Prisoner George ORMISTON



Two different carte-de-visite photographs of a convict identified as George Ormiston are held at the National Library of Australia. Both photographs were taken by T. J. Nevin at different times for different offences for different occasions. The one featuring Ormiston with a moustache was taken first, in 1876, the second minus the moustache and with a haircut was taken later, in 1884. George Ormiston was photographed by Nevin - as were all other prisoners on discharge at the Hobart Municipal Police Office in 1876. However, Ormiston was a repeat offender - the reason why all these police photographs were taken -  and he was photographed again in 1884 while incarcerated on arraignment and transferred from the Launceston Supreme Court to the Hobart Gaol, as were all offenders with sentences of 3 months and longer.



NLA Catalogue notes (incorrrect information)
nla.pic-vn4270377 PIC P1029/66 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 ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm., on mount 10.4 x 6.4 cm.

POLICE RECORDS
Police records show George Ormiston, aged 31 in February 1884, arrived on the "Flinders"  to Tasmania. Ormiston was therefore born in 1852, and could not have been "transported" as a convict to Port Arthur from England when transportation ceased to Tasmania in 1853 and the Port Arthur prison, in ruins by 1874, was closed completely by 1877. His photographs therefore should not be collated at the NLA under the heading of "Convict portraits, Port Arthur, 1874". Further errors by the NLA: their catalogue records "F.C. Monqund", as  the name of a ship which did not exist.



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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 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.