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When Frances (Fanny) Symons married William J. Lott in the Kooringa Wesleyan Chapel on 10 April 1864 she did not know of the pain and suffering she was to endure at the hands of her new husband, or that he was to become South Australia’s most notorious photographer.

After their marriage the couple moved to Adelaide, Gawler, then George Street, Moonta, where Lott had a small drapery store in 1867. The following year he was declared insolvent. By July 1872 Lott had moved into the photographic studio at 164 Rundle Street, Adelaide, which had previously been occupied by Philip Marchant (q.v.), who was as righteous as Lott was evil.

In February 1873 Lott’s Paris Photographic Studio was advertising portraits on glass from 1s 6d each and cartes de visite, ‘finished by first-class artists’, for 7s 6d per dozen, or 5s per half-dozen. Portraits could be finished in either oil or water colours.

For a time Lott’s photographic business enjoyed a degree of success, with favourable comments in the press. In November 1874 the Register referred to the studio’s ‘admirable cabinet likeness’ of John Forrest, the leader of the West Australian Exploring Expedition. A week later the same paper reported, ‘Mr W.J. Lott … has shown us a large-sized and particularly bold, clear and faithful mezzotint likeness of the late Mr J.H. Barrow. The features are remarkably distinct, the expression is excellent, and the head stands well out from the background, so as to look more like a bust than a photograph.’ Newspaper items and advertisements referred to Lott’s business as the Paris Photographic Studio until 1875, after which it was called the Paris Photographic Company.

In October 1876 the Observer said Lott now had a new studio, which:

… incorporated all the latest improvements … The operating room is 30 feet by 16, and a board six feet high at the lower end of it produces a reflected and subdued light not obtainable by any other means; while a number of shutters and blinds, which can be drawn up and down easily by a spring, give facilities of throwing light on a subject of any character. The camera used was made by Messrs French, of London, to Mr Lott’s special order, and has the rack and pinion movement throughout.
The double repeating back is so arranged that every part of the figure can be brought into focus, and four pictures can be taken in different positions in the time it usually occupies to take one. Mr Lott has also one of Weston’s patent burnishers fitted up with gas, by which a photograph can be thoroughly burnished in very little time, and Marion’s cameo press enables him to press his portraits into any size or shape which may be required.¹

In June 1877 Mrs Lott sought a divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty and adultery. When reporting the case the Observer said:

The annals of Matri-monial Courts here or elsewhere never produced a more flagrant instance of shameful depravity, wanton cruelty, and pitiful cowardice – in short, of utter baseness – than the evidence disclosed. A small portion of that evidence we have printed, but the bulk of it is so gross as to be utterly unfit for publication. It depicts a creature thoroughly steeped in sensuality, lost to all 579 Observer, October 1876. 187 sense of moral restraint, natural affection, and common decency.

The Judge said it was ‘one of the most filthy and brutal of all the cases that had come under his notice’.²

In her testimony Mrs Lott said, ‘From the first my husband was not kind to me, and 12 or 18 months after our marriage he beat me with his fists about the head and face. He used to knock me down and drag me about by the hair of my head. He has frequently given me black eyes, and I have had two at once.’ She described how she left her husband several times, but always returned ‘on account of his constant solicitations and promises never to strike me again’.

‘He has often said he would think no more of blowing my brains out than taking his dinner … In April, 1874, he knocked me down in the shop with his fists in the presence of Miss Hardy, an assistant, and afterwards jumped on me, although he knew I was in an advanced state of pregnancy.’ Mrs Lott told the court that they had six children of whom only two were still living, Julia (12), and Edith (3).

In October, 1875 … he came into the room, locked the door, and said, ‘Now, you wretch, I’ve got you; I’ll murder you’. He caught hold of me by the hair and dashed me on the floor, and before I could get up he knocked me down again. He did this repeatedly while I was trying to get up. He took hold of me by the hair and dashed me against the wall. I was smothered in blood and almost insensible. About this time a woman named Louisa Rebecca Hebblewhite was an assistant in my husband’s shop. Mr Lott was very kind, attentive, and loving to her. He treated me like a dog … He frequently said he would think no more of shooting me than eating his dinner, and that if ever I went into Court against him he would shoot me in the witness-box. He carried a loaded revolver about with him …

When describing her husband’s treatment of their oldest daughter, Julia, Mrs Lott said. ‘He often used to strip her naked and lash her with a whip’. The Observer also reported twelve-year-old Julia’s description of the treatment she received from her father, who ‘would sometimes thrash her till the blood came. On one occasion he took her portrait in a disgraceful manner, and told her if she said anything about it he would murder her … [she] related numerous instances of impropriety between the respondent and the young women assistants in the establishment.’

