by Richard Cox
The Female Factory at Parramatta – magistrates sent recalcitrant women convicts there (National Library of Australia, ref NK/12 47)
Being superintendent of the government labourers in the District of the Hawkesbury involved deciding on the assignment of convicts to private masters sent to the district from Sydney, normally in batches. The register of the Colonial Secretary’s letters shows how frequent this became, as more and more convict transports arrived. Peace in Europe brought unemployment, a surge in crime in Britain and sent an increasing – in fact unmanageable – number of convicts to New South Wales. Commissioner Bigge commented that ‘in perusing the list of persons to whom mechanics have been so assigned, I find them to consist either of the magistrates or of the officers of the government’.25 He might well have enlarged on this. The settler complainants certainly did.
This had not been Macquarie’s intention. At the start of his vice-regal rule there had been a serious shortage of convicts available for assignment. On 24 December 1810, after the transport Indian docked, the Governor’s secretary, John Campbell, wrote to the magistrates saying that it was ‘totally impossible for His Excellency the Governor … to meet the third part of the demand [for assigned convicts]’. On 18 June 1813 he wrote to Samuel Marsden and Cox, as magistrates, ordering that the distribution of stockmen was to be made ‘by ballot and none but industrious and deserving Persons or such as have fair claims to such indulgence shall be admissible to the benefit of the Ballott’.26 Ballots were frequently invoked, being drawn at Windsor for the entire Hawkesbury district, where William evidently considered himself to be an ‘industrious and deserving person’, although less conspicuously so in the early days than later on, when more prisoners arrived.
The Cox family, father and sons, had already received assigned convicts as part of their land grants, starting in 1804. William himself never received large numbers at any one time, acquiring men and some women in dribs and drabs, particularly after the ending of the Napoleonic Wars. Thus on 5 February 1816 William received two from the Ocean and on 18 October that year the Governor directed that three named men be sent to him. On 21 March 1817 he received three of a total of 25 sent from the Sir William Bensley. Whether by coincidence or not, this was three days before he was despatched by Macquarie to explore the Lachlan River from Bathurst. When the number of convicts arriving quadrupled in 1817 and 1818, and Macquarie was hard put to find employment for them, it was more understandable that William got the men he wanted – who were of course primarily ‘mechanics’. On 28 September 1819 Cox again headed the list for Windsor with three men assigned to him.27 By 1819 the number of convicts he employed ‘free of expense to the Crown’ was 86; by 1821 it totalled 104.28 In 1822 the convict indents at the Records Office in the Rocks show he was employing 128.
An analysis has been made of those convict indents of 1822. A sample of one third (actually 48) of the 128 employed was taken. It is not always easy to reconcile names on a later muster with arrival records and with declared job skills. Only 38 could be so identified. Of these, two belonged to government clearing parties working on William’s estate and three were free men or women. Of the 33 remaining, only 13 were servants or labourers, while 20 had skills useful to the estate, including farm men, stable boys, a carter, seamen and a waterman, plus a gamekeeper. Even if an indoor servant and two seamen are excluded, the total of skilled men was still above 50 percent. The wheelwright at Clarendon was a free man, who chose to work for William. So did at least three others, who were free by servitude, plus three ticket of leave men. This route towards emancipation had closely engaged William, ever since the building of the mountain road.
Macquarie defended Cox to Bigge, saying that those ‘who have been useful servants to the government … have surely a prior claim to men who had not been employed in public service’. As recounted earlier, Bigge himself was critical of the rewards given to some men who worked on the mountain road, in at least one case unfairly, and followed this by paying William a very backhanded compliment when he commented on the giving of tickets of leave:
It is to this influence that is attributed the success that Mr Cox has met with in his improvement of the convicts that were placed under him. Men who had been rejected by others … have willingly entered into the services of Mr Cox, and worked for him industriously, under his promises to obtain tickets of leave, or emancipations for them.29
A ticket of leave – the vital pass that enabled a convict to work on his own account
This was indeed a part of the secret of William’s success in dealing with convict employees, though hardly the whole of it: his personality did the rest.
