The Mayor&#39;s Court and the Hobart Town Hall Keeper

The Mayor's Court and the Hobart Town Hall Keeper

Meet Mr Mike Lonergan, present Keeper of the exquisite Faranese Palace miniature, the Hobart Town Hall, Tasmania (erected in 1866). His impromptu guided tour of his ground floor offices and the Mayor's Court room was a revelation. To the left of the main entrance, Mr Lonergan pointed firstly to his office which had always been occupied by the Keeper, and where Thomas J. Nevin had sat at a desk during his incumbency in the position as both the Town Hall Keeper, and as the official police photographer for the Municipal Police Office, also housed in the Town Hall in those years, between his appointment to the civil service in 1875 and his dismissal in 1880.

Here, inside the room which had functioned as the Mayor's Court Room - "the Mayor also being the Chief Magistrate" - Mr Lonergan stood on the exact spot where the Police Office cells were formerly located below, in the basement. That area, he explained, was now just a room for electric cables etc, but in Thomas Nevin's time, it was the place where prisoners (i.e. "convicts") were brought up from the Port Arthur penitentiary as the site there devolved, and incarcerated until commanded up the now-demolished stairway into this room. On incarceration, the prisoner was photographed by Thomas Nevin prior to appearing before the Magistrate.The prisoner was then either sentenced to a further term at the Hobart Gaol, or discharged with various conditions.

In this south-east corner of the Mayor's Court room, on Mr Lonergan's left, was once the doorway where the prisoner entered from the stairway and cells below. It is now a wall decorated with mid-20th century paintings.

Mr Mike Lonergan Hobart Town Hall keeper 2012
Photo posterized © KLW NFC Imprint 2012 ARR

Located in the building is the Keeper's apartment, also used by Mr Lonergan, where Thomas Nevin, his wife Elizabeth Rachel nee Day and their first five children resided. A son - Sydney John - died there on 28 January, 1877, aged 4 months. Their children would have played on the original tiles at the main entrance and around the main chamber upstairs.

The Launceston Town Hall Keeper

The Launceston Town Hall keeper, Edward Hooper Dix 1895
Photo copyright© KLW NFC 2012 ARR
E.H. Dix, Town Hall Keeper 1895. Unattributed. QVMAG 1994 LCC
QVM: 2005: POOO2

Published in McPhee, John A. (John Alexander) & Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tas.) (2007). The painted portrait photograph in Tasmania : 1850 - 1900. Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas

Update 25 October 2012

The Hobart City Council plans to restore the police cells in the basement of the Hobart Town Hall. Article published in The Mercury 24 October 2012. Photo © KLW NFC Imprint 2012.

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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.

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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 were built on nipaluna, the traditional lands 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 Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the Kamberri/Canberra region 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.

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