Today’s post about Nicholas Delaney and the 200th anniversary of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden is more of a news item.

The Delaneys are coming back!

There’s going to be a gathering of Nicholas’s descendants on 13 June, 2016, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, exactly 200 years to the hour after our ancestor told a delighted Governor Lachlan Macquarie that he and his road gang had finished building Mrs Macquarie’s Road.

Lachlan Macquarie’s journal for 13 June, 1816

One of my Delaney cousins tells me that the family will reunite at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair at 1pm ‘to re-enact the dedication of Mrs Macquarie’s Road by Governor Macquarie’. Isn’t that a brilliant idea?

Here’s a link to what else is going on to celebrate the garden’s 200th birthday.

I’ll pass on the details as soon as I know more. I’ll probably tweet them, so if you’re on Twitter, please check my moniker, @ARebelHand.

Inscription on Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, CC via Wikimedia

I can’t be there, so the least I can do is join in the spirit of the occasion and celebrate by announcing this:

Special offer on A Rebel Hand

From today until the end of June, I’m offering 25% off the price of a copy of A Rebel Hand, the biography of Nicholas Delaney, Irish rebel, transported convict, roadbuilder and farmer – a man who left his mark on the early colony and whose work can be seen in Sydney to this day.

I hope you’ll come back soon for the next Botanic Garden bicentenary celebration post.

Get your special offer of A Rebel Hand for £5.99 here.

It’s today! Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden is 200 years old on June 13, 2016. Happy birthday!

We’ve seen why this day is the bicentenary – it’s because this is when Nicholas Delaney and his convict road gang finished building Mrs Macquarie’s Road and delighted her husband, New South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

A small part of Nicholas’s original road can still be seen, two centuries later, at the Macquarie Culvert in the Botanic Garden.

Macquarie Culvert, part of Mrs Macquarie’s Road. Photo © Jeff Farrar, 2013

Nicholas Delaney was the overseer of a gang of labourers working on building roads for Lachlan Macquarie. The Governor’s mission in his early years was to impose order and morals on a colony which had only just experienced its first and only successful military coup, the Rum Rebellion. Part of this involved tidying up Sydney.

He set out to claim back the Domain, the Government House land which included the present Domain and all the area up to Bennelong Point and Mrs Macquarie’s Point.

The Domain, Sydney, from the air

Macquarie, a religious man, had orders from London to reform public morals. Over the years the remoter areas of the Domain had become useful territory for thieves and prostitutes. The seclusion suited hiding stolen goods and meetings of, well, various kinds. The Domain needed a good clean-up.

He enclosed the area with a stone wall and wooden fences. In 1815 he posted constables to lurk inside and arrest anyone who broke in. Three men who were caught there that April – one of them was suspected of dealing in stolen goods and keeping a ‘disorderly house’ – were flogged.

And he decided to reclaim it as a place of beauty and a delight for his beloved wife, Elizabeth.

Mrs Macquarie’s chair, early 20th century

She was the one who planned a new route around the eastern part of the Domain, which was to be named after her – Mrs Macquarie’s Road. At the northern tip of the new road a large rock was carved into a seat for her – called, of course, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair – and it’s said she loved to go there by foot or carriage and watch the ships sailing in from the other side of the world.

I wonder if she saw the convict transports arriving which carried two more of my ancestors, Sarah Marshall on the Friendship and John Simpson on Ocean II, in January 1818?

It’s likely that Mrs Macquarie’s Chair was carved by Nicholas’s road gang, but I haven’t found any proof of that. On one side a stone carver has inscribed the date when Nicholas and his gang finished the road, and that, together with Lachlan Macquarie’s journal, is where the date of 13 June, 2016, the Botanic Garden’s 200th birthday, comes from.

Inscription on Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, CC via Wikimedia

It’s still a popular place for sightseeing, and it’s where Delaneys are gathering today to celebrate Nicholas’s achievement. A cannon will be fired to mark the historic moment at one o’clock when the men downed tools and Nicholas gave the Governor the good news.

Botanic Gardens redevelopment ‘on hold’

There’s some more happy news just in time for the 200th birthday party – a controversial $130 million plan to redevelop the Royal Botanic Garden and Domain has been put on hold, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

I mentioned how canny Nicholas had been to finish Mrs Macquarie’s Road on Mrs Macquarie’s birthday (getting five gallons of spirits as a reward). It seems his announcement of the road’s completion was pretty canny, too.

