According to the Tasmanian police gazette of 23 March, 1871, Henry Singleton absconded from the prison at Port Arthur, 23 March 1871, with two transport ships to his two names - as Henry Singleton per Lord Wm Bentinck, and as his alias Richard Pinches, per Lady Kennaway 2, also known with the moniker Harry the Tinker.

Thomas Nevin photographed this prisoner at least twice, in 1873 and again in 1875. The questions posed by these two photographs centre on this man's age and name at the time of transportation, his name and age when photographed in the 1870s, and his and his female companion's literary tastes which warranted documentation when the police arrested him in a cave in May 1873 at Oatlands, Tasmania.

On Left:
NLA Catalogue notes
nla.pic-vn4270249 PIC P1029/42 LOC Album 935 Henry Singleton, alias Richard Pincers, per Ld. [Lord] Wm. [William] Bentinck, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture] 1874. 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm., on mount 10.4 x 6.4 cm. Gunson Collection file 203/7/54.
Title from inscription on reverse.
Inscription: "319"--On reverse

On the left, a copy or duplicate from Nevin's negative and cdv of a prisoner, held at the National Library of Australia, called Henry Singleton, alias Richard Pincers, per Ld. [Lord] Wm. [William] Bentinck, with verso transcriptions almost identical to the information on the verso of the different photograph on the right of the same man. On the right, another photograph of Henry Singleton, one of several of him held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, with the same information about the same ship and the same name, which might be a phonetic spelling of the name "Pinches" , i.e. "Pincers" with the added date of "1838" and notes about additional photographs. This archivist recorded three copies extant at the time of the transcription: No's: 318, 319, & 320". Photograph No. 319 was the NLA photograph, so the QVMAG photograph must be the last photograph, No. 320. Where is "318" and were there more photographs of this prisoner taken over the course of Singleton's long criminal career?

More important still is the question about the source of the information written on the versos of these photographs, since no transported convict by the name of Henry Singleton or Pincers appears on the arrival lists of the ship Lord William Bentinck, 1832 or 1838, the only two possible dates. If indeed this prisoner of the 1870s called Henry Singleton arrived in 1838, and the police in 1869 recorded his age as 35 yrs old, he would have been born in 1834, and only 4 yrs old when he arrived in VDL, not as a convict but as the child of a guard perhaps. The fact that the National Library's copy bears the same information as the copy at the QVMAG suggests strongly that the QVMAG was the source of the NLA's copy of this photograph (and many others), and that the written transcription on the versos was added from just the one 1871 police gazette notice by an archivist at the QVMAG back in the years of their accession of these records from Beattie ca. 1916 and Beattie's collection in 1930. .

Verso of No. 155
No's: 318, 319, & 320".
QVMAG Ref: QM: 1985: P: 77.

The Archives Office of Tasmania holds a copy of the QVMAG photograph but recorded Singleton with the alias of "Pinches" and the ship on which he arrived as the Lady Kennaway 2, not the Ld. [Lord] Wm. [William] Bentinck.

Caption: "Henry Singleton (alias Richard Pinches) convict, transported per Lady Kennaway. Photograph taken at Port Arthur by Thomas Nevin."
Archives Office of Tasmania (TAHO):
Ref: PH30/1/3248.

There are no transportation records for a convict called Henry Singleton transported later than 1842. Who was copying what from where? The NLA and the QVMAG both document Singleton aka Pincers arriving on the Lord Wm Bentinck (1838), and the source of that inscription is probably from the police gazette of 1871 (see below), but the AOT and the Police gazettes both document Singleton aka Richard Pinches arriving on the Lady Kennaway 2 (1851). That too is unlikely, since the man described as Richard Pinches on the Lady Kennaway 2 transportation records does not describe the younger man in these two photographs.

It is likely that the prisoner in these two photographs was neither Henry Singleton per Lady Kennaway 2 nor his alias Richard Pinches per Lord William Bentinck. The prisoner in these photographs may be Robert Bew, per Mayda , 1846, off Norfolk Island, or indeed the only recorded Henry Singleton to arrive as a transported convict - Henry Singleton, per Surry 4, aged 18, arrived 1842. Robert Bew was photographed by Nevin on 19 July 1873 when discharged with a TOL but no extant photograph carries his name and he was arrested and convicted with the Henry Singleton documented with the Richard Pinches alias in March 1870 (see police record below).The original convict transportation records for the name Pinches compound the confusion today (see more below); the police at the time were doubly confused by Henry Singleton's youthful appearance.

Singleton's Police Records 1869-1883

Henry Singleton aka Harry the Tinker, Index, police gazette called Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1869. The following records are all sourced from these police gazettes which were published weekly.

1869

Warrant for Henry Singleton 19 November 1869 with alias of Harry the Tinker, for stealing flour. The following description accompanied the warrant.

Description of Henry Singleton, 19 November 1869 -"35 years old, appears younger", 5 feet 6 inches, a tin-plate worker, hence the moniker "Tinker".

Henry Singleton was arrested three weeks later at Oatlands, 3 December 1869. Beneath this notice, a transgendered person was arrested the same week- William McCafferty, alias Annie Lowrie Scotty.

Tradesmen by inclination and intent, Henry Singleton and an accomplice called Robert Bew (or Berr) were committed for trial on 24 December 1869 for theft of carpenter's tools.

1870

Robert Bew per Mayda and Henry Singleton alias Richard Pinches per Ly Kennaway 2 were convicted in the Supreme Court Hobart on 4 March 1870, sentenced to four and five years respectively for the offence of breaking and entering within curtilage, i.e. within the boundary of a private property. They were sent to the Port Arthur prison where one year later, Henry Singleton absconded and headed towards Oatlands. This is the first mention in the police records of the ship and the alias, Richard Pinches per Lady Kennaway 2

1871

Henry Singleton absconded from Port Arthur, 23 March 1871, with two transport ships to his two names - as Henry Singleton per Lord Wm Bentinck, and as alias Richard Pinches, per Lady Kennaway 2, known with the moniker Harry the Tinker.

1873: The Library in the Cave

Henry Singleton was arrested 30 May 1873. The police discovered quite a cache in his hideout , a cave in Oatlands, including -

TRANSCRIPT

The following is a list of articles found in a cave in the Municipality of Oatlands, recently occupied by Henry Singleton, alias Harry the Tinker (vide Crime Report, 1871, page 41), and a woman named Elizabeth Wilder, recently arrested by the Oatlands Municipal Police: - 7 vols Sir Walter Scott's novels, paper covers; 1 vol. East Lynne; 1 small vice and other small tools (carpenter's), since identified by Mr John Page, of Lemon Springs; 1 book on Electricity; 1 ditto Philosophy of Common Things; 1 vol. Popular Educator; 1 Church Lesson Book, bound in green velvet, brass edges, "Ohio Brown" written in the cover; 1 single-barreled gun, a crack in the stock where screw fastens lock; 1 small telescope, red barrel; 1 tomahawk; 3 small hammers; several files; 1 rasp; 2 dark lanterns; 8 dies; 2 tin billies; a quantity of note paper and envelopes; a revolver case; 1 bullet mould; 1 nipple-screw; a quantity of bullets; 1 blow-pipe; a quantity of flour; 23 door and drawer keys on steel ring; 14 small keys on a string; 15 ditto; 30 skeleton keys and door keys, some of them broken; 1 frying-pan; 1 pack of cards; 1 black wide-a-wake hat; 1 new Scotch twill shirt; 1 old dark moleskin trousers; 1 pair woman's stays, new; sugar, tea, caraway seeds &. The above articles with the exception of those claimed by Mr Page, are at Police Office, Oatlands, awaiting identification.

Henry Singleton's impressive stash of loot was discovered in a cave at Oatlands after his arrest, reported on 6 June 1873. He was held at the Oatlands Gaol in the Men -on-Routes room until taken on Page's coach to the Hobart Gaol. He was photographed soon after arrival by Thomas J. Nevin, the photograph (above, left) now held at the National Library of Australia. He may have been sent to the Port Arthur prison again in 1873 but his name IS NOT on the lists of those 109 men who were sent there from the Hobart Gaol, and then relocated back to the Hobart Gaol by July 1873 at the request of the Parliament.

Title: [Oatlands Gaol]
Publisher: [Tasmania : s.n., 18--?]
Description: 1 photographic print on card : sepia toned ; 197 x 340 mm
Format: Photograph
ADRI: AUTAS001131821738
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

Men -on-Routes room
Title: Plan - Oatlands - Plan and elevation of intended alterations in the 'Men-on-Routes' room at the Oatlands New Gaol
Description: 1 photographic print
Format: Photograph
ADRI: CSO1-1-937
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania

1875

Henry Singleton was discharged with a ticket of leave from Hobart on 21 July 1875. The police continue to document his ship as the Ly Kennaway 2.

Henry Singleton's discharge was reported again on 23 July 1875. When he was discharged with a Ticket of Leave from Hobart per this notice of 23 Juy 1875, his name was listed twice: the Port Arthur information listed his sentence as 10 years, i.e. dating from his Supreme Court conviction of 1 March 1870, but omits any physical description; he second entry lists his sentence as 5yrs, giving a physical description, and his age - 60 yrs old. If he was 35 yrs old in in November 1869, by July 1875, he would have been about 50 yrs old, not 60 yrs old. The second photograph of Singleton, held at the QVMAG, was taken by Nevin at the Hobart Municipal Police Office in July 1875 on the TOL discharge.

1883

Henry Singleton was discharged 23 May 1883, sentenced to three months in February 1883 for larceny. Here his age is listed 68 yrs old in 1883, but if he was 35 yrs old in 1869, he would have been 58 yrs old, not 68 yrs old. Was he Singleton or was he Pinches? The age discrepancy points not to aliases, but two entirely different men.

Warrant for the arrest of Henry Singleton 5 September 1883

Warrant for Henry Singleton on suspicion of stealing 20 yards of Crimean shirting etc, 28 September 1883

Henry Singleton and a woman called Mrs Singleton or Poole, accused of stealing a green skirt etc, was also arrested on 26 October 1883.

Henry Singleton, alias Richard Pinches, still documented with the ship the Lady Kennaway 2, now aged 71 years - and now with a new alias - "Henry Salterton" - was arraigned in the Supreme Court Launceston on 7 November 1883 with a 14 year sentence, along with Elizabeth Singleton, aged 27, a native or local, who was arrested on a count of burglary and disposed of with a Proclamation. But if he was 35 yrs old in 1869, and looked even younger to police in that year (!), by November 1883, he would have been 68 yrs old, not 71 yrs old. And if he was transported to Norfolk Island in 1851 as Pinches on the Lady Kellaway 2, aged 32 yrs, he would be 64 yrs old, not 71 yrs old, (1851-32 = born ca.1819) by 1883. And if indeed he was transported at all, and in 1869 he was 35 yrs old, in 1851 he would have been born in 1834, transported as a child if transported at all. None of these recorded ages are consistent with the names associated, and none concord with the looks of the prisoner in Nevin's mugshots taken in the 1870s.

And so on ... more offences appear in the police gazettes for both names - Singleton and Pinches - throughout this decade.

On left, the NLA image (1873), flipped and color-corrected to compare with the QVMAG image (1875) on right. The prisoner looks a little older by 1875, but he does not look like a man who was supposedly born in 1819 and transported in 1851 to Norfolk Island, aged 32 yrs. He was described by the police gazettes as "35 years old, appears younger" in 1869, so in 1873, per police records, he would have been 39 yrs old, and by 1875, he would have been 41 yrs old. These look like correct ages for the man photographed, so why was he associated with the following transportation records?

TRANSPORTATION RECORDS
A man named Richard Pinches from Birmingham (UK), a glazier and plumber, was tried at the Oxford Q.S. in 1844. He was 32 years old when he arrived on Norfolk Island on 4th July 1851. He was then sent to Hobart (Port Arthur) as a convict on board the Lady Kennaway 2,on 29 September 1852 per these records:

Richard Pinches per Lady Kennaway 2, 1851

TAHO Ref: CON14-1-42_00322_L; CON14-1-42_00322_L

TAHO Ref: CON33-1-102_00185_L
Convict Details
Pinches, Richard
Convict No: 56424
Extra Identifier:
SEE Surname:
SEE Given Names:
Voyage Ship: Lady Kennaway (2)
Voyage No: 337
Arrival Date: 28 May 1851
Departure Date: 05 Feb 1851
Departure Port: Portsmouth
Conduct Record: CON33/1/102, CON37/1/ p5138
Muster Roll:
Appropriation List:
Other Records:
Indent: CON14/1/42
Description List: CON18/1/52
Remarks: Reconvicted as Henry Singleton

Robert Bew per Mayda, 1842

TAHO Ref: CON33-1-79_00018_L

Henry Singleton per Surrey 4, 1842

TAHO Ref: CON33-1-27_00216_L

Henry Pinches per Candahar, 1842

MISSING FRIENDS
Information is requested respecting Henry Pinches, per ship Candahar, whether living or dead; if the latter, the date and place of death. Communicate with this Office.

