38. “The Brisbane River 100 Years Ago, by an Old Brisbaneite,” Brisbane Courier, Mar. 22, 1930, cit. in J. G. Steele, Brisbane Town in Convict Days, 1824–1842, p. 28.
39. Brisbane to Bathurst, HRA xi:604.
40. Miller to Balfour, CSO 1/371/8476.
41. Ibid.
42. Charles Bateson, Patrick Logan, Tyrant of Brisbane Town, p. 52.
43. W[illiam] R[oss], The Fell Tyrant; or the Suffering Convict: in places a tendentious and biassed diatribe, although its bias, as from a former convict, is understandable. It is verifiably accurate on certain matters of routine and convict discipline, but apt to invent when it comes to names and cases. Thus Ross asserts, at one point that a prisoner named Geary “starved to death in his cell” when in fact he died of dropsy in hospital. Ross was a Special, serving time for embezzlement, and was Logan’s clerk at Moreton Bay. He did not have to labor and was apparently not flogged.
44. Logan to Col. Sec. Macleay, Apr. 6, 1827, cit. in Steele, Brisbane Town, p. 72.
45. Darling’s orders to Logan: HRA xv:104–16. Summary power over free settlers: ibid., clause 35.
46. Bateson, Patrick Logan, p. 96. Douglas Gordon, “Sickness and Death at the Moreton Bay Convict Settlement,” p. 473.
47. Ross, Fell Tyrant, p. 20.
48. J. J. Knight, In the Early Days (1895), cit. in Steele, Brisbane Town, p. 181.
49. Bateson, Patrick Logan, pp. 81–82. In 1827 Macleay wrote to Logan enclosing a copy of a report on Moreton Bay discipline by the acting attorney-general, William Moore, and instructed him to “state both whether the prisoners are actually worked constantly in irons, as supposed by Mr. Moore, and whether hard labour may not advantageously be imposed instead of the severe corporal punishments of which he takes notice.”
50. Gordon, “Sickness and Death,” p. 474.
51. Asst. Surgeon J. F. Murray to Anna Bunn, NSWA 4/1966. One of Spicer’s recorded efforts was to tell the kitchen overseer to replace the worn-out copper bottoms of the settlement cauldrons with wood. “Sir,” the mystified overseer replied, “the wood will catch fire, and the bottoms be immediately burned out, and the prisoners’ victuals will fall into the fire.” “Then, sir,” Spicer is said to have told him, “let the carpenters make fresh bottoms every day, for there is plenty of wood in the settlement.” (Ross, Fell Tyrant, pp. 24–25.)
52. Bateson, Patrick Logan, p. 100.
53. Thus at Glendon in the Hunter River Valley an Aborigine was shot while in custody of the mounted police, “a very singularly formed man” nicknamed Black Cato, whom “it took four men to hold.” His body “was hung up by the Men on the Farm as a terror to the other Blacks,” just as one would nail a dead dingo to a tree. Enclosure 3 in Darling to Bathurst, Oct. 6, 1826, HRA xii:625–26.
54. “Singularly prone to espionage” E. S. Hall, Monitor, Oct. 17, 1829. “Prostituting his authority”: E. S. Hall to Murray, May 1830, Enclosure 1 in Darling to Murray, HRA xv:628ff.
