Warwick Reeder: in search of an "author"

ATTRIBUTION issues re photographer T. J. NEVIN
WARWICK REEDER valuer at the NLA
QVMAG collection of prisoner mugshots 1870s

In his Masters thesis The Democratic Image (ANU 1995), Warwick Reeder assumed that the Commandant of the Port Arthur prison, A. H. Boyd was the photographer of all the Tasmanian prisoner identification photographs taken in the 1870s. Of the 300 plus "convict portraits" (the term used in tourism discourse) to survive which are held in public institutions, Reeder cites this photograph of prisoner Thomas Fleming (Fig. 84, on page 71, QVMAG collection) as an example. His argument, that none of the convicts in the QVMAG collection (72 cdvs) and the TMAG collection (59 cdvs) were released prior to 1874, is substantially incorrect, whatever he might mean by the notion of  "release". A simple reliance on the vagaries which Chris Long published in 1995 regarding A. H. Boyd and T. J. Nevin ultimately led Warwick Reeder into making very dubious assertions in A. H. Boyd's favour founded on little more than rumour and belief.

The Prints
Despite the labelling to enhance their sale prospects by Beattie in 1916, these prisoners were not supported by Imperial funds; their trial and incarceration were funded by the colonial government of Tasmania from 1871 onwards. They were photographed on contract by T. J. Nevin who was commissioned out of Treasury funds from 1872 when the systematic photography of prisoners was implemented in Victoria and NSW.



One of three panels holding forty prints of Tasmania prisoners from negatives by T. J. Nevin 1870s
Offered for sale by John Watt  Beattie ca. 1916
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176

These forty photographs in three frames were listed in Beattie's Port Arthur Museum Catalogue (1916), as item no. 69:
68. Glass Case containing -
  • 1. Skull of the Macquarie Harbour Cannibal, Alex Pearce (Marcus Clarke's "Gabbet.")
  • 2. Two Sketches made of Pearce after execution.
  • 3. The Axe Pearce Carried, and with which the murders were committed.
  • 4. Bolts and Lock Taken from the Cell where Pearce was confined, Old Gaol, Murray street.
  • 5. "Sling Shot" taken from Matthew Brady, the celebrated Tasmanian Bushranger, when captured by John Batman in 1820. 
69. Three Frames containing 40 photographs taken at Port Arthur, showing types of Imperial Prisoners there.
The originals of these forty (40) individual prints of Tasmanian prisoners photographed at the Hobart Gaol by the commissioned photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s, were intended to be pasted to the criminal record sheet of each prisoner. It was customary to photograph a person before conviction and after it, and again on discharge, by order of the Tasmanian Attorney-General from 1872 onwards, and since the men whom Nevin photographed were repeat and habitual offenders, the same glass negative was used again and again. The plates were handled repeatedly to produce duplicates for distribution to regional prisons and police stations, and for the many administrative copies required by the central Municipal Police Office at the Town Hall, the Supreme Court and the Hobart Gaol.

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

The unmounted print of prisoner Thomas Fleming is on the top row, last image. Thomas Nevin produced at least four to six duplicates; one was printed in an oval mount and pasted to the prisoner's rap sheet.



Unmounted print of prisoner Thomas Fleming
Taken at the Police Office Hobart by T. J. Nevin 1874
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176



Thomas Nevin's photograph of Thomas Fleming
Recto and verso: the same image printed in an oval mount.
QVMAG ref: QVM: 1985: P: 67



Above: recto and verso of a mounted cdv taken originally by Thomas J. Nevin of prisoner Thomas Fleming, January 1874 at the Hobart Gaol on Fleming's discharge. This black and white copy was created at the QVMAG in 1985 by Chris Long for reasons best known only to himself, since it serves no purpose.

Thomas Fleming per St Vincent was tried at the Supreme Court Hobart on 9 Sept 1867 for housebreaking and larceny, sentenced to seven years. He was born in Yorkshire , aged 38 yrs, 5ft 6ins, black hair, Free in Servitude. Two moles on left cheek. He was discharged from the Hobart Gaol on 7 January 1874, and photographed on discharge by police photographer Thomas J. Nevin. There was no photographer of prisoners by the name of A. H. Boyd in Tasmania. Boyd was briefly a Commandant at the Port Arthur prison (1871-73). He had nothing to do with the police mugshots taken by T. J. Nevin for the colonial government's Attorney-General's Department.



Thomas Fleming per St Vincent discharge, 7 January 1874.
Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police, J. Barnard, Gov't printer


Fictions not Facts
Warwick Reeder's use of these Tasmanian prisoner mugshots is through the gaze of the fine art dealer. Inevitably, he sees the extant examples as an "artist's" personalised portfolio, even using the literary term "author" to mask the subjective preoccupation with "artist". Had he started with the vocational term "police photographer" his focus would not have veered from Thomas J. Nevin.