I found this story in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of Saturday, 15 June, 1816:

Lachlan Macquarie launches the Elizabeth Henrietta

Governor Macquarie had launched a ‘fine brig’ named after his wife, Elizabeth Henrietta, at noon that day – another birthday present for her. Exactly an hour later, overseer Delaney added his good news about the road gang’s birthday gift. Isn’t that good timing? I have to admire my 3x great grandfather for his forward planning.

I’ve got a little something to mark the ‘auspicious Day’, too – an offer of 25% off the price of Nicholas Delaney’s biography, A Rebel Hand, until the end of June.

Get Nicholas Delaney’s biography, A Rebel Hand, here.

So here’s wishing the Botanic Garden another 200 years, and here’s to Nicholas and his descendants celebrating his achievement today!

Picture credits:
Macquarie Culvert photo © Jeff Farrar, 2013
Photograph of the Domain via Wikimedia
Old photo of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair NLNSW via Wikimedia
Inscription photo by Graeme Churchard, CC via Flickr
Newspaper article via Trove

A Rebel Hand is seven years old!

This blog is, anyway. The book A Rebel Hand has been around much longer.

Seven’s a powerful number. Seven days of the week, seven stars in the sky, seven seas, not to mention Seven Sisters, Sevenoaks and Seven Dials. It’s lucky.

And it’s lucky that my seventh blogiversary has brought me back to writing after a long (too long, sorry) break while I’ve been researching a novel set in the early 18th century. More about that on my new blog, Writing the Past.

So here’s what my plan is: it’s coming up to the 300th anniversary of Sarah Marshall and John Simpson arriving in New South Wales. I’ve already written about them, my 3x great grandmother and great grandfather (you can search for them in the bar on the right).

But now it’s time to look at how they came to be transported to Australia in 1817. There are gaps in my research, of course, but I’ll write about what I’ve found out so far. There’s more interesting stuff about Sarah, including her voyage on a notorious convict ship, the Friendship II. That means I may be concentrating more on her. Who knows? Let me know what you’d like to read.

And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think Sarah is a famous ghost, and I know for sure that she wasn’t murdered. But each to their own, eh?

(I will come back to Celestina Christmas and the Islington Murder, I promise!)

Picture credit:
Birthday cake by cbaquiran, Creative Commons CC0

Earlier in December I went to the launch of Criminal Lives, 1780-1925: Punishing Old Bailey Convicts, a new exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA).

If you’ve visited this blog before (hello! Thanks for coming back!) you’ll know that I write a lot about crime and convicts. A lot.

That’s partly because I’m descended from four convicts transported to Australia: Nicholas Delaney, Sarah Marshall, John Simpson and James Thomas Richards.

I’m also fascinated by the story of Celestina Sommer, nee Christmas, the notorious ‘Islington Murderer‘.

So when I got the chance to meet some of the people behind the Criminal Lives exhibition as well as seeing it, how could I resist?

It’s a smallish exhibition, but full of objects and information that you could spend a long time over. I’m definitely going to go back again to spend more time with my favourites.

I was delighted to see the focus on individual convicts’ lives and on material culture, though there was plenty of explanatory text as well. You’ll get a feel from these photos (please excuse the less-than brilliant quality – the lights sometimes caused unavoidable shadows and flares).

Letter applying for the job of executioner

It’s cleverly laid out, telling the stories of policing and arrest, Old Bailey trials, punishment, the prison crisis, transportation to Australia and more by using themed walls and cases.

I found it sometimes poignant, sometimes horrifying and sometimes amusing (see the executioner’s job application letter. Yes, I’ve got a darkish sense of humour, but what a CV!)

Transcription of the executioner job application

If you’re interested in the history of crime, policing, London, prisons, convicts’ lives or transportation, go if you can. It would probably suit you if you’re missing Ripper Street, Taboo or (sob!) Garrow’s Law, too.

It was great to have a chat with some of the exhibition’s organisers, as well as to talk to Louise Falcini and Jasmine Losasso and to meet Sharon Howard, whose work I’ve been a fan of for quite a while.

Thanks to Laurence Ward, Robert Shoemaker, Tim Hitchcock, Larissa Allwork and to the people from the Digital Panopticon, LMA and the other organisations and people who put this exhibition together.

I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story. All images are by kind permission of LMA.

UPDATE: The Digital Panoptican team has put together a free public engagement programme to complement the Criminal Lives exhibition.

Held at LMA, the season of talks and workshops range from convict art to convict genealogy, and from standing trial at the Old Bailey to the alternatives to hanging.

