Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  This ‘co-operation’ had come about when Hannah, soon determining the nature of the voyage, grew fearful for the health of her children and concluded that the only advantage to them could be brought about by the chief steward.

  Other than in matters of punishment, there are only two other aspects of life on board a convict ship which it is in the power of someone to improve, these being the daily tasks allocated to the prisoners and the nature of the food. Hannah soon ascertained that by greatly increasing the ‘comfort’ of the officers and certain members of the crew, and by enriching the chief steward in the process, both these rewards could be enjoyed by herself and her children.

  It was a relatively easy matter for her to be appointed a monitor in charge of the more profligate and wayward of the female prisoners. The next step was one to which she was most accustomed as a whore mistress and governess of a brothel. She quickly organised a discreet service in which the chief steward acted as go-between and which both the co-operating prisoners and crew soon found to be greatly advantageous. The officers and crew received sexual favours which were arranged with a simple payment to the steward, and the prisoner-prostitutes were allocated pleasant duties and extra rations of food and beverages.

  Hannah needed the surgeon-superintendent to turn a blind eye, so she set about the task of satisfying his desire while allowing him to maintain the utmost celibacy demanded of him in his position as disciplinarian, surgeon, superintendent and as His Majesty’s representative on board ship.

  This Hannah did not with her hips, but with the same ‘Sir Jasper-like’ employment of her skilful lips. In this way the surgeon-superintendent could not be accused of indulging in fornication or of the slightest neglect of his moral duty.

  Hannah had found the key to a more comfortable voyage for herself and her children and was rewarded with special food and a plentiful supply of liquid refreshment. The importance of this arrangement cannot be stressed enough. While the food was monotonous it was deemed to be adequate to the prisoners’ needs. It was liquid refreshment which was especially craved, particularly when the Mermaid lay becalmed on a shining tin-flat sea and the prisoners were possessed of a tropical torpor as they lay gasping below decks.

  It was then that they would implore the steward for a drop of water to cool their parched tongues. But he would answer with an aggrieved shake of the head.

  ‘Can’t do it, allowances have been had.’

  Hannah entered into business with the steward, who saw to it that ‘hospital extras’ were given to her and her four children. Indeed, it must be said, due to the importuning talents of their mother, these brats enjoyed every advantage to be obtained on the voyage. When Ann, Hannah’s daughter, went down with the fever for a period of two weeks she was favoured with the most delicious diet and the tender ministrations of the surgeon-superintendent. She was also given a berth directly below a porthole to catch the clement breezes. Baby Mark, on the sick list for five days with diarrhoea (no doubt from an excess of rich rations), received the same conscientious attention and hospital food, served each day in an adult portion so that it might be shared by his brother and sisters.

  Hannah was the matriarch of the first contingent of her tribe of Solomon to arrive in Van Diemen’s Land on the 27th of June 1828, where they were to prove to possess stubborn and hardy roots. They would do much of both good and evil to shape the destiny of this new land, and would add their ancient faith to a burgeoning new culture.

  A pause is necessary to contemplate a singular phenomenon. In every convict ship which carried Britons, from the First Fleet onwards, there were Jews to share their fate. In this haphazard way Australia was to become the only community of European people in which Jews were present from the moment of inception. For nearly nineteen centuries the Jews had not enjoyed a permanent welcome in European lands. Now, though only a tiny contingent, they were nevertheless a noticeable part of the convict community. Here they were regarded no differently from their fellows, a condition which has continued to exist in this the most egalitarian country on earth, where Jack is thought to be as good as his master, though it should in fairness be added that, at the time Hannah arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, neither Jack nor his master were thought to be much good. Furthermore, the contention still persists, though noticeably among the English, that in the intervening years, nothing much has changed.

  The new Female Factory was not yet fully constructed and Governor Arthur had allowed that a prisoner who had shown exemplary behaviour on the way out should be processed on board ship and then permitted to go directly to the home of a settler as an indentured servant.