ERRORS of FACT

1. wrong biographical data on photographer T. J. Nevin's family and career;

2. citations and quotations from unread sources, such as Margaret Glover's article (1979) which does NOT mention the unpublished children's fiction by E.M. Hall (1930/;1942)

Hall's fiction in turn does NOT mention, A.H. Boyd, nor prisoner photography, nor a "darkroom" although Chris Long does, turning "room" from E.M. Hall's story into a "darkroom" , Reeder's source for this fantasy, (TMAG 1995:82)

3. unseen description and reference to the so-called ONE photograph at the Mitchell, SLNSW, supposedly by Boyd which is unattributed, dated 1894, and not a photograph of a prisoner; this photograph of a building - not a man in prisoner clothing - is supposed to represent evidence of A.H. Boyd's relationship to photography.

4. the assumption that a cargo of negative plates supposedly arriving at Port Arthur in 1873 were for the personal use of its Commandant A.H. Boyd, and that the same plates were used for the same prisoners whose mugshots survive, when in fact the extant examples of more than 300 are random estrays from a corpus taken by the Nevin brothers between 1872 and 1888.

5. repeated reference to the Assistant Colonial Secretary's Travers Solly's requests for prisoner photographs. The request was for those prisoners' photographs taken by T. J. Nevin at the Hobart Gaol before the date of prisoners' transfer to Port Arthur after 1871, copies of which had been sent to Boyd at Port Arthur, eg. the cited examples of the Gregson brothers, who absconded from Hobart and not Port Arthur, were photographed at the Police Office Hobart on February 18th 1874 after arrival from Launceston when arrested (see TAHO: CON37-1-1000498 and 9).

6. no understanding of police practices or prisoner documentation and relevant legislation by 1873, and no reference to the police records of the "convicts" who were just ordinary criminals, habitual re-offenders when photographed - not at the Port Arthur prison - but by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart Gaol, in the city's courts, and at the central Town Hall Municipal Police Office.
etc etc

Reeder's statement that Chris Long was the originator of the "belief" about A.H. Boyd, however, is correct and the most important statement made by Reeder in these few pages.

Although Warwick Reeder's thesis is now decades old, these errors are still being circulated as currency in publications written by his supporters (e.g. Clark, JACHS 2010), so in a sense, Reeder has found the sort of "author" he was hoping would arise from the oblivion of his thesis. It's unfortunate for his own reputation that he has to encourage acolytes to maintain the non-photographer A. H. Boyd as central to the "mystery" of the "author" of these prisoner photographs when the facts about Thomas J. Nevin's work have always been so readily available. That Warwick Reeder was a valuer for the National Library of Australia explains in no small part who was responsible for their holdings of 84 "Portraits, Port Arthur convicts 1874" suddenly catalogued with a photographic attribution to A. H. Boyd in 2007.  It's a cover-up of an error made by Reeder in his poorly researched Masters thesis, a cover-up which puts into question his credibility as a fine arts dealer.

Warwick Reeder's thesis re T. J. Nevin:



Reeder, page 68: Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 68. There is a deception here: the prisoners were photographed before being sent to Port Arthur and after arrival back at Hobart, and not en masse at Port Arthur; although Nevin attended the site during 1873 and 1874 on police business, he worked at the Hobart Gaol where these men were photographed, if a second offender sentenced for 3 months or longer and at the Town Hall police central registry where he photographed men discharged and released, all with various conditions (FS,TOL,CP etc).



Reeder, page 69: Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 69.
Reeder cites Glover (1979) who does NOT cite E.M. Hall’s children’s fiction about Port Arthur (1930/1942) which does NOT mention prisoner photography, obviously having read neither. Details about Thomas J. Nevin are incorrect: his seventh and sixth child to survive was born in 1888. Nevin was the police and prisons photographer in the 1870s-80s (with his brother Constable John Nevin), his government contractor Royal Arms stamp showing joint copyright with the government was used under tender (one photograph stamped per batch of 100) until he gained full-time civil service at the Town Hall in 1876, and he was still working as a City and Supreme Courts bailiff serving warrants and taking offenders’ photographs in 1886. There is no “mystery” about the “author” of the prisoner mugshots, just poor research as Reeder musters the cliched art historian’s essentialist notion of “artistic” creativity.



Reeder, page 70: Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 70.
ERROR: There is information about Milner at the State Library Tas.
FACTS: Chris Long was indeed the originator of this fantasy about A. H. Boyd (ca. 1984, published 1995). Reeder doesn’t understand that the men photographed as prisoners were in and out of prison on TOL and probation from the end of their first sentence in England prior to 1853 – usually 7 to 14 years. They were photographed by Nevin for the police in Hobart only as RE-OFFENDERS – and many had long criminal careers – as offenders are today, and for no other reason.