55. Darling to Bathurst, Apr. 18, 1827, HRA xiii:262–63.
56. Affidavit of Surgeon Henry Cowper, NSWA 4/2081.
57. Affidavit of Rev Vincent, Executive Council Minutes, NSWA 4/1516.
58. Steele, Brisbane Town, p. 150.
59. Lord Charles Grey, November 1830, cit. in E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 202.
60. Sydney Gazette, Oct. 22, 1831.
61. Allan Cunningham to SC 1832, Minutes, p. 40.
62. John Graham, petition in NSWA 4/2325:4. Graham helped rescue one of the minor celebrities of colonial Australian history, Mrs. Eliza Frazer, from a tribe of Aborigines near Lake Cootharaba, north of Moreton Bay. She was among the survivors of the Stirling Castle, wrecked on Eliza Reef, some 150 miles northeast of Gladstone, in May 1836. Its castaways (including its master, Captain Fraser) had reached Macleay’s Island (since renamed Fraser Island) in a longboat and a pinnace before they were seized by local tribesmen. Captain Fraser and others were killed. In August a search party from Moreton Bay, led by Lieutenant Otter and guided by Graham, located the naked and by now partly deranged widow, “dreadfully debilitated and crippled from the sufferings she had undergone” at the hands of the natives. The ordeal of Mrs. Fraser became the subject of a number of books and accounts, from John Curtis’s Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle, 1838, to Patrick White’s novel A Fringe of Leaves. It was also the basis of two well-known series of paintings (1947, 1957) by the Australian artist Sidney Nolan. The best account of the wreck of the Stirling Castle and its aftermath is Michael Alexander, Mrs. Fraser on the Fatal Shore (London, 1971).
63. Foster Fyans, “Memoirs,” Ms., pp. 314–15 (p. 146 in the recently published edition, Memoirs, 1790–1870, ed. P. L. Brown). See Chapter 13, note 20, below, for a brief account of Fyans.
64. Constance Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences (1904), cit. in Steele, Brisbane Town, p. 247. Treadwheels had been in use in English prisons since 1818; the idea had been given to the poor by the engineer and builder Samuel Cubitt, who gave the rich (among other things) the luxurious and solid architecture of Belgravia. It was a parody of labor: utterly useless work which produced nothing, merely “grinding air” as prisoners put it. Never had the alienation of producer from product been so complete—and the authorities did not need a Marx or an Engels to tell them what a torment of anomie this could inflict on the “workers.” Sydney Smith hailed the treadwheel as a wonderful and salutary invention, and one judge called it “the most tiresome, distressing, exemplary punishment that has ever been contrived by human ingenuity.” See Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850, pp. 177–78.
65. Bathurst to Brisbane, HRA xi:322. “Very severe sentence”: Hunter to SC 1812, Appendix 1, Minutes, p. 21.
66. Brisbane to Horton, HRA xi:552–54; to Bathurst, HRA xi:604; to Bathurst, HRA xi:553.
67. Bathurst to Darling, HRA xiii:36.
68. Darling to Undersecretary Hay, Feb. 11, 1827, HRA xii.105.
69. Fyans, “Memoirs,” pp. 213–14 (published edition, p. 92).
70. Ibid.
71. Darling to Hay, HRA xii:105.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Norfolk Island
1. Monitor, Feb. 10, 1829.
2. Morisset praised by Macquarie: Lachlan Macquarie, Journal, Nov. 17, 1821, p. 50, A785, ML. Morisset as opponent of hanging: Sydney Gazette, Nov. 20, 1827.
3. Brisbane Papers, Box 4, Ms. 4036, NLA, Canberra.
4. “Memoir of Norfolk Island,” Frayne’s undated Ms., catalogued in the ML as “Anonymous Convict Narrative,” is at p. 427 of miscellaneous papers bound in the back of NSW Col. Sec. Papers, vol. 1, Ms. 681. It was clearly written some time after the events described, a memoir (not a diary) probably composed during the Norfolk Island administration of Captain Maconochie (1840–44), who is known to have encouraged other convicts including Frayne’s friend Thomas Cook to set down their recollections of the Old System—thus supplying the only first-hand accounts of the Norfolk Island regime from the convicts’ viewpoint. The transcription is mine.
