Limerick

One of the main characters in my upcoming book, The Edward Street Baby Farm, was born in Limerick in 1855. Harriet Lenihan moved to Australia in the 1880s and eventually came to Perth. Her father, Maurice Lenihan, was owner and editor of the Limerick Reporter, and was Mayor of Limerick for several years. He had connections with many of the leading political figures in Ireland. Harriet was very proud of the fact that her father had written a history of the city, which was widely acclaimed, though it never made its author any money. It had even received a commendation from the Pope.

As far as I know I’m not related to Harriet Lenihan. But I am related to another outcast from Limerick, John Mason, whose story I’ve told in several posts here. So I feel an attachment to Limerick despite never having been there.

John Mason’s convict records describe him as a ‘native’ of Limerick. He was certainly arrested, tried and transported from that city but I’m not entirely sure that he was born there.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the records of the Destitute Board in Adelaide, where he eventually finished up, describe him as English. Possibly he migrated to Ireland, or came from an English family living in Limerick. Whatever the case, at the age of eighteen he was working in Limerick as a boatman.

He must have been one of many boatmen in the water-bound city. Limerick sits some way inland, at the head of estuary of the Shannon river, and is accessible by ocean-going ships. Another waterway, the Grand Canal, makes it possible to navigate from Limerick in the southwest all the way to Dublin on the east coast.

A brief history of Limerick

As the much smaller Abbey River meets a loop of the Shannon, it creates an island, known as Kings Island. The Vikings established a settlement there in the 10th century. They maintained trade links with other settlements in Ireland and Europe and eventually integrated into the Irish population.

In 1195 the Normans from England captured Limerick, and Lord John (later ‘bad’ King John) built a castle on Kings Island and erected walls around the city. Although the city was nominally under English rule, it was fairly independent. In 1413 King Henry V granted it a charter as a city-state.

Henry VIII changed all that. He abolished the Irish monasteries, gave land to his supporters and by 1603 controlled the whole of Ireland. Limerick lost most of its independence.

Limerick in 1587, source unknown

In the seventeenth century the city was besieged four times, in 1642, 1651, 1690 and 1691. The final siege was carried out by the troops of the protestant William of Orange against the supporters of catholic James II, who were holed up in the city. After the Williamites broke through, a treaty was signed.

Under the Treaty of Limerick, James’ supporters were allowed to leave Ireland, in what was referred to as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Alternatively, they could join William’s army. Civilians were allowed to keep their land and property, provided that they pledged loyalty to William.

But the treaty was soon broken. Laws passed by the English and Irish parliaments, known as the Penal Laws, put Irish Catholics at a great disadvantage. Limerick became known by many as the City of the Broken Treaty

The city itself gradually expanded and the walls were dismantled and rebuilt to allow it to grow. The oldest part of the city on Kings Island became known as Englishtown, while the expansion to the south of the Abbey River was known as Irishtown. The two were joined by a bridge, the Baal bridge. In the eighteenth century there was a further expansion to the south, with a planned grid of wide streets, named Newtown Pery after its founder, landowner Edmund Sexton Pery. This area, with its Georgian architecture, became the city’s CBD.



When John Mason was born, in about 1814 or 1815, Limerick was a city undergoing great changes. A port was constructed to serve the growing agriculture and manufacturing industries. New bridges crossed the river. Many churches and schools were being built, along with hospitals, a court house and a gaol. (John Mason would see the inside of both the courthouse and the gaol.) Gas, water and sewerage services became available for the first time.

Limerick in the 1830s
Painted by French artist Alphonse Dousseau.

But in the 1830s, in the poorer Catholic areas, and the rural areas around the city, there was unrest. Not everyone benefited from the growing wealth of the city, and the new bridges tended to divide rather than unite the different economic areas. The wealthy moved to the new suburbs of Newton Pery, while in the old parts of the city many were destitute.

Food prices had been rising across southern Ireland as a result of potato crop failures. In 1830 merchants raised the price of oatmeal in Limerick by 25 percent. For many people, oats provided their only food supply. A riot broke out on 25 June 1830, and the mob raided warehouses, shops and factories. Although the troops were called in, the authorities also set up a relief fund to ensure that food was made available at a fair price to those who needed it and work was provided for the unemployed.

Leaving Limerick

This then, was the city in which John Mason lived in the early 1830s. Without knowing where John was born, it’s difficult to trace his background or his life in Limerick. Mason was not a common name in the county. A family named Mason had a property of 772 acres at Cappanihane in County Limerick in the early 1800s, but I haven’t found anything to suggest that John was related to them. The newspaper reports of John's trial say nothing of where he was from. My guess is that if the son of a local landowner had been arrested and brought to trial for stealing, the newspapers would probably have mentioned his family background.