  Hannah and her children were consigned immediately to the home of Mr Richard Newman, a police officer of Hobart Town, who greeted her on the dock with the utmost civility as though she were of equal status and not a convict wretch with the additional burden of four extra mouths to feed.

  This was thought most surprising, for Newman was said to be a happily married man of small means, so there could be no thought of concubinage, nor was there any profit to be gained from the labours of the two older children, David and Ann, as they were not convicts and so not obliged to work under his roof.

  It soon became apparent that Hannah did not intend to be burdened with the duties of a servant or suffer the instructions of a master. She did nothing except loll about the cottage, dawdling through the most undemanding tasks. Her quarrelsome ways soon alienated all who came in contact with her. It was often observed that Mrs Newman, a quiet soul, was the real servant and Hannah the mistress of the house. It was never suggested that this had come about because the convict had ensnared her master with her feminine guile, as Mrs Newman was both pretty and of a most cheerful nature and Hannah was not burdened with either of these pleasant characteristics.

  The truth of the matter was rather more simple. Ikey had made arrangements ahead of Hannah’s arrival, and Richard Newman was most handsomely recompensed for the accommodation of Hannah and her children.

  This convenient arrangement may well have been beyond the talents of a man less enterprising than Ikey Solomon, who had heard about Hannah’s arrest in a letter from Abraham Reuban, the son of the actor Reuban Reuban who had been a part of the great bank scam.

  Abraham Reuban’s letter, sent on the first packet bound for New York, arrived in Ikey’s hands not more than twenty-six days after the conclusion of Hannah’s trial. Furthermore, Ikey was kept abreast of the court case in The Times, news of the arrest and subsequent trial of the wife of the notorious Ikey Solomon being much in demand.

  Ikey’s most immediate concern was for the safe in the Whitechapel home. He hastily dispatched a letter to young Reuban by the next ship bound for London and enclosed with it sufficient money for the windows of the Whitechapel house to be bricked up and the doors to be boarded up.

  Ikey was so certain that Hannah had been compromised in the matter of the watch that he was under no illusion that she might be acquitted. He knew she was capable of disobeying his instructions in the matter of purchasing the consignment of watches. But, when it transpired that the one hundred watches had been honestly purchased by Bob Marley, he knew immediately that she would not, under any circumstances, include a watch gained on the cross in the same shipment. Hannah was greedy and wilful but never stupid. She had been set up, either by Bob Marley, or the Law itself, of that much he was entirely convinced. It remained only for him to know whether she would be transported to Van Diemen’s Land or to New South Wales for him to spring into action.

  With the news that Hannah was to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land, Ikey sent a letter by means of a certain Captain Barkman, master of a whaler sailing out of Boston and bound for Sydney, and then directly to Hobart where it would commence upon a whaling expedition in Antarctic waters. In his letter Ikey instructed his eldest son John to take passage with the captain to Hobart Town, and there to negotiate whatever comforts or conditions would be to the benefit of his mother and his brothers and sisters.
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  John Solomon arrived in Hobart Town not two weeks prior to Hannah’s arrival on the Mermaid, and was quickly acquainted with Governor Arthur’s desire to place female prisoners with settlers or emancipists in a manner most favourable to the containment of government expenses. Arthur ran the colony like a smalltown grocer, aware of the cost of every tin, jar and package on his colonial shelves. Even a single night’s detainment in the Female Factory meant a debit in the government books.

  Richard Newman, an emancipist and police officer, with a third child on the way, was easily enough convinced by John Solomon that he should apply for Hannah to be assigned as his servant. The formalities were arranged with the authorities, who sought to look no further than sparing the government the responsibility and expense of accommodating and feeding not one, but five additional mouths.

  John Solomon arranged for a monthly stipend to be paid a year in advance to Richard Newman, and thereafter to be subject to renewal only if Hannah found the arrangements to her personal satisfaction. In paying the money to the policeman he had demanded a receipt, which had been foolishly supplied without thought for what this might mean at a future time.

