Death – State Library and Tasmanian Archives Blog

Tasmania Reads: Sir John Franklin and his Expedition of 1845 (Part One: The Challenge)

The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.

The scripts are selected to give you insights into some of the key strengths of our collection and we hope they will pique your interest to explore further.

Today’s challenge is to decipher a note (which the library holds a reproduction of) made on a British Admiralty template by the members of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition for the Northern Passage of 1845. The State Library holds many resources relating to Franklin’s time as both Lieutenant Governor and as an explorer.

Your Transcription Challenge

This note has multiple parts to it, with writing in all directions. This challenge focuses only on the writing in the centre of the page, and not the marginalia. This is a challenging transcription that gives two very different messages to the reader…

Tasmanian Archives: Jack Thwaites Collection, A Series of Stereoscopic Views of the “Franklin Relics” brought home in the “Fox” by Captain McClintock.-Sep 1859. Photographed by Lieut. Cheyne R.N.1860 from expedition of Sir John Franklin to find the N.W. Passage. 1859-1860 (1860), NS1155/1/20

The Answer …

will be published in our blog this afternoon. Stay tuned!

Recently Digitised Material: January-June 2022

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania heritage collections.

Read on to find out about new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue and Tasmanian Names Index or visit us on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram.

In this blog:

Thomas Bock’s notes on photography, including Talbot’s calotype process and daguerreotypes – Ref: ALL34/1/1
Star of Tasmanian shipboard journal (1859-60) – Ref: NS7221/1/1
Journals of Separate Prison wardens, Tasman Peninsula (1860, 1863) – Ref CON91/1/2-3
Descriptive Lists of Male and Female Convicts to Be Embarked for Van Diemen’s Land from Various Prisons in the United Kingdom, (1839-50). Ref: CON114/1/1-8
Convict credit and gratuity books, Tasman Peninsula (1865-68). Ref: CON130/1/1-3
Register of Convicts for Whom Enquiries were Made (1850-68). Ref: GO121/1/1
Tasmanian Birth Registers (1921) – RGD33/2/5 to 8
Female Admissions, Royal Derwent Hospital (1898-1903) – Ref: AB365/1/13
Copies of Wills Recording Granting of Probate (1868-1874) – Ref: AD960/1/8, AD960/1/9
Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits – Ref: NS5465/1/1-3
Launceston Collection of Photographs of Ships – Ref: LMSS761/1/1-490
Hobart Town by Ensign Kemp from behind my quarters / W.H. Kemp
Artworks by Knud Geelmuyden Bull
Mount Wellington from Bellerive, artist unknown
Mount Lyell mines map,1896
Glass plate negatives from AA Rollings Collection – Ref: NS1553/2/1 to 34

Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2021

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania.

Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue and Tasmanian Names Index or visit us on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram.

In this blog:

Photographs of Tasmanian Cricket Teams – Ref: PH40/1/3625-27
Photographs of Launceston and Perth– Ref: NS7193/1/5-8
Artwork of Launceston Mechanics Institute – Ref: LPIC41/1/1
Artwork of Hobart Town, on the River Derwent, Van Diemen’s Land by W.J. Huggins (Allport)
Photograph of Twin Ferry Kangaroo, Hobart – Ref: PH30/1/3269
Advertisement for Weaver and Co, Wellington Bridge Hobart by T Midwood – Ref: NS6760/1/7
Glass Plate Negatives by A Rollings of Sorell Area – Ref: NS1553/1/1010-1099
Register of Convicts B, M-Z 1835-47 – Ref: CON22/1/4
Register of payment of salaries to officers of the police, 1855-57 – Ref: AUD45/1/1-3
Journal of a voyage from Liverpool to VDL, 1833 – Ref: NS5739/1/1
Copies of Wills Recording Granting of Probate – Ref: AD960/1/6, AD960/1/7
Film of opening of Launceston library after refit – Ref: AG279/1/2
Film of the Launceston children’s library – Ref: AG279/1/1

10 ways to boost your Tasmanian Names Index searches

There have been some recent enhancements to how you can search the Tasmanian Names Index.

