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amateur photographer, military engineer and deputy master of the Royal Mint, was born on 17 August 1823 in Calcutta, India, son of the Hon. John Petty Ward of the Bengal civil service and Elinor, née Erskine. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1841, he studied engineering and architecture at Chatham and mining at the Royal School of Mines, London, then served in Bermuda and Britain. While working at the London Royal Mint, Captain Ward was appointed deputy master of the new Sydney branch; he arrived in the Calcutta on 22 October 1854.

The assayer at the Sydney Mint, who thought Ward 'generally civil and attentive, but very distant’, was W.S. Jevons . Both practised wet-plate (collodion) photography at the Mint. So did Robert Hunt , Ward’s first clerk in the bullion office and Jevons’s friend. Together with W.F. Moresby , apparently a photographic proétgé of Ward’s, they all exhibited at the second photographic conversazione of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales in December 1859 with other Sydney photographers. These four showed a collection of twenty-three stereographs they had taken.

Ward held a far more exalted position in the Philosophical (later Royal) Society than his assistants, having helped found it in May 1856 and serving both as councillor and honorary secretary. He was later elected a corresponding member, and he published three papers in its Transactions . In 1863 he published a report on the Defences of the City of Sydney and, with Professor John Smith , wrote 'Report on the southern goldfields’ which appeared in the History of New South Wales (London 1862). A trustee of the Australian Museum, Ward held various other official offices, being appointed a member of the Legislative Council (1855-56 and 1861 65) and a commissioner of the railways (1856-58).

At Holy Trinity (the Garrison) Church, The Rocks, Sydney, on 21 November 1857, Ward married Anne Sophia, daughter of Robert Campbell junior; they had at least three sons and three daughters. The Wards lived at Dawes Point Battery and Edward’s undated photograph taken from within its low walls shows the ordnance in front of their home and their splendid view of Sydney Harbour (Historic Photograph Collection, Macleay Museum, University of Sydney). Eight stereographs of similar harbour views (Josef Lebovic Gallery) were exhibited in 1989. Other photographs taken by Ward are in the Macarthur family albums (Mitchell Library), James Macarthur being a close friend with whom Ward maintained a lifelong correspondence.

Ward took leave from the Sydney Mint in 1866 and returned to England with his family. When they came back to the colonies in 1869 (the year he became a colonel), it was to a Melbourne posting. As deputy-master of the newly created Victorian branch of the Royal Mint, he supervised the design, construction and fitting out of the Mint Building which opened on 12 June 1872. Two designs for the building survive in the Victorian Public Records Office, both signed 'Comber and Ward’. One shows the Mint as erected; the other depicts a far more ambitious scheme with fenestration modelled on that of Charles Barry’s Reform Club, London; it was reputedly designed by Ward in London before his return. The drawings for the administrative buildings and guard-houses as built were prepared by J.J. Clark .

In 1876 Ward was again granted home leave. He never returned to Australia, although subsequently investing in cattle stations in Queensland, but lived in London and France for the rest of his life. He died at his villa in Cannes on 5 February 1890 after having been promoted major-general (1877) and knighted (1879).

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011