Someone was looking for a man by the name of Henry Pinches, per this missing friends notice published in the police gazette of 19 September 1879. Henry Pinches, aged 25 years old, was illiterate and under five feet tall when he was transported on the Candahar in 1842, per this record which shows he was discharged from the Police Office Hobart Town Hall in August 1874 where he would have been photographed on discharge by Thomas Nevin, so where is his photograph? If he was born ca. 1817 (1842-1825=1817) he would have been 57 yrs old (1874-1817=57).

TAHO Ref: CON33-1-23_00168_L

Why the Infamy?
The Tasmanian tourist destination, the Port Arthur Historic Site (PAHS) (accessed April 2014) on the Tasman Peninsula, makes a great deal of this prisoner for visitors, casting him as a bad character -

... constantly in trouble for refusing to work, being dirty and disobedient, talking and having money improperly in his possession, insubordination and using threatening language. He received many short sentences of hard labour or solitary confinement. Sent to Port Arthur in 1853, he continued to refuse to work, and to be disobedient and insolent, and received more spells in solitary for his pains.

Webshot on Singleton file

The PAHS insisted (up to April 2014) he be called Richard Pinches and not Henry Singleton, despite all the police records over decades stating clearly that the name Richard Pinches, per Ly Kennaway 2, was an alias, and despite these transportation records for Richard Pinches showing no correlation to the youngish prisoner called Henry Singleton whom Nevin photographed in the 1870s.

This is the information greeting visitors to their website up to April 2014 until their update and after viewing our post here with a thousand clicks:

PAHS publication: People of Port Arthur
http://www.portarthur.org.au/pdfs/People%20of%20the%20Port%20Arthur%20convict%20era.pdf

Richard Pinches a.k.a Henry Singleton was
a 27 year old plumber and glazier when he
was transported. He was a single Roman
Catholic from Birmingham who could read
and write.
Pinches had made a habit out of minor crime; he had four previous convictions
for stealing and housebreaking and had served short sentences. Finally the court
decided that it had seen enough of him, and he was transported for 14 years for
stealing linen. He arrived in mid 1851.
He was fi rst sent to Norfolk Island and in a year he served nine and a half months
hard labour in chains for being disobedient, dirty, disorderly and having money
improperly in his possession.
Transferred to Port Arthur in early 1853, Pinches continued his campaign of
disobedience, earning himself more time in solitary and hard labour in chains. In May
1854 he gained a pass but it seemed that he still had not developed a taste for work;
three months later he absconded from his master. He was caught after some weeks
and returned to Port Arthur for 18 months hard labour. This was not to his liking and
two months later he bolted; he was recaptured and after serving 12 months he was
again assigned to a master.
This time Pinches completed his sentence without incident. His next appearance
was in Oatlands Goal under a new name, Henry Singleton, but he was still up to his
old tricks. He was sentenced to four years at Port Arthur for stealing fi ve pigs. There
he got another three months hard labour for being drunk. In early 1864 Richard
gained his freedom but only seven months later he was back in goal in Hobart,
charged with bigamy. Marriage records cannot even verify that he was married once.
He was acquitted, so the charge against him may have been fabricated.
RICHARD
PINCHES
RICHARD PINCHES
10
15
He kept out of trouble until 1870, when he was returned to Port Arthur for fi ve years
for breaking and entering an outbuilding and stealing. He must have misbehaved
at Port Arthur because four years later he was in the Separate Prison, although his
offence was not recorded. Then he received another three years with hard labour,
including a year in the Separate Prison, for attempting to escape.
In July 1875 and again in 1879 he was in the Prisoners’ Barracks, but we do
not know why. 1883 was a bad year for Richard. He was arrested twice, once in
February when he was sentenced to three months hard labour for larceny and then
in November he received 14 years for burglary. We have no further records
for Richard.
He was then 65 years old and had spent almost half his life in the convict system.

The information used by the Port Arthur site was most likely sourced from Thomas Keneally's book, Australians from Eureka to the Diggers (2011, Allen & Unwin), page 2, (or vice versa) though no sources are cited.

This is the PAHS update (accessed 6 October 2014) which denies ever having insisted on the name Pinches instead of Singleton:

But the PAHS still insists on captioning the QVMAG copy of Nevin's photograph of Singleton with the A. H. Boyd misattribution on their fact sheet. Attributed by whom? Again, no source, no concession to the simple fact that not one photograph of a prisoner or landscape or anything else purported to be taken by the Commandant A. H. Boyd has ever existed except in the febrile minds of vested interests at the Port Arthur historic Site:

[sic] "Henry Singleton circa 1873-4, photograph attributed to Boyd
Reproduced courtesy of Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery"

Relatively speaking, compared with the murderers, child rapists, and the thousands of blood-thirsty felons who populated the prisons of Tasmania in Singleton's time, he was neither especially dangerous to people's physical safety, nor ignorant or malicious. The loot found in his cave hideout at Oatlands in 1873 gives a very clear idea of what aspirations he held, despite his circumstances. He was a tradesmen who stole tools in the hope of building himself and his female companion Elizabeth a house; he was literate with educated tastes who stole novels to read for their amusement, and religious volumes for their enlightenment, and above all, he cared and shared all this with a young woman called Elizabeth, probably his daughter, whom police disposed of with a Proclamation in 1883 rather than imprison. Why the infamy?

One of the books found in Henry Singleton's possession ...

Mrs. Henry Wood, 1814-1887
East Lynne, or, The Earl's Daughter.
Richmond: West & Johnston, 1864.

Print by Alfred Winter
Title: Photograph - View of the township of Oatlands, shown in picture are the sails on Callington Mill
Description: 1 photographic print
Format: Photograph
ADRI: PH30-1-2969
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania

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Thomas Nevin's Christmas feat 1874

December 25, 2014, 3:51 pm

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A Photographic Feat
On Christmas Day, 25th December 1874, The Mercury newspaper (Tasmania) published a notice which served the dual purpose of praising Thomas Nevin's photographic talents and suggesting by way of praise that the "literary curiosity" would make a great gift as a Christmas card:

Thos Nevin photographic feat Mercury 24 Dec 1874

T. J. Nevin's photographic feat, The Mercury 25 December 1874

TRANSCRIPT

A PHOTOGRAPHIC FEAT. - Mr T. J. Nevin, of Elizabeth-street, has performed a feat in photography which may be justly regarded as a literary curiosity. He has succeeded in legibly producing the front page of The Mercury of Wednesday, the 23 inst., on a card three inches by two inches. Many of the advertisements could be read without the aid of a glass, and the seven columns admit of a margin all round the card.

Below is a microfiche scan of the front page of The Mercury, Wednesday 23rd December 1874. It is a poor reproduction despite our 21st century technology, yet Nevin managed to photograph the full broadsheet onto a 3 x 2 inch card without sacrificing margins or legibility.

Scan of front page The Mercury 23rd December 1874
See the full page PDF:Nevin front page Mercury 23 December 1874

Five of the seven columns on the front page carried advertisements for sales and special offers by retailers for goods as diverse as Christmas cards, cakes, imported confectionery, Japanese silks, chaise carts, guns and "real turtle soup" made from "one of the finest and largest turtles ever imported into Tasmania" and only available at Webb's Hotel.

This card and its duplicates may not have survived or even appear to be extant in public collections for several reasons: it would have been displayed in the windows of the Mercury newspaper offices, as well as in Nevin's studio window, and as a result may have deteriorated to a state not fit to be assessed as either valuable or collectable by the narrowly-defined aesthetic standards of museums. It most certainly carried verso Nevin's government stamp current by 1874, the only one of his stamps bearing his full initials - "T. J. Nevin" above the Royal Arms government insignia - since the journalist in his report has used the name with these initials which appear only on his Royal Arms stamp. Nevin used this stamp for commissions from the Lands and Works Department to photograph mining sites (TMAG collection), and from the Municipal Police Office (HCC) to photograph prisoners at the Port Arthur and Hobart Gaols (QVMAG, NLA and SLNSW collections). Duplicates of these same photographs were NOT stamped verso, which has caused attribution issues in recent times amongst librarians and museum workers etc who may only see one of Nevin's unstamped duplicates rather than the stamped original of the same photograph carrying his official or government stamp. It was the original which was used to register copyright for a whole batch or series taken in a single year and on commission, the usual photographic practice by governments, courts and councils in the 1860s and 1870s Tasmania. By 1876 when Nevin was a full-time civil servant with the HCC, his originals of prisoners' mugshots were unstamped because they were pasted directly onto the prisoner's criminal record sheet and owned exclusively, then as police mugshots are now, by the government, a cost defrayed by Treasury as disbursement from stationery expenses.

Children's Portraits December 1874
Among his friends at the HCC were Thomas Nevin's family solicitor, the Hon William Robert Giblin MHA, later Premier, and various serving officers such as William Thomas McVilly who was a constable and later clerk for the Lands and Works Department within the Hobart City Corporation, and Clerk of Papers of the Legislative Council by 1883. Nevin photographed two of William McVilly's children, Laura and Richard, on the 18th December, 1874 (per date on verso). Both photographs were hand-tinted, and in Laura's portrait, she is depicted holding a sprig of Christmas holly. The versos of these two photographs of Laura and Richard bear Nevin's Royal Arms studio stamp used primarily to indicate photographs taken on commission for members and employees of the HCC and Municipal Police Office at the Hobart Town Hall.

Laura Blanche McVilly (1870-1931)

Date: 18 Dec 1874
By: Nevin, Thomas J, 1842-1923
National Library of New Zealand Ref: PA2-1198
Inscriptions: Inscribed - Verso - Laura Blanche McVilly, aged 4 years 18 December 1874.
Nevin, Thomas J, 1842-1923. Nevin, T J (Hobart) fl 1867-1875
Portrait of Laura Blanche McVilly. McVilly, Richard William, 1862?-1949 :
Photograph albums and a group portrait.
Ref: PA2-1198. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22801544

Richard William -"Dick" McVilly (1861-1949 New Zealand)

Date: 1867-1875 By: Nevin, Thomas J, 1842-1923
National Library of New Zealand Ref: PA2-1196
Inscriptions: Inscribed - Verso - In ink : Jn Dick.
Nevin, Thomas J, 1842-1923. Nevin, T J (Hobart) fl 1867-1875 :
Portrait of Jn Dick. McVilly, Richard William, 1862?-1949 :
Photograph albums and a group portrait. Ref: PA2-1196.
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22906805

The girl on the left is Laura Blanche McVilly (1870-1931). When her father registered her birth of 18th December 1870 in the district of Campbell Town Tasmania, his occupation was listed as Constable. Ref: TAHO http://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD33-1-49p291j2k

The boy in the middle is Richard William -"Dick" McVilly (1861-1949 - New Zealand). When his father registered his birth of 12th April 1861 in the district of Brighton Tasmania, his occupation was listed as Watch House Keeper. Ref: TAHO http://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD33-1-39p124j2k

The toddler on the right is unidentified and although noted as a girl, she might well be a boy, eg. their brother Albert Francis McVilly, born 1873. Male toddlers were commonly dressed in frocks. The toddler's carte bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp, and may have been taken in 1875. When his (assuming this is a boy) father registered his birth of 23 July 1873 at Campbell Town Tasmania, his occupation was listed as clerk, information sent by letter to the registry. Ref: TAHO http://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD33-1-51p775j2k

These three children were born in Tasmania to parents William Thomas McVilly (1841-1914) and Sarah Francis (1839-?) who married on 20 December 1859, when she was 20 yrs old, and he was a 22yr old clerk. The three photographs appear in a photo album which belonged to the boy (centre), Richard William "Dick" McVilly, and is now held at the National Library of New Zealand, Wellington. Richard "Dick" McVilly spent a few years working on the Tasmanian Railway before settling in New Zealand where he became General Manager Of Railways NZ in 1919 (Otago Daily Times of February 10, 1919).

Nevin's studio stamp with the Royal Arms insignia was also printed on the verso of this carte-de-visite vignette of a child (held in the Lucy Batchelor Collection). Nevin or his studio assistants, possibly in this instance his wife Elizabeth, hand-painted the green and red motif of Christmas holly over some object held by the child. A similar bouquet is held by Laura McVilly in Nevin's portrait of her dated 18th December 1874. The same sprig of holly motif appears on other extant cartes by Nevin, positioned in the hands of a teenage girl in one carte bearing the hand-written inscription verso "Clifford & Nevin, Hobart Town", (Harrisson Collection), and in another, on the lapel of a young sailor (TMAG; SLTas). The carte of this (unknown) toddler would have been included in Nevin's stock of Christmas cards for 1874, on sale at 140 Elizabeth Street along with the miniature reproduction of The Mercury's front page.

Detail:Nevin photo of baby Lucy Batchelor Collection

Detail of the holly motif

Nevin photo of baby Lucy Batchelor Collection

Photograph of baby with Christmas holly
and its verso by T. J. Nevin, Christmas 1874
Scans courtesy of Robyn and Peter Bishop
Copyright © The Lucy Batchelor Collection 2009 Arr.

This photograph of a teenager holding a hand-tinted Christmas sprig of holly was inscribed verso in Samuel Clifford's handwriting, "Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town." It is one of several in private and public collections bearing this inscription, and may have been taken on Sam Clifford's and Thomas Nevin's travels in 1874, reported at length in the Mercury on their stop-over at Bothwell.