  It was an unfortunate arrangement from the very first, and the policeman and his long-suffering wife were often to contemplate that all the riches in the world could not make up for the presence of Hannah Solomon and her children under their roof.

  Without Hannah in London, Ikey’s plans for his Broadway business had to be severely curtailed, and he decided that he had but one card left to play. He must immediately go to Van Diemen’s Land and convince Hannah to let him have her half of the combination to the safe. If he could assure her of his constant concern for her welfare while supplying her with every creature comfort, he was confident of an early success. He told himself that his wife would soon come to see the utmost sense in his retrieving their now securely bricked-up fortune so that he might establish a prosperous platform against the time of her release. Perhaps in Canada, the West Coast of America or even the Cape of Good Hope where the English were beginning to settle in some numbers.

  Ikey had made several speculative purchases of land in New York, most of these on the island of Manhattan and in the Bronx. He now set about feverishly turning these back into liquid assets, accepting far less for a quick sale than the true worth of the property.

  Ikey managed finally to sell all his interests with the exception of one half-acre corner block in Manhattan which in a moment of weakness he had leased to the Council of American Jews for the Land of Ararat. This was in order that they might build a hostel and reception centre for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe and the Orient. The buildings were to be of impressive proportions and would be known as the Mordecai Manuel Noah, Ararat Foundation.

  Mordecai Noah was a prominent American Jew who had been the consul to Tunis. During his travels he had discovered the plight of the homeless Jews in the Orient and Europe. He dreamed of seeing Palestine returned as a homeland for the Jews, but as a diplomat he was conscious of the impossibility of achieving this mission among the Arab rulers. His thoughts then turned to the great open spaces of America and upon his return from Algiers in 1825 he purchased a tract of seventeen thousand acres on Grand Island on the Niagara River near the city of Buffalo. This he nominated as the site for the temporary Land of Israel and declared himself Governor and Judge of Israel, issuing a manifesto to Jews all over the world to come and settle in the new land which would guarantee them freedom under the protection of the constitution and laws of the United States of America.

  Whether the Jews of New York saw this new and temporary Israel as a holy mission worthy of their support, or simply regarded it as an effective way to keep the immigration of undesirable European and Oriental Jews out of their city is not known, but they determined to build an impressive reception centre for the ‘New Israelites’ so that they could be expedited as speedily as possible to the Land of Ararat. It was the real estate for this centre which Ikey had agreed to lease to the council for a period of fifty years.

  This was the most generous gesture Ikey had made in his entire life but it gained him no favour in the eyes of his American co-religionists. They felt that it showed his true criminal rapacity, for they maintained that a good Jew would have donated the land to them free of all encumbrances and conditions.

  However, for a man of Ikey’s background and temperament this was simply not possible. He could not bring himself to give away something he owned, despite the fact that he did not give a fig for his heirs and was quite aware that he would be long dead before the land reverted to them. Perhaps, had they agreed to call it The Isaac Solomon Welcoming Centre for the Land of Ararat, or some such fancy name to honour his donation, he might well have relented. Men do strange things to perpetuate their importance. However, this too is unlikely given Ikey’s nature and the fact that his instincts told him the great Mordecai Noah was a dreamer of dreams and not a creator of schemes. In this he proved to be entirely correct for not a sod was ever turned in the Land of Ararat, nor a brick placed upon its welcoming gate.

  Ikey was well supplied with funds, despite having lost considerably on the resale of his land, and he spent a short time stocking up on goods to sell in Hobart Town. He also purchased a large quantity of tobacco from Virginia and cigars from the Cuban Islands. He planned to sell the hard goods as quickly as possible upon his arrival on the island and thereafter to open a tobacconist shop so that he might pose as a legitimate merchant.

  Ikey reasoned that tobacco, like grog, was a commodity which would always be in demand in a society where men greatly outnumbered women. For this reason he did not venture to take with him a quantity of jewellery. He quickly surmised that trinkets and rings and bright shining things would not be so much sought after on an island consisting largely of convicts, emancipists and troopers. Furthermore, those free settlers who had made Van Diemen’s Land their home had done so because their limited resources precluded the purchase of land and influence in the more civilised climes of the West Indies, Canada, America or the Cape of Good Hope.

