孝Filial Devotion: While parents are alive, one must not travel far. If one must, one's whereabouts should always be made known. Confucius: Analects, Book 11, Li Ron 19.

-- Where were the photographs found? --
-- Why are these photographs being displayed? --
-- What can you see in the albums? --
-- Why were these albums of photographs created? --
-- How did photography help the prison system? --

These superb photographs of Chinese prisoners are portraits of some of the tens of thousands of Chinese who came in the nineteenth century to the Victorian goldfields, a place they called Hsin Chin Shan (New Gold Mountain).

The Chinese left behind harsh conditions at home and usually the Chinee lodges helped to fund their sea voyage to Australia. Many died on the way. The lives and struggles of those who survivied in the strange new land have also been largely forgotten. The majority of the Chinese diggers wanted to return to their families. By 1901 fewer than 8,000 Chinese remained in Victoria.

A very small proportion of the Chinese immigrants committed crimes and were imprisoned. The prison registers and photographs offer a fascinating and rare glimpse into their lives. These and other records held by Public Record Office Victoria give us an insight into their personal, economic and social circumstances.

Where were the photographs found?

The prison photographs that have been found are located in two main sources:

•  Many of these photographs were selected from the nineteenth century prison registers.

•  Other photographs were selected from a series of large albums of photographs of hundreds of male prisoners.

They form one of the largest collections of individual photographs of Chinese people in Victoria during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Information from the prison registers and trial briefs have been used to help explain who each prisoner was and why each prisoner was convicted. This information gives some insight into their lives and what it was like to be Chinese in nineteenth century Victoria. But other questions remain unanswered.

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Why are these photographs being displayed?

Photographs of Chinese people and communities in Victoria are comparatively rare. Many photographs taken at this time were sent back to their families in China. It was important to keep in contact with family members in China and to show them that they were well and prospering in the new land.

The exhibition and these materials show you how the prison registers can be used to help people such as historians to trace part of the stories of Chinese people living in Australia during the nineteenth century.

Often little is known about these men and the lives they lived because there were very few individual photographs in existence of Chinese men (except in the Immigration files). Written records about these people are also rare. The exhibition cannot tell the full story about each of these Chinese prisoners. But it is an important beginning. Perhaps in the coming years people will be able to find records to help fill in the gaps in some of these stories.

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What can I see in the albums?

Photographs of the Chinese are scattered throughout the albums which contain photographs of hundreds of men and sometimes women living in the colony of Victoria in the second half of the nineteenth century. There is only a picture and the persons' name.

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Why were these albums of photographs created?

The six albums of photos were collected for some purpose which has now been lost. One explanation that people put forward is that these photographs might have been taken to assist with the study of phrenology that was popular at this time. Some scientists in the nineteenth century believed you could learn a great deal about a person's character and personality by studying head shapes and the bumps on people's heads. This study was called phrenology.

People in the nineteenth century were showing an increased interest in science too. Australia was a continent only known to Europeans for a very short time, the first white settlement beginning in January 1788. Everything was new and some scientists and observers were keen to record everything they could about the land, its indigenous people, animals and plant life. Perhaps the interest in these prisoners arose from this general interest in scientific things and photography provided a quicker and more accurate way of recording this information.

When you see photographs such as these, and look at the existing records, you quickly see how so much of their stories are unrecorded. There are often more questions unanswered than are answered by the information available. For example, we know very little about their family backgrounds, their lives at the time they were imprisoned, their interests, their economic situation, their work, how their families coped while they were in prison and how they coped once they were free again.

Perhaps this tells us a lot about people's values and attitudes at this time in history. Prisoners were not highly regarded. And the Chinese certainly were not. At this time history was about rulers, leaders, important military leaders, large landowners and people, of wealth and power. The stories of ordinary people and their lives were of far less interest, let alone the stories of prisoners from an alien and often misunderstood culture.

What do you think?

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How did photography help the prison system?

The prison system in the 1860s in Victoria was quick to realize that the newly invented technology of photography could be used both as a record of the prisoner and for identification purposes.

Soon all prisoners were photographed at the commencement of their sentence. A photograph of their face and profile was attached to their prison record. If a prisoner reoffended and their appearance had changed over the years then a new photograph would be taken and attached to the record. Therefore, if a person had a long criminal record, the photographs provide a record of the changes in a person's appearance over time.

Sometimes prisoners were photographed with their arms crossed on their chest and their hands and fingers clearly displayed. This was to help in the identification process. A prisoner could have a tattoo, a scar, a missing finger, a wart, or some other distinguishing mark on their hands.

Fingerprinting (although it was used by the ancient Assyrians and Chinese to sign legal documents) was not used to identify criminals until the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. DNA testing, first developed in England in 1985, only began to be used as a reliable source of identification from the 1990s. Photography was therefore the most reliable method of accurately recording and identifying people available at this time.

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