Scans courtesy of © The Private Collection of C. G. Harrisson 2006. ARR.

More photographic feats ...
The technology to reduce large layouts to the size of a carte-de-visite was used by the photographer of this card for the Bunster and Young families, which includes fifty of their individual portraits (undated and unattributed). Similar but larger composites were produced of the Aldermen and Mayor of the Hobart City Council to hang on the walls on the Hobart Town Hall where Nevin was Office and Hall Keeper between 1876-1880. Two decades later, in 1899, John Watt Beattie would produce a very big photographic reproduction of 259 portraits of the members of the Tasmanian Parliament from 1859-1895 in a single photograph, mostly using photographs taken by earlier photographers, minus their attribution.

Title: Photograph - various portrait of men (unidentified)
Description: 1 photographic print
Format: Photograph
ADRI: NS3210-1-27
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Photographs of the Bunster and Young Families, 1850 - 1919 (NS3210)

In 1879, Tasmanian photographer Charles A. Woolley produced photographic copies of the London Times of 3 October, 1798, noted by the author of this letter to the Mercury, J. E. Calder (the Sergeant-at-Arms in 1876), as two and a half times less the size of the Mercury - 1806 square inches versus 753½ for the London Times. The historical subject of these pages was Nelson's account of the battle of the Nile. Calder remarked that with the aid of a magnifying glass, the print on Mr. Wooley's [sic] photograph was "beautifully distinct".

The London Times 1798 and Charles Wooley [sic]
The Mercury, 8th January 1879.

The Commercial Xmas Card 1880s

http://eprints.utas.edu.au/6693/
Walker, James Backhouse (the collector, not the photographer)
Photograph of track and rocky outcrop, Mount Wellington? Tasmania.
University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection, Australia.

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The concertina player 1860s

December 28, 2014, 12:09 am

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

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

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

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

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

This stereograph of another group picnicking in the bush, also featuring a musical instrument, a banjo, is attributed to Nevin's partner Samuel Clifford:

nla.pic-vn5057636
Clifford, Samuel, 1827-1890.
A bush picnic with a banjo player, Tasmania, ca. 1860 [picture]
186-? 1 photograph : stereograph, albumen ; 7.2 x 15.5 cm on mount 8.3 x 17.2 cm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Musicians and the Music
Nineteen people excluding the photographer are present in this image; twelve women and seven men, including two teenage boys and an elderly man. The women range from early 20s to middle age. However, it is the concertina player slightly right of centre who draws the eye. She is a young, attractive woman with bushy hair, seated next to the group of men. She may have been Mrs George Case who sang to the accompaniment of her husband playing the concertina while touring Tasmania in concerts held at the Mechanics Institutes in Hobart and Launceston. Notices of their concerts appeared regularly in the press from 1865 to the early 1870s.

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

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

TRANSCRIPT

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

I am, Sir, &c. GEORGE CASE.

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

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

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

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

TRANSCRIPT

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

1860s Wheatstone concertina
metmuseum.org Ref: DP225644

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

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

Source: Portrait Of A Young Lady And Her Concertina

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

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

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

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

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

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The firm of Nevin & Smith stamps and label 1867-1868

January 10, 2015, 8:21 pm

≫ Next: A remarkable New Town studio stamp: Thomas Nevin+s

≪ Previous: The concertina player 1860s

Robert Smith and Thomas Nevin established the firm of Nevin & Smith soon after Thomas Nevin acquired the stock, studio and glass house of Alfred Bock at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town in 1865. The partnership was brief, lasting less than two years. It was dissolved by Nevin's family solicitor, the Hon. W. R. Giblin, in February 1868.

Robert Smith may have operated a studio prior to his partnership with Nevin, as Mrs Esther Mather referred briefly to the "coloured ones from Smith's" in a letter to her step-son, dated October 1865. On Robert Smith's departure to Victoria, where he took up farming and politics, Thomas Nevin pasted the verso of a few more photographs with the label bearing their name, but with Smith's name struck through, and the word "Late"added.

Two studio stamps and one label have survived from their brief partnership. The first stamp featuring the royal insignia of three feathers and a coronet, banded with the German "ICH DIEN" (I Serve) dates from the visit of Prince Albert in late 1867 on his first command, H.M.S. Galatea.

These two children were probably photographed for an album of photographic prints depicting the children of Tasmania which was gifted to Alfred Ernest Albert, the Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, during his visit to Hobart before he returned to Sydney in January 1868 where he was to survive an assassination attempt weeks later (Clontarf, March 1868).

Title: [Studio portrait of two children] [picture] / Nevin & Smith.
Access/Copyright: Reproduction rights: State Library of Victoria
Accession number(s):
H2005.34/2004
H2005.34/2004A

This photograph, a delicately coloured carte-de-visite portrait of an unidentified bearded man in semi-profile, wearing a summer check-pattern jacket, which is printed verso with the rare Nevin & Smith stamp bearing the Duke of Edinburgh's feathered insignia, was also taken in late 1867 during the Duke's visit.These copies are courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010.

Thomas Nevin photographed his future wife Elizabeth Rachel Day (1847-1914) during the 1860s; they married in July 1871 at the Wesleyan Chapel, Kangaroo Valley (Tasmania). He took this photograph of his fiancee when she was barely out of her teens, circa 1866, while operating under the name of Nevin & Smith. Although a personal memento in many respects, and as such, surprisingly stamped verso, it may have been intended for circulation to a large circle of friends, such as the group featured in the stereograph below celebrating a special occasion.

Elizabeth Rachel Day, married Thomas Nevin in 1871
Taken by Thomas Nevin at Nevin & Smith (late Bock's) ca. 1865
140, Elizabeth Street Hobart Town
Full-length portrait, carte-de-visite
Copyright © KLW NFC & The Nevin Family Collections ARR. Watermarked.

Just possibly, the stereograph below of a large group of men and women in formal wear, some seated on the grass, many more dancing in a circle close to the River Derwent, was taken about the same time as the full-length portrait of Elizabeth Rachel Day. She wore a white dress, a dark topcoat and white hat for the studio portrait, and many women in the outdoor stereograph wore the same outfit on this day. It was taken on a summer afternoon to celebrate some festive occasion, and pasted verso with Nevin & Smith's advertising label for commercial reproduction and distribution.

Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection (online catalogue 2006)
"Tasmanian Views from Nevin & Smith .... plus Tombstones copied, Terms - Cheap!"
REF: Q1994.56.20.1
ITEM NAME: Label:
MEDIUM: Paper and printing ink,
MAKER: Nevin & Smith [Artist];
DATE: 1860s
DESCRIPTION : Label from the back of Q1994.56.20 for photographers Nevin & Smith, 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobarton
INSCRIPTIONS & MARKS: On back a pink label: Tasmanian views/ from/ Nevin & Smith,/ Photographers,/ 140, Elizabeth St., Hobarton./ Stereoscopic and Album Portraits/ Views Photographed./ Viiews of Residences, Tombstones copied, Terms —Cheap!

This stereograph of a house bears a yellow rather than pink Nevin & Smith label, with Smith's name struck through, the word "Late" superimposed, and the plural "s" on the word "Photographers" crossed out. It was taken before Smith's departure from the partnership in February 1868 but reprinted soon after. From 1869, Nevin replaced this label with a blind stamp impress on the recto of outdoor stereographs with the simple wording "T. Nevin Photo". Different extant stamps, labels and verso inscriptions used by Nevin to date number at least eight.

Unlike the single image carte-de-visite photograph (below) of a large single-storey house on a hill taken by Nevin of his parents' family home at Kangaroo Valley in 1868, this stereograph of a house bears his commercial label (Smith's name struck through) pasted verso, and was therefore intended for sale to clientele. The subject of the photograph represents one of several houses built to a similar architectural template in the Kangaroo Valley area. Some tinting of the grass in this image was attempted but otherwise abandoned, suggesting a rejected copy.

Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection (online catalogue 2006)
REF: Q16826.9
ITEM NAME: photograph:
MEDIUM: albumen silver print sepia toned stereoscope,
MAKER: T Nevin [Photographer];
TITLE: 'Tasmanian Views.'
DATE: 1870c
DESCRIPTION : No information relative to title of his images. This one, of a house or maybe a school.
INSCRIPTIONS & MARKS: (On bacK) Tas. Views from Nevin & Smith (Late) Photographers (s crossed out) 140 Elizabeth Street. Steroscopic and Album Portraits Views Photographed. Views of Residences, Tombstones copied, Terms:-Cheap!

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds fifty or more of stereographs by Nevin etc, some stamped verso, some blank. Many have survived in barely fair condition, not simply because these early stereos were printed on absorbent salt paper which rendered the image fuzzy over time, they were salvaged from private and public archive locations where conditions were less than optimal. Wherever two very similar photographs have survived, one with Nevin's stamp or inscription, one without, the following circumstances of their production have to be considered:

1. duplicates of a stamped original chosen for commercial profit were not routinely stamped but simply supplied to the client as a copy.
2. duplicates of an original or another very similar original showing the same subject and location but differing in minor details of pose etc were not stamped, especially photographs taken for immediate use by friends, family or even government officials well -known to the photographer.
3. one original photograph bearing a specimen studio stamp was submitted to the Customs and Patent Office to register copyright of that particular stamp for one year, or for a limited quantity to be produced for a specified fee. Nevin covered the registration of seven different stamps from 1865 to 1888,
4. some originals were flawed at the moment of capture, or rendered useless during printing and colouring, and so not stamped or circulated but nonetheless retained by the studio, which then ensured a life beyond the photographer's control in the hands of collectors.
5. many stock commercial negatives by Nevin were acquired and reproduced by Samuel Clifford until Clifford's retirement in 1878. The Anson Brothers acquired Nevin's, Clifford's and even Baily's negatives (the latter through Joshua Anson's theft) and reproduced them with their own studio stamps.

However, in spite of these caveats which segue into disputes about attribution, it must be remembered that Thomas Nevin began professional photography ca 1865 with Alfred Bock, continued as a partner in commercial production with Robert Smith, Samuel Clifford and Henry Hall Baily, as well as taking commissions for the Colonial Government's Lands Department, the Hobart City Corporation, the Municipal Police Office, and the New Town Territorial Police, retiring from professional photography after twenty-five years only at the birth of his last child, Albert, in 1888.

The cottage that John Nevin built at Kangaroo Valley Tasmania
"T.J. Nevin Photo" inscribed on verso, ca. 1868. Exhibited at Wellington Park 1868.
From © KLW NFC & The Liam Peters Collection 2010.

Above: Dissolution notice published in The Mercury on 26 February 1868 of the partnership between Robert Smith and Thomas Nevin. William Robert Giblin, later Attorney-General and Premier, was Thomas Nevin's solicitor and witness.

ANSON'S Books of Tasmanian Scenes

Title: Anson's books of Tasmanian scenes, both north, south and the interior
Creator(s):Anson Bros
Date: 1890?
Description: 1 endpaper : Black/red lettering, 40 X 58 cm.
Related to:In: Picturesque and interesting Tasmania. No. 1
Subjects:Anson Bros Craw and Ratcliff, Booksellers, Stationers and Fancy
Other titles:Best photographs of Tasmania's world-fames scenery, mountains, lakes, ferns and rocks Endpaper of album
Format: album
Location: Tasmaniana Library
ADRI: AUTAS001125641373

John Anson acquired the stock in 1878 of both Thomas Nevin and Samuel Clifford; he reprinted - on glass - an Aboriginal portrait originally taken by Charles A. Woolley in 1866 which is privately held in The McCullagh Collection. With his brother Joshua, recently released from prison, they reproduced Clifford and Nevin's photographs taken in 1873 and 1874 at Port Arthur, printed as an album in 1889 titled Port Arthur Past and Present.

Ansons Bros. photographic album, Port Arthur Past and Present (1889)
State Library of NSW
Photos copyright KLW NFC 2009

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A remarkable New Town studio stamp: Thomas Nevin+s

January 16, 2015, 6:06 pm

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Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1863
Untitled, and held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, this example by Thomas Nevin of a popular and much photographed vista of the Queen's Orphan School and St John's Church, New Town Tasmania, could be titled "Long shadow with guard at the entrance to St John's Avenue, New Town". Its uniqueness as an artefact is the very rare studio stamp on the verso.This is the only extant example (to date) of Thomas Nevin's earliest photography which bears the design with the wording "Thomas Nevins New Town Tasmania" set against a ribbon in three flat loops, enfolding a flowering plant, and printed in bright blue ink. Nevin was barely out of his teens when he took this photograph, still a bachelor, and living with his parents in the house built by his father John Nevin next to the Lady Franklin Museum at Kangaroo Valley (New Town, Hobart, Tasmania.) It is entirely possible that Thomas Nevin's early training and first photographic equipment prior to 1865 was obtained from photographer Douglas Kilburn's declining interest as his political aspirations took precedence. It was through Kilburn's neighbour master mariner Captain Goldsmith that Thomas met his future wife Elizabeth Rachel Day, who was the elder daughter of Captain James Day and Captain Goldsmith's niece.