5. W. S. Coke, Apr. 1826 from Rio, letter 20, D1881, DRO.
6. LF, p. 1.
7. Cook EL, p. 100.
8. James Lawrence, “Memoir,” Ms.
9. LF, p. 3.
10. Ibid., pp. 20–21.
11. Ibid., p. 15.
12. Ibid., p. 16.
13. Ibid., pp. 35–37.
14. Ibid., pp. 38–39.
15. Ibid., p. 40.
16. Ibid., p. 51.
17. John Holyard to Rev. J. Reddell, Feb. 4, 1834, in Reddell Papers, A423, p. 91, ML.
18. LF, p. 19.
19. William Ullathorne, Catholic Mission, p. 41.
20. Foster Fyans (1790–1870), an Irish Anglican from Dublin, was a seasoned career officer by the time he came to Norfolk Island. He had enlisted in the 67th Regiment in 1810 and served at Cadiz and in the Peninsular War for seven years. As soon as he returned to England he re-embarked, with the 1st Battalion, for India,
of its thousand men only 130 survived the ravages of cholera and fighting. He bought his captaincy, and 1827 found him in England again; but like many another “Empire hand,” he could not summon up the will to live there. He transferred to the 20th Regiment and in 1833 moved from Mauritius to Sydney, where he joined the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment and was sent to Norfolk Island as captain of the guard under Morisset. After his repression of the prisoners’ revolt there, he was posted fas commandant) to Moreton Bay.
When the 4th K.O. sailed for India in 1837, Fyans sold his commission and remained in Australia, settling in the Port Phillip district as the police magistrate of Geelong. In 1840 he was made commissioner of crown lands for Portland Bay, riding six thousand miles a year on his tours of inspection of licensed runs. He built up his own cattle-run and married in 1843. Fyans retired from government service ten years later. Up to then his hobby had been carpentry and wood-turning; it was said to be his eccentric fancy to hide jewels, purchased or looted in India, in secret compartments in the furniture he made, and a desk constructed by Fyans and sold at a country auction in the 1940s for £7 did in fact yield diamonds worth £4,000. But on retirement he turned to write his memoirs, whose 500-page manuscript reposes in the Latrobe Library, Melbourne. Rambling, unselfconscious and full of salty humor, it is a prime source on penal Australia. All quotations have been checked against these edited memoirs (1986, ed. P. L. Brown) but were taken from a typescript copy generously furnished by the Army Museums Ogilby Trust, Connaught Barracks, Aldershot. On Fyans, see also entry in ADB (vol. 1, pp. 422–24), S. Sayers, “Captain Foster Fyans of Portland Bay District,” Victorian Historical Magazine, vol. 40, nos. 1–2, pp. 45–66.
21. Jewish prisoners on Norfolk Island were few. In 1841, when the convict population stood at 1,400, only 12 Jews were counted. One may tentatively guess that the man in question was Israel Levey, sentenced to 7 years on Norfolk Island in 1829 and appointed a convict overseer there in September 1832, which would place the suicide pact earlier in that year. Levey played a major role as an informer and witness after the convict mutiny of 1834, and was highly commended by Fyans to the Colonial Secretary for his “zeal.” This was the kind of man whom other convicts would say was “not to be trusted.”
22. Fyans, “Reminiscences,” pp. 233–35.
23. Bourke to Stanley, Nov. 30, 1833, HRA xvii:276–77.
24. LF, p. 65.
25. Morisset to Undersecretary R. W. Hay, Morisset Letters, Ms. AM34, ML, Sydney.
26. On Knatchbull, see ADB entry (vol. 2, p. 66), the colonial secretary’s correspondence on Norfolk Island for 1833–35, NSWA 4/2244:2, Executive Council Minutes for 1834, NSWA 4/1441 and 1443; Colin Roderick, John Knatchbull, from Quarterdeck to Gallows; and Anon., A Memoir of Knatchbull, the Murderer of Mrs. Jamieson, Comprising an Account of his English and Colonial History (Sydney, 1844).
27. Knatchbull, deposition in NI Mutiny Papers, 1834, NSWA 2/8291.
28. John Jackson, deposition in NI Mutiny Papers, NSWA 2/8291.
29. James Pearson in NI Mutiny Papers, NSWA 2/8291, p. 223.
30. Narrative reconstructed from depositions of James Pearson, Elijah Sallis, William Phipps, James Oppenshaw, Charles Russell and William Parham in NI Mutiny Papers.
