Which Greymouth photographer was gaoled for debt after his studio was pulled down to create a firebreak?

Abraham Solomon Levinski (fl.1865-1872)

Before his arrival on the West Coast in 1866, Abraham Levinski had run a barber’s shop and photographic studio in George Street, Dunedin. The combination obviously suited him, and in Greymouth he repeated the arrangement, establishing a haircutting saloon in Boundary Street in July 1866, followed soon after by a portrait gallery – the London Portrait Rooms - in the same premises.

Levinski had probably not bargained on much in the way of rivalry, so it no doubt came as an unpleasant surprise when fellow photographer John Low opened a studio at Shannon’s Bookshop on Mawhera Quay at much the same time. After several months of competition, Levinski dealt with the challenge by letting his rooms to Low, and moving his operations to Greymouth’s thriving neighbour, Charleston, in February 1868.

If the plan was to allow Low to exhaust himself, and the local market, it appeared to work. In June 1868 Low announced he was leaving, and Levinski resumed occupation of his former premises. Low was back in Greymouth by December 1868, but now billed himself as “of Greymouth & Onehunga”, dividing his time between the two centres and, intentionally or not, ensuring Levinski the lion’s share of the local trade.

In the meantime Levinski was busy establishing himself both socially and professionally.  He was a founder member of the town’s Ancient Order of Foresters, he participated in local athletics, gave his support to electoral candidates, sold photographs of the Greymouth floods, and promised to submit portraits of the Greymouth Handicap’s winning horse and jockey to the Illustrated Melbourne Post and Illustrated London News.

In August 1869 Levinski completed costly alterations to his studio. Aiming to increase his patronage and recoup his investment, he substantially reduced his prices, but a series of court judgements against him forced him to put his studio up for auction in early April 1870. The timing was unfortunate; in the early hours of 19 April 1870 Boundary Street was engulfed by flames, and in an attempt to arrest its advance Levinski’s shop was demolished to create a firebreak. With no means of realising any capital, Levinski was imprisoned for debt, and released only on the guarantee of tobacco merchant Jacob Basch.

A year later Levinski turned up in Fiji, opening a studio in Levuka in April 1871. Once again his timing was immaculate, competition arriving barely a month afterwards in the form of Melbourne photographer Frank Dufty. Levinski struggled on briefly, but soon dropped out of the trade, although continuing to live in Fiji.

Greymouth as it appeared in 1875. Fire was an ever present danger in colonial New Zealand, as most buildings were constructed of wood. The inquest into the 1870 conflagration that led to the destruction of Abraham Levinski’s studio failed to uncover the source of the blaze, but the implication was that it was caused by coals falling from an open fireplace. Rebuilding began within days. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. NZ Map 6537)

Which New Zealand-born photographer is renowned for his portrait of the band from HMS Katoomba taken on the porch of Robert Louis Stevenson’s house at Vailima in Samoa?

Alfred James Tattersall (1866-1951)

On 12 September 1893 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: ”Yesterday was perhaps the brightest in the annals of Vailima. I got leave from Captain Bickford to have the band of the Katoomba come up, and they came fourteen of ‘em with drum, fife, cymbals and bugles, blue jackets, white caps and smiling faces.”  The celebrated author makes no mention of the presence of a photographer at the festivities, but the scene was captured by his neighbour, New Zealander Alfred James Tattersall.

Tattersall was born in Auckland on 29 March 1866, the son of Lawrence Tattersall, a painter, and his wife, Sarah, both active Wesleyans. He learnt his trade from fellow non-conformist George Redfern, and briefly worked for the Sydney-based Tuttle & Co, probably joining them when their Auckland branch opened in May 1885. In 1886 John Davis, who had recently been appointed postmaster for the Kingdom of Samoa, hired him to run his photographic concern in Apia. Despite Davis giving priority to his postal responsibilities, the studio remained in his name throughout, Tattersall describing himself as “Manager [of] the business of J Davis”, when he informed the British Consul, Thomas Trood, of his employer’s death on 13 September 1903. Only with Davis dead did Tattersall take over the business in name too, erecting a sign outside the studio reading “A J Tattersall late J Davis” sometime between 1903 and 1907.