The wording on this unique stamp is typical of commercial branding; the prospective client would know from common speech that "Photographic Studio" are the missing words, and no generic apostrophe denoting possession was necessary or even grammatically logical because of the omission, viz. Nevin's (? what?). Comparative usage today goes unnoticed, eg. Myers, Woolworths, Coles, and Harrods, are the founding family surnames of large retailers where both the apostrophe before the "s" and the thing of possession have been dropped. The American department store, Macy's is a notable exception.

The stamp was devised around 1863 at Thomas Nevin's studio in New Town (Hobart) prior to his acquisition of Alfred Bock's stock, studio and glass house at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart in 1865 and prior to his partnership with Robert Smith 1867-68. The more usual New Town stamp which Nevin printed verso on the dozens of stereographs taken during his partnership with Samuel Clifford - and continued to use until ca. 1888 - was a completely different design (see below).

Verso of "Long shadow with guard at the entrance to St John's Avenue, New Town"
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Collection Ref: Q1990.22.4

"Long shadow with guard at the entrance to St John's Avenue, New Town"
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Collection Ref: Q1990.22.4

Thomas J. Nevin took this photograph in the early evening of a summer's day when the shadows were long and the watch house at the entrance to the avenue was manned by at least two constables, given there are two canvas stools outside the porch on the right. The figure sitting against the perimeter fence may have been a guard, or even Nevin's assistant, or quite possibly his younger brother Jack Nevin, who was both his assistant and a constable, Constable John (W. J.) Nevin. The original plans for these two sandstone watch houses included a separate reception room each for men and women plus three small cells in one, and in the other, three rooms for constables. Watch houses on the busy New Town road (the main road leading to the north of the island) were considered a necessary police measure by the 1840s. These lodges were constructed in 1841, the church and schools were built in 1834-35 (TAHO, CSO 5/1/283/7452). The striations across the road at the entrance in this image could be the result of carriage wheels, or chemicals used in the printing process. Nevin may have taken this photograph with the dual purpose of producing a commercial image for sale and a documentary record for the school's administrators.

The small white box next to the watch house on the right at the end of the low wooden fence was possibly a dog house. The low wooden gate next to the box leads to a pit. In this photograph the gate used to enter the pit is closed and not visible.

Samuel Clifford 1863
Similarly, in this photograph there is no open, low wooden gate at the entry to the pit on the viewer's right, adjacent to the watch house in the foreground at the entrance to the avenue leading to the church at centre and the orphan schools on either side. The photograph has been attributed and dated to 1863 by successive archivists and publishers using the stereo frame and notebooks of Clifford's contemporary, namely photographer, horologist and meteorologist Alfred Abbott, so Thomas Nevin's photograph of the same view minus the open gate can also be dated to around 1863 or earlier. In this stereo bearing Clifford's name transcribed on the recto, a male figure stands quite formally outside the gate keeper's porch on the viewer's left; in Nevin's photograph a male figure sits closer to the main road, outside the perimeter fence, and on the right. The publisher has dated the image to March, 1863 when the deciduous tree outside the school on the left was still leafy.

Title: Orphan Schools, New Town / Clifford photo
Creator: Clifford, Samuel, 1827-1890
In: Abbott album Item 75
Publisher: 1863
Description:1 stereoscopic pair of photographs : sepia toned ; 8 x 7 cm. each
ADRI: AUTAS001136189297
Source: W.L. Crowther Library
Notes: Title printed on label and pasted below images
Inscribed lower left in ink: Clifford photo. ; right: Mar. 1863
Exact size 73 x 64 mm. each
For descriptive notes by Alfred Abbott see his notebook item 197

Unattributed - 1870s
This later photograph (below) of the Orphan School and St John's Church New Town was taken in winter after heavy falls of snow on Mount Wellington. The tree on the viewer's left of the avenue outside the Orphan school has lost its foliage. The low gate on viewer's right next to the gatekeeper's lodge is open and hangs evenly, unlike the same gate in the later photograph (see below, attributed to H. H. Baily) where it hangs down on its hinges. This image was reprinted in an album ca. 1870 and titled "Church and Orphan Schools New Town with Mount Wellington."

Title: Queens Orphan Asylum New Town
In: Tasmanian scenes P. 21, item 41
Publisher: [1863] [incorrect?]
Description: 1 photograph : sepia toned ; 11 x 19 cm
ADRI: AUTAS001124075235
Source: W.L. Crowther Library

Title: Photograph - New Town - St John's Avenue - church and orphan schools
Description:1 photographic print
ADRI: PH1-1-15
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Album of Photographs of Tasmania, 1870 (PH1)
Notes: 1870

The photograph (above) was also taken in winter. The tree outside the school building (left of church) is again bare of leaves, and snow has fallen along the slopes of Mount Wellington. Some decorative objects were placed outside the gatekeeper's porch on the left: a milk can and a birdcage. Two canvas stools stand on either side of the gatekeeper's porch on the right, but the guards who sat on them are missing. The photograph (below) was taken in summer, an appropriate capture for the emergent tourist market. It would become one of the most common scenes reproduced in albums and postcards at the close of the 19th century.

Title: Photograph - Church & Orphans School (St John's Park) - St John's Avenue New Town
Description: 1 photographic print
ADRI: PH30-1-6284
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Miscellaneous Collection of Photographs. 1860 - 1992 (PH30)

Henry Hall Baily (attributed) 1876
Historic photographs collated into albums held at the Tasmanian Archives Office and catalogued with a photographer's name such as "Allport or "Clifford" or "Baily", as is this one, Baily album: Souvenir of Tasmania, are more often than not compilations of scenes and portraits by various photographers, put together by publishers such as Walch's for the tourist market, or included in family albums displaying bought scenes and family mementos, or by archivists anxious to tidy up disparate piles of donated items, with only a small number bearing evidence of attribution, such as a photographer's studio stamp. H. H. Baily and Samuel Clifford were both victims of Joshua Anson's theft of plates, frames, chemicals, albums etc (1877) while he was Baily's apprentice, so a catalogued album bearing their names might suggest attribution where none had been established from signs on the single item, nor from the contexts of capture, acquisition and accession.

Title: Queen's Asylum, New Town
In: Baily album: Souvenir of Tasmania P. 6
Publisher: [ca. 1875]
Description: 1 photograph : sepia toned ; 11 x 18 cm
ADRI: AUTAS001124850645
Source: W.L. Crowther Library

The New Town Studio Stamp 1860s-1888
Thomas Nevin used eight different commercial stamps, labels, government insignia stamps and handwritten inscriptions for four different studio locales between 1863 and 1888: the New Town studio; the Elizabeth St, studio (late A. Bock's); the Hobart Town Hall and Municipal Police Office where he was Keeper; and the Hobart Gaol photographer's room (the Royal Arms insignia stamp for government commissions) plus handwritten inscriptions for photographs taken on the road with Samuel Clifford. These stamps were registered between 1863, the date of this unusual "Thomas Nevins" New Town stamp, and 1888, the date when he ceased commercial and police work per evidence from official records, eg. birth registration of last born children and Mercury notices, although he continued producing family photographs well into the 1900s, most likely in the company of his father's second wife's nephew James Chandler (of the Genge family). The more usual commercial stamp used by Nevin operating from his studio at New Town was this one:

Vista of New Town, Hobart, Tasmania towards the former Methodist church
Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, New Town ca. 1866
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Collection Ref: Q1994.56.28

This stereograph (above) taken by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1866 (verso has his usual New Town stamp) may be a view from the Swan family property, Beaulieu, looking across to the former Methodist church on New Town Road (at the junction of Pedder St). However, given the height at which it was taken, Nevin may have captured the scene from the tower of the large (pink-coloured) building now the Divisional Headquarters of the Salvation Army at 4 Bay Road New Town, called Brightside, which was the residence of a key figure in Thomas Nevin's life, Police Superintendent Richard Propsting of the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall.

The 1900s
Trees were planted along St Johns Avenue to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. New fences were built adjoining the gatekeepers' lodges, the dog house was removed and the pit planted with a tree, but the white pebbles at the entrance to the porches, visible from Nevin's 1863 photography, were retained.

St John's Church 1930s
TAHO Ref: PH30/1/6135

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Our Tenth Anniversary

January 16, 2015, 11:23 pm

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Ten years ago we started blogging about Tasmanian photographer Thomas J. Nevin (1842-1923). We look forward to another two years at least as the project draws closer to completion. Contributions and donations are most welcome, and many thanks for your involvement.

Email all enquiries here.

Elizabeth Rachel Nevin nee Day (1847-1914)
Original by her husband Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1874
Photo copyright © KLW NFC Group KLW NFC Imprint ARR

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Tombstones copied, Terms: - Cheap!

January 19, 2015, 9:14 pm

≫ Next: Views and portraits for the Lands & Survey Department

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During their brief partnership ca. 1866-1868, Tasmanian photographers Thomas J. Nevin and Robert Smith advertised a service on the back of their stereographs with the wording Views of Residences, Tombstones copied, Terms: - Cheap!. Commercial studios routinely supplied photographic prints of family head stones, grave sites and sepulchral monuments and some, in addition, provided a low cost copy from an impression of a faded and barely legible tombstone epitaph, thereby retaining the original typography.

Photo copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG REF: Q16826.9

How cheap was "cheap"? Three years previously, when Thomas Nevin was assistant in Alfred Bock's studio at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart before Bock's departure and Nevin &Smith acquiring the business, he would have taken exception to the word "cheap" directed at Alfred Bock's practice. The dispute about the ownership and copyright of the sennotype process between Henry Frith and Alfred Bock in 1864-1865 embittered both to the point of deciding to quit Tasmania. Frith's rates for carte-de-visite portraits were expensive, two for 10/-, and his disdain for "cheap trash palmed off on the public as cheap photography" was loudly proclaimed in this advertisement in the Mercury of 6th April 1864:

Henry Frith advertisement
Advertising. (1864, April 6). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved January 20, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8825487

One year later, Frith had ceased publishing his rates. The very public dispute had affected all photographic businesses in Hobart, with Alfred Bock and George Cherry forced to advertise great or extraordinary reductions in prices, both charging identical rates for cdv portraits: 1/- each for a carte-de-visite portrait, or 10s.6d. per dozen, vignettes a little more expensive at 7s.6d per half-dozen:

TRANSCRIPT

GREAT REDUCTION
IN THE PRICE OF
ALBUM OR CARD PORTRAITS
AT MR. CHERRY'S,
Opposite Mr. Mather's, 94, Liverpool street;
Card Portraits, 10s. 6d. per' dozen ; 6s. the haft-dozen. Vignettes, 12s. 6d, per dozen
7s. 6d the half-dozen. 31o

EXTRAORDINARY REDUCTION
IN THE PRICE OF
ALBUM OR CARD PORTRAITS,
AT
BOCK'S,
140, ELIZABETH STREET, HOBART' TOWN.
Card Portraits, 10s. 6d. per dozen; 6s. the half dozen.
Vignettes, 12s. 6d. per dozen ; 7s. 6d. the half dozen. tc

Advertising. (1865, October 16). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved January 20, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8835500

Another photographer in the north of Tasmania advertised a similar service in tombstones in 1867. Peter Laurie Reid's terms, by contrast, were far from cheap: three carte-de-visite portraits for 7s 6d, compared with Alfred Bock and Thomas Nevin's sale of the same for six at 6s, and 7s 6d for vignettes at the City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart.

LONDON PORTRAIT GALLERY. MESSRS. REID & CO., Portrait and Landscape Photographers, Having erected a splendid Gallery, are now prepared to supply card portraits equal to the best London or Melbourne photographs. One trial is solicited. Three card de visite portraits for 7s 6d, or £1 per dozen. Families taken for a moderate sum. Patronised by the Governor. Album portraits of His Excellency Col. Gore . Browne and Mrs. Gore Browne now ready. Portraits taken from locket to life size. Oil paintings anod large pictures of all kinds copied and reduced to card size. Old portraits of every description copied and improved. Messrs. R. and Co have on hand one of the largest and choicest collections of Tasmanian views in the colony, from all parts of the island (views of the Hon. R. Q. Kermode's new mansion-just added to their stock). Houses, monuments, tombstones, drawing rooms, &c. photographed. Visitors to Launceston are invited to call at the London Portrait Gallery, St. John street, nearly opposite the Theatre. Feb. 21. [UNDER the Patronage of His Excellency Colonel Gore Browne, C.B.

