Travels with my Ancestors #19: In the Shadows of War (Part Two)
This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.
This chapter in the Eather family story is about my grandparents: Florence May Creek (1896 – 1973) and Ernest Beden Newton (1888 – 1955). You can find part one of their story (Travels with my Ancestors #18) here.
In Part One of In the Shadows of War we saw Florence struggling with the devastation of the loss of her beloved eldest son ‘Snow’ during the 1942 fall of Singapore to the Japanese. At home, she had to deal with a volatile and violent husband. In this part of the story we learn a little more about that man: where his people came from and the life he made with Florence.
Son of English Immigrants
Ernest’s parents (Beadon Newton and Elizabeth Robinson) had both emigrated from England with their parents as children. Their families had settled in the Hunter district and that’s where Ernie was born, the second youngest of eight children, in 1888.1
As a youngster he was involved in a scrape which brought him before West Maitland Police Court in early 1905. He was seventeen and with his brother George (aged fourteen) and two other boys, had stolen 40 pounds of lead from the roof of a local school. The little gang had crept out in the dark of night to purloin the material which they then sold to a second-hand dealer. Lead was a popular roofing material because of its flexibility, malleability, resistance to corrosion and wear, and it could be endlessly recycled—very alluring for a dealer.While they initially succeeded in their plan, they were found, arrested, and charged with theft. They were fined £2 10s which was paid on their behalf by unnamed ‘friends.’ 2 The boys could have fallen foul of an unscrupulous dealer offering money for stolen lead; otherwise it was youthful foolishness and hoping for a quick quid that led them astray.
Ernie learnt from this experience because he never came before a court again—despite his later behaviour at home. As Florence knew, a man’s violence towards his family was rarely punished, no matter how much damage he inflicted.
His father had been a carpenter but Ernie worked as a fettler for one of the private railway lines that operated around the Hunter then. With the expansion of coal mining in the district, rail transport was in demand to move coal and mine workers, and private lines ran to and from places like South Maitland, Kurri Kurri and Cessnock.3
He had a shed in the yard where he did work on saddles, bridles, fences and anything else that needed doing. Like most working men of his time, he could turn his hands to many practical tasks. The cows and chickens they kept provided milk, butter and eggs. He shot rabbits for the dinner table. He brought home coal for the fire, from mines near his work on the rail lines. They were poor, but his many flaws did not include a failure to provide for his family as best he could.To the Mountains
After the war ended, Florence and Ernie made the move to Bilpin, to live on the property Snow had taken up there before his enlistment. Snow had named her as administrator of his will and his interest in the Bilpin land formed part of his estate.29
Despite the official Army notification of Snow’s death, she continued to hope that he would return to her. Living in Bilpin meant that if he did come home, she would be there to meet him. She could feel close to him, in the mountain village he’d chosen as his future home.
Ernie agreed with the move; Snow had been the apple of his father’s eye, too.
The journey from Maitland to the Blue Mountains took over two weeks, travelling by horse-drawn wagon. Ernie had converted an old cart for the purpose; it was piled with their modest household items and possessions. Ernie took the reins and the horse plodded its slow way south.
It nearly ended in tragedy. When the horse reared up, startled by something on the road, Florence was tumbled from the cart which then ran over her prone body. A stint in hospital was needed for her injuries to heal before she could settle in Bilpin.
It was a difficult start for the family, especially for youngest daughter Isabel, who at thirteen had to cook and clean house for her father while her mother was in hospital. Making matters worse was the discomfort of the old house they rented from a local man, Mr Heyde; it was a dark and cold place where winter winds sent cold fingers into the many cracks in the floor and walls.5
From 1950 Florence leased Snow’s land while a cottage was built for them by Oswald Johnson, whose son Bill was later to marry Isabel. In 1953 Florence successfully applied to the Lands Department to convert her lease to a Conditional Purchase.6 Son Bob built his house on the other half of the property.
The Bilpin cottage c 1951 She had returned to settle in the mountains that edged the Hawkesbury valley, where she’d been born and where her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had lived. It was the valley where her convict ancestors had farmed alongside the Hawkesbury river, the ancient winding waterway that ran from the mountains to the sea. New generations of Eather and Lee descendants would now regard the valley and its surrounding mountains as home.
Moving from Maitland to the tiny hamlet of Bilpin took some adjustment. First sparsely settled by Europeans in the early years of the colony, Bilpin was still small, with few services. There was a weatherboard School of Arts hall, a tiny school, post office and telephone exchange, a petrol bowser with hardware and produce store. Electricity was not available until 1953; before that everyone lit their homes with kerosine or pressure lamps, or had their own generators.7
Transport was often a problem, as the road from Richmond to Bilpin and out the other side to Lithgow always needed maintenance and upgrading. Many locals used horse and buggy or cart into the 1950s. Groceries, meat, bread and milk deliveries were made by stores at Kurrajong or Richmond; there were no doctors or other medical services in Bilpin.
Her new home was surrounded by hills thickly forested with eucalypts, tree-ferns and climbing vines, punctuated on the lower slopes by neat orchards.
The cool climate and productive soil suited fruit growing. Bilpin was known as the ‘Land of the mountain apple,’ with many flourishing orchards producing a variety of apples along with pears, plums, peaches and nectarines. From early times, the beautiful stands of tall native trees attracted timber getters; there were still sawmills near the village.
Their cottage in Bilpin was a simple one, with a vegetable garden and chicken coop in the back near the outhouse. Life was as busy as ever with many chores that needed doing.
She had left behind the ever-present risk of river floods, and exchanged that for a new worry—bushfires which could take hold on the thickly forested hills and threaten homes and lives.
Still, many of her children and grandchildren lived nearby, visiting often. Christmas afternoons were for the grandkids, who came to show their Christmas gifts to Nanna.8 She loved those times with the young ones all around her. And she was at home on the land chosen by Snow.
The Newton home at Bilpin c1960s She cared for her aunt Isabella until Isabella’s death in 1955, and Aquilla, Florence’s eldest brother, during his illness a few years later. 9 Florence was known and loved for her generosity and kindness.
She lived there with Ernie until his death after a stroke in 1955.10
On the January day he was buried, as Florence stood at the graveside at St Peters, Richmond, she was finally free.11
She had eighteen years without him, peaceful years to enjoy her family. But she never forgot her first born child, keeping his memory alive, especially at Christmas.A Quiet Courage
Florence died from pancreatic cancer in 1973 at Kurrajong hospital, at the age of seventy-seven.12 She was buried alongside Ernie at St Peters, Richmond. She could rest at last, even lying so close to the man who had bullied and abused her for so many years. He could no longer hurt her.
The gravestone of Ernest and Florence at St Peters churchyard in Richmond, NSW. A plaque commemorating their son, Doug, sits beneath. Nearby are graves of other Eather family members and descendants. She was a gentle and generous woman, a simple wife and mother who did not draw attention to herself, preferring to keep in the background. Her life with Ernie blunted much of her sense of self-worth. She did her very best for her family with the meagre resources she had, coped with a volatile and bullying husband, and raised her children in trying circumstances.