Reeder, page 71: Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 71.
The extensive copying and numbering of the QVMAG collection bears no weight to his argument about either Boyd or Nevin (Reeder was a museum employee, hence the fascination). None of the numbers are police or prison registration numbers: they are accessioning file numbers by museum and library archivists in the 20th century, as well as curatorial numbering used when more than 50 were removed from the QVMAG, taken to Port Arthur for an exhibition in 1983, and deposited instead at the TMAG. The inscription “Taken at Port Arthur 1874″ on dozens of the versos is a confabulation of facts by Beattie et al to excite intercolonial tourism when dozens of these cdvs were exhibited in 1916 at Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in association with the fake convict hulk Success.



Reeder, page 72:Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 72:
This is where Reeder creates an artist photographer of A. H. Boyd, and the real photographer, Thomas J. Nevin, as just a copyist. He also assumes he has broken the numbering code, without reference to any actual criminal register or police gazette of the day. Note the pathos mustered around Boyd’s untimely death: what Warwick Reeder fails to document is that A. H. Boyd was much despised in his day, and that no authentic public records associate him with personally taking prisoner photographs. Reeder’s logic goes something like this: Very Important Person requests his Subordinate one chain down in rank for a photograph of a lowly criminal in his care, therefore the Subordinate is the “author”: applying the analogy would be akin to saying that the Governor General requested from the NSW Premier a photograph of a known criminal in prison, therefore the NSW Premier was the “author” of the photograph, etc etc. It’s a managerial delusion about POWER that knowingly confuses ownership with authorship



Reeder, page 73:Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 73:
There is no understanding here that several hundred photographs including duplicates were in circulation in the 1870s, and that the extant 300 plus are just central police office estrays, not some ethnographic archive or portfolio of an amateur whom Reeder would like to believe was A. H. Boyd.



Reeder, page 74:Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), page 74:
Here lies reasons for the creation of A. H. Boyd as an “artist”: the homosocial identification of Reeder with Boyd is all about managerial POWER. It is subjective wishful thinking about the writer’s self projected onto his subject, with the concomitant dejection of the REAL artist/photographer Nevin (of course).



Reeder, footnotes, page 108:Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), footnotes 51-64, page 108:
The ONE photograph at the SLNSW is unattributed, dated 1894, and not a photograph of a prisoner. It is a photo of a building. It was NOT taken by A. H. Boyd, it was taken by the Anson brothers. It has been doctored with a pencilled note to give him an attribution of ONE photo, probably by Chris Long in 1984! No other photos exist because Boyd was not a photographer.



Reeder, footnotes, page 109: Reeder, Warwick (ANU thesis 1995), footnotes 65-79, page 109: Glover’s article does not cite the fictional tale by E.M. Hall (1942) which was not a factual reminiscence. T. J. Nevin’s government contractor stamp also appears on prisoner mugshots at the SLNSW: why does Nevin have to be “author’? Why not just “police photographer”? Because this writer Reeder is an ART historian.



Above: print from T. J. Nevin’s original glass negative, taken on 7th January 1874 at the Mayor's Court for the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall on the discharge of the prisoner Thomas Fleming (Police Gazette), referred to by Reeder on page 71. The QVMAG reproduced it in 1985 as a black and white copy cleaned of scratches and marks, using -
Camera: Canon
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
File: 1985_p_0169
Last update: June 2020

RELATED POSTS main weblog


Aliases, Copies and Misattribution

ALIASES, COPIES & MISATTRIBUTION
THE 'FAIRLIE' 1852




... numbered copies ... 1.2,3, ...

George White as Nutt, George Nutt alias White ...





Above: The database image of George NUTT with verso at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery: note that the verso is inscribed with the conventional date of Nevin's photographic registration (1874), the alias, and the ship on which Nutt was originally transported before 1853, but the transcription which appears on many other versos of convicts' cartes - "Taken at Port Arthur" - is absent. Nevin may have photographed Nutt at Port Arthur prison between 23rd February and 8th May 1874; the former date being another sentence for Nutt for breaking the cell while trying to escape, the latter being one of the dates on which Nevin attended the penal site on police business with prisoner Job Smith whom he had photographed with the alias William Campbell (see details of Nutt's serial offenses on the large Fairlie ship transportation record below.)

The transcriber of the notes on the verso of the carte has collated the prisoner's record with the photograph, and assumed the date "1874" was the date of Nevin's photograph. Nevin would have taken another photograph of Nutt in any event as a re-offender in 1875 when Nutt was arrested for absconding, and this is the image.


Webshot AOT of Thomas Nevin's carte of George Nutt alias White 1875
Click on image for large view

POLICE RECORDS
The vignette of convict George Nutt alias White, which is also online at the Archives Office of Tasmania was taken by Thomas Nevin soon after Nutt was arrested on September 3rd, 1875. Nutt escaped while under sentence on 24th August, 1875 from the Port Arthur settlement, and was considered desperate enough that a reward was offered which was posted in the weekly police gazettes (Tasmania Reports on Crime for Police Information 1875) during the fortnight of the convict's freedom.