Advertising. (1867, March 5). Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 - 1899), p. 1., from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36642307

Even thirty years later, John Watt Beatie charged significantly less, just 10/- per one dozen of small cdvs, half the cost advertised by P. L. Reid and Co., and for the entire album of The Governors of Tasmania (1895), Beattie charged only £2/2/- which included this photograph of Colonel Gore Browne, C.B., possibly the one advertised and taken by Messrs Reid & Co. in 1867:

Colonel Gore Browne, C.B. (1807-1887)
Title: The governors of Tasmania : from 1804 to 1896 / photographed by J. W. Beattie, 52 Elizabeth Street, Hobart
Creator: Beattie, J. W. (John Watt), 1859-1930, photographer, publisher
Publication: Hobart : J.W. Beattie, [c1896]
Description: 1 album (17 hinged boards, 15 albumen photographs ) : card, gelatin silver photographic prints ; photographs 205 x 153 mm. in album 29 x 26 cm. + 1 loose sheet
Binding: Half bound in green leather, gold bands on spine, gold lettering, patterned endpapers
Format: Album, Photograph
ADRI: AUTAS001142927771
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

The Nevin and Swan families
Thomas Nevin worked from his New Town studio in the early 1860s (and again after 1880). He photographed many local scenes and vistas from the St John's Church, the Cemetery and the Orphan schools grounds. His sister Mary Ann Nevin enjoyed the public support of amateur photographer and naturalist Morton Allport when she applied for permission to establish a school in nearby Kangaroo Valley in 1865. This stereograph was taken at the Swan family vault at the St Johns Cemetery, New Town and attributed to Morton Allport at the State Library,but it may have been taken or copied by Thomas Nevin, given his advertisement "Tombstones copied" etc.

Title: St John's Cemetery, New Town, Swan vault
Publisher: Hobart : M. Allport, [1860]
Description: 1 photographic print : stereograph : b&w ; 96 x 172 mm
Format: Photograph
ADRI: AUTAS001126252238
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

The Swan family vault was substantial for two reasons: the patriarch John Swan snr was a wealthy retailer who established Swan’s Stores, Elizabeth Street, Hobart. By the 1830s it was the premier store for clothing, millinery, fabrics, household furniture and upholstery. Premature deaths in the family was another. Mary Swan senior gave birth to fourteen children, including nine daughters. Two daughters, Harriet (1826–1853) and Julia (1834–1853) both died in 1853 of childbirth complications and scarlet fever respectively.

Mrs John Swan senior, Mary Anne (née Cameron 1800– 1869)
ADRI: AUTAS001125883785
Mr John Swan senior (1796–1858)
ADRI: AUTAS001125883801
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

National Portrait Gallery of Australia
Left:Portrait of Harriet Swan, c 1840
by attributed to Thomas Bock and Unknown
watercolour on ivory (17.5 x 20.0 cm)
Right: Portrait of Julia Swan, c 1840
by attributed to Thomas Bock and Unknown
watercolour on ivory (16.4 x 20.0 cm)

Another daughter, Katherine, married Thomas Daniel Chapman (1815-1884), merchant and politician in 1843. And yet another daughter, Maria Nairn nee Swan, married William Edward Nairn (1812-1869) who had arrived at Hobart in February 1837 on board the Fairlie with Franklin's party. W. E. Nairn was assistant comptroller of the Convict Department in 1843. He had charge of the prisoners in Tasmania and Norfolk Island, was departmental registrar in 1855-56 and comptroller-general of convictsin 1859-68. He was also Sheriff of Hobart in 1857-68. One of the Swan family's sons, John Swan the younger, was Inspector of Police by 1875 when he endorsed Thomas Nevin's commission to photograph prisoners at the Hobart Gaol, and Sheriff of Hobart in the 1880s when he signed the death warrants for James Sutherland and Henry Stock (SLNSW Mitchell Library C203.). John Swan, Inspector of Police, signed off these discharges for prisoners from H. M Gaols in the week ending 17th February 1875, published in the police gazette, Tasmania Information for Police.Thomas Nevin's photograph of prisoner James McNally was taken on discharge from Hobart Town in the preceding fortnight.

Tasmanian prisoner James McNally
Photo by Thomas J. Nevin taken at Hobart, February 1875
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Collection
Ref: Q1985 P0168

John Swan, Sheriff, Hobart, signed the death warrant for Henry Stock 1884
From Death Warrants V.D.L. Tasmania Supreme Court. Mitchell Library C203.

A rather spooky, over-edited photograph of John Swan the younger, Inspector of Police and Sheriff of Hobart, was reprinted in 1895 by John Watt Beatie in his album Members of the Parliaments of Tasmania. As with the majority of photographs in the Beattie album of parliamentarians, this one was touched up because it was taken by an earlier and unacknowledged photographer.

Title: John Swan [the yr = younger]
In: In: Members of the Parliaments of Tasmania No. 114
Publisher: Hobart : J. W. Beattie, [19--]
ADRI: AUTAS001136191392
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

Maria Nairn
On the death of her husband in 1869, John Swan's sister Maria Nairn nee Swan leased an acre of land to Thomas Nevin's father, John Nevin, adjacent to Lady Franklin's Museum at Kangaroo Valley where he had built a cottage on land held by the Wesleyan Trustees. He taught evening class to adult males at the school house, shown as his occupancy in the Hobart Gazette notices. The Wesleyan Chapel was used for family weddings and funerals etc. John Nevin used the land leased from Maria Nairn to cultivate orchards and make fruit jams which he exported to the Victorian colony.

Property values, Hobart Town Gazette 26 November 1872.

John Nevin, school house and dwelling, Kangaroo Valley, garden leased from Maria Nairn
Maria Nairn, Cottage ornee and garden, Stephen St New Town
Maria Nairn occupier, Executors of the late Mrs. Swan [snr], J.C and A. Swan, paddock, part of Beaulieu, New Town

This stereograph taken by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1866 (verso has his usual New Town stamp) may be a view from the Swan family property, Beaulieu, looking across to the former Methodist church on New Town Road (at the junction of Pedder St). However, given the height at which it was taken, Nevin may have captured the scene from the tower of the large (pink-coloured) building now the Divisional Headquarters of the Salvation Army at 4 Bay Road New Town, called Brightside, which was the residence of another key figure in Thomas Nevin's life, Police Superintendent Richard Propsting of the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall.

Vista of New Town, Hobart, Tasmania looking east
Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, New Town ca. 1866
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Collection Ref: Q1994.56.28

Title: In the church yard at New Town [St John's Cemetery]
Publisher: Hobart : M. Allport, [1860]
ADRI: AUTAS001126252253
Source: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

This stereograph (below) of the tombstone of Stuart Jackson Dandridge who died of "low fever" aged 31 yrs, on 16 June, 1861, is unattributed and dated to ca. 1870. Dandridge was a member of the Second Rifles, Southern Tasmanian Volunteers. In the distance on the right is the three storey house which was the residence in Davey St. until 1855 of Thomas Nevin's wife's uncle, Captain Edward Goldsmith.

Title:[St. David's Cemetery]
Publisher:[ca. 1870]
Description:1 stereoscopic pair of photographs : sepia toned ; 9 x 18 cm. (mount)
ADRI: AUTAS001125299511
Source: W.L. Crowther Library

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Views and portraits for the Lands & Survey Department

January 20, 2015, 2:07 pm

≫ Next: Prisoner James Geary: mugshots and rap sheet 1865-1896

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THE ROYAL ARMS INSIGNIA STAMP
THE YELLOW STEREO FRAME and ALBUMEN PRINT

Thomas J. Nevin's photographic commissions to provide documentary records for the Colonial Government's Lands and Survey Department, date from the beginning of the 1870s while operating from his commercial studio at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart. Nevin's next commission from ca. 1873 onwards was to provide prisoner identification photographs (mugshots) for the Prisons Department, Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall and Hobart Gaol, which was also funded through the Hobart City Corporation's Lands Department (Treasury). All of Nevin's extant photographs bearing the Royal Arms insignia stamp were paid through his Lands Department contracts. Several prisoner photographs bearing this particular stamp were used to register joint copyright with the government (one sample per batch per year). Several extant portraits of HCC officials, their wives and children, all bear this Royal Arms insignia, for example, those of Constable William McVilly's children, Laura and John. On the verso of the river scene below is inscribed the name of Police Superintendent Frederick Pedder's wife, Ann Pedder. Presumably, the cost for these portraits was funded jointly by the HCC and the families. Thomas Nevin was still being paid by the Lands Department in 1880, by then receiving a full-time salary as a civil servant for the four years he served as Hall and Office Keeper of the Hobart Town Hall.

Landscapes
The Lands and Survey Department wanted these photographs, printed for depth of field effect as a stereograph because they would have conveyed important information about rainfall, the water course in the location, and soil erosion. The verso stamp on the first is one of cleanest to have survived. Its brightness can be attributed to the albumen paper Nevin used for this series, unlike the salt paper he used for many of the earlier commercial stereographs which absorbed the image, rendering it soft and fuzzy over time.

Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca. 1870 of creek bed
Verso stamp with government Royal Arms insignia (Lands Dept)
T. J. Nevin Photographic Artist, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q16826.20

CAUTION: THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE ALL WATERMARKED

Tasmanian Museum and Art Galleries (TMAG online cat. 2006)
Q16826.20 ITEM NAME: photograph: MEDIUM: albumen silver print sepia toned stereoscope, MAKER: T J Nevin [Photographer]; DATE: 1870c DESCRIPTION : MountWellington - not Mt Wellington - looks like a man made channel

Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca. 1870 of small waterfall
Verso stamp with government Royal Arms insignia (Lands Dept)
T. J. Nevin Photographic Artist, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q16826.2

Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca. 1870 of river scene
Verso stamp with government Royal Arms insignia,
T. J. Nevin Photographic Artist, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town
Pencil inscription verso "A. Pedder".
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q16826.19

Tasmanian Museum and Art Galleries (TMAG online cat. 2006)
Q16826.19 ITEM NAME: photograph: MEDIUM: albumen silver print sepia toned stereoscope, MAKER: T J Nevin [Artist]; DATE: 1860s DESCRIPTION : A waterfront shot. Location is uncertain. Possibly, the Huon. INSCRIPTIONS & MARKS: T.J. Nevin Photographic Artist 140 Elizabeth StreetHobart Town. Copies may be had at any time. A. Peddar.[sic]

Another vista of this river, ca. 1870, attributed to Nevin's friend and collaborator, Henry Hall Baily, was taken from a slightly closer spot along the river bank across to the hotel. The location is now called Huonville, the name finally gazetted as a town in 1891, but known as both Victoria and Ranelagh from first settlement by the Walton brothers in 1839. A coach service was in operation by 1869.

Walker, James Backhouse (collector, not photographer)
Photograph of Victoria, Huon, Tasmania c. 1870.
Henry Hall Baily (attributed)
University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection

Portraits
Two different stereographs taken on the same day, possibly only minutes apart of a group of men who could have been surveyors on government business, given Nevin's government stamp on the verso of the group of five portrait. The TMAG has identified the location as the Salt Caves, at the town of Victoria (also called Ranelagh, now Huonville), in the Huon Valley, 38 km south of Hobart Tasmania. The first shows five men in supine poses leaning against the entrance to a cave; the second shows two men posed in similar fashion in another spot within the same cave location. The first, with five men, bears Nevin's Royal Arms insignia stamp, the second showing two men, does not. The blank verso of the second stereograph with two men indicates that Nevin used the first, the group of five men, to register the stamp, and the second was supplied as a copy for the same commission fee.

Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca. 1870 of five men in a cave
Verso stamp with government Royal Arms insignia,
Inscription: "Salt Rock Cave, Victoria, Huon"
T. J. Nevin Photographic Artist, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q16826.14

Tasmanian Museum and Art Galleries (TMAG online cat. 2006)
Q16826.14 ITEM NAME: photograph: MEDIUM: albumen silver print sepia toned stereoscope, MAKER: Thomas Nevin [Photographer]; TITLE: 'Salt Rock Cave Victoria Huon' DATE: 1860s DESCRIPTION : A shot of five men inside the entrance of Salt Rock Cave INSCRIPTIONS & MARKS: T.J. Nevin Photogrpahic Artist 140 Elizabeth Street Hobart Town. Copies may be had at any time.

Stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, ca. 1870 of two men in a cave
Verso is blank, with inscription: "1860s,Salt Rock Cave"
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q16826.15

Tasmanian Museum and Art Galleries (TMAG online cat. 2006)
Q16826.15 ITEM NAME: photograph: MEDIUM: albumen silver print sepia toned stereoscope, MAKER: Thomas Nevin ? [Photographer]; DATE: 1860s DESCRIPTION : A shot of 2 men inside the entrance of SaltRockCave at Victoria, Huon INSCRIPTIONS & MARKS: T.J. Nevin Photogrpahic Artist 140 Elizabeth Street Hobart Town. Copies may be had at any time. On back of Q 16826.14

A Visitor's Report to the Salt Caves 1871
An employee of the firm Murchison, Lyell, and Co. who signed the following article simply S. H. W. was probably a geologist with an extensive knowledge of botany and fossils. This account of his trip to the Salt Caves, published in the Mercury, 12th May 1871 mentions only one companion. Readers are warned that phrases pertaining to Aboriginal people may cause offense.

