By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 10/2023, December

Commercial photographer and photojournalist Sam Hood lived at various addresses in Glebe and the suburb featured in many of his iconic images of everyday life. Although photography moved from wet to dry plate to film, and illumination from sunlight to flash powder to flashlight bulbs during his long career, Hood used the same modified Folmer and Schwing Graflex camera for more than 40 years. 

Samuel Hood was born on 20 August 1872 at Glenelg, SA, the eldest child of pioneer photographer John Riley Hood (whose father was also an artist) and Mary Martha née Hübbe who had worked with her future husband as a photo retoucher in Townsend Duryea’s Studio in Adelaide. The couple had three more sons (William Harrison, John ‘Jack’ Ulrich and Thomas ‘Tom’ Courtney) before Mary Hood died aged 32 in January 1881. Her widower then married Ruth Wright, a young widow, and Martha Mary, Alexander Dolman and Frederick William were born in 1882, 1883 and 1887 respectively. Following the death of Frederick at age three months, the family moved to Sydney where William Harrison died of typhoid on 4 April 1888, his 14th birthday.  His death was registered at Leichhardt. John and Ruth’s last child, Dorothy Ruth, was born in 1889 when the family was living in Leichhardt Street Glebe. 

By this time Sam already had experience in his father’s Adelaide studio. His first Sydney employer was William Nutting Tuttle, an American who founded Tuttle & Co. in Kidman’s buildings in George Street. The firm was not only the city’s biggest photography studio, but it was accessed by Sydney’s first private elevator, installed by Tuttle at considerable expense. After the other tenants refused to help pay for it, Tuttle boarded up the exits so they and their customers were forced to use the stairs. The elevator’s cabin then travelled directly from ground level to the studio through the well’s total darkness. When a restaurant owner took Tuttle to court over the noise of the machinery used to drive it, the elevator was given a lunch break. Sam and another boy operated the lift.

After Tuttle was declared bankrupt in 1889 and the business sold, Sam worked as a commercial traveller, book salesman and photographer in country towns in NSW and Queensland. He returned periodically to Sydney to help in his father’s studio, John Hood & Sons, at various addresses on Glebe Point Road.

One of his jobs was crewing on a yacht and it was probably through this connection that he met Emily Albertina Heesch, the daughter of a coastal steamer captain. They eloped in 1895 and the birth of Alfred was registered in Newcastle the next year. The birth of William was registered in Glebe (the best furniture in their spartan home was a cedar sea chest and a rocking chair) in 1899. 

That year Sam established his own portrait business at the Adelaide Photographic Co. at 256 Pitt Street in an area known as Poverty Point frequented by out-of-work actors. The Pitt Street building also became the Hoods’ family home but after two fires broke out there, they moved to Haxton, 9 Clifton Street, Balmain, in 1904. Gladys Elizabeth Marjorie was born that year. Sam’s brother Thomas married Emily Heesch’s sister Martha. They also set up house in Balmain at 1 St John Street. 

Sam built a darkroom in his East Balmain house which was close to the waterfront and began specialising in maritime subjects. From its assigned tugboat, he would photograph a ship as it lay off Sydney Heads and sell pictures to the crew after it docked. His fascination with the harbour continued, his subjects ranging from merchant ships to leisure craft to troopships involved in both world wars. The Australian Maritime Museum holds over 9,000 of his images of ships, their passengers and crews. 

Emily Hood died aged 34 in May 1907 and was buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery. Three years later her widower married Ruby Blanche Ramplin and began a second family. Edgar ‘Ted’ (1911-2000) had a long career as a photojournalist. By the time Noel was born in 1918, the family was living in a Federation bungalow in Chatswood.  

In 1910 Hood rented cheap premises in the Dore Studios in the Queen Victoria Markets. In 1918 he acquired the Dalny Studio at 124 Pitt Street, his workplace for the rest of his life, and expanded into press photography for newspapers such as the Sydney Mail, Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph. For a short period from 1934, as the Labor Daily’s full-time photographer, he engaged others to look after his studio. His children Gladys and Ted worked there.  

When newspaper proprietors began hiring their own photographers, Hood sought other commissions to add to his stock-in-trade portraits and coverage of weddings and social events. He won a number of long-term advertising and commercial contracts and, with extensive contacts in the entertainment industry, was often called upon to photograph celebrity events and stars. During the Second World War he was employed by the Ministry of News and Information to document the armed services.

After moving to Glenbrook in 1949, Hood continued to work in his Pitt Street studio, claiming that the daily trek in all weathers from Carmel Street to the train station was good for his health. On 8 June 1953 he was hurrying home to catch the ‘Chips’ (the Blue Mountains train service) when he collapsed in Eddy Avenue and died shortly after. Survived by his wife and five children, he was cremated at Rookwood, his mourners including members of the Australian Journalists’ Association. 

Postscript:

Sam’s father John Riley Hood (whose story was told in Bulletin 3/2014) in 1867 made a coloured portrait of the visiting Duke of Edinburgh. His son continued the tradition of ‘shooting’ members of the British Royal family: the future George V in Centennial Park in 1901, Edward VII as the Prince of Wales in 1920, and George VI as the Duke of York for the opening of Parliament House in Canberra in 1927.  

 Sources: NSW cemetery records; NSW electoral rolls; NSW and SA registries of births, deaths, marriages; Sands Directories; State Library of NSW; Trove website; Wikipedia entry.