William continued to seek special favours long after Macquarie had left, such as when he asked the new Colonial Secretary, Alexander McLeay, to find him a teacher for his children. On 30 July 1827 he asked for a Robert Turner, belonging to the town gang at Windsor, to be transferred to him for a period ‘as I stand very much in need of a man of his description … he is either a brickmaker or has been accustomed to work in a brickyard’.30 This demand was in spite of the skill being in short supply. Bigge had noted six years before that there were only 17 brickmakers in the entire colony. He commented further that:
Cox got men transferred from working on the roads and obtained services from them gratuitously, which other persons could with difficulty obtain, and must have paid for. Evidence … is very pointed upon this subject and has not been denied by Mr Cox.31
Not surprisingly, William’s skilled workforce aroused envy. John Blaxland was asked by Bigge: ‘Do you know any other persons who have succeeded in obtaining mechanics?’ He replied: ‘I have heard that Mr Cox of Clarendon, Mr Fitzgerald … at Windsor, Mr Meehan, Mr Wentworth’. Blaxland complained that of four he received himself from the Three Bees two were ruptured, one lame and the other incapacitated by old age.32 Samuel Marsden told Bigge that convicts came already assigned to individuals, including ‘To Mr Cox, several’, in spite of having benefited himself. 33 A. G. L. Shaw comments that ‘Only about two dozen “superior settlers” could employ mechanics full time … Marsden had ten, Macarthur was “reasonably satisfied” and so were Cox and D’Arcy Wentworth, though Jamison, Bayly, Blaxland, Howe and Dr Townsend had been aggrieved’.34 D’Arcy Wentworth was similarly accused of misusing his position as a magistrate. Neither side fooled Commissioner Bigge.
At the same time, William was being kept extremely busy at Bathurst, having become a fully accredited expert on expeditions. A short summary of the Colonial Secretary’s correspondence gives an idea of what he was involved in, both at Bathurst and on the Cumberland Plain. In 1816 he constructed a new ‘Western Road’ from Parramatta to Emu Ford, improving access to the mountain road, where he erected new buildings at Springwood. He dealt with an outbreak of hostilities between Aborigines and settlers. He supplied bricks for the new church at Windsor, one of the colony’s most substantial and architecturally notable buildings. On the other side of the mountains he was administering and provisioning government road workers at Bathurst, an activity which continued in 1817.
In March 1817 William was sent by Macquarie to explore the Lachlan River, as already mentioned, and thereafter was responsible over a period of a year for equipping the surveyor John Oxley’s expeditions. It was all very well ordering Mr Cox on 14 June 1817 to have articles such as ‘8 gallons of spirits, 40 lbs sugar, 4 lbs tea, 6 cotton shirts … conveyed to the Depot on the river Lachlan’ for Oxley’s ‘Journey of Discovery’.35 But William had very limited resources and the demands must have seemed incessant. On 29 October 1817 the Colonial Secretary gave more instructions to the Commissary to send stores for ‘the intended expedition to trace the course of the Macquarie river in the country west of the Blue Mountains’. These were for 10 persons, the stores to be sent to Parramatta to be delivered to Mr Cox at Clarendon, ‘he having undertaken to forward them to Bathurst for the Party’.36 Oxley was awarded £200 for this exploration.