THE SALT CAVES AT THE HUON. (1871, May 12). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 3. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8875696

THE SALT CAVES AT THE HUON.
Although my rambles on high days and holidays, on behalf of the firm of Murchison, Lyell, and Co., have not been few - although I have boxed nearly all points of the compass from Hobart Town, still, by some peculiar combination of circumstances, I never saw the River Huon until a few days since, nor had I the remotest idea that the district could boast of formations having so much geological interest attached to them.
My attention was especially directed to that quarter by a gentleman (who is in the habit of going there very frequently on business) showing to me a piece of salt of remarkable purity, which he said he had obtained from a cave in some high sandstone hills near the bank of the river. What, however, seemed to be of greater importance in his mind, was the existence of a " large fossil bone of some huge animal, pro- jecting from the sandstone in one of the smaller caves." Having reason to believe that palaeozoic formations occupied that part of the country, I was sceptic enough to treat this statement of the huge fossil bone with indifference, remembering how a geologic observer illustrated on a memo- rable occasion at a meeting of our Royal Society, the character of the conclusions arrived at by tyros in geology, by a story of a petrified black-fellow's head, and which supposed head was nothing more, if I remember rightly, than a concretionary mass of ferruginous matter. Not seldom have I been decoyed into hunting shadows in these respects. One time it was a gigantic fossil fern, eight feet high, in sandstone, and which turned out to be iron dendrites, common as ditch water is in Liverpool and Collins streets. At another time it was a perfect fossil fish in a huge block of stone, which proved, after a walk of upwards of twenty miles, to be an accidental stain in sandstone, caused by the presence of oxide of iron. It is worthy of remark parenthetically, that not a single icthyolite has yet been found in Tasmania, while the veteran geologist of N.S.W., the Rev. W. B. Clarke, has discovered many in that colony from time to time, some of which I have in my collection from his cabinet. On another occasion it was nothing less than the " thigh of a blackfellow," weighing ovor a hundredweight, which the finder carried on his shoulders five or six miles. This came out to be a tubular con- cretion of iron and sand without any organic structure whatsoever. The proprietor, how- ever, is happy in the belief that he knows better, and he never loses an opportunity of drawing attention to the petrified blackfellow's thigh. Thes things will be despite philosophy, or common sense.
On Good Friday last I started with my friend for the Huon. The cuttings on the road side afford, occasionally, some very good vertical sections of the rocks. For a distance of about five miles from Hobart Town, the rocks ex- posed by the roadside consist of mudstone, often appearing as a conglomerate, limestone, and claystone, the latter being darker in colour than that which is so well exposed by the Richmond roadside and at the Bridgewater Causeway, and, like those examples, appears to be barren of fossils, while the mudstone and the lower limestone teem with them. The remainder of the road to the Huon is occupied by sand- stone, which alternates frequently and abruptly with greenstone and basalt, the latter rock in one or two instances appearing as dark, augitic basalt.
I was much struck with the character of the country traversed by the road, the lofty hills densely timbered with wonderfully gigantic trees being every now and then intersected by the beautiful fern tree gullies. It was dusk when we arrived at the Picnic Inn, but there was sufficient light to show me that I stood on the bank of a magnificent river. Leaving the dog-cart at the inn, we stepped into the punt, taking the horse with us, as my companion observed, to pilot the way to our destination, which is distant about one mile and a half from the ferry, and reached by some rather intricate paths ; and well did the tired and intelligent creature perform the task, being entirely left to his own judgment, and without making a single mistake, although it was quite dark before we had gone half the distance.
Shortly after we left the ferry, while yet there was sufficient light to enable us to discern large objects close at hand, my companion directed my attention to a high wall of rock, which skirts the river bank on the Franklin side.
"That," said he, "is where the salt caves are."
I could see a long line of almost vertical cliffs, with trees growing over the very edge. As we threaded our way along the base of this stupendous natural masonry, with the calm, bright river flowing noiselessly along on our right hand, and reflecting the few stars that were visible, with scarcely a breath of air stirring, I was impressed with a strange sense of wild weirdness in the scene, which, I might say, almost amounted to a pleasing oppression. When we had gone about a mile, and were ascending a gentle rise, I observed to my friend that we were walking over quartz, although none was visible. He seemed to think it strange that anyone should be able to arrive at that fact without seeing the stone. He was soon, how- ever, made aware of the secret. I had reason to regard it as drift, and such it turned out to be.
On the following morning at an early hour we started for the caves, my guide taking up a track that crossed a steep hill, which is bound on the south-eastern side by the sand- stone cliffs. On the top of this hill I found a crescent shaped plateau, with a slight depression in the centre, and which bears the name of Skinner's Basin. It had been under cultivation not long ago. Although, I am pretty well accustomed to mountain climbing, I looked at the high cliffs, which rose abruptly before me, and which seemed almost to overhang, with some doubt as to the possibility of scaling them from that point, but my guide informed me that it was the only point at which they might be said to be accessible. I regarded the northern escarpment of Mount Falkner, by which route I first visited the Bone Caves, as a perilous ascent, but I am bound to admit that scaling these cliffs is still more so. However, we gained the top in safety, and were, rewarded by looking from thence on a landscape of surpassing beauty. There meandered the river through broken rock-work, and tree-fringed level banks. In the distance rose the Huon Belle, a mountain that owes its name to a fancied resemblance in its outline to some Titaness stretched supine, gazing heavenward. Wherever the eye wandered from this point it was met by earth- billows thickly clothed with trees. After walking over the edge of these cliffs for about half a mile, my companion directed my attention to a projecting mass of sandstone, fully thirty yards below where we were standing. "Under that," said he, "is the 'salt cave.'" I quickly saw that, in order to reach it, a task of no easy matter, and one that was not unattended with danger lay before us. While scrambling down the almost vertical face of the cliff, grasping anything that was within our reach, my courage, I must con- fess, on one or two occasions all but forsook me ; for, on looking down the precipice, I became painfully conscious that one false step, one slip would be followed by a heavy dull thud, darkness, and oblivion. We, however, reached the cave without any such catastrophe, and I was amply rewarded for the risk run, and its attendant labour. I found my- self in a cavern about fifty feet wide at the en- trance, twenty feet long, while the roof, which is dome-shaped, is about twelve feet high at the mouth. The floor slopes upward at an angle of about 35°, and reaches to within two feet of the roof, at the back of the cave. The sides and roof of this cavity are covered with fine incrustations of salt, perfectly white, but it is on the floor where the mineral is deposited in the greatest quantity. The roof over the entrance presents a most beautiful appearance, being weathered into the most exquisitely delicate stone tapestry. It required no stretch of the imagination to see miniature castles and cathedrals, pillars, and pilas- ters, architraves and cupolas, grottoes and labyrinths in this example of natural sculpture. The lower part of the floor was covered several inches deep with loose sand, produced by the disintegration of the sandstone, and it was under- neath this that we found the thickest deposit of salt. The mineral had a highly columnar, or acicular structure, and required considerable force to detach it from the sandstone, portions of the latter often coming away with the incrustation. Upon a qualitative analysis being made of this product by an able friend of mine, it was found to consist of chloride of sodium, potass, and lime.
The whole of this sandstone formation is impregnated more or less with the salt. Where the rock has not been acted upon by atmospheric agencies, it is very hard - the hammer rebounding as from a crystalline limestone.
There are several caves of various dimensions in the face of the cliffs, some being inaccessible.
On our return my guide conducted me to the small cave, containing the huge " fossil bone." This supposed organism I found to be none other than a portion of the rock which had been weathered into a sub-globular form, and which stood out in full relief from the wall of the cavity. Were it a fossil bone, it would exceed in bulk the largest bone of the megatherium.
On the following day I examined the banks of the upper part of the river, in the neighbourhood of the falls, and found limestone of palaeozoic age, probably carboniferous, to abound on the Victoria side of the river ; while the Franklin side is more or less covered with drift. From this limestone I obtained some very choice fossils, which in genera and species, in some instances, are very different to anything I have from the rocks in the neighbourhood of Mount Wellington. For the information of geological readers, I may mention that I secured an internal cast of spirifcra glabra, six inches in length, by five inches in width, and four other species spirifera, quite new to me. Also a new ostrea, and a pachydomous, probably new, with several species of pro- ducta, terebratula, and spiral univalve shells, among which are pleurotomaria and euomphalus. In one place the limestone had a parting of blue clay, very rich in impressions of fenestella and other forms of Bryozoa.
There can be very little doubt that this high belt of sandstone cliffs owes its origin to the denuding action of the river in ages long past, by cutting its way through the sandstone, which at that time extended over the extensive plateau on the opposite bank, where it has been completely re- moved. The large rounded boulders of quartz and other rock bear testimony to the force and extent of water action in former times ; and I may observe that the fact of the saliferous sand- stone appearing in lofty cliffs on the Franklin side of the river is due to the rock being capped with greenstone on the higher ground, and which protected it from being completely removed.
During my stay I heard a good deal from an old prospector about the character of the country in the neighbourhood of the Picton, distant from the Huon forty miles. Had the season not been so far advanced I would have extended my observations to that locality. As it was, I returned to town much pleased with my visit to the salt caves of the Huon.

S. H. W.

Thanks extended to the person who corrected this text at Trove.THE SALT CAVES AT THE HUON. (1871, May 12). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 3. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8875696

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Prisoner James Geary: mugshots and rap sheet 1865-1896

January 24, 2015, 6:57 pm

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Mugshots of locally born Tasmanian prisoner James Geary (1844-1897?) from 1874-1893
Left: Photographed by Thomas Nevin, 20th February 1874 at the Police Office, Hobart Gaol
Centre: Photographed by Constable John Nevin, at the Hobart Gaol on 12th November 1889
Right: Photographed by [unknown] at Police Office, Hobart on 25th April 1893

The Rap Sheet 1865-1896
James Geary was born in Hobart to Ellen and Stephen Geary, a labourer, on 12th March 1844. His career in convicted crime began with horse-stealing in 1865, at 20yrs old. He was photographed by Thomas Nevin in 1874 at the Hobart Gaol when he was 30yrs old. His next extant mugshot was taken by Constable John Nevin at the Hobart Gaol in 1889 when he was registered as 45 yrs old. His last police photograph was taken (by unknown) at the Police Office, Hobart in 1893 when he was 49 yrs old. Date of death unknown, possibly 1897 (see below),

1865: Horse stealing (4 yrs)
1868: Cattle stealing (6 yrs)
1869: Neglecting work (7 days Solitary)
1870: Absconding (12 months)
1874: Horse stealing (6 yrs)
1879: Stealing from a person (6 months)
1880: Larceny as a bailee (6 months)
1882: Larceny (3 months)
1882: Horse stealing (6 yrs)
1893: Larceny as a baillie (6 months)
1894: Disturbing the peace (48 hours)
1894: ditto (28 days)
1895: False pretences (3 months)
1895: Drunk & Dis(48 hours)
1895: Indecent behaviour (14 days)
1896: Idle & Dis (2 months)
1896: ditto (3 months)
1896: Disturbing peace (3 days)
1896: Obscene language (14 days)

James Geary, Page 665 :GD63/1/1

State Library of Tasmania
Item Number: GD63/1/1 View this record online
Description: (Book No. 2).
Copy Number: Z1537
Series: • GD63 PRISONERS RECORD BOOKS. 01 Jan 1890 31 Dec 1962
http://stors.tas.gov.au/GD63-1-1

The first mugshot 1874 by T. J. Nevin
This is one of Thomas J. Nevin's finely produced albumen prints of Tasmanian prisoners taken in the 1870s for the Colonial government, typical of his commercial studio practice.

NLA Catalogue [incorrect information]
Title James Gearey, native, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture]
Date1874. Extent 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm.

POLICE GAZETTE RECORDS

1. James Geary absconded from the Hobart Commissariat Stores, police gazette notice of 22nd April 1870. He was serving a sentence of 6 yrs for cattle-stealing, tried 7th July 1868, Hobart.

2. James Geary was arrested by Sub-Inspector Dorsett, 20 May 1870. Thomas Nevin often accompanied Sub-Inspector Dorsett as assistant bailiff, a service he continued through to 1886.

3. Geary was photographed by Nevin on being discharged from the Police Office on 20th February 1874.

4. But Geary reoffended. Warrant for his arrest issued on 6th November 1874

5. Geary was arrested again on 13th November, 1874, Supt Propsting etc

6. Geary was arraigned and photographed again by Nevin at the Hobart Supreme Court on 1st December, 1874.

The 1874 photograph of James Geary, aged 30 yrs, taken by Thomas Nevin is a finely produced albumen print exhibiting the commercial portraiture techniques typical of Nevin's work for police in this decade.

Hobart Gaol 1889: Larceny
However, when James Geary was arrested again for larceny in 1889, aged 45 yrs, his mugshot taken at the Hobart Gaol was less than appealing, and more consistent with the rough and ready values of prisoner identification photographs produced everywhere by 1900, including the full-face gaze. This mugshot, pasted to his criminal sheet, was taken by Thomas Nevin's brother Constable John Nevin, at the Hobart Gaol on 12th November 1889 when Geary was transferred there from the police office at Deloraine, northern Tasmania.

Ref: TAHO GD6719
James Geary p. 137

Police Office, Hobart 1893
Convicted and incarcerated for a series of minor offences at the Police Office, Hobart, James Geary was photographed in 1893 at 49yrs old, looking rather healthier in this mugshot than in 1889. He married 44 year old widow Jane Saunders in 1894, his occupation listed as a 48 yr old labourer and bachelor. However, he may have died of heart disease one year after his last conviction, at Black Brush, Brighton, north of Hobart, in the house of John Samson. An inquest was held on 4th January, 1897, but the registration of his death on 2nd January at Black Brush gave his age as 43 yrs old rather than 49yrs, possibly because the date of his birth, as written on the record, states "not known". The Tasmanian police gazette published this same man's age as 40yrs old when the notice of the inquest was published on January 29th, 1897 (p. 18).