Tattersall is the only Samoan photographer known to have made a living exclusively from photography. This he achieved in part by continuing to print from his predecessor’s negatives. But he also took hundreds of his own landscape and river views, and is noted for his postcards and souvenir albums. His photo-journalism proved another lucrative source of income, the Auckland Weekly News publishing, amongst others, his pictures of the 1908 volcanic destruction on Savaii, and the New Zealand occupying forces in 1914. He married Samoan-born Blanche Yandall in August 1891, and lived in Samoa until his death in 1951.

Alfred Tattersall was on hand to record the occupation of Samoa by a New Zealand Expeditionary Force that landed at Apia on 29 August 1914. This photograph shows the Union flag being hoisted at the courthouse in Apia on the morning of 30 August. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. AWNS-19140917-43-2)

The introduction to a travel guide by which New Zealand photographer begins, “The wish for mine enemy to write a book not having eventuated, I have written one myself”?

Charles Spencer (1854-1933)

It may have been a tongue-in-cheek remark, but as a high profile Tauranga businessman Charles Spencer was no doubt sensitive to the petty jealousies of local politics, and the introduction to “Spencer’s Illustrated Guide to the Hot Springs” can be read as a comment on the town’s lively public affairs.

Charles was the eldest son of Thomas Spencer of Parawai who, as one half of Spencer and Hall, ran a lucrative pharmacy and gold-broking business in Grahamstown, Thames. The pair also owned a local stamper-battery. By 1876, doubtless with his father’s financial backing, Charles reputedly paid £1000 for a stake in the Dunedin photographic partnership Clifford and Morris. In 1878, however, he and his brother George were in the employ of Burton Brothers, climbing and photographing in the Southern Alps when they reportedly discovered gold at Waihoa Flat, at the base of Mount Cook. The find was apparently sufficient to induce the brothers to abandon their expedition in favour of further prospecting, if only temporarily.

By April 1879 Charles was in Tauranga, where he opened a photographic studio in a tent next door to Wrigley’s Brewery on Willow Street. Within weeks the enterprise was put in jeopardy when a stove Charles had installed ignited the canvas and reduced his premises to ashes. But the setback proved fleeting, and in September 1879 Charles purchased H C Hoyte’s chemist’s shop on The Strand. By installing a manager, he was able to continue to work as a photographer in a studio he erected at rear of the building. He satisfied his thirst for adventure with photographic excursions to the South Island, occasional visits to the rumbling White Island, and regular trips to the Hot Lakes, one of which provided the basis for his 1885 guide book. Undaunted by the danger, he was also one of first photographers to reach Rotomahana after the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886.

An irrepressible entrepreneur, Charles was probably instrumental in his father’s chartering of the steamer Vivid (under the captaincy of his brother, George) on the route between Tauranga and Te Puke; he experimented with the cultivation of silkworms, and as a director of the short-lived New Zealand Manure & Chemical Company promoted the exploitation of White Island’s sulphur deposits. He was a skilled roller skater, and the first person in Tauranga to own a velocipede (much to the amusement of the locals). He immersed himself in local politics, becoming a borough councillor in 1887, but failed in an attempt to be elected mayor. In 1890 he moved to Auckland to promote a photo-lithographic printing process, collaborating with his brother Percy to publish views of Auckland and Thames.

Tragedy struck in 1894 when Charles’s father, Thomas, drowned in the wreck of the Wairarapa at Great Barrier Island. Charles was a witness at inquest where he criticised the inaction of the Union Steam Ship Co.

He continued to live in Auckland, working as a photographer with the Government Survey Department, and later as chemist with a sideline in landscape photography. He died in 1933.

This photograph of the Whanganui River at Pipiriki was taken by Charles Spencer after his relocation to Auckland in 1890. It is one of at least 9 original Spencer plates in the Richardson Collection at the Auckland Central Library. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 4-3554)

Which photographer was the first to visit the Pink and White Terraces?

Bruno Lancel Hamel (1837-?)

When in January 1859 the Auckland Provincial Government prevailed upon the geologist Dr Ferdinand Hochstetter of the visiting Austrian survey ship Novara to abandon his colleagues and undertake an expedition into the province’s vast interior, 21 year-old Bruno Lancel Hamel was recruited to act as the expedition’s photographer.

Hamel, of French Huguenot descent, was born in Tamworth, England in 1837, but had spent some years in Victoria, before returning to Britain in 1855 after the accidental death of his father at the Mt Blackwood goldfield. Unable to settle, Bruno and his mother left for New Zealand on the William Watson in August 1857, arriving in January 1858 in Auckland, where Bruno set up a photographic studio in Edward Street.