MORE: To mark the 200th anniversary of the arrival in New South Wales of my ancestors John Simpson and Sarah Marshall in January 1818, I’m writing a series of posts about their trials, transportation and later lives, starting with John Simpson. He sailed to Port Jackson from Spithead on the convict ship Ocean II.

Policeman’s truncheon, with handcuffs behind

Prisoner’s waist belt and cuffs

Millbank Prison, view down main corridor

Millbank Prison – main passageway

Prisoners had to ‘pick oakum’ from hemp ropes to make padding or stuffing

Charlotte Walker’s story

Convict uniform (replica)

Convict love token, 1818

Convicts writing letters at Cockatoo Island

Wear a Bonnet, living art installation by Christina Henri

On 16 January 1818, the Yorkshire convict John Simpson left the transport ship Ocean II and set foot on Australian soil.

Ocean was a relatively new ship, built in 1808 at Whitby (coincidentally, that’s just under 30 miles away from John’s birthplace, Yarm). This could have been one of the reasons why only two of the 182 male convicts on board died during the voyage.

Fairfowl’s medical journal p1

John Simpson and his fellows were also lucky to have a good surgeon superintendent on board: George Fairfowl, who New South Wales governor Lachlan Macquarie described as ‘at once an Intelligent and kind humane Man’.

Note by Macquarie at the end of Fairfowl’s journal

In his dispatches to Henry, Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Macquarie also wrote that the convicts were ‘All in Good Health, and highly Satisfied with that Gentleman’s Care and Attention during the passage’.

It’s good to see from Macquarie’s note at the end of Fairfowl’s medical journal that John and his fellow convicts were ‘landed… in a Clean Healthy State’, which was no small success after 149 days – nearly five months – at sea.

They’d only had a short stop at St Helena to take on fresh water and food.

Since Napoleon was imprisoned on the island at the time, I wonder whether the convicts hoped to catch a glimpse of the world’s most famous captive from their own prison ship?

The Justitia hulk with convicts working, 1777

And even before Ocean left Spithead, near Portsmouth, for Port Jackson on 25 June, 1817, John had been imprisoned on the Justitia hulk, which was moored at Woolwich, for 39 days.

The Justitia was itself a former convict ship, and the first to be used as a floating prison. I can write more about prison hulks if you’re interested – let me know in the comments below.

Macquarie went on to say of the Ocean‘s master, Samuel Remmington, that his ‘Conduct also appears to have been perfectly Correct’.

It looks as if John Simpson’s experience of transportation was (relatively) bearable, like Nicholas Delaney‘s 16 years before.

John’s future ‘wife’, Sarah Marshall (also known as Sarah Simpson), had a very different time during her journey on the Friendship II, which I’ll come back to soon.

This is the first in a series of posts marking the 200th anniversary of my great-great-great grandparents, John and Sarah, arriving in New South Wales in January 1818.

Front cover of Fairfowl’s medical journal

Sources (where not linked to):

Frederick Watson (ed): Historical records of Australia. Series I. Governors’ despatches to and from England. Volume IX, January, 1816-December, 1818
The National Archives: HO 9. Convict hulks moored at Woolwich. Index to register of prisoners on the Justitia
TNA: Surgeons at sea – Royal Navy Medical officers’ journals ADM 101/57/8

Images:

Fairfowl’s medical journal: TNA: Surgeons at sea – Royal Navy Medical officers’ journals ADM 101/57/8
The Justitia: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

It’s exactly 200 years since Sarah Marshall, a convict from the Manchester area, climbed out of the boat that brought her from the transport ship Friendship II to the penal colony of New South Wales.

Friendship was built in 1793. According to Lloyd’s Register of Ships, she was a triple-decker second-class ship made with good materials. At the time she arrived in Sydney Cove, like a growing number of merchant ships sailing into warm waters, her hull was sheathed with copper (over boards). She’d had a thorough refit in 1813 and damage repaired in 1817.

Sarah Marshall’s entry on the Friendship II ‘list of convicts with their characters’

But Friendship was 25 years old and, only seven months after Sarah disembarked, the ship was condemned as unseaworthy.

Add to this an unusually long, ‘tedious’ voyage during which the women were deprived of water… and all the nice materials and copper bottoms in the world wouldn’t have made it as (relatively) easy an experience as her future ‘husband’ John was having.

Sarah Marshall’s voyage across the world began at Deptford, in East London, where another branch of my Aussie ancestors, the Richards and Wickings, were working as watermen and in the dockyards.