Even as late as 1893, the photographer at the Metropolitan Police Office, Hobart, where this photograph was taken, was still printing prisoner mugshots in the oval frame used by Thomas Nevin for his 1870s cartes-de-visite of prisoners at the Mayor's Court, MPO and Hobart Gaol.

Tasmanian police gazette listed this man's age as 40yrs old when the notice of the inquest was published on January 29th, 1897 (p. 18), and not 43yrs old which was listed at the inquest. If the same man, he was actually 49 yrs old,

James Geary Page 665:GD63/1/1

State Library of Tasmania
Item Number: GD63/1/1 View this record online
Description: (Book No. 2).
Series: • GD63 PRISONERS RECORD BOOKS. 01 Jan 1890 31 Dec 1962
http://stors.tas.gov.au/GD63-1-1

James Geary death 1897

James Geary inquest

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Nevin's women clients and their dresses 1870s

January 25, 2015, 7:37 pm

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Clients of early photographers were advised to wear clothing in strong patterns to distinguish the figure from the background in the final sepia print. This is a very small selection featuring unidentified women from dozens of Thomas J. Nevin's commercial studio portraits dated from the early to mid 1870s. These clients differed in social status, as the cut and style and fabric of their dresses suggest, in addition to their jewellery and hair-dos, but they wore their finest day dress for the occasion. Some stared directly at the photographer, others gazed towards left or right of the frame. Most are young, but extant portraits of older women who seemed to favour his services also number in the dozens. Each of these cdvs shows variations in Nevin's studio decor, his portraiture techniques, and printed frames. Some are also hand tinted.

CAUTION: These images are all WATERMARKED

Check Pattern

Full length: A young married woman [unidentified], standing with her right hand (with wedding ring) on a dining chair, wearing a dress with small checks, and a brooch at the neck. Her gaze is direct to the camera.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 or earlier.
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".

Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q2012.28.28

Verso: A young married woman [unidentified], standing with her right hand (with wedding ring) on a dining chair, wearing a dress with small checks, and a brooch at the neck. Her gaze is direct to the camera.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 or earlier.
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".

Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q2012.28.28

Stripe Pattern

Full length: A woman [unidentified] in her early forties, probably the wife of a government official, wearing a dark dress with white stripes and a frilled bustle, seated on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her right hand resting on the small table with the griffin-shaped legs which features in many of his studio portraits. The verso bears the Royal Arms insignia printed for Nevin's government work ca.1873-1875. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All right reserved.

Verso: A woman [unidentified] in her early forties, probably the wife of a government official, wearing a dark dress with white stripes and a frilled bustle, seated on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her right hand resting on the small table with the griffin-shaped legs which features in many of his studio portraits. The verso bears the Royal Arms insignia printed for Nevin's government work ca.1873-1875. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All right reserved.

Oval frame, head and shoulders to below waist cdv: A teenage girl [unidentified] with ringlets, wearing a dark dress with wide stripes banded in white and white cuffs, holding a hand coloured posy of flowers tinted yellow. The verso of this cdv bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp "T. Nevin late A. Bock" etc and dates to ca. 1871-1874. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All right reserved.

Verso: A teenage girl [unidentified] with ringlets, wearing a dark dress with wide stripes banded in white and white cuffs, holding a hand coloured posy of flowers tinted yellow. The verso of this cdv bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp "T. Nevin late A. Bock" etc and dates to ca. 1871-1874. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All right reserved.

Plain or Textured with Frills

Oval frame, head and torso to below waist cdv: A young woman [unidentified] wearing no jewellery, in a dark plain dress with braid on dropped shoulders, velvet buttons, and tight white neck band and tight plaits pinned up to the part.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 or earlier.
Verso with blue studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem with red tint, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Copyright © KLW NFC Imprint KLW NFC Private Collection 2013 ARR.

Verso: Oval frame, head and torso to below waist cdv: A young woman [unidentified] wearing no jewellery, in a dark plain dress with braid on dropped shoulders, velvet buttons, and tight white neck band and tight plaits pinned up to the part.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 or earlier.
Verso with blue studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem with red tint, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Copyright © KLW NFC Imprint KLW NFC Private Collection 2013 ARR

Full length: A young pregnant (?) woman [unidentified] wearing a head band (tinted pink), and a dark dress with frilled bodice, bustle and hem, her hand resting on a book atop the same big box stereoscopic viewer and table with the griffin-shaped legs which feature in five extant studio portraits by Nevin of clients, of himself and family members. The verso (below) bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp "T. Nevin late A. Bock, City Photographic Establishment 140 Elizabeth Street Hobart Town" etc etc and dates to ca. 1871-1874. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All rights reserved.

Verso: A young pregnant (?) woman [unidentified] wearing a head band (tinted pink), and a dark dress with frilled bodice, bustle and hem, her hand resting on a book atop the same big box stereoscopic viewer and table with the griffin-shaped legs which feature in five extant studio portraits by Nevin of clients, of himself and family members. The verso (below) bears Nevin's most common commercial studio stamp "T. Nevin late A. Bock, City Photographic Establishment 140 Elizabeth Street Hobart Town" etc etc and dates to ca. 1871-1874. Courtesy of © The Liam Peters Collection 2010. All rights reserved.

Full length: A young woman [unidentified] with large roll of hair atop the part, holding a book in her left hand, seated on an invisible stool, wearing a dress densely textured with raised flecks, a short flounce attached to the waist, and a frilled bodice.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870
Verso with the handwritten inscription in Samuel Clifford's orthography: "Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town". The original was taken by Thomas Nevin before 1876, and reprinted by Samuel Clifford until 1878, per this advertisement in The Mercury, 17th January 1876:

Mr T. J. Nevin's friends may depend that I will endeavour to satisfy them with any prints they may require from his negatives.
S. CLIFFORD

Verso: A young woman [unidentified] with large roll of hair atop the part, holding a book in her left hand, seated on an invisible stool, wearing a dress densely textured with raised flecks, a short flounce attached to the waist, and a frilled bodice.
Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870
Verso with the handwritten inscription in Samuel Clifford's orthography: "Clifford & Nevin Hobart Town". The original was taken by Thomas Nevin before 1876, and reprinted by Samuel Clifford until 1878, per this advertisement in The Mercury, 17th January 1876:

Mr T. J. Nevin's friends may depend that I will endeavour to satisfy them with any prints they may require from his negatives.
S. CLIFFORD

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Male and female clerics and Nevin's table 1870s

January 28, 2015, 7:20 pm

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From two different private collections ...

Clerical dress
So many coincidences inform the existence of these photographs. This man and woman are both of East Asian appearance, and both wore clerical dress denoting religious affiliations when photographed in the 1870s. But were they known to each other? Both portraits were collected in Australia, despite one originating from India. And then there's the question about the table. The male portrait poses many questions, since it was printed in Madras by the Maselawmoney Brothers photographers, but located amongst other cartes-de-visite taken by Thomas J. Nevin held in the private collection of a Tasmanian family (the Liam Peters Collection). The female portrait was acquired through a Douglas Stewart Fine Books dealers' catalogue (Melbourne) for KLW NFC Imprint & Private Collection in 2013.

The most significant aspect of the male cleric's portrait, from the point of view of Thomas J. Nevin's studio decor of the 1870s, is the table at which the cleric is seated. Dozens of Nevin's sitters at the City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town, were photographed next to this exact table in the early 1870s. Yet an identical table with the griffin-shaped legs appears in several extant portraits also taken by the Maselawmoney Bros. of Madras. The question arises, how and why did Nevin acquire an identical table, or is it the same table?

A child (Western dress and appearance) seated next to the table with the griffin-shaped legs, decorated with a hat and pottery figure of a King Charles Spaniel
Photographer: Maselawmoney Brothers Madras.
Source: eBay, 17 June 2014

The Maselawmoney Bros. portrait

Verso (above) of full length cdv of a seated man (below) with a wispy beard, East Asian in appearance and dressed in Western clerical garb, dated to ca. 1873. The verso bears the studio name and stamp of Maselawmoney Brothers, Photographers, Madras, and a handwritten note "Mrs Fitzpatrick 2 copies, 3/- to pay". This handwritten inscription may have detailed the name of the person who originated the request that this man be photographed, or indeed it may have been added by the sitter himself, requesting copies for a publisher, a congregationalist, or a relative called Mrs Fitzpatrick, perhaps the name of the woman in Thomas Nevin's photograph (below). Did they know each other?

The cleric is seated with his right arm resting on a table with the griffin-shaped legs which now appears to be a prominent and consistent motif in Nevin's studio decor for portraiture ca.1871-1875. On the table stands a full bunch of flowers. The cleric wears a clerical three-cornered hat, a white collar, and full-length dark robe buttoned up the middle, over trousers. At the end of a long chain around his neck are two or more small objects. His eyes calmly focused at the camera at the point of capture. Scans courtesy of the Liam Peters Collection 2010. All rights reserved.

The Thomas J. Nevin portrait
The young woman in this studio portrait by Thomas J. Nevin, taken ca. 1871-75, was also a cleric of East Asian appearance. She was photographed wearing a plain dark dress, and a Christian cross attached to a tight white neckband. This item is not a copy made of another Maselawmoney photograph taken in Madras and printed verso with Nevin's stamp, because Nevin OWNED THE SAME TABLE (or one identical) which is too much of a coincidence.This photograph is not a copy. It is an original real-time capture with both Nevin and the woman in his studio at the same time. The unusual, delicate tinting of the verso studio stamp would signify that this sitter and her portrait were socially more significant to Nevin and his studio assistants than the average client.

Oval frame, head and torso to below waist cdv: A young woman [unidentified] of East Asian appearance wearing no jewellery except for a Christian cross on a tight white neckband, in a dark plain dress with braid on dropped shoulders, velvet buttons, her hair in tight plaits pinned up to or from the part.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, early 1870s.
Verso with blue studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem with red tint, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Copyright © KLW NFC Imprint KLW NFC Private Collection 2013 ARR.

These two members of a religious order or movement may have visited the Nevin family at the Wesleyan Chapel, Kangaroo Valley (Tas), where Thomas Nevin's father, John Nevin taught school at the schoolhouse, next to the family house, orchards and the Lady Franklin Museum. As visitors, and assuming they knew each other, they may have been in Tasmania on a campaign to raise relief for the Indian famine of 1870s or they may been involved with the social purity movements of temperance, sobriety and sexual health at a time when colonial governments brought in Contagious Diseases (CD) Acts:

In Australasia, Queensland passed a CD Act in 1868, followed by New Zealand in 1869, and ordinances were passed in Victoria in 1878 and Tasmania in 1879. They arose out of concern at the rising rate of venereal diseases (a particular problem in India and other places where there was a large concentration of military men deprived of normal domestic relationships), both on account of the loss of efficiency in the army and because it was feared VD would spread to the general community.
The CD Acts aimed to control the spread of VD by ‘compulsory medical inspection of common prostitutes and forcible detention in hospitals for the diseased.’ As there were so many variables in their execution, they were not always successful in containing the spread of disease.

Elisabeth Wilson‘Wandering stars’The impact of British evangelists in Australia, 1870s – 1900. PhD thesis, University of Tasmania October 2011. p. 307.

Further reading
The London Missionary Society Collection
National Library of Australia

HISTORY of COLLECTION
Source: Gosling, Andrew, Religion and Rebellion in China: The London Missionary Society Collection, National Library of Australia News, vol. 8 (10), July 1998, pp. 3–6. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/131760/20120120-0944/www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/1998/jul98/story-1.pdf

The National Library acquired the London Missionary Society collection of Chinese language sources in 1961, as part of its effort to develop strong research holdings on modern Asia. The Library's Liaison Officer in London at that time,F.W. Torrington, first sought advice from experts at London's School of Oriental and African Studies and the British Museum. On 4 May 1961 he wrote to the National Librarian, Harold White, in the following terms. I have to report that the London Missionary Society has offered to sell to the National Library a collection of Chinese works of about 600 volumes. The majority of these works were published in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and they cover a wide range of subjects-religion, history, literature, politics etc. Works on theology comprise about one fifth of the total ... Some of the historical and literary material is of considerable value and rarity. The most valuable items in the collection are the pamphlets relating to the T'ai P'ing rebellion ...
Following receipt of this letter, the Library consulted several eminent China scholars at the Australian National University. They supported acquisition of the collection, which was duly purchased and sent to Australia on board the Carnatic in January 1962.
As Torrington noted, the most outstanding part of the collection came from the T'aiping Rebellion, one of the greatest upheavals in modern Chinese history. The Taiping (,Great Peace') movement was founded byHung Hsiu-ch'uan, a visionary leader influenced by Liang A-fa and other Protestant missionaries. Hung preached a mixture of Christian egalitarianism and traditional Chinese utopian ideas, and established what was intended as an ideal realm known as the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace.
The movement's reformist actions initially enjoyed some support from missionaries and other Westerners, despite misgivings about its unorthodox form of Christianity. Hung and his followers-including the former charcoal-cutter Yang Hsiuch'ing (d.1856), who became Taiping commander-in-chief-captured Nanking in 1853, making it their 'Heavenly Capital'. For a while they looked as if they might overthrow the ruling Manchu Ch'ing dynasty. However, the Ch'ing largely retained the loyalty of the Confucian Chinese elite, who preferred Manchu government along traditional lines to Chinese rule by rebels with an ideology combining Western Christian and anti-Confucian elements. Finally, Chinese forces with some aid from foreign-officered mercenaries-crushed the rebellion with enormous loss of life.