Hochstetter’s expedition proved a gruelling 1000 kilometre, 79-day journey by foot, horseback and canoe, and even with the assistance of four Maori porters, sections of the trek were deemed much too rugged to safely transport Hamel’s photographic equipment. Consequently while Hochstetter and his companions took a southerly route from the Waipa Mission Station to the Hot Lakes district via Lake Taupo, Hamel travelled directly eastward, rendezvousing with the rest of the party at Lake Tarawera. Despite this shortcut, Hamel still managed to arrive back in Auckland with a collection of some 60 glass plate negatives.

Within weeks his return Hamel had taken over John Nicol Crombie's former Shortland Street studio, now known as "Hamel's Atelier", and was offering for sale albums of photographic views from his recent trip. But Hamel's advertisement in Laurence's Auckland Almanac for 1860 (published in December 1859) gave as much prominence to his work as a musical instrument repairer as to his activities as a photographer. In March Henry Frith acquired Hamel’s premises, and this may well have spelt the end of Hamel’s photographic career in New Zealand. The following month the expedition camera used by Hamel was put up for public auction.

Bruno had married 17 year-old Caroline Umbers at St Patrick's Church, Auckland on 23 January 1860. But in September 1861 he arrived in Sydney on the Fortune, apparently leaving his young wife behind in Auckland. The following year Caroline, travelling alone, was caught up in the wreck of White Swan, en route for Wellington, where she appears to have settled, if temporarily. As for Bruno, in April 1863 the Maitland Mercury noted the brief appearance in West Maitland (New South Wales) of the photographers Sanders & Hamel. If this was Bruno, it could be the last confirmed sighting of him. In March 1866, Bruno’s mother advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald for her son to contact to her. After her death in November 1873, the family solicitor in Tamworth also advertised for information about Bruno’s whereabouts. Caroline, however, had already decided that Bruno was dead, and she remarried in December 1869, at the time describing herself as a widow. Despite her certainty, no trace of Bruno Hamel's death has ever been found.

In July 1859 the Auckland Provincial Government paid Bruno Hamel £10 for an album of photographic views taken on the Hochstetter Expedition. This album is now in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Auckland Central Library, and is prefaced by a portrait of Ferdinand Hochstetter, and by this panoramic view of Auckland – the earliest known view of the city’s waterfront. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 755-Album-40)

Which New Zealand photographer was reported dead in 1875, but actually died in Sydney in 1911?

Robert Henry Bartlett (1842-1911)

In the 1860s and 1870s Robert Henry Bartlett was a high-profile Auckland photographer. Like other photographic artists of the era, he found that persuading visiting actors and musicians to sit for him was a highly lucrative business. Such arrangements promoted both the photographer and the performer, and provided a steady source of income.

Reproducing photographs obtained from other sources was similarly rewarding. When Henry James O’Farrell shot and wounded Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, at Clontarf near Sydney, Australia in 1868, Bartlett quickly acquired cartes-de-visite of the prince and his assailant, and set about churning out portraits under his own name. Within a month he had sold some 1600 likenesses of the prince alone at one shilling each.

The scheme had unexpected results. After recovering, the prince made a brief visit to Auckland in December 1870, and Bartlett was invited to accompany the royal party to Rotomahana. Photographs he took during the expedition were displayed at his Queen Street studio, and he subsequently presented Prince Alfred with a set of 36 views of the colony. The prince reciprocated with the honorific title "Photographer to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh", said to be the only appointment of its kind in New Zealand.

Rumours of Bartlett’s death reached the Daily Southern Cross newspaper on the evening of 2 August 1875. But it was a Mark Twain moment, the photographer’s demise being much exaggerated. Earlier in the day Bartlett had suffered an epileptic fit, collapsing outside the New Caledonia Hotel. He was carried to a private residence, and prescribed rest and quiet as the best aids to recovery.

Bartlett continued to practise as a photographer in Auckland until well into the 1890s, despite a disastrous fire that destroyed his premises in September 1873, and repeated flirtations with bankruptcy. He died at the Rookwood Asylum in Sydney on 2 June 1911.

In 1868 Robert Henry Bartlett’s studio was on the upper floor of the building at the corner of Wellesley Street West and Queen Street (extreme left). At this point of his career he traded under the name of Bartlett & Co at the rather grandiose sounding New Zealand Academy of Photographic Art. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 4-85)

Which photographer of the Auckland waterfront died in an airship explosion over Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1912?