Someone once told me that boatmen in Ireland were employed by the government as coastguards. They were often recruited from England so that they had no local ties that might lead to corruption. It’s possible that John or his father came from England in this way. The National Archives UK website has PDF images of the coastguard records of service available for download. So far I haven't been able to find any mention of anyone named Mason in these handwritten records from the 1800s, but I have many more files still to search through.

In the 1830s, many people from Limerick chose to migrate to Australia, some with assistance from the government or their landlord. John Mason wasn’t given a choice when he was given a one-way trip to New South Wales. He was transported in 1833 for stealing a length of muslin cloth.

I've described in another post (Muslin by the yard) my reasoning for thinking that the cloth that John stole came from a haberdashery shop in George Street, belonging to Thomas Evans and his family. George Street, now known as O'Connell Street, is the main street in Limerick, running from the bridge at the southern end of Kings Island through the Newtown Pery district, parallel to the Shannon.

According to the Limerick Chronicle, John broke a pane of glass to grab the cloth, while the owner's two sons were behind the counter. It seems a rather brazen thing to do, and he was easily caught. Could he have deliberately committed a crime to get himself transported? If so, he certainly wouldn’t have been the only person to do so.

The story of John Mason's life after he left Limerick, and that of his family, appears in other posts on this blog. It's also told in more detail in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.









General references:

Roots Ireland - A brief history of Limerick
Limerick.ie - Our history
Irish walled towns network - Limerick
Wikipedia - history of Limerick
Liam Hogan - The 1830 Limerick Food Riots

Sydney in New South Wales

On 2 March 1834, the Parmelia sailed through the sandstone heads of Port Jackson in New South Wales. Author Thomas Keneally describes the Parmelia's voyage and arrival in his book, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New. Hugh Larkin, one of Keneally's wife's ancestors, was one of the 200 or so Irish prisoners on board. John Mason, my great great great grandfather, was another.

They had been cooped up in the crowded, creaking ship since they left Cork the previous October, so everyone was eager to catch a glimpse of land and the penal colony which was to be their home and prison for the next 7 years, 14 years or even a lifetime. From the decks they could see the coastal hills, with their strange (to their eyes) drab vegetation, the sandy beaches and the lighthouse, signal station and shacks around South Head. Sydney Town itself was hidden from view.

But the ship didn't immediately head for the docks in Sydney. According to Keneally, the soldiers of the 50th regiment, who had been the guards aboard the Parmelia, were landed four days after they reached Port Jackson. The convicts were given health checks and assessed for their fitness for work. It was not until 18 March that they were disembarked upstream at Sydney Cove.

Map from Museums Victoria

Sydney's history

People had been living in the area that would become Sydney for 30,000, perhaps even 50,000 years. It's estimated that the Aboriginal population was between 4000 and 8000 before the First Fleet arrived in 1788. Their descendants remain to this day, but initially their numbers declined as their traditional food-gathering areas were taken over by settlers, and they succumbed to previously-unknown diseases such as smallpox and measles. Violent confrontations also occurred.

John Mason had come from Limerick, a port city of elegant buildings but dire poverty. Food riots had broken out among the destitute there in 1830. In some ways, Sydney, with its bustling port, might have seemed familiar to him, though it was much smaller than Limerick. In the 1820s, Governor Lachlan Macquarie had set about constructing many grand public buildings and laid out the future city with a botanic garden and public open spaces.

Vue de George's Street a Sydney 1833
By Alexis Nicolas Noel 
Contributed By National Library of Australia  [nla.pic-an8148364]

Macquarie had also insisted that those who had served their term ('emancipists') should be treated as free citizens and be allowed to buy land, establish businesses, and be appointed to government posts. Many had done well for themselves. The port had become a busy trading centre. Those with money or power kept up a social life as similar to their English counterparts as they could, in the heat and dust.

Advertisement in the Sydney Gazette, 9 March 1833

But Sydney was still a town built by, and for, convicts. Although many women had arrived, either as convicts or free settlers, men still heavily outnumbered them. Crime, drunkenness and prostitution were rife. Convicts were provided with food, clothing and shelter, but their lives could be very harsh, depending on where they were allocated to work. Public floggings and hangings took place regularly. In 1833, there were 1,149 floggings in NSW, with 247 convicts receiving 9,909 lashes between them.

John Mason, convict labourer

Nineteen-year-old John Mason was initially assigned to work for Alexander Fotheringham, a prominent local business man and shipwright. By 1837 he had been re-assigned to Wright and Long, a shipping company with a wharf at Millers Point on Darling Harbour. He may have helped to build the store building on the wharf at the Point, eventually sold to Captain Joseph Moore, using sandstone quarried on-site. Working alongside John was another convict, William Doody, who would later migrate with John to South Australia.