DESCRIPTION of COLLECTION
Source::http://www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/london-missionary-society-collection

The collection consists of 722 books, pamphlets, leaflets, manuscripts, newspapers and maps. The works are mostly written in Chinese, but there are also 37 titles in Japanese, three in Korean and two in Manchu. In addition, there are some bilingual works and one trilingual work (Chinese–Malay–English). The bulk of the works were published between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, but there are a few published in the seventeenth century and a small number of works dating from the 1950s. They were published in Malacca, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hankou, Taibei, Edo (Tokyo), Kyoto, San Francisco and elsewhere.
The largest group comprises Christian works, including Biblical translations and commentaries, catechisms, hymns, prayers and theological writings. Early Protestant missionaries in China are strongly represented including Robert Morrison (1782–1834), William Milne (1785–1822), Walter Medhurst (1796–1857), Karl Gutzlaff (1803–1851), James Legge (1815–1897), Benjamin Hobson (1816–1873), Joseph Edkins (1823–1905), John Chalmers (1825–1899), W.A.P. Martin (1827–1916), John Nevius (1829–1893) and Griffith John (1831–1912). There are also writings by a few Catholic missionaries and about 20 Chinese Christians, such as Ho Tsin-sheen (1817–1871), who collaborated with Legge, and Xu Jiaxing, who collaborated with W. Hopkyn Rees. Apart from publications of the London Missionary Society itself, there are works published by the South China Religious Tract Society, the Presbyterian Mission Press, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Bible Society, the Lutheran Missions Literature Society and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Source: http://www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/london-missionary-society-collection
See also: Christian Missions to the Chinese in Australia and New Zealand, 1855 - c1900
http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au/store/3/4/5/5/1/public/welch/missionaries.htm#rcmcb

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Portraits of older women by Thomas Nevin 1870s

January 30, 2015, 9:11 pm

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This collection of studio portraits taken by Thomas J. Nevin in the early 1870s of otherwise unidentified older women includes just one whose name is inscribed verso: Mrs Morrison. Who might she have been? A servant, a farmer, a post-mistress, some relation to Askin Morrison, ship owner, of Morrison Street, opposite Franklin Wharf, Hobart? Or Mrs Morrison, teacher of Kangaroo Point whose health had forced her to retire (Mercury, 6 December 1872). Perhaps she was Mrs Ellen Morrison, licensee of the Launceston Hotel, Brisbane St. on a visit south to Hobart? Whoever this sitter was, she appears to have worked hard all her life, no fuss or frills about it.

The business-like stare

Full length cdv: Mrs Morrison (name inscribed verso) wore a three-quarter length, light-coloured, thick check-weave shawl pinned at the neck with a brooch over a white scarf for this important occasion. Her dark dress shows braiding in rows on the bodice and cuffs. She had pinned a thin plait over her head at the back. Her scowling stare straight at the camera under thunderous eyebrows might suggest excitement at having her likeness taken, a rare event perhaps and possibly an expensive one, or fascination with process, or simply impatience with the ever affable, rather humorous, and good-looking thirty-ish Mr. Nevin.

STUDIO DECOR: Mrs Morrison sat on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her left arm resting on his table with the griffin-shaped legs. Noticeably absent from the table is any decoration, such as a vase or book, which just might indicate that Nevin charged a little extra for flowers which his assistant would then hand-tint, but the client declined the offer. Or perhaps it was winter when flowers were not available. Behind the table hangs the backdrop sheet painted with the usual vista of tiles on a patio terrace, an Italianate balcony, and a river meandering through a valley in the distance, partially obscured by the drape.The carpet pattern of lozenges and chain links features in some but not all of these full-length portraits.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca. 1870-1875.
Verso inscribed "Mrs Morrison" in black ink with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q14529

Verso: Full length cdv: Mrs Morrison (name inscribed verso) wore a three-quarter length, light-coloured, thick check-weave shawl pinned at the neck with a brooch over a white scarf for this important occasion. Her dark dress shows braiding in rows on the bodice and cuffs. She had pinned a thin plait over her head at the back. Her scowling stare straight at the camera under thunderous eyebrows might suggest excitement at having her likeness taken, a rare event perhaps and possibly an expensive one, or fascination with process, or simply impatience with the ever affable, rather humorous, and good-looking thirty-ish Mr. Nevin.

STUDIO DECOR: Mrs Morrison sat on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her left arm resting on his table with the griffin-shaped legs. Noticeably absent from the table is any decoration, such as a vase or book, which just might indicate that Nevin charged a little extra for flowers which his assistant would then hand-tint, but the client declined the offer. Or perhaps it was winter when flowers were not available. Behind the table hangs the backdrop sheet painted with the usual vista of tiles on a patio terrace, an Italianate balcony, and a river meandering through a valley in the distance, partially obscured by the drape. The carpet pattern of lozenges and chain links features in some but not all of these full-length portraits.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca. 1870-1875.
Verso inscribed "Mrs Morrison" in black ink with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2014-2015
Taken at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 10 November 2014
TMAG Ref: Q14529

Hat, bag and umbrella

Full length cdv: A mature woman [unidentified] wearing a short thick jacket with six metallic buttons over a dark dress buttoned up from the hem, a flat hat decorated with a large floral arrangement, and a brooch on a dark ribbon at her throat. She decided to keep her outdoor possessions in view for the capture, her closed umbrella and handbag held tight in gloved hands. She sat on Nevin's low chair covered with a shiny material, her left arm resting on the table with the griffin-shaped legs. No flowers or books were placed on the table, perhaps not to obscure the painted wall hanging behind with Italianate tiling and balcony giving onto a river scene which is very clear in this photograph. The drape is on the viewer's left, whereas in others, the drape is on the right in front of the wall hanging. This sitter ponders the experience by directing her frontal gaze slightly to the left of the camera, her lips pressed together and cheeks puffed out as though holding her breath.

Studio portrait by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1870-75, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart
Scans courtesy © The Private Collection of Marcel Safier 2005 ARR.
NOTES Courtesy of owner Marcel Safier:
"Subject not known. It came in an album I bought from a Tasmanian dealer at a Sydney collector's fair in 2001. The pencil numbering on the rear is my own cataloguing system. The mount is 64mm x 102mm ... It very closely resembles the mounts used by Bock previously."

Verso: Full length cdv: A mature woman [unidentified] wearing a short thick jacket with six metallic buttons over a dark dress buttoned up from the hem, a flat hat decorated with a large floral arrangement, and a brooch on a dark ribbon at her throat. She decided to keep her outdoor possessions in view for the capture, her closed umbrella and handbag held tight in gloved hands. She sat on Nevin's low chair covered with a shiny material, her left arm resting on the table with the griffin-shaped legs. No flowers or books were placed on the table, perhaps not to obscure the painted wall hanging behind with Italianate tiling and balcony giving onto a river scene which is very clear in this photograph . The drape is on the viewer's left, whereas in others, the drape is on the right in front of the wall hanging. This sitter ponders the experience by directing her frontal gaze slightly to the left of the camera, her lips pressed together and cheeks puffed out as though holding her breath.

Studio portrait by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1870-75, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart
Scans courtesy © The Private Collection of Marcel Safier 2005 ARR.
NOTES Courtesy of owner Marcel Safier:
"Subject not known. It came in an album I bought from a Tasmanian dealer at a Sydney collector's fair in 2001. The pencil numbering on the rear is my own cataloguing system. The mount is 64mm x 102mm ... It very closely resembles the mounts used by Bock previously."

Colour means social status

Full length and highly-coloured cdv: A mature woman [unidentified but possibly Emily Giblin nee Perkins, wife of Thomas Nevin's family solicitor, the Hon. W.R. Giblin, Attorney-General] wearing a white floral head covering with ribbons, a plain dress with white bow and white cuffs, seated with sewing on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material at his table with the griffin-shaped legs on which stands a portable pin cushion, books, and vase with flowers, all highly colored including the carpet and drape. Only the backdrop of a patterned patio looking out from an Italianate terrace to a vista of a meandering river has escaped the colouring. This carte-de-visite ca. 1872 taken by T.Nevin late A.Bock, 140 Elizabeth St., Hobart Town may have been coloured by the purchaser, whether the client, or the client's descendants. Similar inept or heavy-handed colouring is evident on a private collection of Nevin's studios portraits originating from a family in northern Tasmania, and another held at the QVMAG, Launceston. This item is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart, included in a box with Thomas Nevin's carte-de-visite of W. R. Giblin.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 -1875
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
TAHO Ref: PH31/439 [not digitised]
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2012 ARR

Verso: Full length and highly-coloured cdv: A mature woman [unidentified but possibly Emily Giblin nee Perkins, wife of Thomas Nevin's family solicitor, the Hon. W.R. Giblin, Attorney-General] wearing a white floral head covering with ribbons, a plain dress with white bow and white cuffs, seated with sewing on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material at his table with the griffin-shaped legs on which stands a portable pin cushion, books, and vase with flowers, all highly colored including the carpet and drape. Only the backdrop of a patterned patio looking out from an Italianate terrace to a vista of a meandering river has escaped the colouring. This carte-de-visite ca. 1872 taken by T.Nevin late A.Bock, 140 Elizabeth St., Hobart Town may have been coloured by the purchaser, whether the client, or the client's descendants. Similar inept or heavy-handed colouring is evident on a private collection of Nevin's studios portraits originating from a family in northern Tasmania and another held at the QVMAG, Launceston. This item is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart, included in a box with Thomas Nevin's carte-de-visite of W. R. Giblin.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 -1875
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
TAHO Ref: PH31/439 [not digitised]
Photos recto and verso copyright © KLW NFC Imprint 2012 ARR

Widowhood

Full length cdv: An older woman [unidentified] seated on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her left elbow resting on the studio table with the griffin-shaped legs where a book and a dark vase holding delicately tinted flowers in pink and yellow have been arranged. The drape is to the viewer's left in this photograph. This woman wore a very long dark plain dress showing a fold near the hem, with braiding around the drop shoulders and a brooch on a ribbon at her throat, her hair plainly arranged at the nape. Perhaps she was newly widowed. Her eyes are sunken and her forlorn gaze averted, directed towards the foot of the camera stand rather than at the lens.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 -1875
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Scans courtesy of © The Private Collection of C. G. Harrisson 2006. ARR.

Verso: Full length cdv: An older woman [unidentified] seated on Nevin's low chair covered with shiny material, her left elbow resting on the studio table with the griffin-shaped legs where a book and a dark vase holding delicately tinted flowers in pink and yellow have been arranged. The drape is to the viewer's left in this photograph. This woman wore a very long dark plain dress showing a fold near the hem, with braiding around the drop shoulders and a brooch on a ribbon at her throat, her hair plainly arranged at the nape. Perhaps she was newly widowed. Her eyes are sunken and her forlorn gaze averted, directed towards the foot of the camera stand rather than at the lens.

Studio portrait by Thomas Nevin ca, 1870 -1875
Verso with studio stamp: "Ad Altiora" above Kangaroo emblem, T. Nevin late A. Bock encircled by belt printed with "City Photographic Establishment" and address below, "140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town". In italics below: "Further Copies can be obtained at any time".
Scans courtesy of © The Private Collection of C. G. Harrisson 2006. ARR.

Floral head band

Oval frame, head and torso to below waist cdv: An older woman [unidentified] wearing a floral head band, a light-coloured dress, or perhaps a skirt and matching jacket trimmed in dark braid with large buttons and wide sleeves dropped from the shoulder, a white bow at her neck and a thin long chain reaching below her waist. Her gaze is serious, calm, and directed 25 degrees or so off centre towards the viewer's right.

Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
[Studio portrait of a woman, half-length, to left] T. Nevin.
Accession number(s):
H2005.34/2003
H2005.34/2003A

STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA
[Studio portrait of a woman, half-length, to left] T. Nevin.
Digital image(s):
Creator: Nevin, Thomas J., photographer.
Title:[Studio portrait of a woman, half-length, to left] [picture] / T. Nevin.
Access/Copyright: Reproduction rights: State Library of Victoria
Accession number(s):
H2005.34/2003
H2005.34/2003A
Date(s) of creation: [ca. 1867-ca. 1875]
Medium: 1 photographic print on carte de visite mount : albumen silver ;
Dimensions: 11 x 7 cm.
Collection: John Etkins collection.
Notes: Title assigned by cataloguer.
Not dated but Nevin worked at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town, between 1867-1875.
Ref.: Australians behind the camera, directory of early Australian photographers, 1841-1945 / Sandy Barrie, 2002.
Photographer printed on verso: City Photographic Establishment / T. Nevin / late / A. Bock / 140 / Elizabeth St. / Hobart Town.
Source/Donor: Gift of Mr John Etkins; 2005.

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