Above: The notice in the gazette on 27th August, 1875.

Some details about his height were amended in the following week's description for police information:



The notice appeared again on the eve of Nutt's capture:



And the notice of his arrest appeared in the same issue, September 3rd, 1875.



Sources: Tasmania Reports on Crime for Police Information 1875.
James Barnard, Govt printer.

THE 'FAIRLIE' 1852
Thomas Nevin was able to recognize and describe George Nutt from their common experience as passengers travelling to Australia on board the Fairlie, which arrived in Hobart on July 3rd, 1852. Thomas Nevin was still a child in 1852, the ten year old son of a Fairlie guard, John Nevin, accompanying his mother Mary and three siblings, William John (Jack) , Rebecca and Mary Ann. George Nutt was a Parkhurst boy, a transported exile from the prison of the Isle of Wight. He would have been about 18 years old in 1852, if he was 42 years old when he fled the Port Arthur prison in 1875.



Above: Nutt's convict record at AOT
Ref: CON33-1-107_00197_L

Unlike many of these transportation records, this one contains some information of Nutt's work record and serial criminal offenses upto his discharge in 1884.

COPIES and DUPLICATES and ALIASES
The Archives Office of Tasmania & the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery copies of this prisoner's vignette both bear the number "1" on the mount, recto. An ink stain of a square stamp partially covering the convict's face is evident on this one, the AOT copy.



AOT: PH30/1/3222
Caption by AOT: Possibly George White alias Nutt convict transported per Fairlie 1852
Photo taken at Port Arthur by Thomas Nevin 1874


Archives Office of Tasmania photographic database:
PH30/1/3222
Title: George White
Subject: convicts, people, portraits
Locality: not identified
Date: 1874

Archives Office of Tasmania Convicts' names database:
Database number:81329 Name: White, George
Arrived: 03 Jul 1852 Fairlie
Departed: 11 Mar 1852 Plymouth
Transported as George Nutt

The AOT has used Nutt's ship transportation record with details of his incarceration in 1870-71 at the Separate Model Prison Port Arthur where he was originally documented George White as Nut [sic]



White as Nutt in Separate Prison July 1870



White as Nutt Separate Prison April 1871 -

George White as Nutt,
Separate Model Prison 1870-1
Mitchell Library, SLNSW
Photos © KLW NFC 2009 ARR


- but the police documented his escape as Nutt alias White. According to information detailing the Parkhurst Boys at Convict Central, a 13 year old boy called George Nutt was convicted of larceny on 15th May 1848, sentenced for 7yrs and transported on the Fairlie departing Plymouth on March 2nd, 1852, arriving in Tasmania on July 3rd, 1852. The ship transportation record (above) confirms these details, although his age by 1852 was given as 19 yrs. He was listed as a tailor or shoemaker. George Nutt would have been born ca 1834 if aged 13 at the time of conviction in 1848, and would have been around 42 in late 1875. The photograph by Nevin shows a man of that age.

COPYING
Nevin took the one surviving image of Nutt as a police photograph at the Hobart Gaol where Nutt was incarcerated after arrest in 1875. The vignette was printed from the glass negative, as a standard police identification carte of the period, and pasted to Nutt's criminal record sheet. The number "1" on the mount may be Nevin's numbering, or one used by the police, and there would have existed at least two more duplicates circulated to police, but more likely it has been numbered by museum archivists on accession. Another indication on this carte that it was the first photograph in an album copied as a series at the QVM in 1958 is the ink impress left by the square QVM stamp across George Nutt's left cheek and collar from the verso of the second carte in the series in 1958 which was placed on top of it, that of convict carte No.2, Nevin's vignette  of Wm Yeomans.

For this reason, the square stamp ink is visible in the AOT image, but not in the QVMAG image, although identical in all other respects, which points to multiple copies made by the QVMAG archivist (in Launceston) for circulation to the AOT office and in some cases, to the TMAG in 1987 (in Hobart). The original from which 20th century copies were made may be the one held at the QVMAG but not necessarily the only duplicate which was first made by Nevin from his glass negative and used in criminal registers.

For example, there are three extant copies of the photograph taken once and once only by Nevin of prisoner William Yeomans: one at the QVMAG, one at the AOT, both numbered "2" on the front, and a third which is held at the National Library of Australia with no numbering on the front, rather, it is numbered "57" on the verso, testifying to further copying from a single original glass negative either by Nevin for the prison authorities' immediate use, or by later archivists again. The NLA copy of the Yeomans carte is an archival estray donated there by Dr Neil Gunson in 1962 and accessioned in Nevin's name.



NLA Catalogue notes:
Part of collection: Convict portraits, Port Arthur, 1874.; Gunson Collection file 203/7/54.; Title from inscription on reverse.; Inscription: "No 57"--On reverse.