A photo of her as a young woman, taken before her marriage and all that came with it, shows a pretty girl with dark hair and a full mouth. She is not smiling: her thoughtful gaze is to the side of the camera. Was she dreaming of what her future might hold?
She deserved a better life than the one she went on to have. The undying affection of her children and grandchildren may have been some compensation for that. She made sure that her family knew they were loved; not by demonstrative hugs or declarations but by her hard work and kindness. All who knew her loved her; she was affectionately called ‘Aunty May’ (her middle name) by many.
Footnotes:
1 Birth registration of Ernest Beden Newton 1888/27288 Certified copy 31 Oct 1988
2 Newcastle Morning Herald & Miner’s Advocate 28 January 1905 Via Trove, accessed 12 Jan 2023
3 Stephen Miller Smith, The History of Rail Services in the Hunter Valley, University of Newcastle, at https://hunterlivinghistories.com/ Accessed 15 Jan 2023
4 Ernest Harvey Newton in Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: A Series (1939-1948); Reel Number: 3277State Records Authority of New South Wales, Australia; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 26 Jan 2024
5 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
6 Certificate of Granting an Application for Conversion of a Special Lease Tenure 54/5900, in family collection of Doug Newton
7 Meredyth Hungerford, Bilpin, The Apple Country: A Local History, p307
8 Kris Newton to Denise Newton, conversations 2023
9 Isabelle Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion 2024
10 NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages, Death Reg 1955/427
11 Windsor & Richmond Gazette 25 Jan 1955 p12 Via Trove, accessed 21 January 2023
12 NSW Death Registration Florence May Newton No 1973/64407
Travels with my Ancestors #18: In the Shadows of War (part one)
Ernest Beden Newton & Florence May Creek This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.
This chapter in the Eather family story is about my grandparents: Florence May Creek (1896 – 1973) and Ernest Beden Newton (1888 – 1955)
A Missing Son
On Christmas Day 1942, Florence Newton (née Creek) set the table as usual for the family lunch. Eight plates, knives and forks: a set positioned in front of a chair for each of her children and her husband, Ernest Beden Newton. She omitted a setting for herself—she would eat later, once everyone had been served and were enjoying their meal. Until then, she would hover, in case Ernie wanted something. She’d bring extra potatoes or peas, dashing back to stir the gravy pan over the fuel stove in the hot kitchen. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades and ran into her eyes as she worked.
Once she could finally sit on the back step, a plate on her lap with a jumble of crispy potato skins and salty crackling from the roast, she’d fan her hot face with a corner of her apron and long for a cooling breeze.
One chair around the table would remain empty: the one facing the setting she’d laid out carefully for her eldest child. Lovable, kind, smiling Ernest Harvey—nicknamed ‘Snow’ because of his fair hair in a family of dark-haired and hazel-eyed children—would never again join them for Christmas dinner. But she refused to believe that he was gone forever.1
Private Ernest Harvey (‘Snow’) Newton In June 1940, after the German invasion of France, Snow had told her he was off to Paddington to enlist, where he joined the 2/18 Australian Infantry Battalion.2
At the time, he was living in Bilpin in the Blue Mountains, on a property he’d leased in 1939 and named Snow’s Carinya.3 He’d chosen Bilpin because a cousin, David Horsefield, lived there; the two lads were good friends.4 Most of the family were still at Homeville, the suburb of West Maitland where Snow had been born. Younger brother, fifteen year old Doug, had accompanied him to Bilpin, but returned to Maitland when Snow enlisted.
Like most mothers she’d have experienced a mix of pride and dread when her eldest signed up for war. She naturally assumed he’d be sent to the Middle East, where much of the action involving Australians had been to that point. It was hard to imagine her boy fighting in the desert against the Germans or Italians.
First, though, came training. Basic training began at the Army Camp at Wallgrove—not so far away, so that was reassuring. Then to Bathurst, for open field training to prepare for that desert war. The new year arrived, and in February 1941 he was on a troop ship, sailing out of Sydney to an unknown destination.
The surprising news came that he’d landed in Malaya. Far from desert warfare, his letters home described the tropical jungle environment, the sights, sounds and smells in the local villages, rest and recreation days in Singapore with its crowded streets and shops:
I rode {along} the waterfront where it is barricaded like a fortress with barb wire and pill boxes and the harbour is simply one mass of boats all shapes and sizes and coloures (sic).5
That was reassuring. Like most Australians, she assumed that the island of Singapore, controlled and fortified by the British, was protection against Japanese expansion into southeast Asia and Australia’s north.6 There were unsettling cartoons in the papers, depicting bayonet-wielding Japanese using the islands of Singapore and Indonesia as stepping stones on their way to Darwin7, but Singapore was safe. If Snow was in Malaya or Singapore, he really was defending his country.
His letters were full of stories of movie nights at base camp, the torrential rain of the wet season, shopping excursions to buy gifts for people back home, and messages of thanks for letters and parcels received.
The worst injuries he’d suffered so far had been fractured ribs in a footy match with his unit, and a head laceration from a fall, but nothing to worry about. He’d enjoyed dancing with Chinese women at the ‘New World’ dance pavilion in Singapore, set up for the entertainment and relaxation of the troops.Snow had always loved motor bikes and had his rider’s license, so it was no surprise that he was tasked with the role of rider. He sent a photo of himself proudly astride his motorcycle. In one letter, he corrected his mother’s use of the abbreviation ‘DR’ (dispatch rider):
I see you are putting D.R. before my name. Well, I’m not a D.R. in the eyes of this Battalion as they pay an extra 1/- (one shilling) a day for D.R.s. They may want some later on they say, as a new organisation is being developed. Here’s hoping as 1/- would mount up each fortnight.8
In November he wrote to say that he was starting a month-long course to become a driver/ mechanic, and he’d be working on vehicles affected by the humid and muddy environment.9
In every letter, he asked after family and his girlfriend, Doris:Has Doug been called up yet? And has Ralph heard anything about coming over since last you wrote? I will enclose a lot of {photo} negatives and match box tops for Doris…
Don’t leave yourself short by putting money in the Bank and don’t forget to help yourself if necessary.
Tell Ralph not to knock the bike around as it will have to do a long trip when I get back…
Bob seems to be doing alright for himself … I hope he does well, tell him to watch himself. Doug is also getting a good wage, damn near as we get in our pay. Ron is also doing well. You can tell them to keep it up and look after themselfs (sic) and wish them a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year for me please.
Will send a piece of poetry next letter and the boys all join in sending a merry Xmas and a happy new year.Always her ally, he hadn’t forgotten how difficult his father could be:
Glad to hear Dad has gone back to work, I suppose it is a load off your mind to have him away.10And every letter he signed off as: your loving son, Snow.
Now it was Christmas and she must have longed for another letter. His last had been dated a year earlier: 18 November 1941. While she waited, she couldn’t know that Japanese troops had received orders to begin an assault on Malaya.
As the new year dawned, they overcame key British targets along the Malay peninsula, covering hundreds of kilometres at a frightening pace.11 They were better equipped, better trained and more professional than Australians had been led to believe.12
Snow’s unit was ordered to move south to defend Singapore Island, the last bulwark against further Japanese expansion. During the night of 8 February, they faced an all-out assault on the island, while Japanese planes rained bombs on Allied airbases. Waves of Japanese soldiers streamed through gaps in defences, seemingly unstoppable.
