Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, inventor and publican, had one of the earliest billiards saloons in Sydney. In 1851 there were two tables, one imported and one made by him. His had a wooden instead of slate bed and was cushioned in rubber made of the entire stock of ink and pencil erasers from Moffitt’s stationery shop. By the early 1860s Spencer was running The Shakspere Tavern in Pitt Street, the hotel decorated with Shakespearian characters by Andrew Torning , Thomas Newall and Thomas Balcombe in 1847 when it was owned by William Knight.

Charles Bertie recollected in 1920 that under Spencer The Shakspere became a major Sydney attraction, full of models and mechanical wonders, including an electrified brass rail along the front of the bar to shock the customers. There in December 1864 Spencer invited customers to inspect an 'extremely ingenious piece of mechanism’ he had designed and executed, which depicted a rural landscape in relief with a fox hunt in the foreground in which all participants were 'tearing along with an astonishing and thoroughly break-neck celerity’. Over a plate-glass river in the centre was a bridge with a moving train constantly crossing it (at ’100 feet per minute’) while, behind this, balloons painted with pictures of the Queen, Shakespeare and Sydney Harbour constantly rose into the clouds. The whole was enclosed in a gilt and glass case measuring 3½ x 5 feet (106 × 152 cm). The Sydney Morning Herald thought it exceedingly creditable to Spencer, 'a self-taught artist’.

In May 1865 Spencer was reported in the Illustrated Sydney News as indulging in a bizarre photographic experiment:

The statement that the retina of the eye of a murdered person will retain a picture of the murderer from some time after death, recently induced Mr Spencer, of the Victoria Hotel, Pitt Street, to try some experiments in this direction, and by arrangement with Mr. Weir, butcher, of Pitt-Street, a calf was obtained and killed. After being dead for an hour the eye was extracted and photographed; the result was that the picture showed a distinct outline of Mr. Weir’s features and figures such as would have enabled any person knowing him at once to recognise him, and certainly such as would have enabled a detective of any shrewdness to select him from a number of individuals.

From its opening in October 1870 until 1878 Spencer operated his Mechanical Museum (later called Spencer’s Royal Polytechnic) at 222 Pitt Street, between King and Market Streets. It consisted of at least seventy-four mechanical inventions ranging from a white rat in a cage to working models of the Great Eastern and Galatea ships, 'to say nothing’, said Bertie, 'of a “glass shade of artificial teeth made by J. Spencer, dentist, 352 George-street”’ – Thomas’s son who had apparently inherited his father’s unusual artistic gifts. The Illustrated Sydney News reported regularly on Spencer’s Mechanical Museum, which from the first incorporated 'an exhibition in itself’ of stereo views, including a series of transparent and illuminated slides. Another major feature was the waxworks, about fifty figures, 'their clothing, the furniture, even the most minute ornaments on the dresses … formed of wax’, assembled into four major scenes in glass cases, plus separate individual figures. The main scene depicted the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, another showed Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak before Queen Elizabeth and there were two 'humorous combinations’.

In March 1873 a new scene was added of Stanley and Livingstone meeting in Africa, with a painted background copied from a print in the Illustrated London News . A new attraction in March 1874 was a model of the zig-zag railway at Lithgow, including a tiny moving train. Spencer’s daughter Clara provided pianoforte and singing accompaniment and with two younger members of the family made up 'a really first-class musical entertainment’. They subsequently performed in the Polytechnic’s own concert-room at the rear of the museum which seated about sixty people.

Spencer sold his museum in December 1878 to Monsieur Thiodon, son of the celebrated inventor of the 'Theatre des Arts’, but was still in Sydney on 11 July 1880 when his 'dining saloons’ in the Royal Victoria Theatre were destroyed by fire.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011