By the time twenty-year old Catherine Murphy arrived in Sydney aboard the Mary Ann, in August 1840, the town had a population of 35,000, and had its own City Council. New South Wales was in an economic depression, and transportation of convicts to NSW had been suspended, but settlers continued to arrive. Decent accommodation was in short supply. Perhaps Catherine was met on the wharf by Mrs Caroline Chisholm, who endeavoured to make sure that newly-arrived single women had accommodation and found employment, rather than drifting into prostitution.

Caroline Chisholm

John and Catherine's marriage

Catherine came from a farming family in Monaghan, Ireland, and was hoping to find work as a farm servant. It seems, though, that she probably stayed in Sydney. On 2 February 1841, her twenty-first birthday, she married John Mason in St Mary's Roman Catholic church. John had received his Certificate of Freedom on 18 July 1840.

Hyde Park and St Mary's Cathedral, c1842
by John Rae. Image from State Library NSW

John and Catherine made their home in Elizabeth St, near the harbour, and their first child, Rosanna, was born there 10 months later in December 1841. Andrew and Mary Goodwin, an Irish couple who had been the witnesses at their wedding, became Rosanna’s baptism sponsors (similar to god-parents). One of John’s former mates from his days at Wright and Long’s shipping company, Timothy Rourke, along with his wife Mary, were the sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s second child, Mary Ann, in October 1842. John’s friend William Doody and his wife Bridget (nee Murnane) were sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s third daughter Catherine in 1844.

In 1843 John and Catherine were rocked by the death of little Rosanna. Such deaths were tragic but common in the colony as childhood diseases such as measles, whooping cough and scarlet fever arrived with the children of free settlers and spread in the overcrowded conditions in the city. Infants made up thirty percent of deaths in the colony in the 1840s.

Millers Point Sydney c1845 by Joseph Fowles.
Image from State Library NSW

Leaving for Adelaide

The Mason family remained in Sydney until December 1844. Then they sailed for Adelaide aboard the Dorset, along with several other Irish Catholic families. Did they feel any sadness at leaving the former penal colony? Somehow I doubt that they did. It wasn't a place of happy memories. Today, much of what they left behind has disappeared and the city would be unrecognisable to them.


General sources:
Wikipedia, History of Sydney
Webster World Encyclopedia of Australia
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia
NSW State Records and Archives

====================================

For more details about John Mason and his family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Was the convict James Orton related to John Orton?

Back in 2014, I described how I'd found records for a man in Australia with the same name as my Leicestershire-born great great grandfather, Thomas Brown Orton. My curiosity was piqued and I looked into this younger man's story a little. I soon realised that it was probably co-incidental that the two men were both named Thomas Brown. My great great grandfather (born 1842) was named after his mother, Mary Ann Brown, while the Australian (born 1880) was named after his maternal grandmother, Ruth Moore Brown. (I previously said he was named after his grandfather, but this wasn't correct.)

Along the way I discovered that the Australian Thomas was descended from a convict named James Orton from Leicestershire. I kept digging, hoping that he might still be related in some way to the Ortons in my family tree. He would be from the same generation as my ggg grandfather, John Orton, born in Husbands Bosworth in about 1813. But I couldn't find a link and eventually gave up.

The Australian Thomas Brown Orton came to mind again this week with the centenary of the Armistice at the end of World War One. I recalled that he enlisted in 1915. Sadly he died of war wounds in Belgium in September 1917, a terrible blow to his widowed mother in Victoria. I decided to look again at his story to see if I could find any new information to link his Orton family and mine.

His grandfather, James Orton, was sentenced on 31 December 1838 at the Leicester Assizes for his part in stealing a large quantity of wool from a hosier in Leicester. His sentence of 14 years transportation was much more severe than that of his companion, Thomas Tomkins, because he had a prior conviction for stealing. (Leicester Chronicle 5 January 1839, p4). He was transported to New South Wales in 1839 aboard the Barossa, at the age of 18.

In 1844, while still serving his sentence, he successfully applied for permission to marry Jane Waddell, a single woman from Glasgow who had arrived as a free settler aboard the Trinidad in 1841. They went on to have at least five children - Allison (1846), Anne (1847), Hannah (1849) James (c 1851) and George (1853).

James Orton received a conditional pardon on 10 June 1850. It seems he and his family moved to Sofala, near Bendigo in Victoria. On 22 March 1856 this advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald:

(JAMES ORTON left his wife and four children about the middle of February 1855, and has not since been heard of. Should this meet the eye of any person who has seen the above James Orton, will please communicate with his wife.JANE ORTON, Sofala.)

