Prisoner identification photographs, Tasmania, 1870s.
Soho Square native Thomas Ryan was 26 yrs old when he was convicted at London Central Criminal Court in 1849 to serve ten years for stealing money, so his birth date if calculated from 1849 was ca. 1823. He arrived at Hobart, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on board the Oriental Queen in 1853, his occupation listed as blacksmith's striker.
The weekly police gazettes have dozens of notices of arrests, convictions and discharges for men with the name "Thomas Ryan" but very few for the subject of this photograph, Thomas Ryan per Oriental Queen. He is not to be confused with a much younger offender, 16 yr old Thomas Ryan, a Queen's Asylum apprentice who absconded from the service of Edward Haley, Dromedary (Tas) on 17 April 1868 (b. 1852). Nor with another Thomas Ryan, seaman, 22 years old in 1875 (b. 1853), who served 3 months for stealing an oilskin coat, whose name appears as "Bryan" and "Bryant" in some police and press notices. Another Thomas Ryan alias Kennedy per Ratcliffe, an Irishman from Cork with no distinguishing marks was 45 yrs old in 1875 (b. 1830) when he served one month for being idle and disorderly. Questions then arise as to the identity and/or aliases of the man in prisoner clothing in this photograph, why his conviction merited a mugshot, and where and when he was photographed.
Prisoner Thomas Ryan's mugshot
Prisoner RYAN, Thomas
Photographer: Thomas J. Nevin
Taken at the Hobart Gaol, 1873-4
Recto "126": Verso: Oriental Queen [ship]
TMAG Collection Ref: Q15593 ex QVMAG Beattie Collection
The recto of this mugshot was numbered "126" below the photograph on the mount when it was catalogued at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, on accession from the estate of convictarian collector John Watt Beattie in the early 1930s. The cdv with this number is now listed as missing from Beattie's collection at the QVMAG. It was removed and taken to the Port Arthur Heritage site for an exhibition in 1983 and deposited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, along with another fifty (50) or so of these prisoner cdv's exhibited as the work of Thomas J. Nevin at the QVMAG in 1977, instead of being re-united with the other 250 or so mugshots in Beattie's collection. Those fifty or so mugshots by Thomas Nevin now held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery including this one of Thomas Ryan are viewable on this weblog here (but not online at the TMAG) : Rogues Gallery: the TMAG Collection
The verso states simply the name of the prisoner "Thomas Ryan" and the ship "Oriental Queen" on which he was transported. The verso of this mugshot escaped the archivist who wrote "Taken at Port Arthur 1874" in the 1900s on the backs of hundreds of these 1870s mugshots held at the National Library of Australia (NLA), the QVMAG and the TMAG (all are copies or duplicates of the single sitting with Nevin from his negative). Unlike most of these cdv's, the inscription appears on the vertical instead of horizontal orientation of the verso. The backing shows a pattern similar to others where the photograph was removed from where it had once been pasted to carboard (the blue criminal rap sheet and photo book) or to calico which Nevin used when sending photographs through the mail.
This prisoner was photographed at the Hobart Gaol by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin in 1873-4. There is no suggestion on the markings of this photograph that the prisoner was photographed at Port Arthur, nor are there records of earnings by a prisoner named Thomas Ryan at Port Arthur in the years 1873-1876 (1873 -76 CON94-1-2 AOT) although the name appears among those who were relocated from Port Arthur back to the Hobart Gaol along with the majority of colonial prisoners from July 1873 onwards with Parliament's call for the immediate closure of Port Arthur. Is this the same prisoner?
Prisoner Thomas Ryan's transportation records
Archives Office Tasmania
https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Record/NamesIndex/1431623
Ryan, Thomas
Record Type: Convicts
Employer: Hudson, Joseph: 1853; Dixon, James: 1855
Property: Port Arthur Penal Station
Departure date: 4 Nov 1852
Departure port: Plymouth
Ship: Oriental Queen
Voyage number: 360
Police number: 27779
Index number: 61843
Record ID: NAME_INDEXES:1431623
Source: https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON33-1-114$init=CON33-1-114p211
Source: https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/CON14-1-47/CON14-1-47_00100_L
Source: https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/CON14-1-47/CON14-1-47_00101_L
Prisoner Thomas Ryan's police gazette records
This offense dated 1867 is one of several short sentences of three months or less recorded in the weekly police gazettes for this individual Thomas Ryan per Oriental Queen. A conviction in the Supreme Court would likely mean a mugshot was taken, but this Thomas Ryan, sentenced only to 3 months in a regional lock-up (Ross), was not photographed there.
Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police Gov't printer J. Barnard
Thomas Ryan, native place London, 32 yrs old, 5ft 6½ins tall, wreath and bird right arm, per Oriental Queen to colony, was discharged at Launceston from a sentence of 3 months on 18 January 1867 for being idle and disorderly. He was sentenced at Ross (Tas) on 24 Oct 1866. Five years later his name appears again in the police gazettes, charged on 23 December 1870 with larceny, sentenced to three months at Longford and discharged on 29 March 1871. His age was given as 40yrs old.
Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police Gov't printer J . Barnard
Thomas Ryan per Ol Queen [Oriental Queen] was discharged in March 1871 but just a few months later, on 1st June 1871, he was convicted at the Supreme Court Launceston for feloniously receiving. He was sentenced to 7 years.
Court record: Thomas Ryan and his accomplice Samuel Smith were tried on 22 April 1871 for housebreaking and receiving.
Guilty verdict. Thomas Ryan was sentenced to 7yrs imprisonment, Samuel Smith to 4yrs.
Archives Office Tasmania AB693-1-1 1871 - The Prosecutions Project
Source:https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/AB693-1-1/AB693-1-1_097
Details of the crime and sentence passed on Thomas Ryan and Smith were published in the Cornwall Advertiser Tuesday 6 June 1871, page 2:
HOUSEBREAKING. Thomas Ryan and Samuel Smith were charged with breaking and entering into the dwelling house of Elizabeth Stobie Pegus, in Lord street, and stealing a blanket, counterpane, a gold eye-glass and other articles; on a second count they were charged with receiving the same.
Mrs Pegus left home on the morning of 11th May, to into town, and on her return about five in the afternoon she found a pane of glass in the window broken and the window-sash up. She searched the house, and missed some of her clothes off her bed. The prisoner Smith had breakfast at her house that morning; and Ryan had been seen during the day in the vicinity of the house. A witness had seen the prisoner examining a bundle in an unfrequented street; and Prisoner Smith offered for sale property like that stolen. The jury found Smith guilty on the first count, and Ryan on the second.
Source: HOUSEBREAKING. (1871, June 6). Cornwall Advertiser (Launceston) p. 2.
Link: https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article232999744
On a document dated 10 June 1873 and tabled in Parliament as "Nominal Return of all prisoners sent to Port Arthur since its transfer to the Colonial government", prisoner Thomas Ryan was listed with these details, although the date of his arrival there is not readily retrievable:
Ryan, Thomas 39 yrs old convicted on 1 June 1871 at the Supreme Court Launceston for feloniously receiving. He was sentenced to 7 years.
All sentences of longer than three months passed in Launceston meant transfer to the Hobart Gaol. The press reported Thomas Ryan's transfer from Launceston to Hobart in 1871 in the company of other prisoners, most likely on board government contractor Sam Page's Royal Mail coach, a photograph of which Nevin produced for government records (see below).
ARRIVAL OF PRISONERS - The prisoners convicted at the recent criminal sitting of the Supreme Court at Launceston arrived here by the coach last evening. Alfred Maldon, who shot Constable Eddie, at Launceston, and received sentence of ten years; Michael O'Brien, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, for maliciously breaking about fifty squares of of glass in Dr. Milner's house at Launceston ; Thomas Duncan, sentenced to five years for house-breaking, and Thomas Ryan, seven years for feloniously receiving, were the prisoners. By the same coach a diminutive little fellow ten years of age, who received a sentence of ten days for stealing some tobacco and 10lbs. of mutton at the West Tamar, arrived here to undergo a term of five years' detention at the reformatory.
Source: Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Saturday 10 June 1871, page 2
Link: https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8867722
These four prisoners may have been photographed at the Hobart Gaol by Thomas J. Nevin in the days after their arrival in 1871, but as Nevin's commission to begin the systematic photographing of prisoners commenced six months later, in February 1872, his photographs of these men were more likely taken on their relocation back to the Hobart House of Corrections and discharge from the Mayor's Court in the mid 1870s.
