Thomas J. Nevin | Tasmanian Prisoner Photographs 1870s-1880s: 01/01/2013

Prisoner James MORGAN alias Morgan the Poet who sings in pubs

Records Source:
National Library of Australia TROVE and State Library of Tasmania record of the police identity photograph of James Morgan, taken by commercial and police photographer T.J. Nevin at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall on or about 20th December 1876, the date of James Morgan's discharge, and the year - 1876 - when Thomas J. Nevin took the residential position of keeper of the Hobart Town Hall; was also photographer for the Mayor's Court police records held in the Municipal Police Office housed within the Town Hall; and office record keeper for the Hobart City Corporation.

Older webshot of the mugshot of James Morgan at the Archives Office of Tasmania

TRANSPORTATION RECORDS

James Morgan was 22 years old when he was tried at the Gloucester Assizes in 1844 for burglary and transported for 15 years, first to Norfolk Island in 1845 and then to VDL in 1847.

This part of Morgan's record is underscored on the conduct register:

"Tried Hobart Town S.C [Supreme Court} 11 December 1855 Buggery with James Rowe To be Hanged Mercy extended To be kept in Penal Servitude fo the term of his natural Life and to be sent to Port Arthur ..."

State Library of Tasmania Archives (TAHO)

Morgan, James
Convict No: 50625
Extra Identifier:
SEE Surname:
SEE Given Names:
Voyage Ship: Hyderabad
Voyage No: 368
Arrival Date: 19 Feb 1845
Departure Date: 21 Oct 1844
Departure Port: Downs
Conduct Record: CON33/1/86
Muster Roll:
Appropriation List:
Other Records:
Indent: CON14/1/29 p226c
Description List:
Remarks: Off Norfolk Island per Tory May 1847

POLICE RECORDS

Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime (Police Gazettes) Govt Printer James Barnard

".. known as Morgan the Poet. Sings in public-houses."

James Morgan was arrested on the 16th August 1872 for assault; notice of the arrest was printed in the police gazette on 23 August 1872. In 1872 he was listed as 50 years old.

The Conduct Record (above) notes in the right hand column;

On 3 March 1872,someone wrote on the Conduct Register:

"At the expiration of 4 yrs from 4/12/72 being 21 yrs from Life sentence without offence T of L to be granted ...11/12/76 To be enlarged wth T.L. "

And so Morgan the Poet was discharged of 20 December 1876, per this notice in the police gazette:

James Morgan's crime was listed "Unnatural Offences" for which he was sentenced in 1855 for life, discharged 20 December 1876

In this extract from the NSW Police Gazette of 27 March, 1878, (reprinted in the Tasmanian police gazettes on 5 April 1878) ) James Morgan was reported as missing by a relative, possibly a wife or sister-in-law, or mother, Mrs Caroline Morgan, resident of New Zealand. The information contained in this notice correctly identifies his physical features - 55 years old, medium build, fair complexion, and had left England in 1849. It would appear that Mrs Caroline Morgan believed he had settled in Victoria ca. 1865, 13 years previously. However, his transportation records show he left England in 1844, arrived on Norfolk Island and arrived in VDL off Norfolk Island in 1847.

James Morgan didn't remain at large for long.

James Morgan alias The Poet was arrested on the 2 August by the Kingston (Tas) Territorial Police, and the notice was published on 30 August 1878. What was the crime?

QVMAG RECORDS

Above: Verso of the carte-de-visite photograph of James Morgan, which was inscribed in the early 1900s to include details of the convict's date of arrival and name of ship, and the date "1874", a year in which T.J. Nevin was commissioned by the Municipal Police Office to visit Port Arthur to collate records and take photographs of prisoners whom he had not previously photographed at the Hobart Gaol, the central gaol for all offenders with sentences of longer than 3 months.

Taken at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall by Thomas J. Nevin on or about 20th December 1876, the date of James Morgan's discharge.