Fighting throughout that night and into the early hours of the next morning was hand-to-hand, much of it in thick mud and mangrove swamps. As men fell, they sank into warm, sucking mud.13 It was a chaotic frenzy of fear, violence and adrenalin, with little time to think. All the Australian boys could do was react, fend off the ferocity of the Japanese, try to survive the night.
Snow was last seen at a rubber plantation near the Tengah airfield, in the island’s northwest, probably killed during that first night of intense fighting, rather than the retreat that followed.
‘Missing Presumed Dead’ declared the Army casualty list, several days before Singapore surrendered to the Japanese.14 Another two hundred and twenty two families received similar news, while four hundred more heard their boys had been wounded.15
Survivors were marched to prison camps in Japanese occupied countries. Many died from their wounds or the terrible conditions in the camps.
Florence could never accept Snow’s disappearance on that dreadful night. Even when the official Army Certificate of Death arrived in May 1946, she did not want to believe the stark words on the page. A more hurtful notice arrived a few months later, in the form of a flimsy paper on which an Army clerk had typed a list of ‘war gratuity entitlements’ payable on her son’s behalf: his service and his life apparently valued at £ 270.16
She continued setting a place for him at the Christmas table for many years.
Snow’s disappearance echoed down the years for the whole family, including his siblings. Decades after the end of the war, his younger brother Doug began researching the events of February 1942 in Singapore and Malaya. He contacted Lynette Silver, historian and Honorary Member of the 2/18th Battalion and 2/19th Battalion AIF, who provided information on what was known about the fighting there, and the likely date and place of Snow’s death. This helped Doug and others in the family come to terms with the loss of their beloved brother.
A Mighty War
The frightening news of Singapore’s surrender meant that those back home had to consider the possibility of a Japanese invasion of Australia: something that before had seemed unthinkable. This was a new worry, added to the sorrow of the gaping hole left by Snow’s disappearance.
More anxiety was in store. In 1942, son Bob enlisted.17 At least he would serve in the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) within Australia, as a motorcycle dispatch rider at Wagga Wagga and Bathurst army camps. Members of the regular Army often derided the CMF as ‘chokkos’ or ‘chocolate soldiers’ who would melt in the heat of battle, but for a time there were many more CMF than AIF soldiers, and CMF troops fought at Kokoda and other parts of New Guinea alongside the AIF. Bob, however, remained in NSW.
When she heard the news that he’d been in a serious accident while on duty, she must have feared the worst. He ended up with an amputated leg, but he lived, and was discharged as medically unfit in 1946, much the family’s relief.18
In 1943 her fourth son, Doug, decided to sign up.19 He first joined the Citizen Military Forces as his brother Bob had done, and spent time in Australia before transferring as a gunner in the AIF. Departing from Cairns on board the Mexico for New Guinea, he landed at Aitape, in northern New Guinea. He was twice admitted to the Australian camp hospital—for malaria and then bronchitis—but no telegram arrived at Maitland to inform Florence that he had been killed or was missing, like Snow.He was finally demobbed in 1946 and arrived home, safe and sound—although as for many war veterans, there were injuries, illnesses and mental scars that would appear later. For Florence, the main thing was that he was alive and home again. The fear that she might lose another son to this war was very real.
Through all this she also dealt with wartime rationing, trying to keep house and home together through restrictions on some foods. As during the Great War thirty years earlier, mothers and housewives worked hard to make sure their families had food and clothing. In the back yard at Station Street, Homeville, Florence grew vegetables and kept poultry and a few cows, so they had fresh food, though she needed to save her coupons to buy sugar, tea, meat and clothing.
She cooked over a wood stove; lighting was from kerosine lamps and heating by a coal fire. She was handy with a needle to darn and mend; Prime Minister John Curtin himself had declared that the darning needle is a weapon of war.20
She’d always dressed plainly, as had her mother. No fancy frocks or expensive shoes: just a homemade cotton dress with an apron or pinny to keep it clean. She never went to a beauty salon—they were for women with money to spend on professional haircuts or a weekly set in rollers. She wore her hair bobbed or scraped back into a simple bun—again, exactly as her mother had done. No makeup either. Her needs were few, apart from Sunlight soap and a warm wash with the flannel.
Her widowed mother, Jo, lived a few houses away on Station Street and was a great support. The children would often visit their grandmother and be treated to biscuits from an old tin on her kitchen bench.21Jo’s death in 1942 added another grief to the burdens piling up during those hard years.
Ernie’s wage did not bring in much, but at least now it was just the youngest children still living at home. They were all used to wearing hand-me-downs, so not much changed there.
Florence had given birth to six sons and two daughters, all of whom lived to adulthood.22 She had avoided the anguish of burying a child—the fate of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmothers. The children all attended school, but without government financial support, there was an urgent need to start earning, so most left after primary school. Higher education was not possible, even if they had dreamt of something different.
The children all had chores depending on their ages: milking the cows each morning, separating the milk, making butter, cleaning out the dairy shed, weeding the vegetable garden, feeding the stock.
On top of the constraints and worries of wartime, a different kind of threat hung over her every day.
When she’d married in 1916, like most brides she hadn’t expected to live in fear.23 Ernie could be charming—indeed, people sometimes commented on what a pleasant fellow her husband was. But at home, it was a different matter.
She’d quickly learned to keep her mouth shut and her eyes downcast when he was in a ‘mood.’ The wrong look or word could result in a beating. At meal times, he kept a leather strap handy near his seat, so that if any of the children spoke out of turn, they’d get a beating, too. The whole family ate in silence, eyes on their plates, never speaking unless spoken to by him. She tried to make sure the kids had everything on their plates before they sat down, so they wouldn’t need to ask for the salt or butter. If Ernie exploded at someone and she tried to intervene, it made things worse for them all.24
There were many small cruelties: if he cut one of the children’s hair, the scissors sometimes took a little piece of their neck along with hair. A hinged lolly tin sat by his armchair and sometimes the children were allowed to have two each. They learnt to be quick in grabbing the sweets—too slow and fingers would be caught in the tin as he slammed the lid down.25
There was no possibility of leaving him. One by one the older children found jobs and lives of their own. Snow’s move to Bilpin had been in part because it was a comfortable distance from his father. That was a source of grief, but she understood. She stayed, making the best of things with the few resources available to her, enduring his outbursts and attacks. Where could she go? She’d had only a basic education and few skills for a job to support herself and the younger children were still in school.
She was needed most at home, making do—and worrying. This was the lot of wives and mothers, especially in wartime.
She was fighting a mighty war of her own.