A former employee, photographer James Marshall, supported Mrs Lott’s testimony, and said, ‘There was nothing in her conduct to justify this treatment. She worked from 6 in the morning until 12 at night.’ He had seen Lott ‘behaving familiarly’ with Miss Hebblewhite and Emily Louisa Callow, an assistant printer, and had also heard him talking indecently to Miss Callow. The court found that cruelty and adultery had been proved and the divorce was granted.

Six months later Lott was again in court, this time for ‘alleged brutal assault’ on Louisa Callow. The Port Augusta Dispatch reported, ‘it appears that Lott was in the habit of treating the poor girl in a manner which would have horrified a savage’. He was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. However, the Judge thought Miss Callow was an unreliable witness and that Lott had been judged on public opinion and not the facts of the matter. He arranged a pardon and early release for Lott, which aroused widespread public indignation. The Jamestown Review said, ‘Is the administration of justice a “Lottery”, and is a great rascal let out?’ The newspaper described Lott as an adulterer, a brutal coward and debauchee, and ridiculed the lightness of his original sentence and the subsequent lack of justice.

By 1884 Lott had married Louisa Callow and they were living together at 164 Rundle Street with a ten-year old girl who was described mostly as Lott’s niece, but sometimes as his daughter. Lott was financially embarrassed, his business premises were insured for £500, but his insurance company had told him it would not renew the policy. Attempts to insure with other companies were rejected. ‘The answers had this feature in common, “the moral risk was not good enough”; 580 Observer, June 1877. 188 the objection was personal rather than connected with the construction of the building or the business carried on’.

On 13 November 1884, four days before the insurance policy was due to expire, Lott left the studio with his wife and niece. Shortly afterwards a fire broke out but was quickly extinguished. When Lott returned he rushed upstairs and was acting so strangely he had to be ordered from the premises. Soon afterwards another fire broke out. At the inquest the jury returned a verdict to the effect that the fire had been caused by Lott, but when he was tried in the Supreme Court the case against him broke down, due, it was said, to the inefficient way in which the coroner’s inquiry had been conducted.

Lott was involved in yet another sensational court case while being tried for arson. An English barrister ‘of dissipated habits’, Mr C.L.H. Joy, had been lodging with Lott’s mother. When Lott discovered he had private means Joy was well supplied with alcohol and eventually went to live with Lott and his wife at 164 Rundle Street. Here Joy was given a ‘small, meanly furnished, dirty bedroom’, where he was kept in a state of intoxication, and in a period of three months was induced to sign cheques in the Lott’s favour to the value of £500. In the same period Lott’s photography business only returned £80, and he was greatly overdrawn at the bank.

Joy was brutally ill-treated by Lott and his family. Typical of the evidence heard in court was an instance in which a cab driver described driving Lott and his niece and the unfortunate Joy to Henley Beach. Lott stopped the cab, dragged Joy out on the road, punched him in the face, held him against the wheel and told his ten-year old niece to beat poor Joy with a stick which had a nail in the end. She did this until Joy begged for mercy and Lott told her to stop. Joy was eventually found dead on his bedroom floor as a result of alcohol poisoning.

In court Lott claimed that before Joy died he had made out a will in Mrs Lott’s favour, and while he was not able to produce the original document he did submit a photograph which he claimed was a genuine copy of the will. The report of the case said that much of the evidence given by Lott and his wife was suspect, and that ‘when the photograph was looked into still more fishy features were discernible, and the Special Magistrate intimated that he thought Joy’s signature had been pasted on or otherwise affixed to the alleged agreement before it was photographed’. Lott’s claim for money under the so-called will was thrown out of court.

The Kapunda Herald used Lott’s latest appearances in court to review his unsavoury past, and express its opinion of his character. At one time, said the Herald, Lott used to conduct open-air religious services in Botanic Park, but since then he had ‘managed to squeeze more hypocrisy, filthy immorality, and knowledge of our law courts into a few years than many a wicked man is able to do in a long lifetime …for far-reaching wickedness, William James Lott is without a peer. Popular prejudice against him is so marked that the first dozen men you meet in the street would readily find him guilty of any crime a little short of murder without the formality of a charge being preferred … in a less law-abiding community than this Lott would have doubtless had an application of the shot gun argument.’

It seems that Lott’s unsavoury reputation did not deter women from patronising his studio, and it may even have had the opposite effect by arousing their curiosity. One survey of fifty cartes de visite taken by Lott provides an interesting, but not necessarily accurate, result. Almost all the portraits were of women, children or babies, and less than ten per cent were portraits of, or including, a man.

A brief note in the Kapunda Herald on 16 December 1885 said, ‘The notorious Lott is said to have joined the Salvation Army’.

¹Observer, October 1876.
²Observer, June 1877.

Text taken from:
Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp.186-88.

Writers:

Nerina_Dunt

Date written:

2013

Last updated:

2013