There is little doubt that the enduring legacy of professional photographer and government contractor Thomas J. Nevin will centre on the 300 or so remaining extant photographs (mugshots) in public holdings of incarcerated male offenders ("convicts") taken in 1870s-1880s Tasmania. Articles on forensic photography on this weblog primarily focus on each mugshot at the time and place of capture, each taking less than a day at most in the life of Thomas J. Nevin. With very few exceptions, therefore, a full biography of each prisoner and his criminal or civilian career is irrelevant to this project, as the photographer was only present with him for a short time for each sitting and for one purpose. To better understand the context in which he worked while doing police work, Thomas J. Nevin's commercial portraiture and landscape photography receive equal attention on the main weblog, including documentation of his family life with friends and others in his photographer cohort.
Prisoner identification photography in Tasmania 1870s-1888
Thumbnail index: Supreme Court Trials
Provenance
The majority of the 300 or so extant prisoner identification photos collected by public institutions in Australia were taken by commercial photographer and government contractor Thomas J. Nevin (1832-1923) at the Supreme Court sittings held once every three months in Hobart, and once every six months in Launceston. In other words, the photographs now held in public institutions have survived because they were selected some time in the early 1900s by archivists on the basis of the notoriety of the prisoner, often a repeat offender sentenced in every trial to longer than two years incarceration. Prisoners sentenced at the Supreme Court Launceston were photographed on being received at the Hobart Town Gaol, and photographed as well on discharge at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall by Thomas J. Nevin with the assistance of his brother Constable John (William John aka Jack) Nevin between 1872 and 1886. Nevin's earliest prisoner photographs date from the mid year session of 1872. The majority are dated from October 1873 to mid 1874 when a small group of prisoners was transferred from the Port Arthur prison to the central city prison, the Hobart Gaol, Campbell St. One copy was pasted to the criminal's record sheet, other copies were circulated to police when the prisoner was transferred from regional and city courts to prison, or when recaptured on warrant, or when finally discharged.
Of the 1000 or so prisoner mugshots, inclusive of duplicates, taken by Thomas Nevin and his brother Constable John Nevin, only 300 or so are accounted for in Australian public archives, libraries and museums. The original photographs, both as uncut sepia prints and those in oval cdv mounts which Nevin made in duplicate for immediate police use of the same man for prison and police records during the criminal's career, constitute the majority of extant examples. The QVMAG made and circulated many copies of their holdings to the National Library of Australia, the Archives Office of Tasmania, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the 1960s and 70s. Another dozen or so were collected by David Scott Mitchell and donated to the State Library of NSW in 1907. Items from private collections are not viewable here.
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection
Galleries: TMAG posts thumbnails
These cartes-de-visite of Tasmanian prisoners printed in an oval mount (50 or so) are held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), Hobart. They were originally held in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG), Launceston, together with another three hundred or more 1870s mugshots taken at the Hobart Gaol by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin which were acquired by the QVMAG as part of the bequest from the estate of John Watt Beattie in the 1930s. When they were removed from Beattie's collection and taken down to the Port Arthur prison heritage site for an exhibition as part of the Port Arthur Conservation Project in 1983, they were not returned to the QVMAG. They were deposited instead at the TMAG .
QVMAG prisoner photographs collection
Galleries: QVMAG posts thumbnails
These police mugshots taken by police and commercial photographer Thomas J. Nevin in the 1870s-80s at the Port Arthur prison, the Hobart Gaol (assisted by his brother Constable John Nevin) and the Hobart Municipal Police Office (Mayor's Court, Hobart Town Hall) are held in the John Watt Beattie Collection at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania. Most are Nevin's originals and duplicates produced in carte-de-visite format; some were reproduced from Nevin's glass negatives by Beattie for sale and exhibition in Hobart at his museum and in Sydney at the Royal Hotel in conjunction with convictaria from the fake prison ship Success (1916). An exhibition of these photographs by T. J. Nevin was held at the AGNSW in 1976 and at the QVMAG in 1977.
Archives Office of Tasmania webshots
Galleries: Archives Office Tasmania posts thumbnails
The majority of these prisoner photographs are paper copies made for the Archives Office of Tasmania in the 1970s from the collection held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
National Library of Australia collection
Galleries: National Library of Australia posts thumbnails
This collection of Tasmanian police mugshots - originally taken at the Hobart Gaol, Campbell St. Hobart and at the Mayor's Court, Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall, by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin from 1872-1886 - was donated from government estrays in 1964 with further additions sourced from the 1976 and 1977 exhibitions of convict photographs by T. J. Nevin held at the AGNSW, Sydney and the QVMAG, Launceston. Full records with T. J. Nevin's attribution are held at the NLA in former NLA Director Dan Sprod's Papers (NLA MS 2320).
The National Library of Australia has recently updated its digital software, yet the versos of these photographs, which can provide researchers with valuable information. have not been digitised. The NLA believes that the absence of a photographer's studio stamp on the versos - of police mugshots no less - is reason enough to engage in puerile political games of re-attribution, despite historical documentation and expert curatorial validation, even though T. J. Nevin's government contractor stamp appears on several of these same mugshots held in other national collections (Beattie collection, QVMAG and Mitchell Collection, SLNSW). The versos of the majority of these photographs were incorrectly transcribed in 1915-1916 with the wording Taken at Port Arthur 1874 to promote penal heritage tourism to Tasmania when they were sent as exhibits to the Royal Hotel, Sydney, in conjunction with an exhibition of convictaria on the fake transport ship, the Success, which toured Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide before returning to Sydney. The majority of the 85 mugshots in the NLA collection consists of copies either duplicated from the originals - or missing from - the collections held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston.
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 who had all arrived 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 a thousand originals and duplicates of Tasmanian prisoners, the bulk now lost or destroyed. The three hundred extant mugshots in public collections were the random estrays salvaged - and reproduced in many instances- for sale at John Watt Beatties' Port Arthur convictaria museum located in Hobart, and at intercolonial (state) 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, police gazettes records of the 1870s-1880s and the complete list of prisoners' names submitted to the House of Assembly Report on Penal Discipline in 1875. The earliest mugshots 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, Govt Printer.
State Library of NSW: Nevin collection
Galleries: State Library of NSW posts thumbnails
The cdv of prisoner Robert Ogden found its way to the State Library of NSW, along with John Watt Beattie's own photograph of the conchologist William Legrand before 1907. The Ogden mugshot belongs with the other collection of eleven Thomas J. Nevin photographs of Tasmanian prisoners catalogued in the David Scott Mitchell Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library NSW at PXB 274. An additional hand-coloured prisoner mugshot by Thomas Nevin, pasted next to the death warrant of Ogden’s accomplice, James Sutherland, is also held in the David Scott Mitchell collection (Tasmania Supreme Court - Death warrants and related papers, 1818-1884). Other Nevin family materials held in the same collection include a published copy of Thomas J. Nevin’s father's poem, "My Cottage in the Wilderness" (1868) by John Nevin snr. These and other selections of Tasmaniana were contributed to David Scott Mitchell’s collection by John Watt Beattie in the early 1900s.
Poster Boys
Poster boys 1991 of Tasmanian convicts 1870s
Who were they? They were T. J. Nevins sitters for police records, mostly "Supreme Court men" photographed on committal for trial at the Supreme Court adjoining the Hobart Gaol when they were isolated in silence for a month after sentencing. If sentenced for a term longer than three months at the Supreme Court Launceston, they were photographed, bathed, shaved and dressed on being received in Hobart.
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 Thomas J. Nevin weblogs to apply the misattribution.