Whether poor Jane ever managed to locate James is unknown. Possibly he was the James Orton imprisoned in Darlinghurst Gaol in 1862 for being "of unsound mind". There were many James Ortons in New South Wales and Victoria at the time and the prison record contains few details, so it's impossible to be sure.

Jane died suddenly of heart disease in 1872. I haven't been able to find a definite date for James' death. Their son James married May Fulton Eaglesim and became the father of Thomas Brown Orton. He died in 1912.

So, was the convict James Orton related to 'my' Orton family from Leicestershire or not? Until I discover who his parents were, I won't know. I still haven't been able to track him down prior to his appearances in court in Leicester. Several James Ortons were born in Leicestershire around the right time (1820). Some of these I've excluded because they were still living in Leicestershire after 1839. None of the others have clear links to my Orton family.

If there is a connection, it may be much further back than I've been able to go so far. I know that 'my' Thomas Brown Orton's grandparents were John Orton and Mary Steans. (Not to be confused with his parents, John Orton and Mary Brown, though it certainly is confusing!) Mary was baptised in Husbands Bosworth in 1784, and she and John Orton were married there in 1804, but John's origins are still a mystery. Another of those mysteries yet to be solved.

Summary

The "English" Thomas Brown Orton
b 1842, Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire
m Sarah Gregory, 1865, Leicester
d 1918, Ashton, Lancashire

Parents:

John Orton
b about 1813, Husbands Bosworth
m 1841, Birmingham
d 1880, Husbands Bosworth

Mary Ann Brown (daughter of Joseph Brown and Mary Berry)
b 1819, North Kilworth, Leicestershire
d 1901, Leicester, Leicestershire

Grandparents:

John Orton
b ? 1780, location unknown
m 1804, Husbands Bosworth
d October 1840, Husbands Bosworth

Mary Steans (daughter of Thomas Steans and Elizabeth Illiff)
b 1784, Husbands Bosworth
d July 1863, Husbands Bosworth

The "Australian" Thomas Brown Orton

b 1880, Eaglehawk, Victoria

d 1917 Hell Fire Corner, Belgium

Parents 

James Orton b about 1851, 

m 8 March 1873, the Manse, Eaglehawk

d 1912, Victoria

May Fulton Eaglesim (daughter of William Eaglesim and Ruth Moore Brown)

b March 1853, Eaglehawk, Victoria

d 1926, California Gully, Bendigo, Victoria

Grandparents:

James Orton

b about 1820, Leicestershire. Transported 1839

m 1844, Port MacQuarie, NSW

d ??

Jane Waddell

b about 1821, Glasgow, Scotland

d October 1872, Bendigo, Victoria

Mysteries and puzzles

Happy New Year! For the past few years I've used the new year as the time to alternate between writing about the maternal and paternal sides of my family history. If I kept to that pattern, this should be the year I switch back to writing about the Ward and Beales families, on the paternal side. But since I've now covered most of the main individuals on both sides of the family tree in this blog, I've decided to do something a little different. This year, most of my posts will re-visit a mystery yet to be solved.

By mystery, I don't mean those points in the family history where I simply can't go back any further, due to non-existent records. Most lines of my family tree begin somewhere about the middle of the 18th century. That's about as far back as the records go. I accept that some things are impossible to know.

The "mysteries" I have in mind involve aspects of people's lives that don't make sense, at least based on the information I have. Or there are large holes in their story that I haven't been able to fill. I have a nagging feeling that if only I could find more information, or the right information, it ought to be possible to solve these puzzles.

An example of such a mystery was the long-standing question I had about where John Mason, my great great great grandfather, came from. I knew he was almost certainly transported to Australia as a convict, and my hunch was that he was from Ireland, but which of the many convicts named John Mason was he? I've written previously about how that mystery was finally solved.

There are many similar mysteries on both sides of the family. My hope is that, while I'm revisiting the research I've already done, I might see some different possibilities that hadn't occurred to me before. Or perhaps, with new material coming online all the time, I'll find some new sources of evidence that will make things clearer. It may be that someone reading the posts might have an answer to those puzzling questions. As I've discovered, we all hold fragments of stories that together make up the whole picture of our family history.

Muslin by the yard - John Mason's trial

Limerick c 1900

John Mason was 18 years old when he was transported to Australia aboard the Parmelia. Until recently all that I knew about his crime came from his convict records, which stated that he had been sentenced in Limerick for 'stealing cotton'. The Limerick prison records (available at Find My Past) showed that he had been tried on 27 June 1833 and sentenced on 11 July, but gave no other details.