Florence and Ernest’s story will be continued in the next Travels with My Ancestors (#19) post
Footnotes:1 Personal communication of recollections by Doug, Doreen and Kris Newton, multiple dates
2 Ernest Harvey Newton NX27296 in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Second Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947; Series: B883, Accessed 12 Sept 2023
3 Historic Land Records Viewer, Historical Parish Maps, County Cook, Parish Bilpin, Sheet ref 1, Edition 6, 1933 EH Newton Special Lease 39-9; Via Museums of History NSW, State Records Collection, accessed 1 Feb 2024
4 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
5 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton 13 May 1941 (copy in collection of family of Doug Newton)
6 Commemorations Branch, Department of Veterans Affairs, A Bitter Fate: Australians in Malaya and Singapore Dec 1941 – Feb 1942, 2002, p2
7 Commemorations Branch, Department of Veterans Affairs, p13
8 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 27 Oct 1941 (family collection)
9 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 18 Nov 1941 (family collection)
10 Letters from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 13 May, 27 Oct, 6 Nov 1941 (family collection)
11 James Burfitt, Against All Odds: the history of the 2/18th Battalion AIF, Monograph published by the 2/18th Battalion Assoc, c. 1991
12 Email from Lynette Silver, Historian and Honorary Member of the 2/18th Battalion and 2/19th Battalion AIF, to Doug Newton, 11 Sept 2001, Copy in collection of family of Doug Newton
13 Email from Lynette Silver 11 Sept 2001
14 Commonwealth War Graves Commission Casualty details for Private EH Newton. Singapore Memorial, Kanji War Cemetery, memorial reference Column 120; Aust War Memorial Roll of Honour Canberra Panel 41; Certificate of Death on War Service dated 30 May 1946
15 James Burfitt, Against All Odds, p1
16 State Records of NSW; EH Newton Will Packet NRS-13660-28-8526-Series 4_338224
17 Arnold Robert Newton in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Citizen Military Forces Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947; Series: B884, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024
18 Arnold Robert Newton in N156695Australia, World War II Military Service Records, 1939-1945, Series B884: Army Citizen Military Forces Accessed 20 Sept 2023
19 Douglas Frank Newton NX174633 in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Second Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947,. Accessed 15 Sept 2023
20 National Archives of Australia, Empty shelves: rationing in Australia | naa.gov.au Accessed 15 Sept 2023
21 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
22 NSW Birth registrations Ernest Harvey Newton 1917/45938/; Edward Ralph 1920/16849; Arnold Robert Newton 1922/36722; Douglas Frank Newton 1925 from Australia, World War II Military Service Records, 1939-1945; Family records for Ronald George Newton 1927; Alma Newton 1928; Albert Newton 1933; Isabel Newton 1935
23 Marriage of Ernest B Newton & Florence M Creek, Aust Marriage Index 1788- 1950, 1916/15549 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2023
24 Recollections of Doug Newton
25 Isabelle Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion 2024Travels with my Ancestors #16: Robert Vincent Eather and Ann Cornwell
This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.
This post tells the story of their grandson, Robert Vincent (1824-1879) and his wife Ann Cornwell (1831-1889.) They are my great-great grandparents.
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.
Legacies and continuity
Like his father before him, Robert Vincent Eather arrived into the world surrounded by the fertile river land of the Hawkesbury valley. The family lived at their farm at Cornwallis, on low lying land near Windsor. When Robert junior was born in May, 1824, the leaves of the deciduous trees planted by his father and grandfather were burnished with autumn reds and golds, and a chill was in the air.
His childhood was crowded: nine surviving siblings, and later, the three orphaned Griffiths boys his parents had fostered—the farmhouse brimming with young bodies. At least there was plenty of space outside, though chores always wanted doing.
His father’s butchery in Richmond was a flourishing business, and the farms produced good yields. Once he was old enough, Robert followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a farmer and butcher, setting up a shop in Richmond, on the corner of Paget and Lennox streets.
Richmond Church and Rectory c.1854 Frederick Casemero Terry.
Source: Hawkesbury City LibraryThe township had been established back in Governor Macquarie’s time, and his family had seen it grow. There were now many businesses lining its main street, fringed on one side by open land that had been meant for a market square but had instead been used for games and foot races by the townsfolk, and a Guy Fawkes bonfire each November. There was a grocery store, blacksmith, chemist, bakery, drapery, the Royal and Commercial hotels, several churches and schools, saddler and shoemaker, and tannery. There were frequent grumbles about the poor repair of the streets, which in wet weather were flooded, with large potholes big enough to bathe a baby. The stink of the tannery was barely covered by piles of bark thrown down to mop up the bloody refuse that seeped out onto the road.
Post Office & Police station, WIndsor St Richmond
Source: Hawkesbury Library
Black Horse Hotel, Richmond; date unknown
Source: Hawkesbury LibraryStill, Richmond was a good town to live in. His grandparents told many stories about the old days in the district, when Windsor was called ‘Green Hills’ and the people who lived alongside the upper reaches ran a bit wild, just like the river.
In 1847 he married Ann Cornwell, also from the Hawkesbury. Ann’s parents, John Cornwell and Ann Eaton, had been ‘native born’. And like him, Ann’s grandparents had come to the colony in fetters—in her case, all four grandparents. In the small Hawkesbury settler community, there were few families without at least one elder with a murky past. Each successive generation tried its best to shrug off the convict legacy of their forebears.
Restless lives
Given the tumult and drama of their grandparents’ convict pasts, Robert and Ann’s life together got off to a tamer start in Richmond. One year after their marriage, their first child was born. Young Jane was followed by another girl, Cecilia; then ten other children, each born within two or three years of the last. Ann had no respite between babies; feeding and housing the growing family preoccupied her husband. And Robert had become increasingly restless, looking for opportunities outside the Hawkesbury district.
Maitland Mercury & General Advertiser Sat 7 June 1856 p3 In 1856, with their first five youngsters in tow, they moved to The Glebe, a suburb of Newcastle, on Awabakal land in the Hunter Valley. Here Robert took up an auctioneer’s license; and opened a butchery business.
Newcastle in 1874. Source: Hunter Living Histories University of Newcastle https://images.app.goo.gl/mhmUPbrCaGRGUGnt7 There were many similarities between this valley and the one they’d been born in. Both Hunter and Hawkesbury were mighty rivers, with the fertile soils of all floodplains. European occupation had begun with penal settlements, followed by bloody battles with the First peoples, who fought to defend their traditional homelands. Now, the white settlements were growing: the lure of land ownership and the natural resources of the valleys proving irresistible.
Three more children were born at Newcastle, though Robert’s little namesake Robert Vincent junior, only lived one year. In 1867 the family moved again, this time to Black Creek, near Singleton, on Wonnarua country. Two years on, they returned to Newcastle.
He put an optimistic notice of a new business venture in the local paper:
Robert V Eather begs most respectfully to inform the inhabitants of Lake Macquarie Road, Glebe, and Racecourse, that he will conduct the BUTCHERING BUSINESS heretofore carried on by Mr Davis Jones… where he hopes, by strict attention to business combined with cleanliness and civility to all who will favour him with a call, to merit a share of patronage so liberally bestowed on Mr Jones.
The Newcastle Chronicle, Wednesday 18 Jan 1868
Problems with credit had him placing a peevish notice in the newspaper, warning that he would take legal action to recover money owed him by customers who were late paying their bills. If the business was not going as well as he’d hoped, money was tight with eleven children to provide for.
Alcohol is an easy salve for problems, but can bring more trouble. In 1870 he was charged with public drunkenness, though let off without penalty. A few months before that, he’d been fined 10 shillings for riding his horse carelessly on a public thoroughfare. Was he liquored up then, too?
