by Harry Beaves
The Hammonds and their fellow passengers endured all this for more than four months. From the very beginning the passengers had to lend a hand and look after each other. The women would help with things like health matters, teaching the children, sewing and laundry, while the men would lend a hand to the crew. Strong friendships were forged in such adversity and the passengers would have been a functioning community before they set foot in their new home. It is hardly surprising that Annie White (Mary Hammond’s daughter with her first husband) subsequently married Joseph Bartlett as both families had travelled out aboard the Olympus.
If the arduous voyage had put steel into the backbones of the emigrants, then they were to need it when they went ashore as, on arrival, things were not as they had been promised. No houses had been built and for the first few months many lived in tents or native Maori shelters. The colony was slow to become established. Today we would say the New Zealand Company’s business plan was unsound partly through incompetence and bad planning, partly as a result of unforeseen circumstances and partly through plain dishonesty. They had not sold sufficient plots of land to support the plan and many of the plots sold had been bought by speculators with no intention of ever settling in the country. As a result there were too few managers, administrators and potential employers and too many artisans and labourers. Whilst most of the land was good, much of it could not be developed, with some parcels boggy, some steep and rocky or otherwise unusable. The Company urgently needed more land and they dishonestly began to sell plots to which they had no legal ownership. Things reached a crisis in 1843 when a survey party from the Company in the Wairau area were confronted by a group of Maori. They said the Company had no right to the land and the ensuing incident left several Maori and most of the survey party dead. A subsequent inquiry cleared the Maori of any wrongdoing and declared the land to belong to them. David Hammond was involved with pegging out the plots in the settlement with John Wallis Barnicoat, a surveyor employed by the New Zealand Company, and had been in the Wairau, but by a fortunate twist of fate he was sent back to Nelson shortly before the massacre occurred.
Life in Nelson was now unsafe with the threat from the Maori. The people were hungry and poor and there was little that they could do to improve their lot. As many as twenty per cent of the original settlers are said to have moved on, some to the gold fields of Australia. The situation was so serious that for some years emigration to Nelson was suspended. But the Hammonds stuck it out. They had already experienced the frying pan and the fire and perhaps they could see the true potential that life in New Zealand might one day offer. It took considerable courage and fortitude, but they persevered, helped no doubt by a strong faith. The Hammonds were baptised and married in the Anglican Church, but became Methodists. This is not surprising as many of the Non-Conformist religious movements grew up alongside the workers’ movements in nineteenth-century Britain. There are many stories, obituaries and minor newspaper reports that illustrate the involvement of many of the family members with the Chapel. Significantly, David’s son, Thomas Godfrey Hammond (1846–1926) established a remarkable reputation as a Methodist Minister working with the Maori and occupies an important place in New Zealand history. Today, the involvement of William Hammond (1794–1866) with the Nelson Temperance Movement might be seen as mildly amusing!
The three Hammond brothers farmed the land, while Edward Laney and his stepdaughter Annie White (1833–1909) set up as bakers and confectioners. Slowly things improved and they discovered they were able to support their families in a far healthier environment than they had left behind. Moreover, freed from the shackles of the employment system in England they were able to fulfil dreams of independence through land ownership and to benefit more directly from the fruits of their own labours. The first generation did not achieve great fame or fortune, but they were among the pioneers who steadfastly laid the foundations for the modern New Zealand.
Back in England, Joseph Hammond (1818–1866) and his family were still living in Spitalfields. In the 1851 census Joseph is listed as a blacking maker (boot polish) with ditto marks under each family member. Charles Dickens, as a boy aged between eight and twelve years, was sent to work at a blacking factory. A biographer writes:
Then followed the most bitter experience in the life of Charles Dickens. The work was menial in the extreme and the pay was only a few shillings a week… The blacking factory was a crazy, tumble-down old house, overrun with rats. In later life Dickens recalled with painful emotion its wainscoted rooms, with its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times.
At the end of Joseph Hammond’s family’s entry in the 1851 census are the words ‘all employed’. This included little Rose Hammond – working in a blacking factory at the age of six!
