Prisoner William HAYES 1872

William Hayes' prison identification photograph was among the first taken by Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart House of Corrections (Hobart Gaol) when William Hayes was discharged from a 2 year sentence for indecent assault in the week ending 24 April 1872.

The same image in these two cartes was printed at different times from Nevin's original glass negative. In the first carte, Hayes' image was straightened, eliminating the lean to the right in the carte below. Hayes' petty minor offences between 1873-1875 after release from the Hobart Gaol were tried in Launceston, where the reprint of his ID photograph was sent in 1874.



NLA catalogue notes: (incorrect information)
Title William Hayes, per Asia, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture].
Date 1874.
Extent 1 photograph on carte-de-visite mount : albumen ; 9.4 x 5.6 cm. on mount 10.5 x 6.3 cm.

The carte below lacks a number and bears the inscription on verso, per NLA catalogue notes:



Title from inscription on verso (incorrect information)
Inscription: “William Hayes, per Asia, taken at Port Arthur”–In ink on verso.
Condition: Foxing.

POLICE RECORDS

1872

William Hayes' prison ID photograph was among the earliest taken by Thomas J. Nevin at the Hobart Gaol when William Hayes was discharged from a 2 year sentence in the week ending 24 April 1872.



1873

William Hayes was discharged after a week as a pauper from the Brickfields Invalid Depot on 25 March



1874

Two years later, Hayes was imprisoned for 14 days for "Threatening" and discharged at Launceston on 1st May 1874. Nevin reprinted his negative of Hayes for the Launceston courts and for the central Office of Inspector for Police in Hobart.





A few months later, in July 1874, he was imprisoned for one month for resisting a constable and discharged in August 1874.

1875

A year later he was imprisoned for 3 months for threatening to stab with a discharge from Launceston on 22 September 1875.



Nevin's original cdv of William Hayes (per Asiatic) was reprinted again for Hayes' discharge 22 September 1875 from a 3 month sentence, at the Launceston Police Office.

First published on
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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.