Photograph of convict William Yeomans by Nevin at the QVMAG and AOT.



The recto on Yeomans' carte is numbered "2' and its verso was most likely placed on top of the front of Nutt's carte when the QVMAG archivist was in the process of copying them in 1958. The catalogue number for the job in 1958 was 1958:78:22, accompanied by the QVM stamp with more numbers.

The original transcription of the convict's name and ship and the date 1874 was added much earlier, probably ca. 1900-1927, given the calligraphic style. The most recent inscriptions by archivists date from 1985; e.g. QVM1985:P69, and are in a childish hand. Again, there is NO statement on this verso that the photograph was taken at Port Arthur, the probable explanation being that these first few cartes were transcribed verso and copied by one person, and the remainder at a later date by another. The third prisoner carte in the series, that of Bewley Tuck, with the number "3" on recto, similarly lacks the statement "Taken at Port Arthur":






MISATTRIBUTION: QVMAG, TMAG, NLA, DAAO
Cataloguists, librarians, archivists, students, photo historians and others in public service have made a real mess of storing and recording the accession history, numbering, and data collation on these Tasmanian prisoners' identification photos: obliteration, reinvention, fads, guesses, fashions, and personal agendas have managed to obliterate valuable data and thus the traces of facts from their past.

George Nutt's ID photograph is one example. It was one of more than 70 exhibited at the Queen Victoria and Museum Gallery in 1977, with correct attribution to Thomas Nevin from the Beattie collection. But by 1984 a researcher on a very tiny budget, Chris Long, who had the job of putting together an A-Z directory of Tasmanian photographers (published in 1995) for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, indulged a speculation that photographic supplies supposedly sent to Port Arthur in August 1873 were used personally by the Civil Commandant to photograph the prison's inmates (letter to Nevin descendants 1984, letter to the authors Davies and Stanbury, The Mechanical Eye 1985). The Civil Commandant from 1871 to December 1873 was A.H. Boyd, with no reputation in his lifetime as a photographer, no history of training or skills, and no extant works. No police or official documentation associates his name with prisoner photographic records and there has never surfaced any authentic evidence to support this "idea" or "belief", but because of the self-referential world of art history, photo historians such as Ennis, Crombie and Reeder have credited Chris Long and used his "idea" as a possible attribution, extending to the present as a "likely" attribution by the sycophantic Clark who has influenced the NLA's current revision of Nevin's attribution. Under the influence of the QVMAG employee Elspeth Wishart,now at the TMAG and her former colleague at the TMAG, Julia Clark, the NLA has recently been co-opted  to apply the misattribution to Boyd of their 84 "convict portraits", further effectively suppressing Nevin's former sole attribution, for no reason other than to attempt to mask their collective foolishness in believing Chris Long's idle speculations (1984,1995). Their doggedness is tantamount to professional fraud.

This simple fallacy of judgment by Long and his unquestioning cohort has misled commentators, and more significantly, librarians and museum cataloguists into suppressing Nevin's attribution, foregrounding the name A.H. Boyd, ignoring the circumstances and contexts of police practices, and labelling the ID photos as "portraits" - aesthetic objects, in other words. Chris Long expressed regret at the confusion he caused (acknowledged 2005, email to these weblogs), but the misattribution in public institutions is still evident in their catalogues. George White aka Nutt's carte has gone from this record:

Archives Office of Tasmania (and current at June 2010)
Carte no. 1
PH30/1/3222
Title: George White
Subject: convicts, people, portraits Locality: not identified
Date: 1874  Possibly George White (alias Nutt) convict transported per Fairlie.

Photo taken at Port Arthur by Thomas Nevin

and this original record at the QVMAG (prior to 1985)
Nevin, Thomas J. 1874
QVMAG carte no. 1
George White, alias Nutt
Fairlie

to this now at the QVMAG from 1985 (until 2009) when Elspeth Wishart re-catalogued all these convict photographs for an Exhibition purely because of Long's idle and groundless hypothesis:

QVMAG from 1985-2009
Registration Number: QVM: 1985:P :0070
Type: carte de visite
Producer/Photographer: Boyd, Adolarious Humphrey
Content: Portrait of George White alias Nutt at Port Arthur, Tasmania, 1874.

Notice that the data about ship, date of transportation, and former catalogue numbers are all gone, and the aesthetic term "portrait" has subsumed the documentary facts. When asked why the QVMAG had obliterated Nevin's attribution, which was correctly assigned in 1977 by the same institution, the QVMAG, their reply was simply - "because of comments made by Chris Long, " without so much as a backwards glance at their own curatorial history (letter from Community History Technical Officer - see this article: The QVMAG, Chris Long and A. H. Boyd.)