No doubt Joseph wrote to his siblings in New Zealand. Perhaps they urged caution, perhaps the suspension of emigration to Nelson caused him to remain in London. Either way, Joseph and his family did not set sail until 14th August 1851 when they embarked on the Lord William Bentinck, arriving in Auckland on 11th December 1851.
Elizabeth (Hammond) Ardley (1819–1907) and Samuel Ardley (1820–1904) were also still living in London. Like Joseph Hammond, her reasons for delaying her emigration are not clear, nor is it known why they chose to go to Australia. However, there is an interesting story that throws some light on the matter. Samuel Ardley’s elder brother, John Ardley (1805–46) had been transported for burglary while two younger brothers, Robert Ardley (1812–57) and William Ardley (1818–86) were also transported, aged seventeen and thirteen (!), for the seemingly trivial offence of stealing two donkeys. When John Ardley was transported his son William Ardley (1826–1908) went to live with Betsy and Samuel Ardley and is shown with them in the 1841 census. John Ardley’s daughter Eliza Ardley (1825–1918) went to live with his sister Frances Ardley (1811–88) who was married to William Sheppard (1857).
Frances (Ardley) Sheppard and William Sheppard were witnesses to the marriage of Elizabeth Hammond to Samuel Ardley so probably talked about the prospects in Australia and New Zealand. In 1842 Francis and William Sheppard emigrated to New Zealand aboard the Indus, taking with them Eliza Ardley. In 1848 the three sailed from New Zealand to Australia aboard the Brightman to join Frances (Ardley) Sheppard’s convict brothers, probably influenced by the problems in the Nelson Settlement.
Betsy (Hammond) and Samuel Ardley made the decision to join the Ardleys in Australia rather than the Hammonds in New Zealand and their family arrived in Tasmania on 27th April 1853 aboard the Northumberland. They subsequently settled in the state of Victoria along with a number of Ardley relatives, leaving William Ardley (1826–1908) behind in England. He married Emma Smith (1829–1920) and they emigrated to Australia in 1857 on the Admiral Boxer.
Cousins of Uriel Hammond emigrated to other parts of the New World, notably Utah in the USA, where there is a significant branch of the family tree. Again their strong Christian outlook on life is very significant, this time in the Mormon Church.
What of those who did not emigrate? The fate of Uriel and Henry has been described above. After Uriel’s death in 1835 his wife Jane (Druly) Hammond returned with her family to the poverty of Andover. In the 1841 census she is living with her children in an area of Andover called ‘Mudtown’. Uriel’s mother Sarah (Knight) Hammond, his sister Mary (White-Hammond) Laney and three of his daughters, Ann, Sarah and Eliza, were listed as silk-weavers and probably worked in the same mill in Mudtown. The mere name Mudtown conjures up an image of poverty and poor housing. Today it is the area of Andover roughly between Vigo Road and London Road.
After Jane (Druly) Hammond’s death in 1850 her illegitimate daughter Ann Druly became the head of household. Ann made a disastrous marriage to George Baverstock (1827–1868), who lived next door in Mudtown and was eight years her junior. George served three prison sentences for larceny and died at the age of forty-on
e.
Jane and Uriel’s daughter, Sarah, a silk-weaver, aged thirty-nine married George Baverstock’s father William, aged sixty-four! She retired as a midwife aged over 70 and lived to be ninety!
Jane and Uriel’s daughter, Eliza, also a silk-weaver, married my great-great-grandfather George Beavis, a brickmaker. Fortunately there was a high demand for bricks in Victorian times, so they were able to live more comfortably.
Two of Jane and Uriel’s sons, Henry and George, returned to London to raise their families, though not in the silk trade nor in the East End. The details of all of Jane and Uriel’s children are easily found in the registers except for Charlotte and Charles, which suggests that they did not survive childhood.