Melvin Vaniman (1866-1912)

American Melvin Vaniman arrived in New Zealand from San Francisco on 4 February 1902 bringing with him large-format panoramic cameras of his own design and construction.

Originally a musician and opera singer, Vaniman stayed on in Honolulu to become a professional photographer when the opera company of which he was a member self-destructed while on tour in Hawaii. Throwing himself into his new profession, he developed refinements in panoramic camera design and experimented in artificial vantage points for his equipment. His work caught the attention of an American steamship company, and in 1901 he was engaged to photograph tourist destinations in New Zealand and Australia.

While in Christchurch Vaniman constructed a 32 metre tall pole to photograph the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company works. In Auckland, he clambered to the top of a ship’s mast to secure a view of the waterfront. Moving on to Sydney, he realised that if he was to capture a satisfactory view of the harbour, masts and poles or scaffolding would be inadequate. He therefore imported a purpose-made balloon to carry his camera aloft.

Vaniman’s aerial success encouraged him to travel to Europe, but his plans to photograph its principal cities from tethered balloons were thwarted by unfavourable atmospheric conditions. Undaunted, he teamed up with US newspaper proprietor Walter Wellman who employed Vaniman’s ballooning expertise in two failed attempts to reach the North Pole by airship in 1907 and 1909. After Peary’s conquest of the Pole in 1909, the pair switched their attention to the Atlantic, setting new world records for balloon travel in 1910. On 2 July 1912, during a second attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean, airship Akron exploded killing its skipper Vaniman, his brother Calvin, and three others.

One of the last photographs of Melvin Vaniman (centre) before his tragic death in the airship Akron. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. AWNS-19120815-12-4)

Which New Zealand photographer became chief cartoonist on the Sydney Punch, and Queensland’s Worker and was known for his paintings of racehorses?

Eugene Montagu Scott (1835-1909)

In a career spanning some 50 years Montagu Scott produced around 3000 front-page, full-page or double-page illustrations for a variety of Australian publications. He was Australia’s, if not the world’s, most prolific 19th century cartoonist; only Alice in Wonderland illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, is said to have matched his output.

Scott was born in London in 1835, the son of artist and portrait painter, William Scott, and his American wife Sarah. His siblings Walter, William and Emily Anne all became accomplished artists in their own right, and it may have been sibling rivalry that prompted Montagu, in July 1855, to accompany his cousins Robert Manfred, Arabella and Julia, on the Joseph Fletcher bound for New Zealand. Among the other cabin passengers was the Reverend John Kinder. Today Kinder is known, amongst other things, for his skill as a watercolourist, but it was Montagu Scott who was dubbed “the artist on board” by a fellow migrant.

Immediately on arrival in Auckland in October 1855, Scott took rooms adjacent to the Masonic Hotel in Princes Street, and advertised “portraits on glass” – ambrotypes - plain or coloured, from 10 shillings “including frame”. Unfortunately his chemicals had succumbed to the sea air on the voyage, and he was forced to suspend his photographic activities until fresh supplies arrived from Sydney. In the meantime he offered tuition in painting and drawing, eventually establishing formal segregated drawing classes to supplement his income from photography. He was, after all, as an “Exhibitor at the Royal Academy, London”, supremely qualified for this role, although he neglected to point out that he had exhibited just one work - a portrait of “James Smith Esq”. He also made good use of his artistic skills at the Theatre Royal in Victoria Street, repainting the stage doors, adding decoration, and painting the drop scene for a production of Ali Baba.

But with the theatre in financial difficulties, and sustained competition from other photographers and artists, Scott determined to try his luck in Australia. In August 1856 he left Auckland on the Elenora, arriving in Sydney on 15 September 1856, en route for Melbourne. When in 1868 he was commissioned to paint a portrait of the visiting Duke of Edinburgh for the princely sum of 250 guineas, at the time highest fee ever commanded for a portrait in the Colonies, it must have seemed like a very shrewd move. But Scott had already survived a catastrophic bankruptcy in 1860, and despite simultaneously working as both an artist and photographer and, from 1866, as chief cartoonist on the Sydney Punch, he was again declared bankrupt in 1870, and forced to sell his photographic equipment. In the 1880s he went on to work for the radical Brisbane-based Boomerang and Queensland’s Worker. But his finances barely improved, and despite the popularity of his paintings of racehorses, he was once again bankrupted in August 1908. He died on 15 May 1909 at Randwick, Sydney.