AS AT JUNE 2010

The QVMAG has now brought online most (but not all) of their database holdings of these convict photographs, with a revised catalogue entry for Nutt (below). The first cataloguing of these photographs by the QVM was in 1958, evidenced by the stamp on versos, and the second database dates from 1985. A new database collation needs to be performed, going back to the original cartes and glass negatives to include the criminal records sheets with cartes attached, mentioned by Nevin's curator for the 1977 QVMAG exhibition, John McPhee, in correspondence with the Specialist Librarian G.T. Stilwell. Full color online images would also be appreciated; the current practice of displaying only  the b & w version is now a passe precaution.

Purely because of one idle comment by Chris Long that forced and foisted onto the Commandant A.H. Boyd an  association as the photographer of these "convict portraits" (i.e. police mugshots), the former employee at the QVMAG and now an historian at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Elspeth Wishart, has pushed onto the public the Boyd misattribution, both at the TMAG and per this entry online at the QVMAG website. A.H. Boyd has no entry in the mammoth publication, Dictionary of Australian Artists to 1870 (ed. Joan Kerr 1992), while Nevin does, complete with attribution as the photographer of these convict images (p.568), yet Boyd has an entry as THE photographer of these prisoner cartes in the DAA online version, probably because Wishart and Clark were actively involved as the contributors who authored the fatuously illogical comment -"not surprising given his job as penal officer".



The entire misattribution problem has its genesis in a belief that a single sentence in an unpublished children's fictional tale about a holiday at Port Arthur, written in 1930 by a niece of A.H. Boyd, E.M. Hall, called "The Young Explorer" (SLTAS) which does NOT mention Boyd by name NOR does it refer to the photographing of prisoners at the Port Arthur prison, can be taken as FACT (an artful wish from Wishart!). Elspeth Wishart and her former colleague at the TMAG, Julia Clark, are determined to promulgate the A.H. Boyd misattribution with appeals to impressionable staff at the National Library of Australia and other public institutions, not to mention the editors of academic journals (Clark, JACHS 2010) purely to mask their own gullibility in placing all their faith in Chris Long's assumption that a single sentence from children's fiction can function as historical fact. For further discussion on this issue see these articles:



Mitchell Library, SLNSW
Photos © KLW NFC 2009 ARR

Prisoner Phillip AYLWARD

SUPREME COURT CONVICTION 1872



QVMAG Collection
Ref: 1985:P129


POLICE RECORDS



Aylward was convicted at the Supreme Court Hobart and photographed by Nevin there on 13 February 1872.



Aylward discharged from the Hobart Gaol, photographed again by Nevin on 18th February 1874.



Aylward was discharged from Cascades as pauper 23 October 1874.

Samuel Page's Royal Mail coach

Samuel Page held the government contracts for the Royal Mail coach deliveries between Hobart and Launceston. As part of his commission to provide photographs of various government services, T. J. Nevin phtographed the coachline. In addition to the Royal Mail, Samuel Page transported prisoners from regional stations and courts to be "received" at H.M. Gaol, Hobart, accompanied by constables. Thomas Nevin travelled between Hobart and Launceston on several commissions, sometimes in the company of Samuel Clifford (1874), combining commercial photography with official photography for the Municipal and Territorial Police. The original of this photograph may have been produced during the criminal trial of Elliott (Administratrix) v. Page (Mercury 18 June 1874),  in which -
"...the deceased, Mr. Elliott, was killed on the 26th December by the upsetting of the defendant's coach near Oatlands, such upsetting having been produced by the recklessness of the driver, recklessness which had been persisted in despite the remonstrances of the guard to secure the brake before proceeding down the hill where the coach was turned over...."
By 1874 the use of photography in criminal matters was an established practice. Photographs of the scene of the accident resulting in Elliott's death were also produced and referred to, as in this witness account:  "I recognise the photograph showing where I was thrown, I was thrown against the fence slightly."



[Top]: Original photograph by T.J. Nevin with the figure of Tom Davis and Burdon's company name painted out (QMAG Collection Ref: 1987_P_0220). Tom Davis was a coach painter. The verso bears Nevin's Royal Arms insignia stamp used for government commissions, in this instance for the Royal Mail coach.

[Below]: Original photo by T.J. Nevin with the figure of Tom Davis and Burdon's company name visible (TMAG Collection Ref: Q1988.77.480).



The top photograph may have been painted with omissions in order to sell the coach in 1880. A Brougham, similar to the one photographed by Nevin, was offered for sale at Burdon's per this advertisement in The Mercury of 2-19 November, 1880:



TRANSCRIPT
FOR SALE AT J. BURDON & SON'S COACH MANU-FACTORY,
No. 16, Argyle-street,
A Superior London-built DOUBLE-SEATED BROUGHAM CHARIOT, in good condition; also, a WAGGONETTE, a Whitechapel Cart,
and a new Chaise Cart.
November 2,1880.
The photograph with the figure of Tom Davis is held in the TMAG Collection and features in the TMAG video of railways and coaches, Railway Station Hobart.



