Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, scientific entertainer, inventor, photographic supplier and chemist, had a 'Chemical Hall and Medical Repository’ at King Street, Sydney, in the early 1840s. Declared bankrupt on 29 July 1843, he was discharged the following May. By August 1849 he was in Pitt Street, advertising that he would shortly be photographing portraits 'in a very superior style. The light and shade perfect; the figures standing out in strong relief, and which for life like beauty, distinctness and accuracy will be unequalled’. By October he was taking daguerreotypes between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and promising 'a portrait free from the usual defects, whether of intentional flattery or imperfect observation’. He charged from half a guinea upwards 'according to size, in superior morocco cases, or gilt frames’. At his daily clinic, held after 4 p.m., he used Galvanism on his patients (a type of shock treatment).

Norrie moved into new premises in the same street in May 1850—140 Pitt Street, next door to the Independent Chapel. By July he was trading as Norrie’s Photographic Portrait Establishment. He used a camera imported from Voigtlander & Son of Vienna and seems to have specialised in tintypes; in the Fords’ Sydney Directory for 1851 he asserted the superiority of metallic photographs over images on paper. This business apparently prospered and he was advertising for an apprentice in December 1851. Joseph Docker purchased all his photographic supplies from Norrie’s sho

At the Mechanics Institute Hall in April-June 1854, Norrie held evening exhibitions of dissolving landscape views which incorporated scientific lectures, displays and experiments. An anonymous writer to the Sydney Morning Herald in May ('not personally acquainted with Mr. Norrie’) recommended the performance as 'highly instructive to youth, and at the same time accompanied with entertainments (all connected with natural philosophy), which were not only new to me (a man above sixty), but exceedingly pleasing, and in many respects wonderful, to a novice like myself’. One of the most admired magic-lantern sequences showed a ship being struck by lightning then engulfed in flames. The appropriateness of the accompanying songs (sung by Mr and Mrs Hancock) was also praised while Norrie’s 'experiments with the gases were beautifully executed’. Norrie’s microscopic display, however, used only 'faded moths glued to glass’ and he was advised to get some fresh specimens. However, the major flaw noted was that Norrie’s explanatory lectures were inaudible and the writer suggested that he practice reading aloud for an hour or two every day.

Norrie closed his photographic studio in 1852 but retained his pharmacy where he continued to sell photographic equipment and chemicals. The photographic equipment side of the business expanded considerably until Norrie was again declared insolvent on 10 March 1856. Discharged in July, his fortunes continued to fluctuate. As a chemist, he was awarded two first-class medals from the 1862 LondonInternational Exhibition. Later he resumed the photographic apparatus and chemical side of the business, announcing in June 1868 that he had entered into partnership with Thomas Park. Apart from photographic materials, the shop also sold 'Norrie’s Poultry Restorative’, 'Norrie’s Crimson Marking Ink’ and 'Norrie’s Ozonised Water’. He mentioned in one of his advertisements that he also worked as a 'forensic specialist’, i.e. probably at the mortuary where it would be valuable to know if he took photographs. (Mortuary photography is still largely an unknown genre in Australia; John Degotardi was taking photographs at the Sydney Mortuary in the 1870s.)

A third bankruptcy in September 1869 resulting in a period of confinement in Her Majesty’s Gaol was ineffective. Norrie was again insolvent in February 1874. Fighting back by branching into yet another enterprise, at 67 William Street, he showed a gold and silver ore-treating machine he had invented at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011