On arrival in Auckland in October 1856, Scott rented rooms and set up a photographic studio in Princes Street, probably in what had been (until 1847) Wood's Royal Hotel, but was now the Claremont Boarding House (left). The building in the centre is the Union Bank of Australia;  the Masonic Hotel can be seen centre right. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 4-16)

Which New Zealand photographer was gaoled as a result of his marrying a 12 year-old girl?

Charles Henry Monkton (1840-1890)

Until 1933 in New Zealand it was perfectly legal for a girl under the age of 16 to marry, provided she did so with the consent of a parent or guardian. Consequently when Charles Henry Monkton married 12 year-old Emma Mary Howell in November 1881, he committed no crime. What proved his downfall, however, were the circumstances surrounding the marriage.

In what appears to have been a bizarre, premeditated precursor to an enforced ménage-à-trois, Monkton presented himself at the office of the Auckland Registrar in the company of Emma’s eldest sister, Alice Lynch, with whom he had been living for a number of years. To ensure the marriage went ahead, Lynch posed as Emma’s mother, and gave the girl’s age as 15. The ruse was only uncovered some 3 years later, when Emma absconded to Sydney in an apparent attempt to escape plans to force her into prostitution. Monkton was arrested, and put on trial. The case was a national sensation, and the New Zealand press revelled in the salacious details. Monkton was convicted of making a false declaration under the 1880 Marriage Act, and was sentenced to 2 years’ imprisonment in the Mount Cook Gaol in Wellington.

It was the end of a promising career that had taken Monkton across the length and breadth of the colony. Arriving in Auckland from London on the ship Jura in January 1860, he had immediately established himself as a cheap, innovative and popular photographer, praised by the Daily Southern Cross for his entrepreneurial flair. In the early 1870s he had toured the West Coast goldfields, and after a brief stint in Wellington, in 1876 he settled in Whanganui. In 1879 he returned to the capital, where he suffered his first serious setback. Declared bankrupt in June 1880, Monkton embarked on a semi-itinerant existence that took him to Napier, back to Auckland, on to Parihaka, and then finally to Christchurch, where he was arrested in April 1884.

On his release from prison in July 1886, Monkton assumed the name Henry Airey (his mother’s maiden name), and fled to Australia. He settled in Minyip, Victoria, where he abandoned photography and made his living as a hotelier. He died in 1890, aged only 50; just retribution, perhaps, for a dissolute life.

At the end of 1865 Charles Henry Monkton travelled to the Upper Wairoa to photograph Wiremu Tamihana. According to the Daily Southern Cross (18 December 1865, p4), he photographed Tamihana with his rifle, reading a bible, and with his friends - back row: (from left to right) W L C Williams, Josiah Clifton Firth, Wiremu Tamihana, unknown; front row: Purae, Dr Sam, William Australia Graham. Could the man standing at the extreme right, wearing the tam-o-shanter, be Monkton, having set up the shot? (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries.  34-F56A-5)

Which well-known Auckland photographer once took possession of a Pacific island in order to exploit its valuable guano?

Henry Winkelmann, 1860-1931

Despite his Germanic-sounding name, Henry Winkelmann was born in Bradford, England. He did, however, come from Germanic stock. 19th century Bradford was the centre of the English wool trade and cloth manufacturing industry, and was already home to a sizeable German community when Henry’s father Peter moved there from Prussia in the late 1850s with his young wife Louise (Schueller) to become a worsted yarn and stuff merchant.

Henry would probably not have come to New Zealand but for two significant events. One was the death of his father towards the end of 1877 at the relatively young age of 47; the other was the conviction of his brother Charles in April 1875, then just 16 years old, of involuntary manslaughter. On his release from prison Charles took ship to Auckland. Three years later Henry undertook the same journey.

During the next couple of years, Henry drifted between Dunedin and Auckland. The longest he spent in any one place was six months in Hawke’s Bay where Charles had been appointed a master at Te Aute College. Then in 1881 living at a boarding house in Hobson Street, Auckland Henry accepted a job offer from Thomas Henderson of Henderson and MacFarlane. The plan seemed simple enough. Henry and fellow boarder Harold Willey Hudson were to live on the remote Jarvis Island for 3 months to validate the company’s claim to the island and permit the exploitation of its valuable guano. Dropped off by the company schooner Sunbeam, the pair found themselves marooned for almost 8 months. With supplies running low they survived on turtles and birds’ eggs, and by distilling their own drinking water. Their employer Henderson seemed nonplussed by their re-appearance in Auckland, but paid out their agreed wages to the exact penny, fixedly overlooking the hardships they had suffered.