Deptford dockyards, around 1800

She and 96 other convict women, along with a few wives of serving convicts and some free passengers, along with the crew, were crammed into a ship 180 feet long and just over 28 feet in the beam. They shared this space with food and drink for the voyage and with supplies for the colony.

The ship sailed on 3 July, 1817, and took a gruelling 195 days – over six months – to reach Port Jackson. John Simpson‘s voyage, on the Ocean II, was 46 days shorter.

But although Friendship II dropped anchor in Sydney Cove on January 14, 1818, the convicts didn’t disembark for many days. First the legal niceties had to be observed. The cargo had to be accounted for and inspected before it was handed over.

And that cargo included 3,175 blankets; 1,996 cotton shirts; 8,000 shoes*; 4,000 pairs of trousers; one sugar mill; and 97 convict women.

For cargo is what they were.

As Friendship’s surgeon-superintendant Peter Cosgreave wrote in a letter to Lachlan Macquarie, the Governor of New South Wales: ‘The Master of the Ship also apprized his Crew of the Consequence that was likely to result from their meddling with the Convicts, being Considered as the Cargo…’

But meddle they did. And there were consequences. I’ll come back to this in a separate post.

Six days after the ship arrived, on 21 January, the convicts were mustered and inspected by Macquarie’s hard-working secretary, John Campbell. Their names were recorded to check that all were accounted for. Then they were checked for their state of health and questioned about their trades before imprisonment, to see what work they could be used for.

Sydney Gazette account of the women being landed

They were landed at last on 30 January, as the Sydney Gazette reported the following day.

I don’t know whether Sarah was one of the women sent to be a servant, or whether she had scurvy and went straight to hospital.

What I do know is that she was healthy enough and in the Sydney area by the middle of February, where John Simpson was living, because on 18 November, 1818, she gave birth to their first child, Lucy, my direct ancestor.

But I don’t want to jump too far ahead, because (you might have guessed this from my hints) there’s a lot to say about what it was like to be a transported convict aboard the Friendship. And not much of it is positive.

So if you’ve come here fresh from the disappointment that Sarah wasn’t murdered horribly and that she doesn’t haunt Castlereagh cemetery, I’ve got some good news for you. Her voyage in Friendship II was a nightmare. Cruel punishments, suicide, deliberate dehydration, ‘prostitution’, pirates… they all feature in her story and I’ll be writing more about it soon.

In the meantime, there are some murders on this blog: my ancestor Nicholas Delaney died in very mysterious circumstances, and I also tell the tale of the infamous Islington Murderer, Celestina Sommer.

*As my genealogist friend Anne Powers has reminded me, shoes weren’t made in left- and right-foot versions until relatively recently.

Sources (where not linked to):
(ed) Frederick Watson: Historical records of Australia. Series I. Governors’ despatches to and from England. Volume IX

Images:
Deptford Dockyard and ships c 1800 by Joseph Farington via Wikimedia Commons

Previous posts: John Simpson arrives on Ocean II

The Hebridean island of Ulva is to be bought by a community group including its remaining inhabitants and those of nearby north-west Mull.

Ormaig, Isle of Ulva, where Lachlan Macquarie was born

When I heard the news yesterday, 11 May 2018, my ears perked up. Not just because it’s an interesting event, but becausethe Isle of Ulva is where Lachlan Macquarie, the ‘Father of Australia’ and the patron of my ancestor, Nicholas Delaney, was born in 1762.

Australia’s National Trust has, press reports say, offered to help promote tourism to Ulva to see the former Governor’s birthplace. I’m guessing this would be the New South Wales NT, though I haven’t seen anything to prove or disprove this yet. It would be logical, since this Trust has cared for the Macquarie Mausoleum on Mull for over 50 years.

Macquarie Mausoleum, Isle of Mull

Read more about Nicholas Delaney’s work for Governor Lachlan Macquarie:
Making roads for Macquarie
At the heart of Sydney
Did Nicholas build the oldest bridge in Australia?
Family myths, cover-ups – what did Nicholas Delaney really do?
Wealth for Toil
Australia’s oldest bridge revisited
Nicholas Delaney and the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney

1807 map of Scotland showing Ulva

Image credits:
Ormaig, Isle of Mull: photo by Chris McLean via Wikimedia
Macquarie Mausoluem: photo by Douglas Law via Wikimedia
Arrowsmith map of 1807: National Library of Scotland

It’s the anniversary of the foundation of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney today, June 13. That was the day when, in 1816, Nicholas Delaney finished the road to Mrs Macquarie’s chair along with the gang he was overseer of.

