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professional photographer, journalist, public servant and entrepreneur, was born in Newry, County Down, Ireland, on 5 August 1835, eldest son of Joseph Glenny, a linen merchant, and Elizabeth, née Grandy. In 1853 he left Liverpool in the Phoenix bound for the Victorian goldfields. He prospected with little success at White Flat and Eureka before opening a store on the Gravel Pit Flat. The day after the Eureka uprising Glenny came out on the side of officialdom and joined the volunteer police force. In 1855 he was employed as postmaster and clerk of courts at Beechworth and the following year managed a large shop in Castlemaine. He married Emma Jane Blanchard at Castlemaine on 14 February 1859.

Glenny first took up photography as a hobby, then in 1857 set up a Portrait Saloon in Castlemaine’s Market Square. He soon had branches at Ballarat and Kyneton, the chain being known as the Dublin and Melbourne Portrait Rooms. By August 1863 the Kyneton branch was well established and Glenny had become known, in an unexpected quarter, for his photographs of Aborigines. The Kyneton Guardian reported that a party of Aborigines consisting of three men, three women and a boy had just visited him wanting to know how much he would pay for photographing them (which, of course, was thought very comical). He remained in business at Kyneton until 1867. In 1866 his partner was Frederick Cornell and the two were probably the unnamed photographers commissioned to take 21 views of Kyneton in June for the Borough Council to show at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. In 1867, however, the partnership was dissolved and the Kyneton branch of the Dublin and Melbourne Portrait Gallery closed.

The Castlemaine branch was still in business. A carte-de-visite depicting J. Myring’s coach-factory and shoeing forge at Castlemaine (Josef Lebovic Gallery), together with surviving portrait cartes, dates from this period. The Ballarat branch continued also; Glenny had a studio in Victoria Street, Ballarat, from 1865. In 1869, when at Main Road, Ballarat East, he exhibited photographs of Aborigines and Wesleyan ministers at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. The latter subject seems to have been another speciality for Glenny advertised in the Ballarat Directory for 1869 that he had available a large range of cartes-de-visite of foreign and colonial clergymen at a shilling each. He listed approximately 90 ministers as being among those whose portraits he had on hand, perhaps not all taken by him. He also offered, at the same price, 'C.D.V. Photographic views of all the Churches, Public Buildings and Principal Streets in Ballarat’, adding that he would attend 'Bazaars and Fancy Fairs on reasonable terms’. He was still producing ambrotypes in 1869, according to a story published in the Melbourne Argus of his photographing a dead baby in this medium for 'a poor but evidently respectable woman’.

Little is known of the extent of Glenny’s professional input into his photographic business. Clearly since he was running two or three studios concurrently he was dependent on the assistance of other photographers. A fourth studio, the Glenny Art Studio at Sale, which advertised cabinet photographs (in vogue in the 1870s and 1880s), was presumably another of the chain.

Additionally, Glenny worked as a freelance journalist for over 40 years. A biographical article stated that he wrote under various pseudonyms, including 'Old Chum’, 'Peter Possum’, 'A Voice from the East’, 'Quince’ and 'Rambler’ but mostly under the name of 'Silverpen’. ('Peter Possum’, however, is known to have been the pseudonym of Richard Rowe, and 'Old Chum’ that of J.M. Forde.) He is said to have contributed to many colonial newspapers, including several religious periodicals, and to have sent colonial sketches to the Belfast (Ireland) Christian Advocate for many years. While in Britain in 1887-88 Glenny published Jottings and Sketches at Home and Abroad at Belfast.

In 1876 Glenny, a Justice of the Peace, was appointed to the government Commission on the Peace of the Southern (and subsequently, the Western and Midland) Bailiwicks of Victoria. He was one of the signatories who certified Ned Kelly’s hanging in the Melbourne gaol-book of 1880. He was a fellow of the British Geological and Royal Geographical societies and Ballarat representative for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Prisoners’ Aid societies. In 1890 he contested the electorate of Dundas for the House of Assembly, losing by a small proportion of the vote to the standing member.

Glenny made six return visits to Britain altogether in order to promote and sell mining companies he floated. In 1891 he was appointed Victorian commissioner for taking oaths and affidavits in Fiji, where he presumably moved for a time. He died in Melbourne on 24 July 1910, survived by his wife and five children.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011