Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/stephen-montagu-stout

Birth Place

Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Biography

professional photographer, schoolteacher and editor, son of Kedawins Stout, was born in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England. He became one of the handfull of competent photographers working in Western Australia during the 1860s and 1870s. Formerly a land agent and surveyor in England (where he married and had a child), in 1856 he was convicted of forgery in London’s Central Criminal Courts and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. He arrived at Fremantle on 1 June 1858 in the Lord Raglan . During the voyage he gave lectures on subjects as diverse as The Eclipse of the Sun and Employment Opportunities in Australia , became the ship’s schoolmaster and edited the ship’s newspaper, The Life-Boat , a pun on the lifetime exile faced by so many of the convicts. After receiving his ticket of leave at Bunbury on 30 April 1859, Stout became a schoolmaster at nearby Australind. He was dismissed in 1861 but this was said to have been no reflection on his teaching abilities (more on his convict status). He was granted a conditional pardon at Fremantle on 1 September 1862 and in 1864 established himself as a photographer. One patron in 1866, Mrs T.C. Gull, reported that he took very good likenesses 'on cards like Curtis [q.v.]’ and that his views were first-rate, 'one of the church being beautifully done’. Six cartes-de-visites cost 10s. Unfortunately, Stout was to suffer financial competition from wealthier photographers of the free class who were able to travel overseas in order to study new processes and who could afford the latest equipment. At Australind on 28 July 1868, Stout married Ellenor (Fanny) Brown, the 17-year-old daughter of a recently remarried widow, Mrs Howell. He gave his age as thirty-five (though the convict records stated he was twenty-nine on arrival ten years earlier). Despite the obvious age difference and his dubious status, Stout was an acceptable husband, having been well educated and of a good social background before his fall from grace in England. He also possessed an obvious charm. On 23 October 1872, S.M. Stout, 'artist photographer’, advertised that his photographic gallery in Hay Street, Perth, was now open. He was offering cabinet portraits for 3s each, cartes-de-visites for 1s 6d for the first copy, with additional copies 1s, and 'a large and varied assortment of photographic goods’. Country orders were invited. By now competition had become keen and a growing family made more regular employment a necessity, so the following year he accepted the position of schoolmaster at the Pensioners’ Barracks, Perth. This was a significant post since teachers of the bond class were normally not tolerated in metropolitan government schools. Stout was the first and only expiree to be appointed to a government school in the city. A popular lecturer, Stout also conducted a magic-lantern show on occasions, the commandant of the Pensioner Force lending him his equipment for charitable functions. He had access to a very complete collection of slides: on historical subjects, the Crimean War, the Victoria Cross, the Eddystone Lighthouse, the polar regions, natural history and astronomy, and 'innumerable comic slides guaranteed to produce roars of laughter’. He also showed chromatropes (a lantern slide of two circular discs, one rotating in front of the other to give a kaleidoscopic movement of colours). One exhibition of slides of historical and educational value at Perth Town Hall in June 1876 was voted a 'complete success’ although the Inquirer reported: '“Showing the magic lantern” is doubtless very amusing, but such excellent slides…should be made subservient to the lecturer, and we are glad to hear that…Mr. Stout is preparing a course of lectures explanatory of the subjects exhibited’. Stout was transferred to the Champion Bay (Geraldton) government school in 1878 where he soon embarked upon a different enterprise, becoming editor, under contract for at least a year, to a newly established newspaper, the Victoria Express . Not long afterwards the proprietor sued him for embezzlement, but the judge ruled that there was no case to answer. Stout started a rival newspaper, the Observer , but in such a small community this was not a profitable venture and he soon returned to Perth to work as a reporter for the Daily News and Morning Herald . He died in Perth Hospital on 11 April 1886. Fanny had died the previous year, so their six children were left orphaned. His ten-year career as a photographer was relatively brief but his surviving work, preserved in old family albums and in the Battye Library, is an important contribution to that field of art in Western Australia. Writers: Erickson, Rica Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1829

Summary

Convicted of forgery and sentenced to fourteen years transportation, Stout became one of the handful of competent photographers working in Western Australia during the 1860s and 1870s.

Gender

Male

Died

11 April 1886

Age at death

57