This week the British Newspaper Archive posted a new batch of pages from Irish newspapers, including the Limerick Chronicle, and I was finally able to discover a little more about John's trial. On 13 July 1833, under the heading "Limerick City Sessions" this appears:

John Mason, for stealing 29 yards of muslin goods from Thomas Evans.
James Evans sworn - He was behind the counter when he heard a pane of glass broken in the window; jumped over the counter and saw the prisoner outside with the piece of muslin in his hand; his brother coming out, they took the muslin from him.
George Evans sworn - corroborated the evidence of his brother, whom he saw struggling with the prisoner outside the window.
Thomas Evans; fully confirmed the testimony of the two preceding witnesses, young boys, who gave their evidence in a most correct and intelligent manner. Verdict - Guilty.

The sentence, transportation for seven years, given a few days later, appears on page 3 of the same paper.

Since reading this I've been trying to find out more about the shop owned by Thomas Evans. Where was it? What did it sell? On a genealogy site I found a Thomas Evans in Limerick with sons named George and James, born in  1817 and 1818 respectively. That seemed promising

The Evan's family in the 1846 Slater's directory p 264

Then I came across an entry in the 1846 Slater's National Commercial Directory of Ireland for Thomas Evans in William St, Limerick  (pg 264). But according to this he was an ironmonger, and the correct and intelligent George and James were hardwaremen in Rutland Street. Another entry showed Thomas Evans and his sons also held a license to sell gunpowder (p 274). It didn't seem likely that either of these stores would sell muslin by the yard. Had Thomas Evans changed his business in the thirteen years since 1833, or was this a different family?

George St, Limerick c 1880

The mystery was solved when I noticed a Hannah Evans listed as the owner of a haberdashery store in George Street, Limerick. Thomas Evans' wife and James and George's mother was named Hannah, so I'm guessing that it was the Evans' haberdashery shop rather than the hardware or gunpowder store that John Mason robbed. 

John was not the only Limerick resident sentenced on 11 July to being transported. Just below the newspaper account of John's trial is one for Mary Lynch, who stole a coat. She freely admitted that she was guilty, adding that she had deliberately stolen the coat in the hope of being transported, since so many of her family and friends were now in New South Wales. She was found guilty and had her wish granted.

Photos from National Library of Ireland on Flickr

_______________________

You can find out more about John Mason, Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool, available on Amazon and other online books stores

And it's done!

View the book

The book I've been writing about Susan Mason and her family is finally complete and published on Amazon worldwide. It's available as an e-book which can be read on any Kindle device or Kindle app. A paperback version is also available (although sadly not through the Australian Amazon site, which doesn't stock printed books yet). I'm still looking into other e-book options such as epub and ibooks.

I hope if you've enjoyed reading my articles about the Mason and Whybrew families here on Clogs and Clippers you will find this much expanded and chronological version of their stories interesting and enjoyable. The book has extensive endnotes and a bibliography.

I've had great fun writing it. My sincere thanks to all who have helped with the research, editing, and revising of the book. Thanks especially to Katie for the cover and Amy for her editing.

For UK readers, the Kindle edition is available here.
For customers of the Australian Amazon site, it can be found here.

Visit my new "author page" on Amazon for more information.

Ben Bentley, Gentleman (part 1)

I mentioned in my last post that when Ben Bentley died in 1897 he was described in the probate calendar as "Ben Bentley, gentleman". Originally a man could only be described as a gentleman if he inherited, or was granted, a coat of arms. By the 19th century the term had started to be applied to anyone who was wealthy enough to live on their own means, without needing to work. Eventually it ceased to describe a person's status altogether, and acquired its current meaning of someone with courteous manners and good behaviour. But which of these meanings applied to Ben?

"Birdseye view of Gildersome"
photo by Simpson Morley (cropped slightly)
courtesy of History of Gildersome

Ben Bentley (1819-1897) seems to have been a man with ambition and a self confidence not always backed by wisdom. He began life in Gildersome, a small village 7 km outside Leeds in West Yorkshire. He was the youngest son of William Bentley, a tailor, and his wife Ann (nee Wildrick), whose families had both lived in the area for several generations.  For reasons known only to his parents, he was baptised plain "Ben" rather than "Benjamin", and continued to be known as Ben throughout his life, even on most official documents. (This fact proved helpful during my research in distinguishing him from the half dozen or so Benjamin Bentleys of similar age living in West Yorkshire in this period.)

Initially he seemed set to follow his father's family into the clothing trade. His first occupation was as a clothier, selling cloth or ready made clothing. But in his twenties he became involved in the grain milling trade. A few years after his marriage in 1839 to Harriet Smith he and his family moved to the inner city area of Leeds. By 1851 he was working as a flour dealer.