Henry now embarked on a peripatetic lifestyle of a very different kind. As a clerk with the Bank of New Zealand he worked at locations throughout the North and South Islands, in Levuka (Fiji) and in Sydney. In 1892 he purchased his first camera, but pursued photography in tandem with banking until 1895 when he resigned to take up farming on Great Barrier. It was not a success. He rejoined the bank, this time in Blenheim, but quit after just 12 months to run a customs agency on Auckland’s Queen Street Wharf. Four years later, in August 1901, Henry opened a photographic studio in Victoria Arcade. His adventurous spirit continued to manifest itself in his cityscapes taken from the crosstrees of sailing ships on the Auckland waterfront, and in his photographs of yachts, invariably snapped from his “peanut of a boat” on the Waitemata Harbour.

On his retirement in 1928 Henry sold his negatives of Auckland city streets to the Old Colonists Museum. He died at Mount Eden on 5 July 1931. In his will he left the remainder of his glass plates and a sizeable collection of prints to the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Henry Winkelmann's view of Freemans Bay, Auckland photographed from the mast of the Jessie Craig, 23 March 1904 (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 1-W1102)

Which moneyed New Zealand photographer and phrenologist had an aunt who lived next door to Charles Dickens?

Herbert Henry Vorley 1839-1880

In January 1879 Herbert Henry Vorley of Westport received a cablegram from London notifying him of the death of his paternal aunt, Frances Sharp. She was the widow of a solicitor, Edmund Sharp, and for over a decade had been a neighbour of the author Charles Dickens when he lived in Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone. Anxious to claim his share of his aunt’s ₤50,000 estate (NZ$6 million at current values), Herbert Henry immediately packed up his belongings and together with his family set sail for England.

Despite an affluent background, Herbert Henry had since 1867 pursued a humble existence earning a living as a photographer and phrenologist on New Zealand’s West Coast. Born in London in 1839, the commercial activities of his father, John Iliff Vorley, a former ship's officer and merchant, had taken them both to Melbourne, Australia by 1860. Here Vorley junior married 17 year-old Margaret Wood in February 1863. But the successive deaths of his father in July 1863, his one year-old son Edmund Sharp Vorley in 1865, and infant daughter Frances Caroline Vorley in 1866 prompted a radical change in direction. The recent gold discoveries in New Zealand had Melbourne buzzing, and Herbert Henry and Margaret joined the exodus of diggers from Victoria headed for the West Coast.

Vorley eventually settled in Westport, and in 1873 was one of the signatories to a petition calling for the town to be constituted a borough. But it is evident from the birthplaces of his children, and from his cartes-de-visite, that he did not limit his activities to the town, at various times operating photographic rooms at Camp Street, Charleston, and in Broadway, Reefton.

Vorley’s Westport studio adjoined his house in Palmerston Street. As was usual at that time, it had an expansive glass roof to provide natural lighting. However, the roof was susceptible to the weather, and suffered substantial hailstorm damage in December 1875. Much to his annoyance and distress, Vorley’s premises also abutted a roller-skating rink. In October 1876 he successfully prosecuted the proprietor of the rink, hotelkeeper George Clark, for nuisance, claiming that skaters’ jeers and catcalls, and a noise like a perpetual Ethiopian clog dance, frequently lasted from morning until 11 or 12 o’clock at night. The clamour interfered with his calculation of exposure times, and disturbed sitters, often necessitating the taking of additional negatives. Not only was the din detrimental to his business, it had also affected his health. The judge agreed with the plaintiff, and awarded damages of £10 10 shillings, plus costs.

This was the first mention of health problems. Soon after, in March 1877, Vorley was compelled to cut short a business stay in Reefton because of illness. His aunt’s bequest was therefore very opportune. But he had little time to enjoy his good fortune, dying in London on 17 November 1880.

Herbert Henry Vorley was one of many 19th century New Zealand photographers who combined their art with other occupations, offering both portraits and phrenological assessments at his Charleston studio. This phrenological chart of Sir George Grey by P Besomo is dated 1891. Note the beer bottle by his right temple! (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 7-C65)

Which New Zealand photographer claimed the patronage of the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia?

