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William Robinson
photographer UK
CpC  |
William Robinson, (attributed to) United Kingdom
working 1884
H. Negretti & Zambra printers and publishers at Crystal Palace, Sydenham, London1883-1899
members of R.A. Cunningham’s Australian Aboriginal international touring company,
l-r: Jenny, Toby her son, her husband Toby, Billy, Bob, Jimmy and Sussy (Crystal Palace London, April 1884)
albumen silver carte de visite 6.3 x 10.4 cm on Negretti & Zambra yellow mount
Collection National Gallery of Australia (Canberra) |
In 1882 Canadian theatrical agent Robert A. Cunningham came to Queensland to secure ‘wild’ Aboriginals as performers for touring in America and Europe in P.T. Barnum’s show 'Ethnological Congress of Strange and Savage Tribes'.
Six of the resulting nine troupe members ‘recruited’ were from separate communities on Palm Island and three from Hinchinbrook Island. They did not all speak the same native languages and only two spoke some English and these were used to assert Cunningham’s claims they were not coerced. Their performance in Barnum’s Congress began in 1883 and during the following year both Tambo and Wangong had died.
Cunningham left Barnum in 1884 and began a long tour across Europe despite the deaths of Bob, Toby senior, Sussy and Jimmy 1885. Only Jenny, her son Toby and Billy returned to Australia in 1888. Their full and extraordinary story has been told by Australian writer and anthropologist Roslyn Poignant in her 2004 book Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle.
Cunningham knew nothing of Aboriginal culture so the members must have worked together as a group to develop a crowd pleasing repertoire of dances, singing, boomerang throwing and mock fights in stage costumes which they came to like and deeply resented requests to be photographed as naked savages. He did however, soon realise the value of professional photography and sales of images became a feature of all the European venues. Relatively few copies of the tour images are known to survive.
Cunningham was undeterred by the death of the majority of his first troupe and returned to recruit a second group in 1892 in preparation for the living ethnological displays planned for the 1893 World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago.
Queensland journalist Archibald Meston who had assisted Cunningham, and developed his own troupe called ‘Meston’s Wild Australia’ which performed in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in 1892-93 but did not make it to Chicago. The National Gallery has photographs of those troupe members in the collection.
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