In the early 1850’s the gold rushes had begun, luring people from all over the world to the diggings in NSW and Victoria. Perhaps he’d been caught up in the spirit of the time, always on the lookout to make a fortune, rather than a living. The decade before had brought drought, depression, and bank crashes, all of which contributed to a sense of the precariousness of life.
In 1856, he came before the court in Maitland, over a dispute between himself and a man called Richardson who he’d employed for a while as auctioneer’s clerk. When he told the man that he no longer needed his services because he was ‘off to the diggings,’ the man took him to court for unpaid wages and breach of promise. The court found in Richardson’s favour; Robert was ordered to pay a hefty £10.
Ann would not have thanked him if he had gone off to the diggings, leaving her with the children to keep on her own. While some on the goldfields struck it rich, many more returned with nothing— or worse, in debt. If he’d used the idea as a ruse for not continuing with Richardson’s employment, she must have wondered what was going on. Either way, it was an expensive mistake.
Ever restless, he moved Ann and the children again, but this time for good. By 1872 they were back in the Hawkesbury, on forty acres near Howe’s Creek, at Tennyson, where he’d been raised.
Their three youngest children were born here.
In those years between their marriage and finally settling back on home ground, Ann had given birth to thirteen babies, moved four times, buried one son aged one year, another aged eleven, and a daughter aged two. She worried about her husband’s businesses, money, and his drinking. At long last they were settled, within reach of their extended family members for support and help.
She could breathe a sigh of relief—for now.
The next generation
Five years after their move back to the Hawkesbury, Robert was dead. The alcohol he’d turned to when things were tough may have finally claimed its toll: the death certificate recorded the cause of his death as cirrhosis of the liver and fluid in the lungs. He was fifty four.
At least she had a home where she could continue to live: her husband had left all his estate, valued at £715, to her. Son John managed the property on her behalf. Her three youngest children, Walter, Isabella and Florence, aged twelve, seven and five, stayed with her there until she died ten years later, in 1889.
Ann’s will expressed her wish that her property be divided: one half to go to son John, the other half to be shared equally by Walter, Isabella and Florence.
She was buried near her husband at St Peters churchyard in Richmond.
They had come full circle, from their birth beside the Hawkesbury River, to their burial in its soil.
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
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.
Thank you for reading. If you’d like to read more Travels with my Ancestors, you can subscribe to my blog.Travels with my Ancestors #9: A question of ‘why’?
This is the ninth in the Travels with my Ancestors series. You may wish to read the first post for context. You can find it here.
Around 1841, a newly married couple arrived at the port of Launceston in Tasmania’s north. They were Charles Littler and Ann (or Anne) Summers. They are my 3 x great-grandparents on my mother’s side. They left behind their families, home and community in Essex, England, and voyaged to a small island at the bottom of the world, perched between the Southern and Indian Oceans.
What did they know of Van Diemen’s Land, as it was then called? Why had they chosen this place as their new home? And how did they, and later generations of Littlers, fare in Australia?
Both Charles and Ann came from the town of Waltham Abbey, Essex, which had been the home of Littlers since the mid-1700s. My visit to this place, just north of London, is necessarily brief, but my aim is to visit the church from which it got its name, and to walk around the town itself.
There has been a church on the same site here for fourteen centuries. The current building has a tower built in the reign of Mary Tudor. I know that both Charles and Ann were baptised here, in the early 1800’s.
Its main claim to fame is that the legendary king Harold prayed there in 1066, just before his ride south to Hastings to battle Duke William of Normandy for the English throne. Harold died in the battle (the ‘arrow through the eye’ of Bayeaux Tapestry fame) and the story is that his mistress ordered his body to be brought back to Waltham Abbey for burial in the grounds. No one knows exactly where, but there is a marker on the grassy ground outside the church and a statue of Harold carved into the stone of the building.
Charles came from a family of some means. His father William had taken advantage of the silk weaving industry that had sprung up in Essex and owned a silk printing factory in the centre of town, earning enough to support his wife Elizabeth and huge family of eighteen (including three sets of twins.) As was common at the time, the couple lost three children to illness.
However, life, family and business continued, and as the Littler sons reached adulthood, their father turned his printing business into a partnership with Charles and his eldest brother Edmund. They were comfortably middle class; the continued prosperity of the Littler family seemed assured.
Ann, on the other hand, came from a rather different family background. Rather than a successful businessman, her father Michael Summers was a labourer, working at the Royal Gunpowder Mills, a major employer in the area. Before her marriage to Charles, Ann also worked there. Her family lived at Crooked Mile, a road leading north from the town. I venture up that road but there is little of historical interest evident now.
The Gunpowder Mill, however, is a heritage site with a history of over three hundred years of production. No doubt it contributed much to the bloody and brutal business of empire building in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Workers at the mills were proud that their labour supplied the gunpowder that contributed to Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar and Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. They operated under strict rules, working slowly and carefully to avoid accidents, which could be fatal. Even the powder boats, pulled by a man rather than a horse along the system of canals through the site, contributed to safety, as the waterways were a smoother ride than horse and cart for such highly explosive materials. The finished product was taken by barge to the arsenals at Woolwich or Purfleet on the Thames.
Ann and her father may have worked in one of the press houses where the gunpowder was made, following the ancient recipe incorporating charcoal, saltpeter and sulphur. At the end of a working day, they would find it hard to rid their hands and clothes of the pungent odour of the explosive they helped create.
There is no sign of the Littler’s silk production and printing factory now. The town feels a little run down to me, and I note shabby shops rubbing shoulders with quirky Tudor and Georgian or Victorian era buildings. It’s a pleasant stroll, though, and the question on my mind is why Charles and Ann decided to emigrate to Australia?
Interior of St Martins in the Fields, London The answer might lie in events that unfolded a year before Charles and Ann married in 1838, which did not take place in their parish church of Waltham Abbey (because it was apparently undergoing some repair work) but at the rather grander St Martins in the Fields at Trafalger Square in London.
In January 1837, his father William summoned his solicitor to prepare his will, and to dissolve the business partnership with his sons. Three days later he was dead. The outlook for the Littler family was now more complicated.
Almost immediately after their wedding, Charles and Ann embarked on their momentous voyage to Australia, arriving first at the port of Adelaide, then continuing to Van Diemen’s Land.
Ann’s trepidation about beginning married life aboard a ship full of emigrants, not to mention leaving behind her pretty town, her job, and her family, was mixed with excitement. For a young woman, the prospect was one of adventure, starting her new life with Charles on the other side of the world, far away from England with its old traditions and society’s expectations. But if Charles was acting from frustration or anger at the loss of his role in the family business, Ann may have felt differently.
Either way, she had to prepare for a long voyage, followed by a period of adjustment and learning. If pressed, she was unlikely to have been able to point to Van Diemen’s Land on a globe. It looked to be at the bottom of the world. One thing she would have realised was that, once they stepped aboard the Henry Porcher, life would never be the same again.
On the long voyage from England, Charley (as he was known) took on the role of assistant to the ship’s surgeon, probably as a volunteer. Emigrants were required to perform duties on a roster system throughout a voyage, and he chose to work in the ship’s small hospital space.