The Painted Photograph
This photograph may not be the only one taken by Nevin of Samuel Page's coach line, as earlier researchers in the 1980s noted that several trade advertisements by Nevin were extant in public collections. Strictly speaking, this was taken for government services rather than as an advertisement for Burdon's or Page's business interests.The verso notes suggest that either the untouched original was held at the property called "Entally" or that it is a copy of the same photo held at Entally which had been altered to eliminate the figure of Tom Davis. The area to the viewer's right of the coach bears clear evidence of a man's figure painted over. Tom Davis was employed at Burdon's in Argyle Street as a coach painter.



Detail: "S. PAGE" above door





Inscription: handwritten on the reverse:
"From same photo held at Entally/ painted out background/ Burdons Coach Factory/ Man on r.h.s. of photo Tom Davis (has been painted out)/ 1872/ A.B. McKellar 328 Liverpool St/ coach body maker employed at Burdon and son when this coach was built"
This item is yet another example of an original photograph taken by Nevin with a provenance from a Northern Tasmanian family which bears evidence of paint subsequently applied by his client(s). See these examples held at the QVMAG, at the State Library of Victoria, and in the Private Collection of John McCullagh.


QVMAG Collection
View of the Coachhouse stable, Entally House, near Hadspen, Tasmania.
Registration No: QVM:1988:P:0036
Type: postcard


On February 1st, 1873, the same day on which Thomas Nevin advertised his services to provide "A first-class photographic likeness" at reduced costs "to suit the times", Samuel Page's advertisement appeared below Nevin's also advertising a reduction in fares:



PAGE'S LINE OF DAY AND NIGHT COACHES ____ FURTHER REDUCTION OF FARES BY MAIL ____ On and after FRIDAY, 17th January instant, the Fares will be REDUCED as under- mentioned: - DAY AND NIGHT COACHES [etc etc].

Samuel Page (1810-1878)
This photograph was taken of Samuel Page between 1870 and 1878:



Undated and unattributed
Samuel Page, Private Collection.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography gives this summary of Samuel Page's life:

PAGE, SAMUEL (1810-1878), publican, coach proprietor and pastoralist, was born on 30 March 1810 in London, the second son of George Page of Bermondsey, and his wife Sarah. His father, a Waterloo veteran, arrived in Hobart Town in January 1822 from England in the Tiger, settled at Bagdad and was later granted land at Lemon Springs although he claimed to have migrated without a shilling. His wife and three children, Samuel, John and Louisa, arrived in Van Diemen's Land in the brig Belinda in November 1823. 
On 19 September 1833 at Hobart Samuel Page was married to Grace, daughter of Captain Harris, a master mariner. In 1835 he was granted the licence of the Glasgow Wine and Spirits Vaults at the north-east corner of Elizabeth and Liverpool Streets in Hobart, and two years later took over the Lake Dulverton Inn at Oatlands. In 1839 he moved to the Oatlands Hotel. With John Lord he became a coach proprietor in 1848. Next year he bought from the widow of John Edward Cox a coach service that had run between Hobart and Launceston for seventeen years. In 1853 Page took over the mail contract and after six years bought out John Lord for £8750. With three coaches daily each way, the service controlled most of the transport on the main road and required 300 horses and three main fodder stations. Fares ranged from 5s. for outside seats to £5 inside. Each mail coach carried an armed guard, and two when bullion was aboard. Although the service was never held up by bushrangers, Page himself was once stopped in Epping Forest by two of them, Ogden and Sullivan; he refused to take them seriously and was allowed to pass on, chiefly, he claimed, because one of them had worked for him. A more serious challenge came in 1873 when Alfred Burbury started a rival coach service, but within three years Hobart and Launceston were linked by railway. 
During his coaching operations Page acquired many pastoral properties, including Northumbria, Anstey Barton, Woodlands, Kelvin Grove, Trefusis, Ellenthorpe, Stonehenge and Mount Vernon. At one time his landholdings and his flocks of 63,000 sheep were said to be the largest ever held by one person in the colony. Page was an enthusiastic breeder of race-horses and, with Sir James Agnew and James Lord, he helped to found the Tasmanian Racing Club in Hobart. He died at Hobart on 31 March 1878, and his widow on 9 August 1882. Of their four sons and six daughters, Alfred ran a stud farm at Melton Mowbray on a portion of Woodlands. Alfred's son, Charles Service Page, followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps and served for twenty years on the committee of the Tasmanian Racing Club. 
Select Bibliography
correspondence file under Samuel Page
(Archives Office of Tasmania).
Author: C. A. S. Page
Print Publication Details: C. A. S. Page, 'Page, Samuel (1810 - 1878)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, p. 308.

