The Humphery Collection
This collection of sixteen images was scanned from a photo album provided by John Ellis and was put together by Doctor E.M.Humphery. The photo album was prepared as a wedding gift to Florence Rachel Walker (1877-1933) who married Edgar Charles Bond on 17 September 1901.
Esca Morris Humphery (1876-1961) was born in Sydney and attended Sydney Grammar School in 1887-94. He graduated in Medicine from the University of Sydney in 1903. For the next ten years he was a medical officer in hospitals in Maclean, Bellingen and Lismore in northern New South Wales. He served in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War I. In 1919 he returned to Sydney and established a practice in Macquarie Street. He served on the council of the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association and was President in 1930. He was an honorary surgeon at the North Shore Hospital, and the honorary secretary (1926-44) and chairman (1944-56) of the Central District Ambulance. He was made a Knight of the Order of St John in 1950.E.M. Humphery had a strong interest in Australian history and was a member of the Council of the Royal Australian Historical Society from 1940 to 1948.
His particular passion was the history of Australian shipping and in his later years he lectured regularly on ships, shipping companies, wrecks, lighthouses, harbours and related subjects. In 1937-40, for instance, he gave 38 lectures on these subjects, illustrated with lantern slides. When Humphery died in 1961, Keast Burke wrote that ‘his death might be said to represent the end of an epoch – namely, the public lecture with the 3¼ in. by 3¼ in. slide’. In the course of his lecturing, he assembled a huge collection of negatives, lantern slides and albums.
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Anyone interested in investigating the images is invited to contact the Curator of the SHF Maritime Records and Research Centre, either by phoning 02 9298 3888 or emailing [email protected]/home.For costs and availability of obtaining any of these photos without watermark, as an electronic file, as a print from the original negative (where available) or as some other format, contact the Maritime Records and Research Centre’s Curator, quoting the full file name and giving details of format wanted.Copyright for the majority of these images from the collection is vested in the Sydney Heritage Fleet. For the remaining images every attempt has been made to ensure correct attribution. If any originator of an image notes an error, the Sydney Heritage Fleet would welcome any notification and will remove that image or modify its attribution.
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