The surgeon had responsibility for the well-being of all crew and passengers. He treated ailments, tried to prevent shipboard illnesses such as scurvy, delivered (and sometimes christened) babies, carried out a funeral at sea if a passenger died, arranged activities for passengers, and supervised dietary matters. Charley would assist where he could. This experience was to stand him in very good stead once he arrived in the colony.
The Henry Porcher docked at Adelaide first, but the Littlers’ journey ended at Launceston, in the northeast of Van Diemen’s Land, on the traditional lands of the Pyemmairrener people. They were to spend the rest of their lives there.
Charley’s work in the Henry Porcher’s shipboard hospital resulted in a recommendation for both he and Ann to be employed in newly vacated positions at the Female Factory: he as Gatekeeper and Ann as sub-Matron. The Factory was one of a number of barracks built to house women convicts, where prisoners lived and worked until they were assigned as free labour.
Neither had any experience related to the jobs they’d be taking on. Being regarded as a decent respectable fellow (as he was described in the letter of recommendation) was all he needed. His middle -class background was an asset here, though he and Ann may have been unprepared for the environment in which they were to live and work for the next few years.
Their time there was not without scandal and controversy: a whole other story which I may continue later.
For now, I leave Waltham Abbey with my question of why? unanswered. I can’t say for certain what drove my mother’s great-great-grandparents to leave Waltham Abbey for a life in a penal colony ‘Down Under.’ But I do feel happy to have visited the place where their life together began.
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All photos by the author.Travels with my Ancestors #8: From the Fenlands – the Robinson family
This is the eighth in the Travels with my Ancestors series. You may wish to read the first post for context. You can find it here.
When Hardy Robinson disembarked from the immigrant ship Irene in the Australian spring of 1852, he carried with him a new baby daughter, some luggage, and his tattered hopes for life in a new country. Accompanying him were his other two children, Harvey aged five and Elizabeth, three. The children looked confused and overwhelmed by the events that had overtaken them. Hardy looked exhausted and deeply troubled.
What had happened to this little family between embarkation in England and arrival in Australia? Some tragedy had struck, destroying the vision that had propelled them to emigrate.
My father rarely spoke of his father’s background, and once (in his later years, when his memory was fading fast) told me that he thought his paternal grandmother was German as ‘she had a sort of German-sounding accent.’ Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Elizabeth Robinson, my great-grandmother, was in fact from Lincolnshire, in England’s east midlands.
This is how Lincolnshire came to be included in the Travels with my Ancestors itinerary.
I’ve explored the city of Lincoln in the county’s north, with its incredible history and castle, medieval canal and cathedral. Now I’m heading south, to Sleaford and the cluster of smaller villages from where the Robinson family originated.
Much of southern Lincolnshire is flat, marshy land. Incredibly green to Australian eyes, dotted with black faced sheep and small hamlets, the fenlands were first drained back in the 1600’s during the reign of Charles I. Today it is rich farmland, though prone to flooding.
Leading up to the fateful journey as assisted immigrants, Hardy (my 2 x great-grandfather) had worked as an agricultural labourer around the village of Helpringham, in this fenland country.
All his life he’d been surrounded by the smell of the marshes and the lush green fields of the fens, where the heavy soil produced crops of wheat, oats, beans, barley and potatoes. Now, as he stepped off the ship at Newcastle in the colony of New South Wales, he wondered if he would ever experience the sights and scents of his homeland again.
Before my own journey of exploration, I had spent a day at the State Library of NSW, poring over the journal of the ship’s surgeon on the Irene. I knew that Hardy’s wife, Mary, had boarded the vessel with her husband and children. I also knew that she did not disembark with them on arrival. I was searching for clues as to why.
I had initially assumed that Mary gave birth to her baby, little Hannah, on the voyage – a horrifying scenario given the cramped and unhygienic conditions of shipboard life at the time. What I found in the surgeon’s journal suggested otherwise.
In the nineteenth century, the ship’s surgeon was responsible for the health and wellbeing of all on board. He assigned chores, facilitated daily activities for adults and lessons for children to reduce boredom, oversaw cleaning routines and the allocation of rations. Of course, there were also medical problems to contend with, ranging from childbirth to digestive problems, injuries, infections.
At that time, dark beer such as porter was considered a healthful way to support the production of breastmilk. Surgeon Willmott ordered each nursing mother to be allocated 1/2 pint twice daily. I found Mary’s name on the list of nursing mothers at the beginning of the voyage. So, Mary did not die in childbirth as I had thought. I examined the journal, day by day, to discover what had killed her.
Every surgeon dreaded the first sign of a communicable disease such as typhus, smallpox or scarlet fever. What surgeon Willmott had to contend with was measles.
On day two of the Irene’s voyage, the first case was reported: the sister of a woman who had left the ship before they sailed, after breaking out in the tell-tale rash and fever. Over the next weeks, the disease spread at a steady rate. Some sufferers were sent to the ship’s ‘hospital’ (usually a curtained or boarded section of deck with bunks for people needing care), while some remained in their own berths. Given the highly infectious nature of the disease, it was no surprise that cases multiplied.
Willmott took his duties seriously and did all he could to prevent the spread of the disease as well as to minimise infection and discomfort from other causes. Despite this there was a great deal of illness on board, and he had to perform another duty, that of carrying out the burial rites when someone had died, before they were ‘buried at sea’ – essentially, wrapped in a shroud and tipped overboard. Altogether, thirty-four passengers lost their lives: not uncommon at this time.
Mary held out against measles, scurvy or diarrhoea, all of which affected many of her fellow passengers. Until just two weeks before making landfall at NSW, when the Surgeon’s journal noted:
Wednesday, 29 September Buried Mary Robinson at 8 am.My guess is that she contracted measles, but I can’t be sure.
Poor Mary. To die so close to their destination, knowing she was leaving her husband, newborn daughter and two other little ones to make their new home without her. It’s such a tragic scenario but one which played out all too often. These people took such risks in coming to Australia. There had to be compelling reasons to uproot themselves and venture forth on such an uncertain adventure.
With all this in mind, I begin my Lincolnshire exploration in Helpringham, where Hardy had been born in 1819. There had been Robinsons in Helpringham and Sleaford, about ten kilometers north, for at least a century and a half. His great-grandparents and their grandparents before them had all been born and raised in that part of the county. His grandparents Robert and Mary had run a coaching inn there, the Willoughby Arms, in the late 1700’s. The churchyard at St Andrew’s in Helpringham held many Robinson graves. I can assume Hardy was baptised there.
Next stop is Great Hale along with its smaller sister, Little Hale, just north. This is where Mary was born and grew up, and where she and Hardy married in 1847, at the Hale Magna Church of St John the Baptist. The church stands on the site of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from the seventh century and has the typical square Norman tower, with features and chapels added over successive centuries.
As I walk through the door where Hardy and Mary entered on their wedding day, I’m sure that neither of them could have imagined that just four and a half years later, Mary would be dead.
