Henry Jones takes photo portraits in the 1870s/80s of hundreds of the earliest South Australian colonists
These South Australian early colonists – Top row: Katherine Pritchard, Amelia Ann Summers, Jane Rollings, Julia Symes, Elizabeth Scott Wright. Bottom row: Harriet Tidy, Sarah Witherick, Mary Ann Ricketts, Hepzibah Westwood, Mary Stutely – were among hundreds of men and women photographed by Henry Jones in the 1870s/80s. Many of the portraits in the State Library of South Australia collection are not fully identified.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Henry Jones was a photographer remembered for his portraits of South Australia’s pioneer colonial settlers.
Born in Bristol, England, Jones trained as a watchmaker and jeweller and, in the early 1850s, migrated to Victoria and set up a business in Bourke/later Elizabeth streets, Melbourne. He moved to Nelson Parade, Williamstown, and around 1857 was augmenting his watchmaking and jewellery income with photographic portraits on glass. From 1858, he went into a series of photographic studio businesses in Melbourne city.
In 1866, he left for Adelaide, where in July he joined the staff at Townsend Duryea’s studio, upstairs at 68 King William Street, on the Grenfell Street corner. In 1868, Jones before opening a succession of studios along King William Street. At the South Australian Society of Arts 1871 exhibition, Jones was awarded a prize for portraits of children, and this became his speciality.
Also in 1871, businessman and politician Emanuel Solomon hosted a reception for early settlers of South Australia to celebrate the colony’s 35th anniversary. The event, at Adelaide Town Hall on December 28, was attended by 620. In March 1872, Jones called on men who’d had been invited to the banquet to come within the first month of the opening of his new studio to have their photographic portraits taken. From June 1872, he started on similar portraits of female colonists.
A mosaic of the male photographs was presented to Solomon but he died in 1873 before Jones had completed the female group, almost 10 years later. This was in part because the number of female colonists rrew to 656. The women’s photographs were technically superior and arranged in alphabetical order rather than grouped by date of arrival. Townsend Duryea also made a large mosaic of the male old colonists in 1872, and Hammer & Co. started a similar project in 1886.
Jones also produced two large group photographs of old colonists that were displayed at the public library but still owned by Jones until 1910 when they were bought as a public gift by pastoralist T.R, Bowman and donated to the library. Jones had restructured his business in 1876 as the Children's Photographic (later Photograph) Company that by 1885 had moved to the northern corner of King William and Hindley street, Adelaide, previously the studio of Melbourne Photographic Company.
By 1886, Jones’s studio had been taken over by R. Laming and, around 1890, by photographic studio Stump & Co., making the corner (like the Beehive Corner diagonally opposite), a familiar landmark.
Jones attended Pirie Street Methodist Church, where his son T.H. Jones became a renowned organist and choirmaster.
