‘Notorious strumpets & dangerous girls’: Convict women in Tasmania
Plaque at Cascades Female Factory historic site; photo by author, 2026 Recently my husband and I spent a week visiting some of our favourite spots in Tasmania (hello Freycinet, Bicheno, Ross, Richmond, and the beautiful Huon Valley!)
While in Hobart, I took the opportunity to go to the Cascades Female Factory historic site. Around 7,000 women walked through the entry gate during its nearly thirty years of operation in the first half of the 1800s.
The term ‘female factory’ puzzled me when I first heard of it. Essentially, the factories were prisons or barracks to house convicts; but they were also places of work where women laboured at various tasks, depending on which institution they were in and their status in the highly regimented convict system.
For example, they might be set to weaving, unravelling tangled, tarry ships’ ropes for re-use, laundering clothes and sheets from the nearby town, or sewing garments. Hence the term ‘factory’. The women made things or did jobs others didn’t want to do.
In addition, these sites operated as marriage market (free settlers or emancipated men could apply to marry one of the ‘better behaved’ women), maternity hospital, and nursery of sorts (although the infant mortality rate was often horrendous).
I was most familiar with the older Female Factory at Parramatta in NSW, so I was keen to visit the Cascades to compare and contrast the experiences of women there.
I joined an hour-long tour entitled Notorious Strumpets and Difficult Girls. That quote, by the way, comes from the surgeon superintendent’s report on a transport ship about a youngster, Julia Mullins, in 1826.
This is the kind of language that men in authority felt free to use about the women in their ‘care’ if they were unfortunate enough to end up in the British justice system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As the guide on my tour remarked, the transportation system was ‘cruel, unfair and arbitrary.’ No one questioned why these women and girls ended up in a crowded, filthy gaol, in a court room, or on a transport ship. The thinking of the time held that there was a ‘convict class’, you were usually born into it, and nothing could change your life trajectory.
As it turned out, for some women, transportation did just that. If they survived the challenges of the system and served their sentence, some were able to make a real go of it in their new home. For most, the idea of returning home was laughable – who had the money for an expensive fare on a sailing ship? So they made the best of it, and some fortunate ones went on to have lives far superior to what they’d have endured had they remained in Britain. Among these were women I have researched and written about in the Travels with my Ancestors series on this blog.
The Notorious Strumpets tour told the story of seven women, all of whom had some experience of the Cascades Factory. Mostly their stories were pretty grim, with a couple who defied the odds and lived reasonable lives afterwards. Many factory women had left family behind when they boarded the transportation ships; lost babies or toddlers on the voyage or in the unhealthy ‘lying-in hospital’ or nursery; all of them experienced trauma of some sort from the time of their arrest and trial.
The strumpets were likely to be those women and girls who were not compliant, who did not keep their mouths shut and their eyes downcast. They spoke out, acted up, made trouble, got drunk, had sex with partners (male or female) not approved of by authorities. For these things they were punished, over and over again. The tour brought them to life in a respectful way, not overly dramatising things (because honestly, their lives were already pretty dramatic) and not glossing over their often troubling behaviours.
Among the saddest stories for me were the women who lived long lives of crime coupled with frequent homelessness. They lived surrounded by violence, both real and threatened. The odds were so stacked against them, yet they continued to defy, choose their own paths, exercise an agency of sorts. But they lived on the edge, among the most vulnerable in a harsh and unfair world. We were shown photos of some women, usually ‘mug shots’ taken when they entered other prisons after the Factory. The harshness of their world was etched in the lines on weathered faces, the rage or defeat in their eyes.
If you are in Hobart I highly recommend a visit to the Cascades Female Factory. While only a small proportion of the built environment of the factory still stands, the interpretive centre, displays and tours are excellent. It is a place to learn, to reflect, to pay respects to the women who lived, worked, suffered and survived.
Statue honouring convict women at Cascades historic site; photo by author, 2026
One husband and wife in my family tree arrived in Tasmania not as convicts, but as employees in the Launceston Female Factory in the north of the island. They were free settlers and got work at the factory – he as Gatekeeper and his wife as Assistant Matron. These were positions of some responsibility; they were gained (as was so often the case in this era) not through previous work experience or particular skills, but rather by presenting as ‘respectable’ people who would be willing to operate in a regimented and punishing system.
An engrossing book, prepared by the excellent Female Convicts Research Centre and published by Convict Women’s Press in Hobart in 2013, tells the history of this establishment, through the stories of the many women who entered its grounds as prisoners. Edited by Lucy Frost & Alice Meredith Hodgson, Convict Lives: The Launceston Female Factory is divided into a number of themes such as ‘Out of Ireland’, ‘The mixed blessings of motherhood’, ‘Resisting reform’, ‘Family sagas’, ‘Difficult ends’.
Once again, the determination of some women to defy, subvert or game the system is a thread that runs through many of the stories. There is tragedy too – how could there not be? – and a sense of the toughness of these people that British society preferred not to think about.
It’s a slim volume but a terrific read. I felt the coldness within the Factory walls, the longing for home of those inside, the quest for companionship and love, the squalor and overcrowding, the hungry bellies and the aching bones of the prisoners. I celebrated those who survived, who went on to marry, have healthy children, run businesses, find comfort and security in their lives after the Factory.
This book is a valuable little resource for my family history research and writing. It’s also a testament to the lives of the women who came here most unwillingly to take part in the absurd, harsh and quixotic experiment that was the convict transportation system.
Travels with my Ancestors #28: The rags to riches tale of the Roberts Family Part Four
This is the Part Four of the epic story of my 4 x great-grandparents, William Roberts and Jane Longhurst.
In the Part Three, the couple were working hard to establish themselves in the colony, busy with William’s road-building work for the Governor, their hotel business in Sydney, and farming ventures. Their lives had transformed along with the settlement of Sydney Town around them.
Part Four: Life after WilliamThey did not have long to enjoy their prosperous new life together. In September 1819 William’s good fortune had run its course and he died, aged in his mid-sixties.[i] He was buried in the Devonshire Street Burial Ground (now the site of Central Railway Station.)[ii]
Devonshire St Cemetery prior to demolition c 1900. By Ethel Foster. Source: State Library NSW He’d survived the worst of the worst on the hulks and the Neptune. Now he was gone and Jane faced a future without him. William had signed a will in May that year with his mark (X), and it was witnessed by three men: William Hutchinson, James Master and a Mr Robinson. [iii]
One of those three was to play a significant role in the family’s future.
In that document, he had left Jane five hundred pounds sterling in cash—a substantial legacy. In addition, she had ownership of the Kings Arms Hotel: the property itself, the stock in trade and all household furniture and other items. She was also bequeathed twenty head of horned cattle. All the legacies for her sole and exclusive use and benefit …for the term of her natural life, Free from the Control of any person. She was thirty-six, financially comfortable, but with eight children to raise to adulthood.
To those children, their father had made additional legacies. His extensive wealth and properties were to be distributed amongst them all. Eldest son William, fourteen at the time, was bequeathed five hundred pounds, and the farm and properties at Liverpool, including the ‘Halfway House’ inn there, and ten head of cattle. Twins Charles and Thomas (aged twelve) each received five hundred pounds and ten head of cattle. They were to share in the interest from a property at Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Likewise Richard (aged nine) received cattle, plus the rental from three tenements on Castlereagh Street. Joseph (aged five) was left a house on Hunter Street (plus, of course, cattle). The youngest son James (just three years old) also received cattle, along with a house and land in Hunter Street and a small cottage in Castlereagh Street.
The daughters were not forgotten. Eldest girl Ann (known by her middle name as Jane) had married earlier that year and had received a generous dowry from her parents. However, if any of her siblings died, she was to have a share of their legacy. Elizabeth (aged six) was left a brick house on Elizabeth Street (and the obligatory cattle). She was also included with the three others who were equally bequeathed the proceeds from rent of another estate on Parramatta Road.
Page 1 of William’s will, photographed by author from original at NSW State Archives, 2026 Their mother proved to be a woman who would not take a backward step. She continued managing the business interests she and William had established. Six months after his death, she wrote to the Colonial Secretary, requesting payment for outstanding amounts owed to William for his work on various government projects.[iv]The next year, she wrote to the Governor, requesting the land grant earlier promised by him to William.
Her petition said:
To His Excellency Governor Macquarie,
The respectful memorial of Jane Roberts most humbly states:
That your memorialist is the relict of the late William Roberts to whom Your Excellency was once kindly pleased to promise some portion of land before your departure from the Colony. Hopes ye will excuse her troubling him at this time and not attending personally, having been in very ill state of health for several months’ past.
That the number of horned cattle now the property of memorialist on behalf of her family nearly approaches two hundred head, which are very much neglected and is obliged to pay Mr Grono of Windsor for four years each twenty-five pounds per annum, through not having pasture of her own, prays that Your Excellency will be pleased to confer on such portion of land in any part of the country Your Excellency may seem meet.
And your memorialist will be truly grateful for such favour.
Jane RobertsShe was granted 200 acres of grazing land at Bathurst, on the lands of the Wiradjuri people.[v] She also had at least two convicts assigned to her there: labourers and one ‘mechanic’ (a skilled worker or tradesman).[vi] It meant she could continue operating the hotel and other business interests in Sydney, while the farm was managed by an overseer and workers.
Those workers would have been aware when hostilities broke out between the Europeans and Wiradjuri. The flood of settlers taking up land for their sheep and cattle in the early 1820s had a devastating effect on the lifestyle and sustainability of the Wiradjuri, who began to fight back under leadership of men such as Windradyne, with guerrilla raids on stock, buildings, crops, graziers and their workers.
Governor Brisbane, who replaced Macquarie in 1821, declared martial law in 1824, effectively giving magistrates, troops and settlers authority to use summary force against any Wiradjuri including women and children. Wiradjuri were shot or poisoned and retaliated with increased attacks of their own.[vii]
Back in Sydney, Jane could not read the newspaper accounts of those events but must have heard tales around the hotel bar or in stores as she shopped for the family. What did she make of these troubled times? Did she think about the terrible toll on the Wiradjuri people, or was the viability of her farming ventures in the bathurst area her primary concern? We will never know.
In 1820 she was one of only eight female shareholders in the newly established Bank of New South Wales, along with the likes of Elizabeth Macquarie, the Governor’s wife, with an initial deposit of £600. [viii] This was a significant amount of money to place in the new bank. As she entered the bank on the day she made this first deposit, did she hold her head a little higher, make her step a little firmer, knowing she was joining a select few: women like herself who had done well in the colony and exceeded the expectations of her betters? To her initial deposit she added over £1300 later that year, money that had been owed to her husband for his government work.[ix]
Document listing early shareholders at Bank NSW, showing Jane Roberts
Photograph by author of original held at NSW Sate Archives in 2026The settler society that had been transplanted from Britain may have allowed space for energetic women like Jane to conduct successful businesses and farms; but people in trade did not generally mix socially with people of private means. The convict stain, too, seeped through all aspects of society; it would be hard for her to overcome this, despite her newfound wealth.
However, there were plenty of social connections and opportunities within large families and the emancipist community, and this is where Jane would socialise: with her family and with others like her in business, trade, or farmers visiting town from the regions. Here she could stand with pride about what she had achieved, as William’s wife and since his death. Her children were growing up and taking their places as prosperous members of colonial society.
She could not have been prepared for the appalling tragedy that was about to overtake one of her children.
~
Jane and William’s first-born, Ann (known as Jane), was just fifteen in the year her father died, and she had fallen in love with a wealthy emancipist from London named Solomon Levey. On the day that Solomon received his absolute pardon he asked young Jane to marry him.[x]
Whatever reservations her parents may have had about her young age were overridden, because within three days the couple were married.[xi] Young Jane was given a substantial dowry by her parents, but Solomon was wealthy in his own right from his business and property holdings, and held in wide esteem by others in Sydney’s commercial society, so they didn’t have to worry that he was a ‘gold digger’ after their daughter’s money. Solomon and his young wife had two children, a boy John (born the same year his parents married) and a girl, another Jane, born in February 1822.[xii]
Young Jane’s youth and inexperience led her into an illicit affair with another man, who very likely was after her money. With toddler John, and her baby no more than six months old, this very young mother must have been caught up in a maelstrom of emotional and psychological turmoil.
Her unhappy husband Solomon posted a pre-emptive notice in the Sydney newspaper:
This is to caution the public from giving trust or credit to my wife, Mrs Ann {Jane}Levey, as I will not be responsible for any debt or debts she may contract. 25 August 1821.[xiii]The affair ended in the worst possible way. Young Jane’s lover beat her and kept her captive for months, denying her medical help, until she eventually died, in February 1824.[xiv] Tragically her baby daughter had died the month before.[xv] If her abuser told her that awful news, Jane senior’s torment would have been complete. Two lives had been snuffed out before they had properly begun. Solomon’s beloved wife and their tiny daughter, both gone.
Jane senior’s sorrow that her daughter suffered and died at the hands of a brutal man was profound and bitter. It was an event that shocked Sydney society and left indelible scars on Jane, her other children, and on Solomon, who never remarried.
The obituary for young Jane echoes the sympathy her terrible death aroused, even in a community where violence and abuse were commonplace:
On Friday, the 30th ult. Mrs. Ann {Jane} Levey, the wife of S{olomon}Levey, 72, George-street, Sydney. Her complaint originated in a hurt from the brutal treatment of her seducer, joined with his inhumanity in not allowing her medical advice for four months past, and during that time she was allowed no female servant to attend her; but she sincerely repented of her conduct to an injured husband, and fervently prayed for forgiveness. The funeral was respectably attended, on Sunday, from her mother’s house (Mrs. Jane Roberts), Hunter-street.[xvi]
Solomon maintained his personal and business connections to the Roberts family, including with his brother-in-law Richard Roberts.[xvii] In 1827 he returned to London to pursue business affairs, until his death there in 1833.[xviii]
Jane’s story will be continued in my next post.
[i] Australia Death Index, 1787-1985, William Roberts 1819, volume no V18194395 2b.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025[ii] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, William Roberts, 1819.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 11 Dec 2025[iii] NSW State Archives NRS-13660-1-[14/3176]-Series 1_53 William Roberts Date of death 13 Sept 1819, Granted on [Not known]
[iv] New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856, Series: NRS 897; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6041-6064, 6071-6072, p358. Via records.nsw.gov.au, Accessed 14 Jan 2026
[v] Col Sec Papers, Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312, p68
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2026[vi] Col Sec Papers, Series: NRS 898; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Reels 6020-6040, 6070; Fiche 3260-3312, p91
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2026[vii] Keneally, Thomas: Australians: A Short History, Allen & Unwin,2016, pp 25-260
[viii] Johns, Leanne: Women in Colonial Commerce 1817-1820, ANU, 2001, p51. Accessed 14 Dec 2025
[ix] Johns, Leanne, p86
[x] Biography – Solomon Levey – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au) Accessed 14 Dec 2025
[xi] New South Wales, Australia, Butts of Marriage Licenses, 1813–1835, 1894, Licenses for Marriages, 1813-1827; NRS Number: NRS 1037; Reel Number: 2281; Volume Number: 4/1710. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Jan 2026
[xii] Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922 John Levey born 1819 Volume No V18195019 1b; Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 Jane Levey born 1820 FHL Film No 993949. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 12 Jan 2026
[xiii] Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser 25 August 1821, p2 Via Trove, accessed 16 Dec 2025
[xiv] Australia Death Index, 1787-1985 Ann Levey died 1824 Vol no V18245984 2b.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 12 Jan 2026[xv] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, Jane Levey Jan 1824. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Jan 2026
[xvi] Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser 5 February 1824 Via Trove, accessed 16 Dec 2025
[xvii] ‘Shipping intelligence’, The Gleaner (Sydney, NSW: 1827), 4 August, p. 4, accessed 18 Jan 2026, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article251535458
[xviii] Biography – Solomon Levey – Australian Dictionary of Biography (anu.edu.au), accessed 17 Jan 2026
Travels with my ancestors #25: The Rags to Riches Tale of the Roberts Family
How did an illiterate horse thief from Warwickshire survive the worst transport ship in the history of convict voyages to Australia, then go on to become the Governor’s ‘go-to man’ for road and infrastructure projects in early Sydney? How did he transform himself from a wretched convict into a wealthy land owner, hotelier, husband and father?
The answer surely includes some good luck. Also, a finely tuned instinct for preservation, dogged hard work, and an ability to grasp the opportunities that the transportation system offered – if you could first survive the cruelties of the British justice system at the time.
William Roberts was my 4 x great-grandfather and his epic story illustrates how someone with physical and mental strength, with a generous dollop of luck, could do that.
His wife, Jane Longhurst, had an equally intruiging tale. I have written an earlier post about Jane and how she and William connected after both were transported; you can read it here.
WILLIAM ROBERTS (Abt. 1754 – 1819)
and
JANE LONGHURST / LONGEST (1783 – 1836)
Part One: Surviving
26 March 1787, Warwickshire, England
When William Roberts reluctantly entered the courtroom of the Warwick Assizes in early spring 1787, it was likely the most modern building he’d ever been inside. The dark wood of the public benches, and the prisoner dock where he stood, shone from regular polishing. Completed eleven years earlier, the courtrooms in the Warwick Shire Hall commanded solemnity, silence and—for the accused—enormous stress.
All eyes were on the Judge’s bench with its red leather seat and curtains, which would be drawn around the bench when a death sentence was pronounced. On a hook next to the bench hung the black cap the Judge would don at that moment. Surely, William would not receive the worst possible penalty for his crime of horse theft?
Mr Justice Heath heard sixty cases before pronouncing all verdicts together, at the end.[i] They were dealt with quickly, on average no more than ten minutes per matter, the sharp sound of the gavel punctuating the conclusion of one and the beginning of the next. William was not the only one facing a charge of horse stealing; there were two others like him, and men and women variously accused of theft of sheep, burglary, house breaking and robbery. Twenty-four times the guilty verdict was pronounced, the curtains drawn and the black cap positioned on top of His Honour’s head. Twenty-four lives to be ended at the gallows.
Most had no money to employ someone to put their case before the Court, had that even been allowed. They now had to hope for mercy from His Majesty King George III.
Thankfully that mercy arrived quickly. Just five days later, William and the other condemned were told that their sentences had been commuted to Transportation to the Eastern Coast of New South Wales, or some one of the islands adjacent, for seven years.[ii]
But what, exactly, did that mean? And where in the world was New South Wales?
~
If he could have looked at a map, he’d have been amazed and horrified at the vast expanse of ocean that lay between his prison in the midlands of England and the new British colony of New South Wales. He’d been raised in the landlocked county of Warwickshire, where the River Leam ambled its way north of the village of Leamington Hastings, his likely birthplace in 1754.[iii] He’d had nothing to prepare him for a voyage across the seas.
Map of England & Warwickshire
Source: https://www.visitnorthwest.com/counties/warwickshire/There’d been Roberts in villages and towns to the south and east of the city of Birmingham for many years.[iv] Most probably worked as agricultural labourers on the farms spread around that part of the county. Life was basic at best, beggared at worst, precarious always. The grand manor house that centuries ago had been home to the local lords, the Hastang family, were not for the likes of the Roberts. They made do from whatever labour or trades they could, settling in places called Arrow, Alcester, Salford Priors, along with William’s own village where he’d been raised with his older sister Elizabeth and younger brother Thomas.[v]
William had been baptised privately, then brought into the church some days later to have the baptism confirmed in front of the congregation.[vi]This often happened when those present at a birth thought that the baby might not survive until a church baptism could be held. In the case of this baby, he proved to be a survivor—several times over.
When he was nine, he’d witnessed his parent’s grief as they buried their baby boy Job, dead within a month of birth. Not a survivor, sadly for the Roberts family. Thomas and Ann had tried again for another boy, born seven months later. He too was baptised Job. They buried that tiny body weeks later.[vii]
There were no more children.
~In his thirties William was working, possibly on an estate known as ‘Wootton Park,’ about twenty kilometres west of Leamington Hastings. Built a century earlier, it had a manor hall, workers’ accommodation and landscaped grounds set amidst fertile green farmland.[viii] Workers kept the manor house in good repair and tended the expansive landscaped gardens. Given the nature of the terrible mistake he was about to make, it’s very possible that he worked in the stables, feeding, watering, and grooming the horses of the estate owners.
His employment at ‘Wootton Hall’ may have provided him with lodgings as well as wages: a real boon as labouring or unskilled work barely brought in enough to cover weekly expenses like lodging and food.
Wootton Hall, Wooton Wawen, Warwickshire UK. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wootton_Wawen_Wootton_Hall_002.JPG
What he did next would turn all that upside down.
He stole a horse, a gelding, probably from the estate—a risky business, stealing from your employer, if that’s what he did. If he enjoyed whatever time he had with the horse, crouching over its mane as it galloped away from Wootton, he would soon regret it. Whether he took the valuable animal to sell, to keep, or to trade, his plan came to a crashing halt when he was arrested and sent to a gaol, probably in Warwick, to await his trial.
After the sentencing, he was transferred in October to the prison hulk Stanislaus on the Thames in London.[ix] Here he was in the company of several other fellows who, like him, had escaped the death penalty at the Warwick Courthouse: Thomas Hughes, James Anderson, Richard Frinchett, James Royal Loome. Their hearts sank as they were rowed out to the decommissioned naval ship moored at Woolwich and clambered the rope up its dripping, rotting side. The old ship looked like a dark, monstrous, crouching thing on the water.
Prison Hulk, National Library of Australia Below, each deck was divided lengthways by metal bars, behind which they were crammed in close together. The smells from disease, unwashed bodies and clothes, and stale air were overwhelming. The other prisoners were thin, despairing, sickly men, many in rags and without shoes. There were some hard-faced veterans of the hulks, but also lads of nine or ten.
Life on the hulks was barely a life. He needed every ounce of courage and strength to face each day.
Their rations were poor: mouldy bread, hard ship’s biscuit, some thin soup with a small portion of cheap meat to be divided among each mess of six or more men. They drank weak beer or water from the filthy Thames.[x]
Each morning they were taken off to labour in work teams: digging moats or building embankments, dredging the thick river mud, construction work on docks, breaking up rocks. Each evening they were returned to the hulk to eat and sleep. The next day, and the next, and all the following days repeated the same pattern. Along with the hard labour, they had to avoid fights between prisoners, obey orders barked at them by guards, stay out of trouble, and hope not to succumb to illness—the only thing that flourished on board.
The hulks were the authorities’ solution to the developing problem of overcrowding in prisons across the land. Monied people had pressured the Government to address an alarming increase in property crimes: theft, burglary, poaching, highway robbery. Soon such offences were on an ever-expanding list of crimes for which death, or a long prison term, were the usual sentences. For some time, miscreants had been sent away to the American colonies. Wealthy folks were happy with this ‘out of sight, out of mind’ solution.
In 1775 that all changed. The Revolutionary War in America stopped the easy transfer of Britain’s law breakers. Unsuitable old gaols were groaning under the strain of more men, women and children pushed through their gates. At the same time, there was growing distaste and unease about the number of offences for which people could be hanged, resulting in more death penalties commuted, more prisoners needing to be incarcerated long term. What was to be done?
The hulks provided a solution—of sorts.
After the First Fleet of ships set off for the new colony of New South Wales in 1787, it seemed that the problem of crowded gaols would be solved by resuming the system of transportation. In the meantime, those waiting to be sent away had to be put somewhere.
Six months after arriving on the Stanislaus, William and his fellow Warwickshire prisoner, Thomas Hughes, were sent south to the harbour at Portsmouth, where yet another prison ship awaited them.[xi] The conditions on the Lion proved no better. They were kept here for twenty long months.
Was William told the news that he would, finally, be transferred to a ship that would sail to New South Wales? Or simply bundled onto a rowboat and sent across to clamber up the side of the new vessel? Either way, he would have felt relief to have the hulk at his back at last. Whatever lay ahead in that mysterious place, New South Wales, at least on the voyage there’d be some rest from back-breaking work, and being at sea might even be a kind of reprieve: fresher air, new sights, perhaps even some sunshine.
He was to be horribly disappointed.
~
Along with nearly five hundred other convicts he boarded the Neptune in December 1789. They quickly realised that the hulks had been merely a prelude to further suffering.
After a month of loading provisions for the voyage, as well as tools, animals and equipment for the colonial settlement, they sailed out of Portsmouth harbour in mid- January 1790.[xii] There was no opportunity for prisoners to watch the dwindling shores of England—from the outset they were bundled below decks, the seventy-eight women in a separate area, the men chained in twos or threes on a lower deck.
The prisoners could not have known it, but the ship and its captain, Donal Traill, had previously been in the business of transporting enslaved people from Africa to North America. The new cargo was treated in a similar way.
They were starved on low rations, because the Captain had orders from the Neptune’s owners, the private contractors Camden, Calvert & King, to sell excess provisions on the way if possible. The Government contract paid a flat rate per prisoner boarded each ship. It had nothing to say about how many should be disembarked once they reached Sydney Cove. It was a perfect opportunity for contractors out to make an easy profit.
The ship anchored at Cape Town in April, too late for the forty-eight men and one woman who had already died.[xiii] Many of those still alive, especially the men kept in irons for the whole voyage, were desperately ill: malnourished, their muscles atrophying from lack of movement, infections from lying in their own filth. The stench of rotting teeth and gums from scurvy, the dreaded blight of life at sea, filled the close air of the prisoners’ decks. Some lemon or lime juice would have fixed that, but not for these prisoners.
They were tormented by lice, suffered in the hot airlessness of the tropics, then shivered in the colder southern regions. The meagre food was often fought over by those who could still fight. Sometimes, no fighting was necessary: if a prisoner died, those closest would quickly take the rations and hope the death would not be discovered for a little while. When a corpse was found by guards, it would be taken above and tossed unceremoniously into the sea.
There was plenty of death. It was the one thing the hell-ship had in abundance.
The Neptune made good time on this voyage, sailing into Port Jackson on 28 June 1790, but one hundred and fifty men and eleven women had not survived the voyage. Once known, the total number of dead convicts on the Second Fleet appalled even authorities in far-off London: over a quarter of all prisoners on the four transport ships that made up the fleet, and a third of those wretches on the Neptune, died on the journey. Within eight months of arrival, forty percent were dead.[xiv]
For the ragged, starving convicts of the First Fleet and their equally hungry guards on shore that day, who were hoping the new ships had brought fresh supplies and strong bodies to help grow more food, the sight of the crippled, dying and very sick passengers disembarking from the Neptune was horrifying. More mouths to feed, more sick bodies to care for in the rudimentary hospital. The rations across the tiny, struggling settlement had already been drastically reduced by Governor Philip. How were they to survive without additional food and healthy people to do the work needed?
Even so, some of those watching were reduced to pity, even tears, at the plight of those crawling from the bowels of the Neptune. William was one of the survivors.
Work and freedom
His next challenge was simple: keep surviving. Firstly he had to get through his seven year sentence. In those early years, newly arrived convicts were set to work on the many projects needed by a fledgling settlement clinging to the edge of a huge, unknown continent. These included building, constructing rudimentary roads to make moving around the township easier, making bricks, fishing, growing grain or vegetables in the struggling government gardens. Prisoners were also assigned to military personnel and officers as servants and labourers.
Shelters were tents or simple wattle and daub huts with woven branches for shutters at their windows. Convicts built their own shelter, grew what food they could from a garden plot in their own time, lined up at the government store for dwindling rations.
During the months on board the hulks and the Neptune, William must have decided not to make the same mistake that had brought him to this wild British outpost. He worked hard in his assignment in Sydney and avoided coming to the attention of the guards or convict overseers for the wrong reasons. His industry was rewarded. Along with the punishments meted out for wrongdoing, there were some rewards for good behaviour.
By January 1794, just four years after his arrival in chains, he had been granted thirty acres of land in Sydney Town, near the Brickfields on the southern side of the settlement.[xv] This year was significant for another reason: he had served his sentence and was now a free man.[xvi] Never to return to his native England, he instead turned his mind to creating a new life in this place under the southern skies.
Brickfield Hill and village on the High Road to Parramatta.
Source: National Library of AustraliaThe land of New South Wales had been claimed for Britain by the first Governor, Arthur Phillip, in 1788. However, there was no negotiation, agreement, or treaty with the original people of that land. From then on, it was the Governor and his successors who decided who ‘owned’ or had the right to occupy, particular parcels of land. Land became one of the ways in which settlers’ and convicts’ behaviour could be rewarded, controlled or manipulated. Any convicts who wondered who really owned the land they were clearing, cultivating, or building on, generally kept those thoughts to themselves.
Did William or his fellow emancipists ever wonder about the Governor’s ability to hand out tracts of land to whomever he pleased? In their day-to-day work and movements around Sydney Town and outlying regions, convicts and freed men and women would encounter the people who had lived there before the English ships arrived. These meetings were sometimes friendly, sometimes not. The ‘natives’ had an uncanny ability to melt into the bushland when they needed to, but they were beginning to push back against the encroachments of the white strangers.
From the first months after January 1788, the Indigenous people around Sydney had been struck down in horrifying numbers by unfamiliar diseases. Those who’d arrived on the first fleet of convict ships, witnessed dead and dying people all around the harbour and its surrounds. The white settlers’ activities continued to destroy the waterways, food sources and hunting grounds that the Eora, Dharug and other groups relied on for their physical, spiritual, family, and cultural needs.
But the original people stayed, survived and resisted the theft of their Country.
Whether William and other transportees ever gave them much thought, is another question.
William and Jane’s story will be continued in my next post.
If you want to follow along on the journey and have not yet subscribed, you can do so here.
[i] Birmingham Gazette April 2, 1787,
via https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/ariss-birmingham-gazette, accessed 31 Jan 2026[ii] WR’s Warwick Assizes record: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8999560
Reference: HO 47/6/91 Fol. 307. Date: 1787 Mar 31 Held by: The National Archives, Kew.
Accessed 28 Nov 2025[iii] Warwickshire County Record Office; Warwick, England; Warwickshire Anglican Registers; Roll: Engl/2/1015; Document Reference: DR 43 (for William Roberts) Accessed 29 Nov 2025
[iv] See Author’s Note re factors guiding assumptions made about locations and records for this Roberts family.
[v] Warwickshire County Record Office; Warwick, England; Warwickshire Anglican Registers; Roll: Engl/2/1015; Document Reference: DR 43 (for Elizabeth Roberts); Warwickshire County Record Office; Warwick, England; Warwickshire Anglican Registers; Roll: Engl/2/1015; Document Reference: DR 43 (for Thomas Roberts). Accessed 29 Nov 2025
[vi] England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1963, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-DZCS-LVB?cc=1462403&wc=XDTP-BZ9%3A42645501%2C1583866127%2C1583866128 : 13 March 2019), Warwickshire > Leamington-Hastings > Baptisms, marriages, burials 1705-1812 > image 23 of 80; from parish registers of the Church of England. Database and images, Warwick County Record Office, England. Accessed 29 Nov 2025
[vii] England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 FHL Film Number 548390, 555353, Web address /search/collections/9841/records/121235106?tid=73626398&pid=202711239221&ssrc=pt
Warwickshire County Record Office; Warwick, England; Warwickshire Anglican Registers; Roll: Engl/2/1015; Document Reference: DR 43 (for Job Roberts 1);
Warwickshire County Record Office; Warwick, England; Warwickshire Anglican Registers; Roll: Engl/2/1015; Document Reference: DR 43;
Burial record for Job Roberts 1765 at FreeReg: https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/65b28ae2f493fd5ab33201eb/job-roberts-burial-warwickshire-leamington-hastings-1765-06-16?locale=en (for Job Roberts 2)
All accessed 29 Nov 2025[viii] https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalogue_her/wootton-hall-park. Accessed 30 Nov 2025
[ix] Treasury records [T 1, 7, 39, 46, 62, 64, 172, 176, 229, 236, 247], 1783-1956 [microform]/Fonds T./Series T1/Subseries (Pieces 587-3031)/File 653. AJCP Reel No: 3551/Item 164/Lord Sydney with Mr Campbell’s return of convicts on board the Ceres and Stanislaus hulks
Via Trove at http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1271439159. Accessed 30 Nov 2025[x] https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/prison-hulks-britain-conditions-escapes-transportation-social-reform-charles-dickens/ Accessed 30 Nov 2025
[xi] Treasury records [T 1, 7, 39, 46, 62, 64, 172, 176, 229, 236, 247], 1783-1956 [microform]/Fonds T./Series T1/Subseries (Pieces 587-3031)/File 658. AJCP Reel No: 3551/Item. Lion’s report and accounts/
Via Trove at http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1271598671. Accessed 30 Nov 2025[xii] https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/neptune Accessed 30 Nov 2025
[xiii] Michael Flynn; The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790 (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 2001) p1
[xiv] Michael Flynn; The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790 p1
[xv] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, NSW, Australia; Archive Reel: 1999; Series: NRS 1213; Description: Colonial Secretary: List of all Grants and Leases 1788-1809.
Via Ancestry.com, accessed 1 Dec 2025[xvi] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Title: Muster of Prisoners in the Colony, 1810-1820; Volume: 4/1237. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 2 Dec 2025
Author’s Note on historical records: the Roberts Family
Locating the correct records for a family with such a common name as ‘Roberts’ is challenging, to say the least. My aim is to only include information for which I have verified sources. In some situations, I have had to do some guesswork, choosing those records which make sense based on the person’s location, age, life circumstances. Then I’ll use phrases or words like ‘about,’ ‘possibly,’ ‘likely to have been.’
Footnotes will take you to verified sources where I’m confident I have the correct records; but I will always indicate if there is uncertainty about a particular fact or record.
In the case of the Roberts, I am sure that the family lived in the county of Warwickshire for at least several generations. The Roberts name pops up across the county; however I have pinpointed connections of family members across generations, around a cluster of small villages and hamlets in the region near Stratford-Upon-Avon (famous as Shakespeare’s birthplace) and east to Rugby. This area is south and southeast of the city of Birmingham.
Location is a factor that I use in my guesswork around which Roberts records belong in ‘my’ Roberts tree: is it reasonable, given the historical time in which the record was generated, for a person to have been baptised in one village but end up at the other side of the county? Certainly that could happen, but where there is a Roberts record closer to their place of origin that fits all the other available facts, I will tend to favour that one.
Family circumstance is another piece of the puzzle. These people were mostly poor, so unlikely to have estates worth making a will for. Marriages licences were expensive; most working class people obtained permission to marriage via having the ‘marriage banns’ (intention to wed) published three times in their local parish prior to the wedding day. My reasoning here is that marriage records involving a licence are less likely to be for my Roberts folk.
Age, marital status, children: all additional pieces to fit into the big jigsaw of constructing a family tree, when the family name is such a common one and records not as forthcoming or informative as they are today.
I hope this gives you some insight into my thinking and that it helps you in making your own decisions about all this as you read.
Vivid colonial story: ‘The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress’ by Sue Williams
The third work of Australian historical fiction by Sue Williams, The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress tells the story of the naval officer who became the third governor of the British colony of New South Wales, but also the lesser-known entwined stories of the two women who shared parts of his life.
Williams has done this twice before, with great effect. Elizabeth and Elizabeth focused on the wives of Governor Lachlan Macquarie and John Macarthur. That Bligh Girl introduced Anna Bligh, the daughter of the notorious William Bligh (of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame) who replaced Gidley King as Governor in 1808.
As with those earlier novels, this new book gives a fabulous insight into the earliest, troubled years of the colony, from the point of view of women. A point of view usually overlooked in official histories of the men who, let’s be honest, made most of the decisions in those times.
Actually, this novel gives a vivid picture of the establishment of two colonies, because Gidley King was sent to put down British roots on Norfolk Island before returning to New South Wales. The author’s research is lightly handled but readers are privy to the many difficulties at both Port Jackson (later Sydney) and the even more remote Norfolk, and the logistical, moral and emotional challenges faced by successive governors.
By most historical accounts, Gidley King was an able and a fair and even handed adminsitrator. It is in his personal affairs that the other side of the man’s character are illuminated.
In this, he was definitely a man of his time and milieu. Men of his rank and situation often thought nothing of taking a convict wife as mistress, especially on the long voyage to the colonies. By the time the transport ships arrived, many had a baby on the way.
This is what happened to Ann Inett, a seamstress who had fallen on hard times when her soldier lover was killed in the Revolutionary War in America, leaving her with two small children to raise alone. One desperate crime sees Ann wrenched from her children, transported to New South Wales on a First Fleet ship, part of the great experiment of setting up a settlement from nothing on the other side of the world. Gidley King invites her to be his housekeeper, attracted by her obliging nature and quiet demeanour and, as they say, ‘one thing leads to another…’ A very common tale, part of Australia’s foundation story.
Dare I say it, more relevant to many modern Australians than the ANZAC story?
Before long, Ann has two young children with him, they are sent to Norfolk Island to endure even harder conditions there, then he is ordered to return to England…what will become of her?
It’s no spoiler to relate the next bit. Gidley King does return to Sydney. He had promised Ann marriage on his return but instead he brings back a wife, who is already expecting a baby!
It is to the author’s credit that she manages to relate this part of the story in a way which made me want to keep reading, rather than throw the book across the room. She took me into Gidley King’s head and his world view. Not a pleasant place, I admit, but it allowed me to see the constraints (as he saw them) on his moral and personal choices. So very different to today’s views. As I often say, people are no different, essentially, but society’s beliefs and expectations certainly change over time.
And as mentioned above, he was among many, many soldiers, sailors and officers who did exactly the same thing back then. Not an excuse. Just background. Captain David Collins, for example, who became the colony’s Judge Advocate, took convict Nancy Yeates, as mistress. She features in this novel too.
The real heroine of this novel, I believe, is the woman Gidley King marries, Anna Josepha. Can you image marrying a man after a very brief courtship, then boarding a ship to sail across the world to a rudimentary outpost of society, arrive heavily pregnant, to be confronted by your new husband’s mistress and his two children with her?
It seems that this quiet, ‘plain’ little woman rose to the occasion magnificently, smoothing what must have been a fraught and humilating situation for all concerned. She built a bridge between herself and Ann, between her husband, his existing children and those she went on to have with him. She took responsibility for the education of his children with Ann (to Ann’s credit also, as this meant losing her children yet again for a time).
And in doing all this, Anna Josepha was Gidley King’s right hand in his role as administrator and as Governor, acting as informal secretary, First Lady, diplomat, helping to sooth fractious tempers and care for her husband when illness took its toll.
An old story, isn’t it? And depressingly common: the faithful, loyal wife or mistress, supporting, helping, building up their menfolk. And then being forgotten in the annals of history.
So it’s wonderful to see their stories being told, both in more recent non-fiction and through the lens of fiction as in this novel.
The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress is published by Allen & Unwin in Janurary 2025.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced reading copy to review.
Travels with my Ancestors #15: Robert Eather & Mary Lynch part 2
This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. Part 1 of the lives of their eldest son, Robert, and his wife Mary, brought us up to the 1840s, where they were farming at Tennyson in the Hawkesbury valley, while maintaining large herds of cattle and sheep in the Liverpool Plains region of northwestern NSW.
NB: For ease of reading online, I have omitted my references and footnotes. If you are interested in seeing the sources I have relied on for this story, please let me know via the contact form on this website and I’ll be happy to share them with you.
In all the busy coming and going to his grazing lands, and his farming and home life, Robert found time for his other passion—horseracing. Racing was a popular pastime in the Hawkesbury and the Eather brothers and their sons were heavily involved in all aspects of organising race days, serving as stewards, and breeding horses.
They loved the heady sound of hooves galloping down a rough racetrack to the finish line, and the cheers and shouts of spectators. They enjoyed plenty of ales and on special race days, the women provided other refreshments and food. There was money to be made, too, with all the wagering before each event.
Site of cockpit in Chislehurst, Kent Cock-fighting was another event which drew eager crowds and high wagers. Had his father Thomas reminisced about the spectacle of fighting birds on the cockpit at Chislehurst Common, back in his youth in Kent? His sons were among a group of lads in the valley who carried on the tradition, until authorities banned it. Matches continued in secret, in paddocks and hidden lanes, always with a lookout posted to raise the alarm if local police wandered by.
What pastimes did Mary enjoy? There was little time for leisure, though as the children grew, their need for mother’s attention lessened. Perhaps she found moments to walk in the kitchen garden, to enjoy the scent and sticky sweetness of apricots or peaches as they ripened, rather than hoeing the weeds. Perhaps it was pleasurable to sit by the kitchen fire at night with a candle to darn or mend clothes instead of bending over the washtub or kneading bread dough. Perhaps, when visiting her mother-in-law, she would listen to Elizabeth’s stories of the old days in the Hawkesbury.
*
Married in the Church of England she may have been, but her children were all baptised Catholics. She was proud that daughter Rachel’s ceremony was conducted by no less than Bishop Bede Polding, a well-known figure to Hawkesbury Catholics.
Daughter Cecilia married a French Catholic, Michel Despointes; and possibly due to her influence, three granddaughters entered Catholic orders, two later becoming Mother Superiors.
Though they ranged across NSW, the Eather clan kept a tight family bond. Robert’s brother Thomas returned often from the Liverpool Plains. His sister Ann had married wealthy ex-convict Joseph Onus and lived in Richmond. Onus himself had properties adjoining Eathers, both in the Hunter and on the Namoi. Other siblings later moved west, Rachel to Orange and James to Narrabri, but others remained in the area. Family events such as weddings, baptisms and birthdays were celebrated together.
In the winter of 1853, the family gathered for an unhappy purpose: to bury Mary, in the Roman Catholic section of Windsor cemetery. She was just fifty years old. As the family stood at her graveside, Robert gaze likely fell on the children he and his wife had raised, with a mix of gladness for their sturdy health and worry that the youngest (Sarah, then aged just ten) was now motherless.
Three years later, he found companionship, and a step-mother for Sarah, when he married Elizabeth Brown(e). She was possibly a widow, an emancipated convict originally from Ireland—just like Mary’s parents.
In Ireland she’d married Mark Browne and had three boys: twins George and John born in 1827 and another son Pierce, in 1829.
Only baby Pierce was allowed to travel with his mother to Sydney on board the transport ship Hooghly, but was taken to the Male Orphan School soon after arrival. Elizabeth must have grieved terribly: she’d left two small sons in Ireland and then Pierce, who’d survived the voyage with her, was taken away. But the following year Elizabeth’s assigned master, James Raymond, applied to have the child in his custody. It was an act of kindness for him to reunite his convict servant with her little boy.
When she and Robert married, Elizabeth was a businesswoman, with boarding houses in Sydney’s York St. She continued this work for a while until moving to live with Robert. In 1858 Robert was at her boarding establishment at 98-104 York St, Sydney, likely assisting Elizabeth in the business.
They had twenty years together; in the comfortable house known as ‘Ben Lomond Cottage’ he’d built with Mary at Tennyson. The house had five rooms with an attached kitchen, as well as a dairy and granary, and enclosures for pigs, cattle, and farm equipment.
The climate here was temperate and their property well away from the dangers of river flooding. The new Mrs Eather could enjoy a cup of tea on the wide verandah where cooling breezes blew, admiring the spring blossoms on the fruit trees nestled in the surrounding hills.
While there was still plenty of work to be done to maintain a house and farm of this size, she may have been thankful that her childbearing days were past her, and her second husband already well established. The hard work of rearing babies, combined with setting up a home and livelihood, had already been done by Robert and by Mary, her predecessor. Now she could enjoy the fruits of that labour.
For supplies or social outings they could travel into Enfield (today’s North Richmond) by horseback or sulky. A punt across the river there allowed visits to other family and friends in Richmond and Windsor. It was replaced by a bridge in 1860, further opening the district.
They lived here until the property was put up for sale in 1863. Elizabeth died ten years later.
Now aged seventy-eight, Robert moved to live with his son Abraham in Francis Street, Richmond. Continued involvement in his properties was beyond him; he’d sold the land at Westmead to eldest son Thomas, and 100 acres at Tennyson to Abraham for just five shillings. The deed of sale explained the low price as arising out of natural love and affection; possibly an act of appreciation for the son who would care for him in his final years.
Had his restless need to push into new territory subsided as he aged? His older body now demanded that he remain at home, though he might still have dreamt of the open plains of the northwest. His days were now spent by the river where he’d been born, living with Abe and his wife.
The next generation
Abe had been something of a wild lad in his youth. Inheriting the Eather love of sports, he’d gained a reputation as a fast runner. Known as the ‘Windsor favourite,’ he competed in foot races on which large sums of money (£50 or more) were at stake in ‘winner takes all’ events. He’d also been known to race a horse up and down Windsor Street in Richmond for a bet, winning handsomely.
He was similarly restless in personal relationships. In 1851 he’d married Margaret McElligott and had a daughter with her. After her death, he’d fathered two daughters with local woman Sophia Adams, before marrying again in 1863.
This time he fronted at St Mathews Catholic church in Windsor to marry Ellen Farrell. At St Peters in Richmond on that same day, his sister Sarah wed her cousin James Eather, and his cousin Thomas Griffiths (the son of one of the Eather foster-brothers) married Mary (Ann) Cornwell.
Connections between and across settler families in small communities like the Hawkesbury were many and complicated, and multiple marriages between families common. There were invisible threads that bound neighbours, friends and families together over decades of shared experiences and often, shared hardship.
Also, the Eather family did enjoy multiple wedding celebrations!
The three matches were followed by a combined wedding feast, with plenty of food, ale and treats for the children.
With Ellen, Abe settled into family life, having eleven children over twenty-six years—plenty of grandchildren for his own father to enjoy —though the first born, little Margaret, did not live past a year.
Tragedy
Two shocking local events rocked the district during Robert’s final years. The first was a blow that struck at the heart of the entire family and became a sad part of the Hawkesbury’s history.
In June 1867, heavy rain began to fall—nothing new to residents of this valley, so accustomed to regular flooding. Concern began to mount as river levels rose with alarming speed, the torrential downpour showing no sign of easing. Abraham and Ellen’s house on Francis Street would surely be safe, far enough above any previous flood levels. The low lying areas surrounding Richmond and Windsor were a different matter. Warnings went out advising people to take refuge in the townships.
Robert’s nephews —George, Charles and Thomas— all had farms and houses at Cornwallis, on the lowlands just outside Windsor. The brothers and their wives and children gathered at George’s house, newer and sturdier than the others. George took his wife and children by boat to Windsor, and offered to take the other women and children with him, but they stayed, thinking a boat could be sent later, should waters rise higher than expected.
Rain continued to pound the Hawkesbury area all that day and into the evening, filling it and the neighbouring Nepean valley to record levels. As the tide rose around George’s house, Charles and Thomas helped their families climb up onto the roof of the house. Twenty souls perched along the ridge: two men, their wives, and eleven children aged between one to sixteen years. All night they remained there, shuddering with cold and pelted by unrelenting rain and wind.
The rescue boat they prayed for never appeared. The two families had to stay on that roof for another whole day. Darkness fell again. Thomas had just grasped his eldest boy to him, trying to secure their precarious hold on the building, when suddenly the roof itself collapsed under them. They were all plunged into the raging, icy floodwaters.
Only three survived: the two men and the sixteen year old, who were eventually rescued by a boat sent over from Windsor. The two women, and ten other children, perished.
The deepened lines on pallid faces of residents were testament to the heartache and loss felt right across the valley, its farmlands and small communities. Some of the dead were found, washed up along the river, in the following days and months. The bodies of Thomas’s wife Emma and three daughters were never found.
It was a long time before the Eathers and their neighbours recovered.
*
Just seven years later, the valley experienced the other side of the colony’s climate coin: searing hot winds and fire.
In the lead-up to Christmas, families prepared for celebratory meals and gatherings: shopping for festive food, wrapping gifts, decorating homes. December 23rd 1874 dawned hot, with a gusty wind blowing dried leaves about the town. By 1 pm, Windsor was being whipped by a hurricane-force gale which blew in thick smoke from bushfires in the surrounding areas.
Flames first appeared at the blacksmiths on George Street, embers landing in the nearby tannery where timbers caught alight. Sparks carried the danger into cottages and shops along George Street and then across into Macquarie Street.
Panicked townsfolk got in the way of efforts to put out flames whipped up by the terrible wind. The newly established Windsor volunteer fire brigade did what it could, though their efforts had little effect until the wind died down later in the afternoon.
The damage and loss from this disaster were appalling: over 53 buildings (including 36 homes) lost, 30 acres of land burnt, many animals killed. Belongings brought out into the street in a bid to save something were not spared.
There were at least two deaths: poor Eliza Wilson who was unable to get out of her weatherboard cottage in time and perished; another woman was riding in a buggy outside the town when it ignited from the heat. Her skirts caught alight and she died.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days later noted that:
The 23rd day of December, 1874, has been a black day for Windsor, and long will it be
remembered by all who witnessed the sad and sorrowful catastrophe.Flood and fire—the bookends of natural disasters in Australia. They’d been new and frightening challenges for his parents, but for Robert’s generation they were part of the landscape, to be expected and endured, particularly across a long life when they were repeated many times.
Robert outlived five of his children: two who had died in infancy, and three adults who’d died in between 1874 and 1879. Robert lived with Abraham and Ellen until his death in 1881.
His passing was noted in the local newspaper:
The Late Robert Eather
The Australian, Windsor, Richmond and Hawkesbury Advertiser, 21 May 1881
This pioneer of the Hawkesbury departed this life recently; much regretted. He had attained the ripe old age of 86 and was the eldest of five brothers. He was the first of the five to leave for the ‘bourne from whence no traveller returns.’ The aggregate of the ages of these venerable brothers was 392 years: Robert 86; twins 81; one 74; and the youngest, 70. Mr Eather leaves behind him great-great grandchildren.While Abe was made the executor of his father’s will, it was to daughter-in-law Ellen that Robert left his estate. He made his mark (X) near his name, printed by the solicitor who prepared the simple, one page document. At the time of his death, his property included a portion of the land at Tennyson, some horses and cattle, a house and furniture. Once funerary and other expenses were paid, the total value amounted to around £180.
Robert Eather will 1881
Robert and Mary lived during years of enormous change. The Eathers had moved from the shackles of servitude and poverty to the freedom of land ownership and prosperity in one generation, achieved through determination, an eye for opportunity, and hard work. New generations—over eighty grandchildren— were forging their own way in the colony.
All of this was at great cost to the first peoples of Australia, though it is questionable if the Eathers, or many of their contemporaries, either understood or cared much about that. For the first European settlers, and their children and grandchildren, Australia was a land in which to firstly survive, and then to thrive. That is exactly what Robert and Mary Eather had set out to do, and what they’d achieved.
The Eather family story will be continued in another chapter of Travels with my Ancestors.
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Thank you for reading!Travels with my Ancestors #13: Thomas Eather, Kentish man & Elizabeth Lee, Lancashire lass: pt 2
This is the continuing story of my 4 x great-grandparents, Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee, who arrived in Australia on convict transport ships in the Second and Third Fleets respectively.
You can read part one of their story here. This chapter finds them in the valley of the Dyarubbin, or Hawkesbury River, in NSW.
Map of Green Hills (Windsor), redrawn by Bryan Thomas, 1981.
The Eather farm is indicated by the arrow.
Source: Hawkesbury City CouncilThomas and Elizabeth moved to take up their land grant in the Hawkesbury area just a few years after the first British had ventured there. Many of those who’d first taken land along the river did so without official permission. Tales of the enormous promise of the district were told in Sydney and Parramatta, and convicts who’d served their time rushed to the new ‘land of plenty.’ As they spread further north, fencing land, clearing vines and casuarinas from the river banks, and trampling the native yams into the mud, the newcomers threatened the very existence of the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug nation, who had made the river land their home for thousands of years. They began to resist, waging armed warfare from 1799 to 1805.[1]
Attacks on lonely cottages and farms were met with violent retaliation from settlers and authorities. Stories about these pitched battles made their way back to the Eathers and their neighbours in the more closely settled areas around Green Hills, later called Windsor. They had weathered so much already: now they were confronted by the risks of this frontier existence.
Their allotment was thirty acres at Mulgrave Place, near where the wandering Rickaby’s Creek joined the Dyarubbin. It had to be cleared, ploughed and sown, just like the farms at Parramatta. They needed somewhere to live: together they built a wattle and daub hut as their new home, with a bare earth floor and window shutters fashioned of woven sticks.
Life for most settlers around the Green Hills and beyond relied on self-sufficiency. There was little in the way of official control or help. There was no constable until 1796, no reverend to conduct worship, marriages or baptisms, and the soldiers sent in 1795 were there to punish the Boorooberongal, not impose order on settlers, who liked to drink, socialise, and avoid rules and regulations wherever they could.[2]
For many convict farmers, being out of the gaze of officials was a boon, even though they had to work hard to establish themselves. The air was fresh and clean, the river flats productive, their labour their own.
The Eathers had help from a convict assigned to them: a strange turnaround of fortune and status. Three years after they took up the land, they’d planted half of it with wheat and maize, and within two years they’d produced ten bushels of maize and purchased four hogs.[3]
They could watch with pleasure as the ears of maize ripened, and the kernels on the sheaves of wheat became plump and golden. The hogs snuffled in contentment in their pen, eating whatever the family did not use. They had become self-sufficient in what they produced: off government stores for the adults, if not the children—an achievement to be proud of.
In 1800 twin boys arrived, named Charles and Thomas.[4] By now Elizabeth was accustomed to the isolation of her new home, with few women for companionship. She had twin babies to care for, and toddler Charlotte around her feet. Ann and Robert, the older children, would quickly learn to help with the smaller ones and chores in the house and on the farm. The work was constant and tiring: keeping the cottage clean, fetching water from the creek, washing clothes and bedding by hand, baking bread or damper, cooking meals, feeding the babies, and hoeing, weeding, watering crops.
Hearth at Lancaster Cottage Museum.
Photo by authorShe may have had occasional, snatched moments of rest, to observe the subtle change of seasons in this new land—so different to the Lancashire frosts and damp summers of her youth—or listen to the unfamiliar calls of the wild birds that lived in the trees around their hut.
Through all the hard work ran a seam of contentment and perhaps, a nagging fear that it could all be taken away in an instant.
Still, Elizabeth had served her sentence by 1797 and 1802 brought another landmark: Thomas received an Absolute Pardon after completing his fourteen years of servitude.[5]
He could not return to England, but why would he want to? He and his wife must have sometimes longed to revisit familiar places and faces from their homelands. But they were finally free of convict shackles. They had land to farm, a home, and a healthy family. Their futures, that had once looked so grim, now beckoned with promise.
The Windsor Farm c1920 Sydney Ure Smith
Source: Hawkesbury City Library:
https://aurora.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/library/Gallery.aspx??showall=true&refinements=XLloc1#prettyPhoto[opac2]/36/Along with that promise, the challenges continued. Accustomed to the wetter, cooler English climate, they had to adjust to the extremes of summer heat, and a drought in 1798. When rains did fall, they were often torrential downpours that felt and sounded as if God Himself had opened the sky. Then came floods in May 1799; followed by an even more shocking one the next year, and worse again the year after that. The river that gave them such fertile soil, could also sweep everything away.
‘Eather Farm’ near Rickaby’s creek was very low-lying and the floods destroyed crops and damaged their hut. The Boorooberongal had offered warnings to settlers about the river’s moods and dangers, but for many, the plentiful crops that could be grown on the silty soil that the floods left behind, outweighed fear. In those last two floods, the waters rose to 15 and 12 metres, and most thought that they would be the last of such high flood levels, at least for many years.[6]
Some settlers had become so discouraged or frightened that they moved away, back to Sydney or Parramatta. But the Eathers stayed. They built another cottage, on higher land overlooking the farm, hoping to avoid disaster when the river next burst its banks. When crops failed or were washed away by the river, the family had to go back on government stores, until they could produce enough themselves.[7]
Joseph Lycett, ‘View of Windsor upon the River Hawkesbury’ 1824
Source: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/1787In 1806 rain once again lashed the district. Torrents fell from the sky and the river became a roaring, rushing creature, sweeping away all in its path. The floodwaters spread out across both Hawkesbury and Nepean plains, turning the valleys into a vast bathtub.
The Eathers fled their low-lying farm and took refuge on higher ground. During a long, terrifying night, they could hear voices crying out and the sharp echoes of musket fire, as frightened people, perched precariously on the roofs of houses and barns, signalled to the rescue boats that circled around the surging river.
The Eathers lost their pigs and many of their crops, and spent the rest of that year slowly recovering. In 1809 Thomas leased part of his land to Andrew Thompson, convict, settler, constable, and landowner.[8] When floods struck again that year, at least this time he and Elizabeth did not have to bear all the losses.
Two more Eather sons and a daughter arrived between 1804 and 1811,[9] completing the family of eight children. Unlike many settler couples, they did not suffer the grief of losing a child to injury or illness: all the youngsters grew into healthy adulthood. Their parents noticed how tall and bonny they were: the ‘currency lads and lasses,’ as those born in the colony became known, often outstripped their parents in height and sturdiness. The new environment was good for this next generation.
Thomas petitioned Governor Macquarie in June 1820 for a second land grant[10] and was allocated fifty acres on the lowlands at Cornwallis, on the southern bank of the river just outside Windsor.[11] Then he purchased a block in Windsor’s George Street in 1818*, while son Robert, now twenty-three, bought an adjoining allotment. They built a five-roomed house, adding two small cottages behind, which they rented out.[12]
Their bright star continued to shine. They were now landlords in a growing, prosperous town, living in a comfortable home, while continuing to farm. They could attend Sunday worship in Windsor’s beautiful new St Mathews church, walk to the shops in town and visit family who lived nearby. They could stroll to the river and along its banks, to watch the constant activity of small open boats, canoes, and sloops across, up and down the river.
Windsor Church, Landscape Scenery Illustrating Sydney and Port Jackson [picture] : c1854 / Frederick Casemero Terry.
Source: Hawkesbury City Library
https://aurora.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/library/Gallery.aspx??showall=true&refinements=XLloc1#prettyPhotoTheir older children were marrying and having families of their own, so they now had grandchildren to enjoy. They’d reduced their farming commitments by the 1820’s, giving away or selling the original ‘Eather Farm’ at Rickaby’s Creek, and opening a store in Windsor.[13]
A settler dies
In February 1827 Thomas made a will—perhaps prompted by premonition or ill health. Whatever his reason, it was timely, because just five weeks later he died, aged sixty-two. He was buried the next day in the grounds of St Mathews at Windsor.[14] **
Elizabeth had lost her husband of over thirty-five years. She grieved his death, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Thomas’ death left a gap in her life, but she did have the comfort of the close family they had made together. And his will meant that she was financially secure for the rest of her life. He had made provision for her in the best way he could:
I give and bequeath to my dearly beloved wife Elizabeth all those three…dwelling houses situate in George Street in the town of Windsor…together with all horned cattle, carts, ploughs, harrows and all other implements there unto belonging. Also all household furniture, good and effects which I may be possessed of at the time of my decease for and during the term of her natural life and by her not to be sold or alienated.[15]He had also provided for their children after his wife’s death. The three cottages on George Street were to be divided into separate living spaces, and bequeathed (along with farm implements, furniture, and livestock) to their two younger sons John and James, and four of their grandchildren.
The will was an expression of Thomas’ love for wife and family and his duty as husband, father, and provider. It was an achievement to be able to leave property and income to those he left behind—something his own father and grandfather back in Chislehurst had not been able to do. His sons and daughters could look with pride at what their parents had done since arriving here in chains.
Not all convict partnerships and marriages lasted; some couples paired in haste for practical reasons, and regretted their choice very soon afterwards. Elizabeth and Thomas’ relationship had lasted the distance. They had shared the difficulties of their years of convict servitude, the challenges of being among the earliest British settlers in the valley, and the traumas of successive floods.
If Elizabeth experienced loneliness in the coming years, she did not remarry. She stayed living in the George Street home, taking in boarders to earn extra income. Younger son John, who never married, continued to live with her and work the remaining farmland they owned. There were weddings to attend as grandchildren came of age, and great-grandbabies born.
The passing of a generation
As Elizabeth aged, she had need for more care and company. In her seventies or early eighties, she moved to Richmond to live with one of her children, either Thomas and his wife Sarah, or one of her daughters.
There, she looked her last on the valley that had been her home for nearly seventy years, marvelling at the changes she had witnessed there: from a small settlement at the place where the continent’s ancient history collided with its future, to a collection of growing towns and spreading farmland. Her own transformation was also remarkable: the frightened young servant girl and convict, alone in a strange land, had become a wife, farmer, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She was leaving a large, loving family who would mourn her, but she could do so knowing that she had lived a good and productive life, here in the valley of the Dyarubbin.
She died at the grand age of eighty-nine on 11 June 1860, and was buried in the grounds of St Mathews church at Windsor, where her husband also lay.[16]
Commemorative plaque for Thomas and Elizabeth at Windsor’s St Mathews church
Photo by author
[1] Karskens, Grace, The Colony, p.128
[2] Karskens, Grace; p12
[3] Flynn, Michael, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Armada, p258
[4] The Sydney Morning Herald Monday 29 Nov 1886, Death notice for Thomas Eather
[5] New South Wales, Australia, Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, 1788-1870, State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Card Index to Letters Received, Colonial Secretary; Reel Number: 774; Roll Number: 1250
[6] Karskens, Grace, People of the River, p.100
[7] St Pierre, John, The Eather Family: 200 Years in Australia, p.25
[8] St Pierre, John, p31
[9] Australia Birth Index, 1788-1922: John Eather (1804 Volume Number V18041478 1A), Rachel Norris nee Eather 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (Australian Copy), James Eather (Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current), 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (Australian Copy) State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; 1828 Census: Alphabetical Return; Series Number: NRS 1272; Reel: 2554. Via Ancestry.com; Accessed July 2023
[10] New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856 Series: NRS 899; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Fiche 3001-3162. Via Ancestry.com. Accessed July 2023
[11] St Pierre, John, p36
[12] John St Pierre, pp.36-37.
*The blocks of land were located at 210 George St, between Suffolk and Fitzgerald Streets, backing onto O’Brien’s Lane (which did not then exist.) In recent years, the block has been variously occupied by a Coles Supermarket, then a Target and later a Kmart store.[13] St Pierre, John, p39
[14] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, for Thomas Eather 1827. Via Ancestry.com
** There is no headstone showing the exact location of Thomas’ grave, but a plaque has been erected in the church grounds, commemorating Thomas and Elizabeth’s lives[15] St Pierre, John, p42
[16] Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, for Elizabeth Eather, 11 June 1860. Via Ancestry.com
Connections: ‘The Remarkable Mrs Reibey’ by Grantlee Kieza
I’d added Grantlee Kieza’s biography of the woman on the Australian $20 note to my ‘Must Read’ list from the moment I heard about it.
The reason?
Apart from the obvious (my abiding interest in Australian history and especially women’s history), I have three points of connection with the subject, Mary Reibey:
1. She hailed originally from near Manchester in England, where my ancestor Elizabeth Lee was also born and raised,
2. Like another of my ancestors, Mary’s crime which had her transported to Australia was the theft of a horse, and
3. She was a contemporary of yet another ancestor, Jane Longhurst. Like Mary, Jane was an emancipated convict in early colonial Sydney who ‘made good’, managing business affairs and a large family within the male-dominated world of nineteenth century Sydney.Mary showed her redoubtable spirit from an early age, running away from a position as maid in a boarding school and in a flight of youthful fantasy, stealing a horse which she thought would be her ticket to a financially independent life.
Of course she was discovered, arrested and tried for the crime; at first receiving the death sentence, later commuted to transportation to the penal colony of NSW. The startling thing about her time in gaol was that she’d been dressed as a boy – and she managed to keep her sex hidden from her male cellmates in a crowded prison! In my view that would take some chutzpah, not to mention ingenuity.
She arrived in the colony full of trepidation as to what life in this frightening place might have in store for a youngster just fifteen years old.
The author paints a fascinating and vivid picture of convict life in Sydney and Parramatta : housing, clothing, rations, and living and working conditions, along with the many larger-than-life characters that peopled the early days of the colonial period.
The class system of Britain was transported here along with their unwanted criminals, and this is seen in attitudes by free settlers towards the convicts.
Also, people in authority struggled to understand many behaviours of the convicts; why did they make such poor choices (such as getting drunk and fighting) which they must know would result in punishment? To middle class eyes this was inexplicable. Why would people jeopardise their futures in this way? To convicts, most of whom came from dire circumstances, having a good time while one could grab it was entirely sensible. Who knew when the next catastrophe could strike? You could die of a disease, accident or violence tomorrow. May as well enjoy tonight while you could.
Mary, however, kept her head down and out of trouble. She married Tom Reibey, a free settler with an entrepreneurial bent, who was involved in trade and real estate. They had a large family together, but Tom nominated his wife to manage the business dealings during his long absences from the colony on trading voyages. She was wife, mother, and trusted co-manager of the family’s business affairs.
After her husband’s death, Mary continued with the various business interests, shipping and trading, buying, selling and leasing real estate, amassing an even greater fortune.
She is the ‘remarkable’ Mrs Reibey because all this activity was at a time when work options for women were severely curtailed and no women were expected to see the inside of a board room or business negotiation. Much to the surprise of her fellow settlers, ‘Mrs Reibey’ proved to be a shrewd negotiator, driving a hard bargain, with a nose for the next opportunity. This was how one survived – even thrived – in the cut throat world of the colony.
I got a thrill from seeing my ancestor, Jane Roberts (nee Longhurst) mentioned along with Mary in the section describing the formation of the Bank Of New South Wales – the first bank in the colony. Jane and Mary were among a handful of women investors in that early bank, much to the surprise and confusion of their male counterparts, as the concept of women investors was a foreign one.
There are moments that made me smile, such as Mary answering a charge by a debtor that she was ‘no lady’ by hitting him over the head with her parasol!
There are also tender, heartwarming moments in the book, as when Mary fulfills a long-nursed ambition to make a return visit to her homeland, with emotional reunions with family members in the ‘old country.’ I found myself wondering how reunions between my convict and immigrant ancestors may have played out, should any of them had the wish and the resources to return to England.
The Remarkable Mrs Reibey is a comprehensive and engrossing portrayal of a colonial women who surely deserves her spot on the $20 note. Her portrait, depicting a grandmotherly round-faced woman with spectacles and a lace cap, belies the adventurous and headstrong spirit of the younger Mary, with the endurance and smarts to not only survive, but thrive, in a colonial environment that was well and truly stacked against women.
The Remarkable Mrs Reibey was published by HarperCollins Publishers in May 2023.
Travels with my Ancestors #12: Thomas Eather, Kentish man & Elizabeth Lee, Lancashire lass
This is the third chapter in the story of Thomas Eather, convict, farmer, husband and father – and my 4 x great-grandfather. You can read chapter one here and chapter two here.
In this chapter, Thomas meets Elizabeth Lee, a young woman from Lancashire in the west midlands of England, who was also transported to NSW as a convict. You can find the first part of Elizabeth’s story here. She is my 4 x great-grandmother.
When we left Thomas, he had arrived at Sydney Cove aboard the death ship Neptune, and wondering what lay ahead, now that he had survived that hellish voyage.
In 1791, Elizabeth arrived on the Third Fleet’s Mary Ann, wondering the same thing.
By the time the Third Fleet arrived, most new convicts were being sent to the little settlement of Rose Hill, later called Parramatta. It was here that Thomas and Elizabeth’s paths first crossed.
Thomas had been first assigned to work in Sydney Town, on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.
The area around the Cove, known as Warrane to the original inhabitants, had already been changed beyond recognition: the First Fleet arrivals had cut native trees and cleared vegetation, planted gardens and sown crops, erected shelters and trampled the sides of the waterway they dubbed the ‘Tank Stream’ to a muddy mess.
What Thomas and his companions from the Second Fleet saw was a muddle of uneven tracks between tents, a jealously guarded government storehouse, military huts, and rough shelters housing groups of convicts. A larger brick residence, set on a hill overlooking the harbour, was where the Governor lived. There was a burial ground and, of course, gallows—they were not allowed to forget that further crimes could be fatal. Having escaped the noose once, Thomas was not eager to test the limits of His Majesty’s mercy a second time.
It was a largely unplanned, chaotic space in which convicts were expected to labour to construct the site of their own imprisonment, shelter, and sustenance.
Sydney Cove. William Bradley, From ‘A Voyage to New South Wales’, 1786–1792.
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South WalesThe Gadigal, and other Eora tribes around the new settlement, continued to fish in the harbour and its many coves and inlets; their slender bark canoes, or nowies, dotting the waters. They could often be seen walking around the township. Governor Phillip had issued orders that they were not to be harmed, and for the convicts and their guards, the dark skinned, often naked men and women had become a common sight.
Aboriginal people fishing, ca 1790’s. By Philip Gidley (att) King
From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales
[a2225005 / Banks Papers – Series 36a.05 (Safe 1 / 457), Series 36a : charts and illustrations, ca 1790s, 1803] (Mitchell Library)With his experience of rural labouring work, Thomas was a good candidate for assignment to the government farms. Early attempts at farming around the settlement were only partly successful, and the Governor was keen to find land that could produce the quantities of grain crops needed for the colony’s survival.
There was talk in the camp about Rose Hill, later called Parramatta (from Burramattagal, the name of the first inhabitants.) Some said the new settlement promised better soils and more land to spread out. June 1790 saw Thomas working there on the government farm. He lived with other convicts in a large tent hut, one of several spread out like a barracks. Life was messy: convicts fought amongst themselves, some tried to evade the labour demanded of them. They had to prepare their own food from the paltry rations they were given. There were plenty who, unlike Thomas, had never worked on a farm or milked a cow.
During each long day they cleared the land, dug the soil, planted wheat and maize. It was exhausting work, all done by hand without aid of horses or bullocks. He was used to hard physical labour, although getting over the weakness and illness caused by six months on the Neptune slowed many of its survivors. Each man was expected to hoe or cultivate a set amount of land per day. There was a military guard to protect the farm from theft by convicts, or attack by the Burramattagal people, who were being squeezed out from their traditional country, sacred places, and livelihoods.
View of Governor’s House, Rose Hill, ca 1798. Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales Once the Government farm began producing, they were allowed to labour for themselves for part of each day, after they’d completed their assigned workload. Gradually, Parramatta became the planned, secondary settlement which the Governor hoped would become more manageable, more civilised than Sydney.
The convicts did not care about civilised. There was always the threat that rations would be restricted again if the farms did not produce enough. The ‘slops’ clothing issued on the transports was now threadbare. They cared more about the quantity of meat, flour, tea and sugar they were allowed, and where they were to sleep at night. Any dreams for the future were secondary to the business of survival.
It was to this fledgling community that Elizabeth was sent. Given her previous work in Manchester, she would be assigned work as a servant to one of the officials or government employees. She’d spend her days working at cleaning, cooking, laundry work; whatever tasks she was directed to do by her master or mistress.
She met Thomas very soon after her arrival and they began living together. There were plenty of couples joined in ‘Botany Bay marriages’: either common law ones or bigamous ones (after all, the other spouse left behind in Britain could hardly protest.) Neither had been married before, and their union was genuine, even if they didn’t have a formal marriage record. And there were real advantages for both in becoming a couple.
For one thing, they were allowed to move to a small hut, rather than share the larger communal quarters reserved for single men and women. Being one of a couple gave each an ally, a support during continuing hard times. For Elizabeth, it also helped her move away from the label of ‘whore’ or ‘prostitute’ given to all the female convicts by many of the men in the convict huts—and by some officials, to whom they were either ‘married’ or ‘concubines.’
Wattle and daub hut (detail from Panoramic views of Port Jackson, c.1821). R. Havell & Son, engravers: after Major James Taylor. Museums of History NSW. Both were young, unlikely to ever return home once they’d served their time. They had to establish a new future here. And the Governor and Reverend Johnson were forever encouraging folks to marry and live respectably.
They’d watched St John’s Church being built across from the military barracks, and it was here that their first child, Ann, was baptised in April 1793. Elizabeth had given birth in their tiny hut, panting through the pain of labour, with no more than another convict woman to offer words of encouragement and her hand to squeeze. And, like all female convicts, she had to manage pregnancies and childcare around her work duties.
Church Street and St. John’s Church, Parramatta, from a copy of a steel engraving, 1853
https://stjohnscathedral.org.au/about/history/The little girl was followed by a son, in April 1795. He was named Robert after his Heather grandfather back in Kent. (Robert is my 3 x great-grandfather.) Thomas had grown up with the family tradition of naming first-born sons Robert: it had been that way since the first Robert Heather made his home in Kent, long ago in the early seventeenth century.
They ignored the tales of escapees: convicts who stowed away on departing ships; made a run for the bush; or the Bryant couple who (with others, including a fellow Thomas knew from the Neptune) had escaped on a stolen government boat. Most escapees were recaptured, forced back to the settlement by thirst or starvation, or perished in the alien bushland. The Eathers were having none of it, preferring to keep out of trouble.
They’d remember 1797 for three reasons: Elizabeth completed her sentence and became a free woman; daughter Charlotte was born; and in recognition of good behaviour, Thomas was granted land in the Hawkesbury by Governor Hunter, who had replaced Arthur Phillip.[i] The couple could scarcely believe their good fortune. After their traumatic start in this strange, wild place, they could dare to begin to think about a future here.
To be continued
[i] The first of many land grants given to Newton ancestors. It’s important to remember: this was land that was not the Governor’s to give. It was the land of the original peoples of Australia, and was never ceded.
Travels with my Ancestors # 11 : Thomas Eather, Kentish man (part two)
This is the second chapter in the story of Thomas Eather, convict, farmer, husband and father – and my 4 x great-grandfather. You can read chapter one here.
November, 1789: Gravesend, on the Thames
It would soon be called the ‘death ship’ or the ‘hell ship.’ Of course, Thomas Eather didn’t know this and nor did his shackled companions as they stood on the Gravesend dock, waiting to be rowed out to board the transport ship. From a distance, it appeared to be an improvement on Maidstone gaol, where he was first incarcerated, and the rotting Thames hulk where he’d been imprisoned for six months. Breathing the salty air was a relief after the fug of the hulk. Grey and white birds wheeled and squawked above his head, as if boasting of their freedom. Then he was on the rowboat and the Neptune drew closer with every pull of the sailors’ oars. It was impossible to tell what lay in store.*
For fourteen months, he had languished in Maidstone Gaol, before being moved to a hulk on the Thames River. On the Justitia, he experienced a sort of living death. Derelict, unseaworthy ships, the hulks were tied up and converted into prisons where convicts slept and ate. Every day he was rowed out with the others to undertake back breaking work in the dockyards, or dredging gravel from the stinking river mud. At sunset he returned to the hulk, where he ate, then dropped into an exhausted sleep. At daybreak, he did it all over again.
Atkins, Samuel (1800). [Prison hulk loading] Source: Trove.
Also available at: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-135231236*
Now, in mid-November 1789, he had his first sight of the Neptune. It was a large ship, square rigged, with three masts. When he’d clambered up the ladder, he could see the river from a new vantage point. Hard to imagine being at sea on such a vessel, but what would he know? He’d never left his native Kent. That moment between climbing onto the ship and being directed below decks, was the last chance for the prisoners to breathe fresh air and see the skies, until they reached their destination—if they survived, that is.
The Neptune
Source: http://www.fromwhencewecame.net/WilliamLevistonJaneChampion.htmlThen he and the others were sent down to the convict prison deck. He stumbled below into the belly of the ship, and heavy leg irons were again clamped around his ankles. It was hard to move. No room to stretch out, anyway, with pairs of convicts chained together in the cramped cells with one thin blanket each. Already, bitter wintry draughts probed into aching bodies. All around him it was dark, airless, and stank of stale bodies, piss, and dread.
No, the Neptune was no better than the gaol and hulk. What lay ahead for him and his fellow prisoners?
*
Shackled with short bolts at the ankles and chained together, he shared a cell with three to five others. While the business of loading supplies went on, all he knew of it were the noises that penetrated down to the prison: the thud of water barrels across the deck, shouts of the crew, banging and clattering of equipment being hoisted up the ship’s sides.
When the Neptune began to move out of the mouth of the Thames to shelter at the Downs, just off the coast, he could see nothing of the outside world. The ship made its slow way south to Plymouth, then to Portsmouth, where it joined two other transports that sailed in the Second Fleet.
*
In Portsmouth, the unfortunate prisoners stayed for nearly a month, buffeted by cold westerly winds. Lying on the damp grimy floor, the government-issue clothing did little to protect from the chill. Shirts and waistcoats were of coarse linen or canvas ‘duck’ cloth, less snug than wool. Rations of thin gruel and bread did little to warm the stomach. In any case, stomachs began to heave as the ship finally left the shelter of port in January 1790, heading down the English Channel and out into the rough seas of the Atlantic.
There were no portholes in their deck and the convicts were rarely allowed above, so Thomas could not watch the coastline of his homeland fade into the distance. But there were changes in the ship’s movements. The waters below the hull were deeper and more turbulent; the creaking and clanking of ropes and rigging above and around them somehow wilder, less rhythmic.
If his experience so far had been difficult, it was here that the real nightmare began. The bitter cold was replaced by stifling heat and humidity as the Neptune crossed the Equator. Sweat ran down backs under the coarse clothing, and beaded filthy foreheads. The air was thick, dense with moisture, harder to breathe in the close confines of the prisoners’ deck. A stop in port at Cape Town gave relief from the swells of the high seas, and a renewed supply of fresh water, but not increased rations.
The Neptune had been previously used as a slave ship, transporting enslaved people from West Africa to the Caribbean or the Americas. The ship’s master, Donald Traill, had captained the Neptune on those shameful voyages and proceeded to treat the new human cargo in the same way.
For this Second Fleet, the British government made the mistake of paying the ships’ owners for every prisoner taken on board their ship – not the prisoners taken off at the other end.
It’s obvious to see the problem here. Having pocketed the money for each convict shoved into the prisoner hold, the owners and captains had no financial incentive to ensure the well-being and safety of these men and women. In fact, there was a strong incentive NOT to do so. By skimping on rations, clothing, blankets, the captains could on-sell saved foods and other items when in port, at inflated prices.
For days, weeks, months, the prisoners lay in their own mess. Time compressed, then drew out into eternity. How long had they been at sea? Who could tell? Most prisoners had few opportunities to move, to feel sunlight or fresh air on skin, or to wash. The stink was overwhelming. Along with the odour of filthy human bodies and matted hair, came the smell of rotting teeth and gums, as scurvy set in, due to the poor diet. Lice tormented skin with itches and bites that could not be soothed.
As fresh water supplies dwindled on the long run from the Cape of Good Hope to New South Wales, thirst was a daily anguish.
If Thomas had had enough coins, he might have been able to purchase fresh water, extra rations, or clothing, from the crew’s black market. As it was, he had to hope that they would reach their destination before illness or starvation took him.
When storms lashed the ship, the turbulence upended toilet buckets while sea water sloshed through the deck, soaking prisoners, clothing, and bedding. The contaminated water lingered, infecting open sores and weakened bodies. Cold southern temperatures added to the misery. Then ship’s fever swept through both crew and convicts.
When a prisoner died, his partner in chains stayed quiet about it, so that he could grab the deceased’s rations and if he were quick, their blanket. Eventually, the death was discovered by the crew and the corpse tipped unceremoniously into the deep. Had Thomas counted, he’d have tallied forty-six such deaths before Cape Town—but there were far more after.
By the time the Neptune made its way through the heads at Port Jackson in June 1790, 147 male and 11 female convicts had died—one in every three convicts on board.
William Bradley – Charts from his journal ‘A Voyage to New South Wales’, 1802 December 1786-May 1792
Source: SLNSW https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/1kVdrNRn*
A crowd of people gathered to watch as the ships unloaded their human cargo at Sydney cove. These were among the first newcomers to arrive since the First Fleet had made landfall eighteen months earlier: hopes were high for new supplies to ward off starvation. Nothing could have prepared the onlookers for what they saw that day.
Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), Convicts embarking for Botany Bay, 180-? Source: nla.obj-135232630 Thomas and other survivors stumbled, crawled, or were carried onto dry land. Eyes that had not seen daylight for half a year squinted painfully in the bright Sydney sun. Their skeletal forms, snarled hair and inflamed skin gave the wretched men and women an almost inhuman appearance. Some died on the boats that brought them to shore and were ruthlessly tossed onto the rocks. Those not yet dead but suffering from fever, scurvy, weeping wounds and other complaints, were carried to the hospital. The air rang with the clanging of hammer on metal as tents were hastily erected beside the hospital building on the western arm of the cove, to accommodate the extra sick bodies.
Amongst those watching as the prisoners were brought to land—the convicts hardened by their own sufferings, military men, and government officials—were those who wept at the pitiful sight.
Thomas had survived his ordeal. What was next?
*
To be continued.
AIATSIS Map of Indigenous Australia, AIATSIS Canberra, 1996
Ancestry.comFlynn, Michael; The Second Fleet 1790: Britain’s Grim Armada, Library of Australian History, 1993
Karskens, Grace; The Colony, Allen & Unwin, 2010
Keneally, Thomas, Australians: A Short History, Allen & Unwin 2016
Historical Records of Australia series 1 vol 1 1788-1796, p189. Via Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/historicalrecord00v1aust/page/188/mode/2up?q=189. Accessed July 2023
https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/second_fleet
National Museum of Australia Online https://www.nma.gov.au/
State Library of NSW https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/St Pierre, John; The Eather Family: 200 Years in Australia 1790-1990, vol 1, The Eather Family History Committee, 1990
Travels with my Ancestors #10: The Eastenders – William Eaton and Jane Lloyd Ison
This is the tenth in the Travels with my Ancestors series. You may wish to read the first post for context. You can find it here.
I’m in London, the final week of my Travel with my Ancestors journey. I’m heading away from the usual tourist haunts and grand palaces to the East End. In mediaeval times this area lay outside the city gates. It was home to successive waves of immigrants: Huguenots (Protestants) fleeing persecution in France in the late 1600’s who brought their silk weaving skills with them; Irish linen weavers; construction and dock workers; Jews escaping pogroms in Poland and Russia.
During WWII London suffered greatly during the Blitz, and the East End and the docklands south along the Thames were among the most heavily bombed districts.
Post war recovery was slow, with poverty, poor health and high crime rates. In more recent years, urban revival and new building projects have changed the face of the East End. A youthful, edgy and creative vibe attracts shoppers, foodies and music lovers.
I’m here to explore where my 4 x great grandparents originated. They were William Eaton and Jane Lloyd Ison, and they lived in and around Bethnal Green and Spitalfields in the late 1700’s.
The tale of a cheese
William was born around 1769 and baptised in February that year at St Mathew’s church, Bethnal Green. I don’t know what his family situation was when he was a youngster. In later years he might well have admitted that the mistake he made when he was nineteen was the biggest of his life. He had tried to make away with a round of Cheshire cheese – which he dropped in full view of its owner. Of course, he was arrested, tried at the Old Bailey Court in 1788 and received a sentence of seven years transportation to NSW for his trouble – and no cheese.
He was sent on a Third Fleet ship, the Admiral Barrington, sailing into Sydney in the winter of 1791.
He did well after his arrival and in 1804 was granted fifty acres of Dharug land in the Nepean district. He called the property Eatonville; it lay on the banks of the Grose, not far from where the Nepean and Grose rivers meet at Yarramundi.
In 1800 he married Jane Ison, whose story is a darker and more complicated one.
A darker tale
I find the church where Jane had been baptised in 1770: Spitalfield’s Christ Church. It’s an imposing building of smooth dressed stonework and graceful white columns. I imagine her parents, James and Eleanor, holding baby Jane at the baptismal font. What were their hopes for their little girl? Her father had a trade, either gunsmith and/or shoemaker, which meant he could offer his family a better life than some in the East End, but they were not comfortably off. What lay in store for Jane?
She grew up amid the smells and sounds of Spitalfields. The Victorian era market building, now a popular spot for bargain hunters and hipster vintage lovers, stands on the site of the original thirteenth century East London marketplace, which would have housed stalls selling everything from live poultry to baked goods, flowers and sides of beef.
Jane was not yet fifteen when she married Edward Jaggers. Her account of her first husband’s fate was vague: as she told it, she was widowed very young. Trying to make a living in the crowded city, young, inexperienced and unskilled, her options were limited: enter domestic service if she could find a position, sell her body, become a pickpocket on the streets, or join a criminal gang.
She chose the last option and nearly lost her life as a result.
By December 1792, she was in a crowded cell at Newgate Gaol ready to face trial at the Old Bailey, along with four other women. Any relief she may have felt at leaving the dirty, dangerous gaol vanished once she was in the court room, standing in the dock. In this daunting, unfamiliar place, surrounded by men wearing frockcoats or dark gowns and white wigs, she heard the charges against her and her companions read out.
Their accuser, a Welsh drover named William Ellis, described what had happened to him. According to Ellis, Jane and several female accomplices had lured him to a house in Sharpe’s Alley, where he went upstairs on the promise of sex with one of the women for the price of sixpence.
This alley no longer exists; but I know that it ran off Cowcross Street, which does still stand. The landscape is vastly different from Jane’s time: there are now clean paved streets, traffic signs and coffee shops. A few local names give a nod to how it looked back in the late eighteenth century, full of (mostly illegal) gin houses, the area known as a ‘rookery’ (a term used to indicate places known for prostitutes and criminal gangs: places where ‘respectable’ folk would not venture.)
Once he was on the bed, two of the women took his purse and watch, when one of them (possibly Jane) bit him on the hand as he tried to struggle. After his assailants had run off, he made his way down to the street, ‘very much frightened’, and reported the assault and theft to the nightwatchman, who was next to testify.
While the women escaped, they were identified and arrested a day or so later. And so Jane and her accomplices faced the court in December 1792. Several of them tried to lay blame on the others, protesting their innocence, but the evidence against them was damning.
I know that the Old Bailey court is no longer the same building as the one the women were tried in, but I still want to see where it all happened, so my next stop is to the Central Criminal Court building on Old Bailey Street, in the City.
The building that stood here in the 1700’s was a crowded and cramped place, with a passageway from Newgate Gaol around the corner, allowing easier access to bring prisoners from their gaol cell to the dock. Newgate is no longer there, and I’m certain that the many thousands of prisoners who languished there along with the rats, fleas and lice, would not regret its loss.
Because the charges against the women involved violent assault as well as robbery, and stolen property worth well over £31, they must have known that if they were found guilty that day, their sentences would be harsh.
Even so, nothing could have prepared them for hearing the ‘guilty’ verdict from the jury for all but one of the five; followed immediately by the sight of the judge placing the dreaded black cloth over his wig and solemnly pronouncing a sentence of death for the four guilty parties—Jane included.
She was twenty-two years old.
The four women were returned to the teeming gaol cells. It seemed that the only way out would be via the gallows. Jane could not claim pregnancy, the most common plea for mercy by women. Would she be hung at the public gallows just outside the gaol, for all to come and gawk as she took her last breath? Perhaps she’d hear the execution bell toll its mournful warning on the night before her execution. How long would it take for her to die once the trapdoor was released beneath her by the hangman? Would she disgrace herself or die with dignity? These thoughts preoccupied all those facing the death sentence.
Three months after the trial, she heard that she and her accomplices had been granted mercy. They were not to be hung after all, but rather transported ‘to the eastern coast of NSW for the term of their natural lives.’ Relief and trepidation were mixed as she contemplated the meaning of this new sentence.
In February 1794, she was put aboard the Surprize, anchored on the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge. For nearly two months the business of provisioning the ship went on, while the convicts accustomed themselves to the routines of shipboard life. They set sail in May. Her three partners in crime sailed along with her; whether they wanted to speak to each other after all the accusations they’d hurled during their trial was another matter.
The Surprize docked at Port Jackson in October, a time of warm spring sunshine and cooling sea breezes in the upside-down seasons of the place.
Her fortunes took a turn for the better when she met William Eaton, already three years into his sentence. Sydney Town was a small settlement and the two met there; a daughter arrived in May 1800, and three months later the couple were married at St Phillips’ church, on the same day as their baby was baptised. As convicts, they did not have the luxury of choosing the date and circumstances of such major life occasions.
William and Jane had seven children together and lived at Eatonville at Yarramundi where William established a productive farm on his land grant, growing wheat, barley, fruit and vegetables: all essential produce to feed the infant colony. He also had two horses (costly and sought after animals), cattle and hogs, two convicts working for him, and he kept his family off the government stores—quite an achievement for someone born and raised in the crowded poverty of eastern London.
In 1823 he was widowed, still with young children. A year later he married another Jane. He shared sixteen years with her at Eatonville until her death in 1840. The two Janes were buried in the same vault at St Peters’ Richmond, where William himself was buried in 1858 at the very grand age of ninety years.
That’s the story of William and Jane, and my search for their beginnings in the seedier parts of eighteenth century London. I find myself wondering: if I could meet them (assuming time travel is a thing) would I like them?
Possibly. William’s crime seems so quirky, even amusing (and I confess to a little sympathy with his evident clumsiness in dropping that cheese!)
Jane, I am not so sure about. She was a young woman of her time and place in history; perhaps neither especially good nor especially bad, although a little of my sympathy here also lies with the gormless Welsh drover, who was clearly thinking with a part of his anatomy other than his brain, when he agreed to give Jane or her accomplice sixpence for sex and go upstairs with them.
I am glad to have found some of the places of significance for these people, my 4 x great-grandparents: these Eastenders.
All photos by author.
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