The other thing I notice is a quote in the church guide booklet. The Vestry Book in 1663, refers to the excommunication of several people from the parish, for their constant contempt of the laws, commands and constitution of the Church of England…
It goes on to exhort members of the parish to refrain from any commerce and conversation with them of any of them or theirs by lying, following, eating, drinking or talking with any of them…until they lawfully go ask that formal absolution in their behalf… {Brief notes on the Hale Magna Church 2021}These individuals and their families were being sent to Coventry, completely expunged from the social and spiritual life of the community.
It is harsh, but we should remember that it was after the English Reformation when profound religious differences divided communities, and the turmoil of the Civil War was a very recent memory. Indeed, a crucial battle in the Civil War, won by Parliamentarians against Royalist forces, took place at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. All of these events left an intense need for conformity to the religious and social standards of the day.
This is of interest to me because in later years, there is a distinct pattern of ‘non-conformity’ of religion in the Robinson family. Methodism and Wesleyanism gained a strong following in Lincolnshire in the late 1700’s and Hardy Robinson and his children were Wesleyans before and after their emigration. Today these religious differences are hardly worth a comment, but in previous centuries they affected many aspects of life, not just how you worshipped.
Indeed, all my visits to various churches on my Travels with Ancestors have brought home to me the central role that religion played in the daily lives of everyone from the monarch, bishops and nobles to tradespeople, shopkeepers, farmers and labourers. The annual calendar revolved around church festivals and celebrations, along with seasonal ones like harvest time. The main records kept of the life events of ordinary folk were those of baptism, marriage, and burial, to be found in the parish church. It was the church that was largely responsible for the distribution of ‘poor relief’ and aid to its community. Government had a much smaller role in everyday life then; the church a much larger one.
The county town of Sleaford is another place of note in the Robinson family tree, with my 5 x great-grandfather Abraham Robinson being baptised there in 1713. It has a grand church, St Denys, and today is a comfortable and prosperous looking town of Georgian and red-bricked Victorian buildings, a busy high street and a canal through its centre, a feature that I imagine is a common one in this marshy fen territory.
I leave Lincolnshire content to have walked in some of the Robinson footsteps from long ago.
And what of Hardy and his family in NSW?
Six months after their arrival, baby daughter Hannah died. Hardy must have felt like packing up his sad little family and returning to Lincolnshire, but that was beyond their means, having arrived as assisted immigrants. They settled in the Hunter Valley and Hardy found work. He remarried twice over, so his life was again marred by death of a spouse. He lived until 1900 when he died at the good age of eighty-one.
His daughter, Elizabeth, married Beadon Newton (my great-grandfather), so uniting those two families.
I wonder what my father would have said to the news that his grandmother was from the Lincolnshire fens, not from Germany. I imagine he may have given a wry smile at his mistake.
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All photos by the author.Travels with my Ancestors #7: From where the fleets sailed
This is the seventh in the Travels with my Ancestors series. You may wish to read the first post for context. You can find it here.
I’m at Portsmouth, in Hampshire on England’s south coast, at the mouth of the Solent River.
It was from here that the first three fleets of convict transportation ships left England in 1787, 1790 and 1791 respectively. The fleets were made up of ships carrying convicts, male and female; plus officers, marines to guard the prisoners, and ships’ crew; along with one or two supply ships. Surprisingly, there were ‘private’ passengers aboard as well: people chancing it in the unknown of the colony, hoping to make money, to find adventure or sometimes, seeking anonymity after scandal or disgrace at home.
After those initial three fleets, transport ships set sail independently, at different times and from a variety of ports. It was all systems go for the British authorities, who could not wait to rid their country of their undesirables, the so-called ‘criminal class.’
Five of my ancestors were on ships of the Second and Third Fleets.
They were Thomas Eather, William Roberts, Elizabeth Lee, William Eaton and Isaac Cornwell. You can read a little about those underlined by clicking the links on their names.
Life at sea in the eighteenth century was not for the faint-hearted. There was the ever-present risk of shipwrecks, generally resulting in terrible loss of life because most people could not swim.
Shipboard diseases and illnesses such as ‘ship fever’ (typhus), measles, influenza, scurvy, constipation or infection could bring death or disability.
It meant living for months in cramped spaces, sleeping in a hammock or uncomfortable narrow bunk, sharing those spaces with many others – with limited washing or laundering facilities and primitive toilets. Rations were monotonous at best, unless you were ship’s master or among the officers or upper-class passengers. Ship’s biscuit, salted beef or pork, rancid butter, hard cheese, and gruel or porridge, with a ration of ale, or spirits if you behaved yourself – and that was the lot of the crew and soldiers, who usually fared better than the prisoners.
For those travelling at His Majesty’s Pleasure below decks in the prisoners’ quarters, conditions were usually much worse.
Especially on the Second Fleet, the convicts’ lot was unspeakably bad. 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 wellbeing 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.
One ship of the Second Fleet, the Neptune, was the worst of the fleet and later labelled the ‘death ship.’ The ship 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.
The end result was a shocking death toll, with many bodies jettisoned over the edge into the deep waters below. Those who did survive crawled, or had to be carried off, at Sydney Cove: emaciated, dressed in tattered rags, filthy, and covered in weeping sores.
Thomas Eather and WIlliam Roberts were among the survivors. One hundred and sixty years later, their descendants met and married: my father and mother. I am always in awe when I consider the odds against the possibility of such an outcome. Whatever their crimes that put them on that ship, those men were tough to have outlasted the months on the Neptune and then go on to prosper in the penal colony that was their new home.
The outcry about the conditions on the Second Fleet resulted in an improvement for subsequent transport ships, which meant that Elizabeth Lee and Isaac Cornwell had a somewhat better experience on the Third Fleet.
Having recently travelled back to Australia on an Airbus A380, I remember the feeling of being cramped in the small seats and worn out by the long flight. Then I remind myself to think of my convict ancestors. On the plane I was given a seat, was regularly fed, had clean toilets to use, fresh water to drink and cabin staff to bring me anything I needed. Apart from a few midair bumps and jolts, I did not suffer weeks of debilitating sickness due to the unaccustomed motion of the sea. I had no chores to do on the journey, nor did I have to worry about my fellow passengers’ emotional or violent outbursts or theft of my few, precious belongings from home.
So yes, I had it easy. Those people on the convict ships did not.
As I stand at the edge of the historic part of Portsmouth harbour, I look out at the blue-grey sea and sky, and down to the shingle on the beach below. There is a line of old buildings on one side of the harbour; small vessels dot the waters around the fully rigged ship on display. A fresh wind brings the tang of the sea as it blows across my face. How much of this did the convicts see or feel, once they had boarded their ship?
For those unfortunates on the Second Fleet vessels, the answer is not very much. Prisoners were kept below decks, chained together in twos or threes for most of the voyage, and I imagine that began as soon as they boarded, clanking along the deck in iron fetters.
For later voyages, prisoners were given regular time above deck, although with the risk of escape always foremost in the minds of authorities, that was often curtailed whilst in port.
As each ship drew anchor and slowly made its way out of the harbour, some would weep as the expanse of sea widened between them and their loved ones. Others remained dry-eyed as they had nothing to leave behind.
But for each and every convict, the thought that remained was this: What lay ahead at the end of this voyage?
I’m happy to know that for three of the four of my convict ancestors, what lay in store for them was a much better, healthier and more prosperous life in the colony.