Alfred Malden/Maldon's mugshot 1874
New York native Alfred Malden was one of Thomas Ryan's companions on the coach trip south from Launceston to the Hobart Gaol in June 1871 (with armed constables). The early 1900s transcription on the versos of Malden's cdv's show two versions of his name (Malden/Maldon) and his ship of arrival in Tasmania as the Tamar (mis-spelt). The transcriber's use of the generic date "1874", and the generic place of imprisonment as "Port Arthur" was written when these cdv's were removed from prisoner rap sheets and police office photo books for display and sale in the name of early 20th century dark tourism. In many, many instances, this same date and place systematically transcribed across the versos of hundreds of these prisoner cdvs forty (40) years after their original use in police hands do not reflect the facts of the prisoner's criminal history at the time he was photographed. Malden's records show he was sent to Port Arthur a month after processing at the Hobart Gaol in 1871, and returned to the Hobart Gaol in 1873 where he was discharged from the House of Corrections on 10 January 1874. His sentence of ten years passed in 1871 was reduced on discharge in 1874 on condition he leave the colony of Tasmania. Two copies of T. J. Nevin's single capture of prisoner Alfred Maldon/Malden are held at the National Library of Australia (Canberra); one is held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (Hobart).
Prisoner Alfred Maldon [Malden]
Photographed by T. J. Nevin, Hobart, July 1873-February 1874
TMAG Ref: 15619
Two mounted cdv duplicates and versos from single sitting with prisoner Alfred Malden/Maldon
Photographed by T. J. Nevin, Hobart, July 1873-February 1874
Photo taken at the National Library of Australia, 6 Feb 2015
Photos copyright © KLW NFC 2015
As assurance to the Parliament, one hundred and nine (109) names of convicts who were sent to Port Arthur from the Hobart Gaol from the year 1871 at the discretion of the Hobart Gaol Sheriff Thomas Reidy were officially tabled in Parliament on July 15th 1873 as soon as the resolution was passed in the House of Assembly to immediately close the prison at Port Arthur and transfer the prisoners there back to the Hobart Gaol. Thomas Nevin's earlier contract with the Lands and Survey Department dating from 1868 was extended to provide the Parliament with their photographs.
Of those one hundred and nine (109) prisoners originally sent from the Hobart Gaol to Port Arthur after 1871 - the "Port Arthur convicts" as they became known in the mid 20th century - sixty (60) had already been transferred back to the Hobart Gaol by October 1873. On arrival at the Hobart Gaol, they were photographed in standard issue prison clothing by contractor T. J. Nevin on being processed or "received". His photographs of a number of these transferred prisoners taken in 1873 were duplicated and sent back to the Port Arthur prison administration during the last weeks of A. H. Boyd's incumbency as Commandant.
Many of the prisoners' names on that list, tabled in Parliament on 15th July 1873, tally with the names (and aliases) of the prisoners whose photographs survive in public collections. Many of those same names appear again on the list tabled in Parliament in 1875 as the Report of the Commission into Penal Discipline, viz. the "convict portraits" identified by name held at the National Library of Australia (84), most of which are copies and exact duplicates of the prisoner photographs by T. J. Nevin held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (72), the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (56), the Mitchell Library SLNSW (13), and the State Library of Tasmania (10).
Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police Gov't printer J . Barnard
Thomas Ryan was convicted of further offenses into the late 1870s, using the alias Thomas Williams when tried at Hobart on 12 January 1877 for being idle and disorderly.
Photograph by T.J. Nevin of contractor Sam Page's Royal Mail coach 1874
The figure of coach painter Tom Davis and Burdon's company name were painted out.
QMAG Collection Ref: 1987_P_0220.
The verso of this photograph carries T. J. Nevin's Royal Arms colonial warrant stamp used for government work.
RELATED POSTS main weblog
- Tasmanian crime statistics 1866-1875
- Samuel Page's Royal Mail coach
- Thomas Nevin's photographs mounted on calico 1870s
- Rogues Gallery: the QVMAG prisoner photographs collection
- Prisoner Alfred MALDEN or MALDON 1874
- Rogues Gallery: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection
