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A Convict Who Made Good - Charles Davis of Hobart, Large…
Auction House:
Auction Location:
Melbourne
Date:
28-Jun-2016
Lot No.
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Description:
A Convict Who Made Good - Charles Davis of Hobart, Large advertising card for Charles Davis, Wholesale and Retail Furnishing Ironmonger, Importer of English and American Hardware, incorporating an albumen print (by the Anson Brothers) of his premises in Elizabeth Street, Hobart. Backed by a similar ornate advertisement for Calder, Bowen & Co., General Printers of Liverpool Street, Hobart. 15 x 36 cm., Davis, was born in London in 1824. He showed an early interest in shops by robbing a till in 1840, and on 5 April 1841, at the London Central Criminal Court, he was sentenced to ten years transportation for a second offence, larceny from the person, nominally the theft of a silk handkerchief. After ten months in the hulks he sailed for Hobart aboard the Candahar, arriving in July 1842. Set to work at Bridgewater and Oyster Cove as a tinsmith, he received his ticket-of-leave in September 1847 and established a small tin and copper-smithing enterprise in a Bathurst Street shed. In October 1848, having 'only three records of a trifling nature - made against him', Davis was recommended for the conditional pardon he received in December the following year. After a try at Victoria's gold in 1851-52, he returned to his Hobart business. Davis flourished in the boom of the 1880s, with the metal-mending and manufacturing workshop becoming augmented by an importing and distributing enterprise.
Estimate:
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Price:
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Category:
Unclassified