  Ikey took a ship in New York bound for Rio, where he hoped to join a vessel from England bound for New South Wales. In later years he would talk of this voyage as a moment when he thought the end was nigh. The ship had no sooner passed the island of Trinidad, in the temperate latitudes of the Caribbean, than the mercury in the barometer dropped alarmingly and the vessel became becalmed. Ikey would recall how there was a complete stillness as though the silence impregnated and thickened the air. There was no breath of wind and the sea grew flat as a sheet of rolled metal until not even the single slap of a wave upon the prow of the ship could be heard.

  The captain, no stranger to conditions in these parts, ordered the portholes to be shut, hatches battened down and new rope was brought to secure what cargo remained on deck. Then he furled canvas and waited for the tropical cyclone to hit.

  Slowly a sound, as though the sea itself had given off a soft sigh, grew into an ear-splitting whistle and soon became a ferocious howling. It was as though the forces of chaos had gathered above the ship to plan its total destruction.

  The flat sea rose suddenly to mountainous proportions. An aft stay snapped like a twig though no responding crack was heard to penetrate the wail of the wind. The ship, a cork upon the sea, plunged deep into each troughed wave and then rode towards its crest seventy feet above the prow.

  Huge seas smashed over the vessel so that below decks the wash came up to the waist and all felt they must surely perish, though sickness forbade them contemplating their lives. Besides, they knew with desperate certainty that no God existed with power sufficient to hear their repentant cries above the raging gale.

  On the morning of the third day the cyclone left them and, once again, a benign sun twinkled on the calm blue waters of the South Atlantic. While no single pieces of cargo lashed to the deck remained, the damage to the vessel was surprisingly slight. The repair of several broken stays and rigging was
all that was necessary to allow them to continue the voyage. Ikey arrived in Rio much shaken by the experience though none the worse for wear.

  Of Rio we have spoken before and Ikey, ever active in ‘turning a penny’, spent his time selling the trinkets he had been unable to dispose of before closing his Broadway shop.

  He thought little of the Latinos and even less of the mosquitoes which swarmed in from the surrounding mangrove swamps at night. Ikey had no eye for the watery plumes of splashing fountains, and even the dirt and squalor to be found in the wide avenues was not to his familiar taste. It was therefore with alacrity that he accepted passage, despite some inconvenience of arrangement, on the Coronet, an English ship bound most fortuitously for Van Diemen’s Land.

  Ikey boarded the ship under the name of Sloman, and it must be assumed that he crossed the palm of the captain most generously, for no berth remained on board. Dr William Henry Browne, LL.D., soon to be Hobart’s colonial chaplain, was on deck taking morning prayers when his tiny cabin was forced open on the captain’s orders and a berth added to accommodate the generous Mr Sloman.

  Dr Browne arrived back to find his books and baggage piled in a most haphazard manner to one side of the tiny cabin, and a Hebrew personage ensconced where they had once lain in a well-ordered convenience. The clergyman, who was of a naturally choleric disposition, demanded that Ikey be removed, though without success, whereupon he took great umbrage and showed no grace or charity whatsoever towards his fellow passenger, who meanwhile remained quietly seated with his arms folded and said not a syllable to offend during the cleric’s entire conniption.

  However, Ikey’s mute tolerance was not to last. While he was well accustomed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a long and tedious voyage is best peppered with an ongoing debate, whether this be an acrimonious or a pleasant one. Therefore Ikey, unable to win his cabin partner with affable conversation, amused himself by baiting the learned Dr Browne with matters of the Anglican religion, of which Ikey knew a surprising amount. This vexatious debate, in which Ikey did not fail to score some telling points on the resurrection and the Holy Trinity, did nothing to improve the temper of God’s representative on board. No sooner had the clergyman landed in Hobart than he hastened to Colonel George Arthur with a burden of bitter complaint against the vile Mr Sloman.