Not the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Ben probably had a fairly basic education, but apparently didn't let that stop him from promoting himself. On 12 March 1853 the Leeds Times carried a brief anecdote, titled "Not up in his arithmetic" about a wager made by gentleman farmer with a local agriculturalist. The wager involved the agriculturalist bringing one grain of barley to the farmer at the public house the next Friday, in return for a bottle of wine and a good dinner. The following week he would bring two grains for the same reward, then four, doubling the number of grains each week, for the whole year. The writer finished by saying "We will not insult the intelligence of our readers by working out the sum in detail, as the compositor would find it difficult to find the figures in his news case, but we apprehend the farmer will soon find it to his interest to get off the bet."

Ben Bentley didn't take the hint. The following week, in a letter to the editor signed "Ben Bentley, Kings Mill", he confidently offered his calculation of the amount of barley that the agriculturalist would have to provide. He even calculated how many times the carts required to carry it would stretch around the globe, and how many thousand years it would take to hoist it all into warehouses. He concluded:

"All this may appear to some to be an exaggeration but they who dispute it I should wish them to reckon for themselves, and I have no doubt they will find me correct in my statement.".

It was inevitable that someone would take up his challenge, and on the 26 March the paper published a letter from a correspondent signing himself "Dizzy" which began:

Sir.—Your Friend "Ben"-- not the Chancellor of the exchequer-- tells the public, through your paper, that he has "undertaken the task of reckoning" the amount of barley to be given by the Wakefield agriculturist for his 52 dinners [ ...]
...I should not have noticed this matter had not "Ben" requested that those who disputed his infallibility in figures to reckon for themselves. I have done as desired, and think he is wrong.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time was Benjamin Disraeli, thus the jibe at Ben's name.  "Dizzy" went on to provide his own calculations. The editor added a footnote to this letter politely suggesting that if Dizzy looked at his figures again he would see that they were not quite correct. But neither Dizzy nor Ben were ready to give up this argument.

The following week the correspondence column carried three letters. The first, from Ben Bentley, suggested that there were so many errors in Dizzy's letter that he was not a fit person to rely on for calculations. The second, from Dizzy, admitted that he had made a slight error in copying his calculations into his letter. He went into a long and detailed explanation of how he made his calculations, implying that Ben showed himself to be an amateur in such matters.

The third letter came from James Greaves, "A teacher of the Elementary Improvement Class of the Leeds Mechanics Institution". Ben's calculations were "erroneous", he said, but Dizzy's were equally so. He offered his own elegant solution to the problem. At this point the newspaper editor evidently tired of the matter, and having listed the names of others who had submitted letters on the subject, he let it drop.

Caught out

By the mid 1850's Ben and Harriet had five (surviving) children, including 6 year old Alfred Pearson Bentley. Harriet's family seems to have had connections with various non-conformist congregations in West Yorkshire, and their eldest son William (b 1841) was a border at Low Green school in Rawdon, a co-educational school run by the Quakers (also known as the Friends). Ben was working as a traveller for James Upton Wooller, a wealthy corn miller. Things seemed to be going well for them.

But perhaps Ben placed too much trust in his ability to impress others with figures, and the temptation to improve his income by fiddling the books a little proved too much for him. He began under-reporting how much money he received from his employer's debtors while over-reporting costs. In 1856 he was arrested for embezzlement. The case was reported by both the Leeds Times and the Huddersfield Chronicle when it came to court in August.

Extract from Ben Bentley's prison record
Source: Registers Of Prisoners In The County Prisons Of Wakefield 
HO 23 piece 16. Accessed at Findmypast.com

Stealing from a master was a serious offence. The magistrate in Dewsbury committed him for trial in York, without bail. Four months later, on 6 December, he pleaded guilty to having embezzled ₤25 2s and was sentenced to four years penal servitude. He served the first year of his sentence in the prison at York Castle. Then on 23 November 1857 he was moved to Portland prison in Dorset on the south coast, far away from Yorkshire and his family. It was no seaside holiday camp. Convicts from the prison were used to quarry stone and build the breakwaters of Portland harbour.

This conviction must have been a terrible blow for both Ben and Harriet. For a family aspiring to join the new middle class, having a father in prison was a cause of great shame. Dorset was too far away for any sort of regular visits. What would the children be told about their father's long absence? How would they survive for four years without Ben's income? And how would Ben fare doing hard labour in gaol?

More in part 2.


*Corn is the term used in England for wheat and other grains, rather than for sweet corn or maize.