31. Deposition of James Fitzgerald, ibid.
32. Fyans to Col. Sec. McLeay, Feb. 16, 1834, NI Mutiny Papers, NSWA 4/1441.
33. Cook EL, pp. 128–29.
34. All the mutiny figures in Fyans’s “Reminiscences” are exaggerated He gave 500 (not 120) for the first attack on the jail gang guard; and 300 for the strength of the mutineers at Longridge, whereas his report to McLeay written within a month of the mutiny put it between 60 and 80. He was writing his memoir many years later, in retirement: Heroic exploits grow with age.
35. Cook EL, pp. 134–35.
36. Cook EL, pp. 130–31. This form of torture was also referred to by Rev. T. Sharpe, who was chaplain on Norfolk Island from 1837 to 1841, hence not a witness to the mutiny: Sharpe Papers, 27 ff., A1502, ML, Sydney.
37. Fyans to Col. Sec. McLeay, Feb. 20, 1834, NI Mutiny Papers, NSWA 4/1441. “Fatal Ball”: Cook EL, p. 133.
38. Chambers to Col. Sec. McLeay, Aug. 20, 1834, NSWA 4/2245.
39. Sir William W. Burton, The State of Religion and Education in New South Wales, pp. 152–54.
40. Chambers to McLeay, Aug. 30, 1834, CSO 34/6236, NSWA 4/2245.
41. Burton, Religion and Education, p. 154.
42. Ullathorne, Catholic Mission, passim and esp. pp. 40–45.
43. Ibid., p. 37.
44. On the last years of Morisset, see Petition of Emily Morisset to Sir Charles Fitzroy, Governor of NSW, Sept. 13, 1852, Ms. at Am. 34, Morisset Papers, ML.
45. Joseph Anderson, Recollections of a Peninsula Veteran (London, 1913).
46. Cook EL, p. 137.
47. T. Sharpe, “Letter Book,” Ms. A1502 in ML, also cit. in Phillip Cox and Wesley Stacey, Building Norfolk Island, p. 24.
48. James Backhouse, A Visit to the Australian Colonies, p. 257. It was difficult to persuade the skeptical authorities on Norfolk Island of the genuineness of one’s injuries. In January 1834 (NSWA) the convict John Boyd petitioned for release from his chains and his life sentence: “Being totally deprived of sight … I most humbly intreat you to look on me with an eye of Mercy … the remainder of my life, shall be spent in sorrow for violating the Laws of the Land …” This heartrending plea did not impress Fyans, who minuted on the back: “From all I can learn of this person, he has malingered with his eyes—and has anything but a good Character.”
49. LF, pp. 25–26.
50. Ibid., p. 26.
51. Ullathorne, Catholic Mission, p. 40.
52. Ibid.
53. Prisoner of “great recklessness”: Backhouse, Australian Colonies, p. 266. “Their passions”: Ullathorne, Catholic Mission, p. 41.
54. Sydney Smith, cit. in Sheldon Glueck, Foreword to Sir John Vincent Barry, Alexander Maconochie of Norfolk Island, p. viii.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Toward Abolition
1. John West, The History of Tasmania, part 4, sect. 1, pp. 146–47.
2. Lady Franklin to Mrs. Simpkinson, Dec. 10, 1841, in George Mackaness, Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin, vol. 2, p. 36.