Uriel’s half-sister, Ann Hammond (1792–1874), the oldest child of John Hammond (b.1775) and Ann Dumper, married William Hobbs (1789–1849) and probably stayed in Andover. In the 1851 census, after William Hobbs died, she is shown living in New Street, not far from where her half-sister Mary Laney (White-Hammond) and her stepmother Sarah (Knight) Hammond had been living in the 1841 census. In the 1861 census and the 1871 census she is in the Acre Almshouses and is described as ‘formerly a silk worker’.
Thomas Hammond (1804–1877), Uriel’s brother, is shown in the 1841 census as a weaver living in Mudtown, Andover, near Uriel’s widow Jane (Druly) Hammond and her family. His son George was born in Andover in 1841; his daughter Caroline was born in Shoreditch in 1845. He returned to Andover and his daughter Esther was born there in 1849. Sometime before 1861 his son John married and moved permanently to Bethnal Green where he worked as a silk-weaver. In the 1861 census Thomas Hammond and his family are shown living next door to his son John and his wife Ann in Bethnal Green. By the 1871 census Thomas has returned with his wife to Mudtown where, aged sixty-seven, he is described as ‘Borough Scavenger’. It is hard to imagine a more gloomy address or occupation. His daughter Thirza (Hammond) Heath lives next door.
But perhaps the saddest fate befell Sarah (Knight) Hammond, Uriel’s mother.
The system of poor relief was overhauled in the first half of the nineteenth century. Workhouses were introduced to provide a basic standard of shelter, food, clothing and employment for the poor. With Victorian logic it was never intended to make them too comfortable, in case the inmates were discouraged from going out to find work! In the event workhouses were underfunded, badly run and poorly supervised and became little more than open prisons.
Andover was one of the worst examples and in 1845 a national scandal broke. The favoured occupation for able-bodied men in Andover Workhouse was the strenuous task of crushing old animal bones to turn them into fertiliser. Rumours arose that men in the workhouse were so hungry that they had resorted eating the tiny scraps of marrow and gristle attached to the bones they were supposed to be crushing.
Questions were asked in Parliament and an inquiry was set up. It was alleged that the Workhouse Master Colin McDougal had been stealing the funds and physically, mentally and sexually abusing the inmates. An appalling picture emerged of inhuman and brutal treatment and appalling conditions. The inquiry led to closer supervision of workhouses throughout the country, but they remained places of great misery and hardship. McDougal was replaced, but his successor was only a little better. It is said that Charles Dickens had Andover Workhouse in mind when he wrote Oliver Twist.
When John Hammond died in 1835 his wife Sarah (Knight) Hammond went to live with her daughter Mary (Hammond) White who had been widowed the year before. In the 1841 census they are shown together in New Street, Andover. On 6th May 1866 the Andover Advertiser wrote of New Street:
… Our attention has been directed to the moral condition of that unfortunate and unhealthy suburb, New Street. No one passing through it can fail to remark on the great number of children, many of them girls, who are idling around and playing about, without any education except in vice and depravity and with no prospect in life other than misery and ruin…
In 1842 Mary married Edward Laney and they decided to make a new life in New Zealand. With no family to support her Sarah (Knight) Hammond went into the Acre Almshouses, where she is shown in the 1851 census. She died aged eighty-one on 25th November 1855 and is buried in St Mary’s Andover. In the record her address is the ‘Union’. After years of hardship she would have lived her final years in the worst period of this notorious establishment.
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In 1983 the descendants of David Hammond (1810–1892) and Mary Ann (Harfield) Hammond (1810–1893) held a gathering to meet and reminisce. From this, Ian Hammond wrote a wonderfully detailed account of David and Mary Ann and all their descendants. His book is called Making it Happen, Making Do: The Story of David and Mary Ann Hammond and their Family and it commemorates the 150th anniversary of their arrival in New Zealand in 1842. I am most grateful to Robyn Tuckett (a descendant of David and Mary Ann) for giving me a copy and for helping me trace the Hammond tree.
Appendix 3
THE BEAVES FAMILY TREE
Appendix 4
THE ELKINS FAMILY TREE
Appendix 5
THE WILLIAMS FAMILY TREE
Appendix 6
THE WILKES FAMILY TREE