The next year the surveyor
was asked to try again, with an expedition which began on 4 June 1818. Macquarie reported to Bathurst that ‘If Mr Oxley and his former Companions can be again induced to embark in it [following the course of the Macquarie River] I feel it will afford the best hopes of a satisfactory result’. The Governor thought the river might lead to a great inland sea. This inevitably involved William in organizing the equipment and supplies. The deputy commissary general, Mr D. Allan, was told to send rations for 15 persons for 24 weeks – for example, 2000 pounds of flour, 90 pounds of tea and equipment including a tent, 4 frying pans, 15 suits of slop clothing and 15 pairs of blankets. These were to be ‘packed up and sent off as soon as possible … to be forwarded from thence [Parramatta] by Mr Cox’. On 15 April Allan was told to send more articles ‘being immediately required’ for Mr Oxley’s expedition. Responsibility for the completion of such constantly repeated, very detailed, orders rested with William at a time when Bathurst was only a tiny settlement offering very few facilities. This time Oxley took 12 men, two boats and 18 horses. The horses were important, which explains William’s problems over horses generally, described below. At the same time, in 1817 William himself was preparing to explore the Macquarie River further. Even for a man of William’s organizational ability, this must have been a strain. Obviously he had assistance from supervisors, notably Lewis, who was now on the government payroll. All these demands on his time must have been exhausting and that he carried them out puts the subsequent convicts’ complaints against him in perspective as petty and often malign.
Such constant activity continued until his commission as commandant was revoked by Macquarie on 23 August 1819. The complaints only surfaced more than a year later, on 1 December 1820, when William was summoned peremptorily by Bigge to answer questions about the execution of the Bathurst road, about buildings at Bathurst, the employment of government men and the conveyance of stores to Bathurst ‘by you and one Richard Lewis’, also the receipt of government stock from the public herds. Lewis had been a superintendent in building the Blue Mountains road and in 1815 had been appointed by the Governor ‘to be a Superintendent in the new discovered country to the westward of the Blue Mountains, under the orders of William Cox Esq, with a salary of fifty pounds sterling per annum and the usual indulgences’.37 Bigge seems to be unaware that Lewis held an official post. He was not always as well informed as his assistants might have kept him. Lastly he cited ‘the promises made by you to several convicts of obtaining tickets of leave … in consideration of certain services performed’.38
The origin of these accusations was a short letter to Bigge, dated 2 August 1820, from Charles Frazer, the Colonial Botanist, who had visited Bathurst when William was superintendent in 1818.39 He accused Cox of having misused his position as commandant at Bathurst, telling Bigge that, when superintending the Bathurst road, Cox had procured an extravagant number of pardons and had defrauded the government by misappropriating government material and labour.40 In fact William, even if he had used government facilities himself, had usually been fairly meticulous in accounting for what he had done. Thus in a three page letter to Macquarie on July 1818 on the state of the settlement, he reported in his neat carefully spaced writing, on the arrival at Latt 31.49.40 Long 147.52.13 of Oxley’s party. ‘I immediately made preparations for leaving Bathurst, having previously had inventories taken, horses tools etc.’ He gave details of horses, cash receipts books and rations, also enclosing ‘for Your Excellency’s perusal’ a list of 16 convicts with ‘their claims for remission of sentence’ and went on to explain the state of crops and the need ‘to repair the [mountain] road from the 16th mile to the 21st’.41
This sort of evidence of William’s stewardship is absent from a book on the evidence to the Bigge reports by John Ritchie, in a chapter headed ‘Roguery’ and featuring ‘Conduct of William Cox’. His collection of convicts’ complaints is editorially heavily weighted against William, despite the author saying in an introduction: ‘Paternal, yet politically radical, Cox earned the reputation of being a humane employer and magistrate’. Ritchie then recites the allegations.42 Quite apart from its having taken Frazer two years to draw attention to the complaints, all his accusations were hearsay and six out of eight do not stand up to examination, although two were potentially serious. Thus William Price’s evidence states, ‘I have never received any payment from Mr Cox since I got my Ticket of Leave, but I was in debt to him’. Evidently William had advanced him money, hardly a condemnation. Patrick Hanigaddy had wanted William to sign a petition to the Governor for land, but William had refused saying he had too many petitions. Elijah Cheetham was contesting methods of payment by another man accused by Frazer, named Fitzgerald, which were totally irrelevant.