3. T. J. Lemprière, Diary at Port Arthur, Mar. 26, 1837, p. 24.
4. Montagu to Arthur, Dec. 9, 1837, cit. in Shaw CC, p. 269.
5. Diary of G.W.T.B. Boyes, June 11, 1846, cit. in Sir John V. Barry, Alexander Maconochie of Norfolk Island, p. 30.
6. Maconochie to Admiral Sir George Back, cit. in Barry, Maconochie, p. 28.
7. Alexander Maconochie, Report on the State of Prison Discipline in Van Diemen’s Land.
8. Maconochie to Back, Mar. 14, 1839 [?], cit. in Barry, Maconochie, p. 52.
9. Maconochie, Report.
10. Jane Franklin to Mrs. Simpkinson, Dec. 26, 1839, cit. in Barry, Maconochie, p. 58.
11. Mrs. Maconochie to Back, Mar. 11, 1839, cit. in Barry, ibid.
12. Maconochie to Washington, May 29, 1839.
13. On Apr. 8, 1837, the “philosophic Radical” William Molesworth, Member for East Cornwall, rose in the Commons to propose a select committee of inquiry into transportation. Fifteen members were appointed, representing a fair cross-section of political views from Tories to Radicals, with Molesworth as chairman. The committee held, in all, thirty-eight meetings between its first session on Apr. 10, 1837 and its last on Aug. 3, 1838. It examined twenty-three witnesses; the most extensive testimony was given by Sir Francis Forbes, James Mudie, James Macarthur, J. D. Lang, Colonel George Arthur and the Rev. William Ullathorne. The voluminous Report of the Molesworth Committee, with minutes of testimony and appendices was published in two parts: PP vol. xix, no. 518, 1837, pp. 5–317, cited as SC 1837–38 (1), and PP vol. 22, 1837–38, pp. 1–139, cited as SC 1837–38 (ii).
14. Correspondence between Russell and the Commissioners for the Reform of the Criminal Law, The Times (London), Apr.
1, 1837, cit. in John Ritchie, “Towards Ending an Unclean Thing,” p. 158.
15. Ritchie, “Towards Ending,” pp. 159–60.
16. Extract from Molesworth’s notes on Report of SC 1837–38 (11), cit. in Sir William W. Burton, “State of Society and State of Crime in New South Wales,” Colonial Magazine, vol. 1.
17. William Ullathorne, Autobiography, pp. 138–39.
18. See SC 1837–38 (11), Report, p. viii, and Appendix, p. 77.
19. Ibid., p. xxi.
20. Ibid., pp. xxiv—vi.
21. NSW V & P, July 17, 1838.
22. On the changing perception of colonial crime in the wake of the Molesworth Report and the attitudes of “respectables,” see Michael Sturma, Vice in a Vicious Society, pp. 27–30.
23. Gipps to Glenelg, Mar. 29, 1839, HRA xx:75.
24. SC 1837–38 (ii), Report, p. xliv.
25. Maconochie, encl. 7 in Gipps to Russell, Feb. 25, 1840, HRA xx:544.
26. Maconochie, encl. 2 in Gipps to Russell, HRA xx:532–33.
27. Maconochie, encl. 3 in Gipps to Russell, HRA xx:533–34.
28. Alexander Maconochie, Norfolk Island, p. 8. West, Tasmania, vol. 2, p. 283.
29. Cook EL, pp. 192–93.
30. Ibid.
31. James Lawrence, “Memoir,” Ms.
32. Gipps to Russell, June 27, 1840, HRA xx:689.
33. Russell to Gipps, Sept. 10, 1840, Con. Disc. 4, 1846, p. 29.
34. Russell to Gipps, Nov. 12, 1840 (in response to Gipps-Russell, June 27, 1840), Con Disc. 4, 1846, pp. 29–30.
35. Maconochie to Gipps, encl. 4 in Gipps to Russell, Feb. 25, 1840, HRA xx:535.
36. E. Deas Thomson (Col. Sec. Off., Sydney) to Maconochie, Aug. 20, 1841, Con. Disc. 4, 1846, p. 29.
37. Gipps to Russell, Aug. 27, 1841, Con. Disc, 4, 1846, p. 27.
38. Maconochie to Gipps, re Mark & Ticket System, June 2, 1842.
39. Encl. 1 in Gipps to Stanley, Aug. 15, 1842, Con. Disc. 4, 1846, p. 59.
40. Gipps to Stanley, Aug. 15, 1842. HRA xxii:209.
41. Maconochie to Gipps, Dec. 31, 1841, encl. 1 in Gipps to Stanley, Con. Disc. 4, 1846, p. 38.
42. Thomson to Maconochie, Jul. 29, 1842, Con. Disc. 4, 1846, p. 55.
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