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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 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 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. The Nevin brothers photographed more than 3000 prisoners, the bulk now lost or destroyed. These extant mugshots are random estrays salvaged or selected on the basis of notoreity in the early 1900s from the Supreme Court trial registers, the Habitual Criminals Registers, warrant forms, and police gazettes records of the 1870s-80s. The earliest date from 1871. The police records are sourced from the weekly police gazettes which were called (until 1884) Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1871-1885. J. Barnard, Gov't Printer.


Monday, January 19, 2009

Ormiston, George 1876



nla.pic-an24612704 PIC P1029/65 LOC Album 935 George Ormiston, [per] F.C. Monqund, 3 years, 5.2.84, horse stealing and uttering [picture] 1884. 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 10.0 x 5.7 cm. Part of Convict portraits, Port Arthur, 1874 [picture] 1874.

POLICE RECORDS

Police records show George Ormiston, aged 31 in February 1884, was transported on the "Flinders" (1852). The NLA catalogue erroneously records "F.C. Monqund", a ship which did not exist. The NLA catalogue entry also erroneously collates this item with the date "1874".

Ormiston arraigned 5 Feb 1884

The later photograph of George Ormiston was taken after he was arraigned in Launceston on 5 February 1884, received and photographed by Nevin at the Hobart Gaol in the following weeks, sentenced to 3 years. This is an earlier photograph of George Ormiston in prison uniform, taken by Nevin on Ormiston's discharge when he was issued with a Freedom Certificate (FC) at the Hobart Municipal Police Office in 1876.

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First published on Monday, January 19, 2009
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