So I was thrilled to see a couple of tweets this morning which marked the occasion. Here they are. The first was from the State Archives of New South Wales:

And here’s a reply from the State Library of New South Wales:

Which is wonderful – I hadn’t seen the map before. If you’d like a closer look at it, you can go to their online collection.

If you’d like to get in touch with me on Twitter, I’m @ARebelHand. I’d love to know what your interests are – genealogy, history, whatever brought you here!

What did it mean to be a woman and a convict on board a transport ship sailing to Australia? I’m going to look at how it was for my 3x great grandmother, Sarah Marshall, farm servant, thief, wife and mother, reputed ghost.

In my previous post about Sarah’s arrival in New South Wales in 1818, I mentioned that she had a terrible voyage. In fact, the ship she was transported on, the Friendship II, was notorious because of the behaviour of its convicts, its crew and both senior officials – the Master, Andrew Armett, and Peter Cosgreave, the Surgeon-Superintendent.

The Surgeon-Superintendant was a naval officer whose job was to oversee the welfare of convicts on board ship. It was a recently-created post and partly existed to try to cut down the loss of a ship’s ‘cargo‘ – in other words, to stop convicts dying during the long sea journey to New South Wales. On the Friendship, the human cargo was female.

Peter Cosgreave, unfortunately, cared more about the women’s morals than their physical health. During the voyage, he compiled a list of ‘Names of Convicts with their Characters during the voyage from London’ for the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie. Every woman was decribed in a terse line or two. Here’s his entry about Sarah.

Sarah Marshall’s entry on the Friendship II list of convicts with their characters

I’ll just enlarge Cosgreave’s description of her so you can see it properly.

It reads: Sarah Marshall  Prostitute (not Insolent or bad disposed) Industrious

Well, I’m very glad that great-great-great-granny wasn’t insolent or bad disposed, but a prostitute? She was a thief, certainly, and that’s why she was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. But prostitution wasn’t a transportable offence. So what’s going on?

The story I uncovered is one of cruelty, exploitation and hypocrisy.

The Friendship carried a few passengers who were heading to Australia – or beyond – but by far the largest group on board was the 101 convict women. The officers and crew, of course, were men, and with the six months or so they’d spend cooped up with the women it was inevitable that they’d try their luck, whether they looked for a sweetheart or a quickie in a dark corner.

Henry, Earl Bathurst, Colonial Secretary

Some of the crew would have seen this as a perk of the job. And it’s possible that some of the women would have spent time as sex workers before they were imprisoned, since their bodies were the only commodities they’d have had to trade with.

The office of the Colonial Secretary (the government minister responsible for administering Britain’s colonies) knew that this was likely to happen on ships transporting women convicts. The captain and surgeon-superintendent were expecteded to discourage it.

But the Friendship became infamous because Cosgreave and Armett’s efforts at discouragement were half-hearted. Official records suggest that they were the only ship’s employees who didn’t enjoy ‘a Very Indecent and licentious Intercourse’ with convict women, and when, early in the voyage, they tried to stop the other officers and crew from meeting the women, the reaction made them fear a mutiny.

Armett’s evidence at the Friendship enquiry

In Cosgreave’s words, ‘Ocular demonstration being Considered indespensably necessary for Conviction’ (of ‘prostitution’), he and Captain Armett decided to just… not notice it. Armett even told the officers: ‘Do not let me see it.’

Unfortunately for Cosgreave and Armett, a passenger complained about the – apparently authorised – sexual activity, and an enquiry was called. The Friendship and its senior officers, with their despairing attitude of ‘if I don’t see it it’s not happening’, became notorious.

It could have been worse for Sarah. Cosgreave gave other women even less flattering reports, like ‘A Thief, Prostitute & blasphemous wretch’, ‘Prostitute, Filthy & Lazy’ and one, Jane Brown, ‘A Most Insolent & mutinous Prostitute’.

I’ll come back to Jane later, when I look at how Armett and Cosgreave – unable to stop their officers and crew from disobeying orders – took revenge on the convict women.

Images:
Book extracts: Historical Records of Australia: Governors’ Despatches (Public domain)
Cosgreave’s list: from Colonial Secretary’s papers, via Ancestry
Earl Bathurst: via Wikimedia
Ostriches: by Fwaaldijk via Wikimedia

Previous 200th anniversary posts:
Sarah Marshall arrives on the Friendship II
John Simpson arrives on the Ocean II