The Millbank Prison photographer, 1888

PRISONER POSES Tasmania 1870s and 1880s
PENTRIDGE PRISON Victoria 1874
MILLBANK PRISON UK photographic practices 1888

"Burial-Ground at Millbank Prison. From a Photograph by Herbert Watkins, 179, Regent Street." Wikipedia

When Thomas J. Nevin photographed prisoners in Tasmania in the decade 1870-1880, his preferred pose for photographing the prisoner was in semi-profile, torso sometimes visible to the waist. No particular emphasis was placed on capturing marks, tattoos, and disfigurement of the hands. Further reduction of information occurred when he printed the final image as a carte-de-visite in an oval mount, a format small enough to fit onto a criminal record.

People/Orgs: Williamson, Allan Matthew
Places: Campbell Street Gaol, Hobart (Tas.)
Institution: Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site Management Committee
Object number: PCH_00033

Prisoner Robert Ogden (1861?-1883), known as James Odgen, executed on 4th June 1883 at the Hobart Goal for murder.
Photographed by Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart Gaol, 23 September 1875.
Source of image: State Library of NSW
Miscellaneous Photographic Portraits ca. 1877-1918
36. James Ogden
Call Number DL PX 158:

Studio portraiture by commercial artists such as Thomas Nevin was requested by prison and police authorities during the early years from the late 1860s to the 1880s, for economic reasons, as stated in the case of the Pentridge photographer in Victoria.

Source: Launceston Examiner 22 Aug 1874

TRANSCRIPT

VICTORIA. The system of taking photographic likenesses of prisoners at the Pentridge Stockade is stated to have proved of great assistance to the police department in detecting crime. The system was commenced at Pentridge about two years ago, and since then one of the officials who had a slight knowledge of the art, with the assistance of a prisoner has taken nearly 7000 pictures, duplicates of which have been sent to all parts of this and the adjacent colonies. But it has been considered rather too expensive, to employ an official entirely for the purpose, and as constant employment could not be provided in the future, a photographer has lately been appointed, who will visit the stockade twice in the week, and the hulks at Williamstown once. --Argus.

The Victorian government employed a commercial photographer to visit the Pentridge prison twice weekly, and to visit the hulks moored at Williamstown once a week. Police found it cheaper if the photographer visited the prisons twice week rather than employing a warden or constable full-time.

During the decades 1880-1890 at the Hobart Gaol, commercial photographer Thomas Nevin and his brother Constable John Nevin deployed various techniques in both the posing of the prisoner for the capture and the printing of the final portrait. In some instances, they retained the conventional printing format of commercial carte-de-visite production; in others, they posed the prisoner in a full face pose with his gaze directed at the camera lens. In some - but not as consistently as was the case with New Zealand police photographers - they requested the prisoner to show his hands.

NZ police mugshot of Amy Bock 1886, daughter of Alfred Bock, Nevin's partner 1863-67
Source: New Zealand Police Museum

All three variations can be seen in this collection held at the Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, now on Flickr: all of these mugshots were taken in the 1880s at the Hobart Gaol.

TAHO Commons Collection at Flickr

Tasmanian convict + prison photos, a set by Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office on Flickr (Commons).

TAHO File numbers: GD128/1/1; GD128/1/2

By the late 1880s, the Bertillon method of photographing prisoners twice, in profile and full frontal, was adopted universally by prison authorities; the prominent display of hands was a new requirement.

Millbank Prison 1888
What follows is a journalist's description of a visit to Millbank Prison (UK) in 1888 to watch the prison photographer at work. In the first paragraph, the "liberty man" is being photographed for discharge. In the last paragraph the journalist gives some technical details: the photographer "gives an exposure of fifteen seconds with a wet plate and No. 2 B lens, and secures an admirable negative."

TRANSCRIPT

PHOTOGRAPHING IN MILLBANK PRISON.
The photographer at Millbank is one of the steel- buttoned warders, and we congratulate him on his well-arranged studio. Here are some pictures he has just taken — half profile, bold, clear, and vigorous portraits, well lighted, and altogether unlike what prison photographs usually are. There is no 'prentice hand here, and we say so.