The most bizarre accusation was the complaint of Richard Kippas. He was a life prisoner who worked for William, who he said ‘allows me £40 Per Annum. He pays me in Property and in money. I now work at Wheelwright’s business and received my emancipation six months ago.’ The pay was almost triple the official rate of £14 a year, but Kippas said he was annoyed that William had not given him a pass, which he had given to several others.43 Earlier he had most unusually not been punished after an escape attempt and went to work for William at Bathurst. In other words, he had of his own free will continued to work for William after achieving emancipation. The complaint by John Emblett, William’s groom, was similarly farcical. He had been recommended for liberty by William, but granted first a ticket and then emancipation by the Governor, not by Cox.
Thomas Smith’s complaint was one about which Ritchie does not appear to have checked the relevant government orders, which illustrate how the system worked at Bathurst. Smith had worked for William in 1816 and in 1817 with bullock carts and told Bigge, ‘I don’t know whether they belonged to him or to the Government’. But on 3 February 1816 Mr Rowland Hassall, the commissary superintendent at Bathurst, had been instructed that ‘William Cox Esq having undertaken to find conveyance for the Provisions and stores required on the part of Government at Bathurst’, he should provide William with ‘ten strong young bullocks [as working oxen] for such conveyance of stores and provisions’ in part payment.44 Again, on 25 October 1817 and in February 1818 the Colonial Secretary’s records show William being issued with oxen in ‘part payment for the carriage of government stores and provisions to Bathurst’.45 Smith’s real grudge was against Macquarie. He said that William had given him a pass and that ‘on presenting it to the Governor he [Macquarie] tore it, saying it was of no use and that he would not have people going about the country with a pass’.46 This sounds unlikely, even though Macquarie could be both imperious and impetuous. Overall, it is understandable that William complained so bitterly to Bigge about labouring ‘amidst a den of thieves and a nest of hornets’.
The only serious accusations came from Blake and Byrne, of which Macquarie testified he had received no complaint, as explained below. Both men nourished a grievance against William because he had accused them of poisoning government horses – of which they had been acquitted, the horses being considered to have ‘died of poor condition’.47 This was in the context of providing horses for Oxley’s expeditions. William had been under pressure for many weeks in 1818 over provisioning Oxley’s expedition into the mountains and horses were in short supply, although the two horses were not intended for the surveyor. William told Bigge that ‘they were bought for Govt to work a two horse cart at Bathurst’. He remained ‘convinced in my own mind that these two men [Blake and Burne] were the cause of the death of the two horses’.48
Blake also told Bigge that a stockyard of two acres had been erected by William, who had sold it and a brick hut to the government, the hut having been built by a government employee named Brown. This was presumably the one at Crooked Corner. William was alleged to have used the stockyard for his own sheep. He also had a house, sheepyards and stockyards built by government men. Then again, Cox and Lewis had used government horses and bullocks to draw a cart to bring provisions from
Springwood to Bathurst ‘to save their own’. In reality they were paid for the hire of the cart with cattle from the government herds and William had been ordered to build the stockyards, for which he was paid £49 17s 6d. 49
In total Bigge gave William the evidence of 33 people to read. His reactions to some of it were intense. He pointed to the Bathurst Book of Expenditure, which tended ‘to refute the Ill grounded complaints that are made by a Sett of designing and malicious men, thereby to injure me because as a magistrate I have been obliged to keep a strict watch over their Conduct and punish it when required’. He considered that ‘as a free man James Blackman [the Lawsons’ supervisor] stands pre-eminent in the mis-statements … instigator of the others’. When William wrote again to Bigge on 20 January 1821 he was unusually vehement, reminding the Commissioner of his many years service as magistrate and the efforts he had made for the government.50 He followed this up with a vigorous rebuttal of various convicts’ accusations that he abused his office when superintendent of Bathurst, saying, as quoted in the Foreword: ‘There is not a magistrate in the Colony who has given as much of his time to the business of the Crown & the public these ten years past as myself’.51