William Robert Robinson 1859–1942

The casual reader of the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov's autobiography, published in exile in 1932, would never know that he had ever set foot in New Zealand. In fact as an officer on board the Russian corvette Rynda, the Grand Duke spent almost two weeks in the country in 1888 at a time when the "Russian Scare", which had led to the building of major fortifications along New Zealand's coast, was still a very recent memory.

As cousin to Tsar Alexander III, Alexander Mikhailovich was the most important Russian ever to have visited the colony.

The Rynda docked at Auckland on 15 March 1888 and, after 4 days in the city, the Grand Duke made a week-long excursion to the Hot Lakes, Rotorua and Taupo. His hectic itinerary, however, proved only mildly more interesting to the New Zealand public than his run-in with a Queen Street storekeeper, and his involuntary donation of £8 to a charitable institution in Rotorua.

But if Alexander found his experiences of the country less than memorable, his presence proved enduringly rewarding for one young Auckland photographer. Summoned to the Rynda to photograph two groups of officers and the ship’s band, William Robert Robinson afterwards used the experience to promote his career, captioning his portraits, “By Appointment to His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia”.

Born in Dorset in 1859, Robinson had arrived in New Zealand in 1884. Initially he based himself in Wellesley Street in Auckland, before moving to a more prominent location in the Victoria Arcade around 1887. In 1888/9 he took over Tuttle's Queen Street studio, which was where the Grand Duke made his acquaintance. In 1892 he on-sold the business (together with his own and Tuttle's negatives) to C H Clemens, subsequently acquiring George Gregory's West End Portrait Rooms in Ponsonby. By 1894 he was back in Queen Street, trading as Robinson and Yates at the recently deceased Edward Arnold's former studio in Edson's Buildings. Two years later, in 1896, he sold out to Charles Hemus and moved to Ellerslie. From at least 1908 he was at Whanganui, where for 23 years he was employed by the notable photographer Frank Denton. He died in 1942, and is buried at Whanganui's Aramoho Cemetery.

William Robinson supplemented his income by acting as an agent for the Dunedin-based Burton Brothers partnership. Customers who purchased 52 Burton Brothers views paid just one shilling per print per week. This Burton Brothers photograph shows Queen Street in 1884, with Clarke Brothers’ Fine Art Studio in the centre adjacent to the building faced with scaffolding. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. 4-782)

Which New Zealand Photographer died while photographing tigers at Wirth Brothers' Circus?

John Randall Mann (c1857-1902)

The sensationalist headlines might have indicated otherwise, but John Randall Mann was not the victim of a tiger attack. Having completed a photo-shoot of a young lady (Miss Purcell) inside the tigers’ cage at Wirth Brothers’ Circus in Freeman’s Bay in May 1902, Mann remarked, “That will do gentlemen,” turned away, and immediately dropped down dead. The ensuing inquest - to which Mann’s partner Auckland photographer Alfred Jones (who later went on to found the firm Jones & Coleman) was called as a witness - attributed his death to heart disease exacerbated by pleurisy.

Although trained as an engineer, Mann worked as a press photographer in Australia, having immigrated to Victoria in 1877. He came to New Zealand from Melbourne to cover the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York’s visit in 1901, and settled in Auckland. He specialised in outdoor photography, and much of his output went to New Zealand illustrated newspapers such as the Auckland Weekly News, although his work was also in demand from British and Australian publications. Despite his professional achievements, however, his deceased estate amounted to just £21 – cash of £11 found on his body, his camera equipment and clothes valued at £8, and jewellery assessed at £2.

But unlike some photographers who were tempted to claim a royal connection on flimsy or barely existent grounds, Mann may have personally been acquainted with the Duke of Cornwall. He grew up on the Isle of Wight where his father (also John Randall Mann) was Surveyor of Works at Osborne House, Queen Victoria's private retreat. The link may have helped facilitate Mann's access to the Duke and Duchess during their tour, and may also account for a telegram of condolence sent by the Acting Premier, Sir Joseph Ward.

Mann was buried at Purewa Cemetery, Auckland on 28 May 1902.

Quite possibly one of the last photographs ever taken by John Randall Mann, this shot appeared in the Auckland Weekly News on 29 May 1902 and was probably supplied by his partner Alfred Jones. (Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. AWNS-19020529-10-3)