A sitter is departing as we arrive — a man in ordinary attire, his short, cutaway beard giving him the appearance of a foreigner. Our guide sees our look of astonishment — ' He is a liberty man, and is photographed in liberty clothes ; he goes out next week, and has, therefore, been permitted to grow a beard during the past three months ;' and on the desk we see a printed form referring to him, to which his photograph will presently be attached, ' Seven years' penal servitude, three years' police supervision,' is upon it. His crime was forgery.

What, we ask, if a man refuse to be photographed just before the expiration of his sentence ? Our guide smiles — 'It is a very simple matter ; a man is usually set at liberty before his time, but only if he conforms to our regulations.' The guide leaves us for a while, and the photographer asks if he shall go on with his work. We reply in the affirmative, and he quits the studio to fetch a sitter. He is not long gone, for there are plenty outside in the yard we have just crossed, men in grey, ambling round the flagged area at a rapid pace at a fixed distance from one another, and reminding you vividly of a go-as-you please race at the Agricultural Hall.
He is a young man of stalwart build, the sitter, when he appears, and as docile as a dog. He is clean shaven, and has an ugly black L on his sleeve, which means, poor fellow, that he is a 'Lifer.' There is a wooden arm-chair for posing.

'Look here, I want you to sit down like this,' says our friend the photographer, placing him sideways in the chair, so as to give a half profile. The convict does as he is told, and evidently enjoys the business immensely. 'Don't throw your head back quite so much ; there, that will do. Now put your hands on your breast, so.' For the shrewd governor believes that a photograph of a man's hands is as important almost as that of his face. The warder photographer retires to coat his plate, and we are left for a moment with a 'Lifer.

Why shouldn't he make a rush for it, fell us to the earth, and have a try for liberty? He might be a murderer; that he had committed a terrible crime was certain from his sentence. Keep the camera between yourself and the man, and be ready to roar out lustily if he so much as move a muscle, was one precaution that occurred to us; or should we knock him down out of hand before he began any mischief at all ? No such precautionary measures are called for. Indeed, it made one smile to think of such a thing as resistance. One might, perhaps, conjure up such thoughts as these in the presence of a typical convict; but the facts here are very commonplace.

On the arm-chair opposite you sits a young man, almost a boy, with a frank, good-humoured face — a poor fellow who is evidently luxuriating in a delightful moment of release from drudging work and monotonous labour. And as to the bravado and ruffianism, there is just the same difference between the daring robber and this gray-clad humble individual as there is between a fighting cock with his plumes and feathers and a plucked fowl on the poulterer's counter.

The photographer comes back to the docile prisoner, focusses; gives an exposure of fifteen seconds with a wet plate and No. 2 B lens, and secures an admirable negative. ' I have never had the least difficulty,' he says, after he has led back his charge, ' either with the men or the women. The men are apt to be too grave, and the women are sometimes , given to giggling, that is perhaps the only drawback I have to contend against'

FULL ARTICLE

Source: National Library of New Zealand
Papers Past & Tuapeka Times, 29 August 1888
Page 5 PHOTOGRAPHING IN MILL. BANK PRISON.

RELATED POSTS main weblog

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.

NOTICES

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

Click here for KEY DATES 1842-1923

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THE MUGSHOTS:Thomas Nevin's extant prisoner identification prints and cartes-de-visite in oval mounts - "mugshots" - were taken between 1871 and 1888. The public collections consists of 350+ estrays from more than 2000 photographs taken of prisoners in Tasmania by Thomas Nevin and his brother Constable John Nevin. The National Library of Australia currently holds 87 photographs, the State Library of NSW holds 13 photographs, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery holds 112 photographs, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds more than 50, and the Archives Office of Tasmania holds 10 originals and 100 or so paper copies of the QVMAG collections. A dozen or so are held in Private Collections.

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

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

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

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

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

We also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the City of Sydney, and the Ngunawal people of the Australian Capital Territory on whose lands this site is maintained.

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