lithographer and copperplate printer, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son of a local bookseller. Apprenticed to the Glasgow lithographers Allen & Fergusson, his fellow apprentices included the watercolour painter Robert Carrick, and W. Simpson, later a staff member of the Illustrated London News . In 1845 Penman travelled to Liverpool and on to London, where he was employed in printing plans for projected railways. When the railway boom collapsed Penman lost his job, so he and his colleague, a fellow Glaswegian called William Galbraith , decided to emigrate to Australia. They chose South Australia after reading John Stephens’s pamphlet on that colony. Galbraith recalled in 1911 that the deciding factor was that Stephens 'mentioned that butter was so plentiful and so cheap that people were in the habit of greasing their boots with it’.

On 31 July 1848 Penman and Galbraith set sail in the Hoogley from London, reaching Adelaide on 5 December. Shortly afterwards, the pair set up in business in Grenfell Street as Penman & Galbraith, lithographers; their first substantial commission was an octavo circular for the stationer, Mr Platts, executed by Galbraith, always the more active lithographer. In 1849 they printed S.T. Gill 's Heads of the People , and in subsequent years printed lithographs by Alexander Schramm and James Shaw , among others. Indeed, they were Adelaide’s most prominent lithographic printers until the firm closed down in 1883, numbering amongst their work 'Maps, Plans, Drawings of Machinery, Architectural and Landscape Drawings, Circulars, Bills of Lading, Bills of Exchange, Bill-heads, Scrips, Labels, Business and Visiting Cards, &c., Lithographed in every variety of style, with neatness and despatch’, according to one of their regular advertisements. Penman died in October 1900.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011