The Archives Office of Tasmania has catalogued this entry on Page's Royal Mail Coach:
Agency Details
Agency Number: NG2622
Title: PAGE'S ROYAL MAIL COACH
Start Date: 01 Jan 1848
End Date: 31 Dec 1880
Description:

Page's Royal Mail Coach operated passenger services between Launceston and Hobart carrying approximately 17 passengers per trip. A timetable of coaches appears in Walch's Almanac. The company was established in 1848, and until the 1870s was one of the main operators in Van Diemen's Land. With the completion of the Tasmanian Main Line Railway from Hobart to Launceston in 1876, travel time was reduced from 14-15 hours to seven and the use of the coach service declined. Samuel Page died on 31 March 1878.
Information Sources:

Walch's Tasmanian Almanac, 1875, p. 132, 144.
Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office, Correspondence file under Samuel Page.
The Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, 'Engineers and Engineering'.
C. A. S. Page, 'Page, Samuel (1810 - 1878)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, p. 308.

Tasmanian Prisoners
Page's coach line conveyed prisoners in irons, accompanied by constables such as Constable John Nevin, Thomas Nevin's brother and photographic assistant, from Launceston and regional lock-ups to the Hobart Gaol.



This notice about the Gregsons appeared in The Mercury, 19th February 1874

TRANSCRIPT
"By Page's coach yesterday morning, three prisoners were brought down from Launceston in irons, under the charge of Superintendent Tinmins and Sub-inspector Clements, of the Hamilton Police. Two of the prisoners, named Gregson, absconded from this city [i.e. Hobart] some seven or eight weeks ago, and made their way through the back country to their sister's residence in Launceston, where they were arrested. The other one, Mitchell, is known by several names. He absconded from the Launceston gaol, and having been arrested in the country, has now been removed, and with the Gregsons, placed in the gaol here."
Thomas Nevin photographed the Gregsons brothers at the Police Office Hobart on February 18th 1874 after arrival from Launceston when arrested per these entries:



John and Francis Gregson, sentenced 18th Feb, 1874 at the Police Office, Hobart
TAHO Ref: CON37-1-1000498 and 9



These two carte-de-visite prisoner identification photographs of the Gregson brothers - Francis Gregson on left, John Gregson on right - were produced by T. Nevin in February 1874 for the Municipal Police Office, Town Hall, and the Hobart Gaol criminal records sheets to which these mugshots were originally pasted. They are now held at the National Library of Australia, minus the record sheets. The duplicate below printed from the negative of the one sitting of John Gregson taken by Nevin, numbered "66"  is now held at the Tasmanian Museuem and Art Gallery where it was deposited after removal from the QVMAG collection for an exhibition at the Port Arthur prison heritage site in 1983 (and wrongly attributed to A. H. Boyd). Both of the NLA photographs were accessioned in Nevin's name in 1964.



John Gregson, photographed by T. Nevin 18th Feb. 1874
TMAG Ref: Q15577

Other photographs by Thomas J. Nevin held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery are the collection of Tasmanian prisoners 1870-1879 deposited in the 1930s from convictaria collector John Watt Beattie's estate.


T. J. Nevin's mugshots at the QVMAG

ADDENDA
Coincidence: The photograph below of a man called Samuel Page who also ran coaches – to the Huon - is not the same Samuel Page as the one pictured above, per emails from this Samuel Page’s descendants. This photo is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania:



Undated and unattributed
Portrait of Samuel Page
Archives office of Tasmania
ADRI: PH30-1-1429

Australia's FIRST MUGSHOTS

PLEASE NOTE: Below each image held at the National Library of Australia is their catalogue batch edit which gives the false impression that all these "convict portraits" were taken solely because these men were transported convicts per se (i.e before cessation in 1853), and that they might have been photographed as a one-off amateur portfolio by a prison official at the Port Arthur prison in 1874, which they were not. Any reference to the Port Arthur prison official A. H. Boyd on the NLA catalogue records is an error, a PARASITIC ATTRIBUTION with no basis in fact. The men in these images were photographed in the 1870s-1880s because they were repeatedly sentenced as habitual offenders whose mugshots were taken on arrest, trial, arraignment, incarceration and/or discharge by government contractor, police and prisons photographer T. J. Nevin at the Supreme Court and adjoining Hobart Gaol with his brother Constable John Nevin, and at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall when appearing at The Mayor's Court. The Nevin brothers produced over a thousand originals and duplicates of Tasmanian prisoners, the bulk now lost or destroyed. The three hundred extant mugshots were the random estrays salvaged - and reproduced in many instances- for sale at Beattie's local convictaria museum in Hobart and at interstate exhibitions associated with the fake convict ship Success in the early 1900s. The mugshots were selected on the basis of the prisoner's notoriety from the Supreme Court trial registers (Rough Calendar), the Habitual Criminals Registers (Gaol Photo Books), warrant forms, and police gazettes records of the 1870s-1880s. The earliest taken on government contract by T. J. Nevin date from 1872. The police records sourced here are from the weekly police gazettes which were called (until 1884) Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1871-1885. J. Barnard, Gov't Printer.