Isaac Cornwell’s story did not have such a happy ending. On New Year’s Eve in 1810, he went to a celebration at the home of Patrick Hand at Richmond Hill (now called Agnes Banks.) Another local joined in the drinking until about 9 pm, when a violent argument broke out between the three men. Isaac was known for his hot temper, especially when drunk. One of the others armed himself with a musket. The night ended with Isaac lying dead with a musket ball in his head.
Which I think only goes to prove that alcohol and weapons are always a dangerous combination, no matter the era or the circumstances.
I am grateful that the other three survived and lived happier lives than they would have experienced had they remained in England. And very glad to have stood at the spot where those ships departed Portsmouth harbour, two hundred and thirty years ago.
One last thought: this monument, marking the sailing of the convict fleets from Portsmouth, makes me smile but also feel a wee bit astounded. It’s an ugly sculpture (in my humble opinion) but it is the wording on the plaque that stops me in my tracks.
It reads:
This Monument commemorates the Sailing
from Spithead on the 13 May 1787
of the First Fleet Conveying Settlers to Australia
A Great Nation was BornWhere to begin with this one? Perhaps with the last line ‘A great nation was born.’ This ignores the fact that before English colonisation Australia was already home to several hundred First Nations. It reinforces the destructive legal fallacy of Australia being ‘terra nullius’ – empty land.
And ‘Settlers’? Yes, as mentioned above, there were some ‘free settlers’, voyaging to the colony of their own choosing. But the vast majority of those on board that First Fleet and all the transport ships that followed, were definitely not there from choice. Most of them did go on to settle in Australia once they had served their sentences, and they may well have been tempted to thumb their noses at the ‘mother country’ because their lives were a great deal better there than in England. Still. The choice of that single word – ‘settler’ – neatly obscures the suffering and trauma the convicts experienced. This is the power of language.
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All photos by the author.Travels with my Ancestors #6: Kick-ass Jane-The Longhurst and Roberts families
Tiny Ewhurst, a village in a narrow parish in the south of Surrey, was almost left off the Travels with Ancestors itinerary. I had somehow forgotten to include this, the birthplace of Jane Longhurst, my 4 x great-grandmother, who I can only describe as my most ‘kick-ass’ ancestor. Fortunately my ever-patient husband and our travelling companion are willing to do a small detour on our way east, towards Kent.
We reach the village after navigating roads that steadily decrease in width, the closer we come to it. It takes a steady nerve to drive along England’s tiny rural lanes and byways, but Andy does a good job as tour driver.
The road to Ewhurst 
Unlike many of my ancestors, as far as I can tell, Jane was not born into poverty. The Longhursts were an established family in the district; probably not wealthy, but her father may have owned some land, as he appeared on a voter registration list for Ewhurst. In the 1700’s only people who owned property were eligible to vote.
For whatever reason, Jane was tried and convicted of a crime that earned her the sentence of seven years’ transportation. Rather surprisingly, though there are records of her trial and sentence, details of her actual crime have not yet surfaced – but I live in hope of uncovering this one day.
She was born about 1783 in Ewhurst, and baptised at the church of St Peter and St Paul in the village. That is my first port of call, because it’s the one definite pinpoint in England that I have for her.
Before leaving Australia, I had made contact with many of the parish churches I hoped to visit, to check on opening hours and so on. I was put in touch with a local woman, Janet, an active member of the local historical society. She is kind enough to meet me at the church and show me around, giving so much rich detail about the village’s history in the process. Janet wrote the History Society’s Guide and History of St Peter & St Paul, so she is a perfect companion for this visit.
The oldest part of the church dates from Norman times, and Janet points out the distinctive Norman use of rough stone rubble and pieces of red Roman-era tile, that were frequently reused in later buildings. Other parts of the church were added, built or rebuilt over subsequent years, much of it after Jane’s time there. But I am able to photograph the church and its baptismal font, certain that baby Jane’s tiny head was wet with water from here at her baptism in March, 1783.
Out in the lush churchyard, Janet points out the ancient, spreading yew tree, sheltering a number of old headstones that are too weathered to read. A lower churchyard has at least 83 species of wildflowers, and grass cutting is carefully timed to allow different species the chance to set seeds and flower. A monument with stone wings seems to stand as guardian angel over the place.
Jane’s father and grandfather were likely buried in this churchyard, though possibly in different sections. Her grandfather, James, would have been laid to rest in the ‘respectable’ part of the churchyard, whereas her father John may have taken his own life. Records are a little confusing here, but if his death in around 1793 was a suicide, he would most likely have been buried away from the general burial ground , as suicide was regarded as a dreadful sin in the eighteenth century. Gazing over the beautiful grounds, I can only hope that he lies in peace, wherever that may be.
As we drive away from little Ewhurst, I am very grateful to Janet for all her information and help.
What happened to Jane after her trial and sentence?
She arrived in Sydney on the transport ship Glatton in 1803, and was assigned to labour for a master or mistress there. Seven years later, she’d completed her sentence and she married William Roberts, also an emancipated convict. They’d been living together before that date and had four sons together; then later two daughters and three more sons were born.
WIlliam had done rather well for himself. Through hard work, diligence and commitment, he had caught the eye of Governor Macquarie, becoming a sought-after road and bridge building supervisor. He was paid handsomely for this work, in land grants on Dharug country in the Hawkesbury Valley of NSW, plus cash and liquor – this was the era of the ‘Rum Corps’ and rum and other spirits had a stranglehold over the economy of the colony.
The family lived at Windsor and then in Sydney, at The King’s Arms, the public house they ran at Castlereagh and Hunter Streets.
When the Governor became disturbed at the rapidly increasing number of liquor establishments operating in the town, and the unruly behaviour of patrons, he issued a decree closing a great many of them. The Roberts’ hotel was one of those approved by Macquarie and allowed to keep trading.
Sadly for Jane, William died in 1819. For a widowed or single woman at that time, life was not easy. Even having money (which Jane now certainly did) was no guarantee of continued success. The male – and military – dominated colony held strict expectations of a woman’s place. It did not include the world of business or trade.
There were very few exceptions to this, and Jane became one of them. She wrote to the Governor, successfully requesting payment owed to her husband for work he had carried out before his death. She continued the hotel businesses that she and William had established. Later, another request to the Governor resulted in an allocation of land for grazing cattle. She became one a very small number of women who were early subscribers to the newly established colonial bank. Her name appears on the bank records alongside the likes of better-known colonial women such as fellow emancipist Mary Reiby, and the Governor’s wife, Elizabeth Macquarie.
She did this all while raising nine children into adulthood, many of whom went on to become successful business people and farmers themselves.
Jane remarried in 1825 and had eleven years with another William, also an emancipist: William Hutchinson. His story is also an interesting one. But this post is all about Jane – the girl from a tiny Surrey village whose 3 x great granddaughter was my mother, Doreen. She would have recognised something in Doreen, had they been able to meet – a quality of determination, a refusal to give up.
I can understand why Mum was always fascinated by Jane and her story. I’m delighted and grateful to have made the pilgrimage to Ewhurst, the birthplace of our kick-ass ancestor.
