tivity. Tasmanian collector Crowther, who just happened to drop by the Government Printing Office during a rebinding exercise, salvaged some of these early newspaper bindings and described them in Biblionews (September 1956). They are typically half calf (or possibly kangaroo skin) with boards covered in light blue or, occasionally, marbled paper.
Some volumes use a dark blue paper and have the title stamped in black alongside the spine (example from 1822 shown). A bound volume for 1819 in the Dixson Library, Sydney, is very similar. These may have been the official government set as opposed to Bent’s personal copies, which were added to the Chief Secretary’s newspaper collection in 1849. Other bound newspaper volumes survive elsewhere, although many are in poor condition. Most are similar to the half bound light blue volumes described by Crowther and to the James Kelly volume shown below. Some have blind tool decoration and/or a paper label on the front.
Early Period (to 1824)
In 1823 Bent received new printing presses and type from England and by the end of that year had moved into a new printing office in Elizabeth Street. As a logical extension to his business, he also imported a ‘complete Set of Book-binder’s Tools and Presses’ and advertised the neat and expeditious performance of ‘book-binding, in all its various branches.’ This equipment was not included in the 1821 requisition for press and types which went to Governor Sorell, so was probably imported entirely on Bent’s own initiative. In 1830, when his printing business was sold, the equipment comprised ‘one large excellent Standing Press, Cutting Presses, Sewing Presses, Plough, Brass Marking Letters, Ornaments, Rolls, and every other Requisite for carrying on the Business to any extent.’
This advertisement indicates the sort of stationery binding undertaken at Bent’s printing office during 1824. Also on offer was ‘The HOBART TOWN GAZETTE, for 1823, neatly bound, and as clean as when they came from the press.’
Government ledgers and other volumes were, of course, being bound well before Bent received his own equipment. From 1818 the government bookbinder was Scottish convict Robert Drysdale who arrived on the Lady Castlereagh in June of that year, aged twenty-two, under a sentence of fourteen years for housebreaking. He was not really Andrew Bent’s own assigned man, but was based at the printing office, working under Bent’s general direction. He probably bound most copies of Bent’s 1824 almanac, although not the one pictured above. Advertisements in 1819 and 1820 indicate that Drysdale also did bookbinding on his own account in his spare time, apparently unimpeded by a lame right arm.
This volume of the Hobart Town Gazette for 1820 which belonged to early Hobart identity James Kelly, was probably bound by Drysdale. It has simple blind-tooled decoration and a printed label pasted onto the front. The convict register shown below is an early example of government binding and may also be Drysdale’s work.
Drysdale was often in trouble. Although acquitted on a charge of neglect of duty, he also, during his association with Bent, spent seven nights in gaol for being absent from his lodgings at night and was flogged for being out after hours. There may well have been increasing friction after Bent’s new binding equipment arrived. In February 1824, after ‘repeated disobedience of orders and insolence to Andrew Bent’, Drysdale was sacked and spent a week in a cell on bread and water.
Drysdale’s short-lived replacement was another housebreaker, this time from Surrey. Philip Caton or Keating (alias John Smith) was twenty-two when he arrived on the Morley in January 1823, transported for life and bearing a very bad character. He had already served seven years on the Retribution hulk for an armed robbery. Part of that sentence overlapped with Bent’s younger brother Benjamin, who served time on the same hulk. Soon after arrival in Hobart Caton was flogged for an assault, and while in Bent’s service was accused of stealing a shirt and of a robbery. He was acquitted on both ch