We have added more fields to the search filters on the drop-down menu to the left of the search bar. Some of these have always been there (while some are new additions). Many of you might not have been aware of the drop-down menu at all, but it can be a useful tool for refining your searches in our ever-expanding database of Tasmanian life.

Here is a short guide to what those options mean and when it might be useful to use them.

Recently Digitised Material: July-September 2021

This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania.

In this blog:

Richard Simson Photographic Collection – Ref: NS6351/1/1-95
Albums of Gladys Midwood – Ref: NS6759/1/2-3
Photographic Albums by Margaret Smithies, Ernest George Record and the McDowell family
Tasmanian Government Railways
1920s aerial view of Hobart city block bounded by Murray, Harrington, Liverpool and Melville Street looking North from behind His Majesty’s Theatre and Hobart Rivulet – Ref: NS892/1/61
Artworks of Launceston
Emu Bay by Thomas Unwin
The Pests of the Prince by Henry Manly
TGR Williams glass plate negatives – Ref: NS1409/1/46-48
Judges notes on capital offences committed at Norfolk Island, 1846 – Ref: CSO20/1/449
Burial Plot Maps, Cornelian Bay Cemetery 1915-16 – Ref: AF86/1/1
Wills from AD960/1/5
1829 journal written from London to Van Diemans Land by John Owen Lord – Ref: NS301/1/2

Esther’s Story, Part Three: The Cascades Female Factory and Brickfields Invalid Depot, 1870-1877

In 1870, a horrific assault took place at the Cascades Female Factory. At eight o’clock in the morning on the 13th of July, a woman named Eliza Osborne beat an elderly woman named Ellen Conway with the iron dinner bell. She hit her in the head so hard that the bell cracked. Ellen Conway was a 73 year old ex-convict who had been sent to the depot for begging. One of the people who rushed to her side to help her was the nurse, Mrs Cecilia Eliza Paul. A few kilometers away (about 25 minutes’ walk), the nurse’s daughter ten year old Esther Mary Paul was also a witness – to her uncle George’s marriage at the family home at Cross Street, Sandy Bay.

This week in Esther’s story, we break away from the whaling logbook where we first found her as a five year old girl. Now we’ll trace her and her parents through two institutions which housed the most vulnerable people in Hobart in the 1870s – the Brickfields Invalid Depot and the Cascades Establishment. To piece that story together, we have to jump forward and backward in time a little bit, but I promise it is worth the journey!

Esther’s Story, Part Two: Getting By in Hobart, 1860-1870

“Cross Street, Sandy Bay Road,” “Be a good girl, Esther,” “Esther shall not go out again,” “Bombay is in Asia, ABC,” “Evil communication corrupts,” “Love your grandmother Esther” – each of these were written over and over again in a whaler’s logbook, and signed “Esther Mary Paul” in November or December, 1865. What was little Esther doing writing these lines, in -between and alongside the records of her uncle and aunt’s adventures at sea long before she was born? Was she being educated or punished, or both? Where was she living and why was she there? In this continuing story of little Esther Mary Paul and the whaling logbook in the Crowther Collection, we’ll try to piece together Esther’s young life. It’s a tale of sorrow, struggle, and abandonment, but also of strength, resilience, and love.

Where the paupers went to die…

Hospital records are like the holy grail of archives. Because medical histories are so personal, they are carefully controlled. In the busy world of a hospital, not every slip of paper could be kept, particularly before computers. By the time 19th and early 20th century records reached the archives, many volumes had gone missing or been destroyed, and only intriguing clues have survived.

Some of the surviving records from the General Hospital in Hobart are the hospital’s registers of deaths (HSD145, 1864-1884) and orders for coffins ‘required for pauper interments’ (HSD146, 1864-1876). These records have now been digitised and added to the Tasmanian Names Index, under the record type ‘deaths’.

Continue reading “Where the paupers went to die…”