The missing link - William Doody

Millers Point in 1870
(Image from State Library of NSW collection)

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will be familiar with my theory that John Mason, who married Catherine Murphy in Sydney in 1841, was an Irish convict born in Limerick.  He arrived in Sydney on the Parmelia in 1834.

The problem has been that my conclusion was based on excluding all the other possible John Masons around at the time, and some circumstantial evidence. And that meant I could never be sure that I wouldn't one day come across another John Mason that I'd overlooked, who would ruin my theory. (I've mentioned before how my heart sank when I read in the Destitute Board records in Adelaide that John Mason was said to be English.)

That uncertainty has always nagged me. It meant I was constantly having to say that John Mason was "probably Irish" and "probably a convict". It's hard to build a good story on the word "probably".

So this week I started to think about what sort of evidence would I need to show that "Convict John" was the same person as "Catherine's  John". Convict John disappears from the records in 1840 after getting his certificate of freedom. What could tie him to the John who appeared on the scene to marry Catherine in 1841?

After asking that question on a genealogy forum, and tossing it around, it occurred to me that William Doody (or Dowdy or Doudey) might be a link. William was a former convict who sailed to Adelaide with the Masons in 1845. He and his wife Bridget (nee Murnane) were also the sponsors at one of the Mason's daughter's baptisms. He was obviously a friend of John and Catherine.

I found William's record on the 1837 General Muster of Convicts. It showed that he arrived on the Dunvegan Castle in 1832 and was employed by Wright and Sons in Sydney. That didn't seem very promising. I knew John Mason fom Limerick was assigned to an Alexander Fotheringham when he arrived in 1834.

Then I realised that I'd never found John Mason's name on the 1837 muster. My information about him came from his convict indent and his certificate of freedom. After some searching I found him listed as "John Wason". All the other details such as his age and his ship, the Parmelia, matched. And he was assigned to.... Wright and Sons. So he would have known William Doody in 1837, before he met Catherine. They would have worked together and probably lived in the same quarters.

I did a little dance - this was just the sort of link I needed. It's not quite proof that the two John Masons were the same man, but it makes it a lot more likely.

Since then I've done more research and found that "Wright and Son"s is probably a mis-transcription of Wright and Long, who owned a wharf and shipping business at Millers Point on Darling Harbour. Another convict assigned to them, Timothy Rourke, was a sponsor at the baptism of one of the Mason's other daughters. Two for the price of one!

More about John Mason:

John and Catherine Mason - pioneers
John Mason - where did he come from?
Two more small clues about John Mason
An interesting snippet of news about John and Catherine Mason
Discoveries in Adelaide part 1
Discoveries in Adelaide part 2
A sad tale of two Roses
The missing link - William Doody
A song of the sea

====================================

You can read more about John Mason and William Doody in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Discoveries in Adelaide (part 1)

Who would have thought that the word "English", written in faded ink on yellowing paper could make my heart sink. But it did.

South Australia's magnificent State Library.
The Spence Wing is in a modern building behind this one.

Last week I spent a few days in Adelaide, looking for information about the Mason family, while my husband attended a conference. Although I'd been to Adelaide before, this was the first time I'd been there since I discovered that my father's forebears had once lived there. I had a wonderful time exploring the city on foot, and using the Spence wing of the State Library to check out some original documents and records that aren't available on-line.

One of the first things I wanted to see was the minutes book of the Destitute Board. As I've mentioned previously, the local newspapers reported that Catherine Mason applied to the Board for relief several times, both before and after her husband John died in 1857. The Board minutes seemed the most likely place to find more information about the family and their circumstances.

Unfortunately there is a gap in the records between 1857 and 1869. But I found the entry for Friday November 21, 1856, a couple of months before John died, in the big tattered ledger. The record was in John's name rather than Catherine's.

Cottages in North St, off Currie St.
Most of Currie St is now taken up by
businesses and warehouses.

It stated, in a neat copperplate hand, that "Jno. Mason" lived in Currie St (no number given), had 4 children under the age of 7 and 4 over 7, that he arrived in Adelaide on the Dorset 12 years prior, and that he was a labourer. His application was recommended by Dr Shole.

Under "Circumstances" it said "Has been ill, unable to work since last Christmas." Type of relief provided was "outdoors", that is, provision of rations rather than "indoors", admission to the Destitute Asylum. All this confirmed what the newspaper report had said. In fact, one of the things I discovered on this trip was that the newspaper reports at the time were remarkably detailed and accurate.

The only new information, apart from Dr Shole's name, was the comment in the last column . Whoever wrote the minutes felt that it was important to record the nationality of the applicants, even though it wasn't required. In most cases they also recorded the religious denomination, though it was omitted in John Mason's case. But there was that word:  "English". Drat!

The Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Currie St,
one of the oldest pubs in Adelaide.
The Ship Inn, frequented by the Masons,
no longer exists.

For some reason, the entry for John in the Destitute Board minutes was duplicated a few lines down, on the same date, but with a minor correction to the ages of the children. Perhaps this entry was made after the information had been checked by the Relieving Officer, as the newspaper reporter indicated was going to happen. But that word English was 'dittoed'. No correction there.

After all the research I'd done trying to discover where John Mason came from, before he married Catherine Murphy in Sydney in 1841, that word "English" was depressing. By a long process of eliminating every other John Mason I could find, I'd come to the conclusion that he was probably the young convict of that name who arrived in New South Wales on the Parmelia in 1834. And that John Mason was an Irishman from Limerick.

The most obvious explanation is that I've got the wrong John Mason. After all, I have no proof that the convict on the Parmelia was the one who married Catherine Murphy. But so much that I know about John and Catherine suggests they were Irish. Almost everyone associated with them - the witnesses at their wedding, the sponsors at their children's baptisms, the person who registered John's death - was Irish. So I've been trying to think of some other possible explanations.

We know from the newspaper report that it was Catherine, not John, who fronted up to the Board to ask for relief, so the recorder didn't actually meet John on that occasion. Did he know the family? Where did the information come from?

If John had arrived in Australia as a teenager in 1834 and he had lived in Australia for 22 years, perhaps he had lost his accent. Or perhaps he lived and worked in Ireland but originally came from England, though convicts' records usually recorded where they were born. Maybe Catherine sounded, looked, or claimed to be English.

Or perhaps, just maybe, the recorder made a clerical error. My faith in official records was rattled when I found a couple of entries in 1882 for Harriet Whybrew, when she was admitted to the Industrial School at the age of 15 for stealing a watch. One entry mentioned that her parents were in England, but both entries said that her uncle, David Whybrew, a turner, lived in Adelaide.

Part of one of the records for Harriet Whybrew.
(Taken with a phone camera from a microfilm,
so not great quality. Click to enlarge.)

In fact, David Whybrew was her father, a soldier who was living in England with his wife Susan Mason and their other children at the time. Harriet's uncle Henry Atkin, husband of Mary Ann Mason, was a wood turner living in Adelaide. (More on this later.)

Since I've been home I've been going back over my previous research, looking for an English John Mason that I might have overlooked before. So far I haven't found one that wasn't dead or married by 1841 or still in Sydney after 1845. I'll keep looking.

As a footnote, I still don't know why John was bed-bound for twelve months before he died. While I was at the library I checked the Adelaide Hospital admissions records for 1855-1857, but didn't find any of the Mason family mentioned. Never mind - it was great fun and fascinating looking at original records from 160 years ago. The library and State Records people were all very helpful. I just wish Adelaide wasn't quite so far away.

====================================

To read more about the Mason family in Adelaide, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Another Thomas Brown Orton

While I was looking for details about Thomas Brown Orton from Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire, I came across another Thomas Brown Orton, this one born in Eaglehawk, Victoria, Australia in 1880. I was intrigued, since the name is not a common one, and it would be fun to discover some more Australian relatives. So I decided to find out a little more about him, to see if there was any distant connection between the two.

The Australian Thomas Brown was the son of James Orton and May Fulton Eaglesim. May's father's name was Thomas Brown Eaglesim, which probably explains where the middle name came from. (Correction - May's father was William Eaglesim, her mother was Ruth Moore Brown.)

This Thomas Brown Orton was the grandson of James Orton (born about 1817), who was transported to Australia for 14 years on the Barossa in 1839. James was tried and convicted (for what crime I don't know) in 1838 in Leicester. In 1844 James married a Jane Waddell who arrived on the ship Trinidad as a free settler.

It's tempting to think that perhaps James was somehow related to the Ortons of Husbands Bosworth, but I haven't been able to make any connection. He would be a contemporary of John Orton, but I don't have a firm date or place of birth for either of them.

York and Oriental Hotels,
 Kalgoorlie ca. 1900
image via wikipedia

The Australian Thomas Brown Orton lived in the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie for a while. By a strange co-incidence he seems to have been a grocer, like the English Thomas Brown Orton. Unfortunately he died in Belgium in 1917 while fighting in the war.

If anyone can tell me more about the elder James Orton and his origins, or if you would like more details about where I found the information in this post, please contact me, either through the comments section or by email. (stella DOT budrikis AT gmail DOT com)

Two more small clues about John Mason

In a previous post (John Mason - where did he come from?) I explained my reasons for thinking that the John Mason who married Catherine Murphy in Sydney in 1841 was probably the convict named John Mason who was tried and sentenced to transportation for stealing cotton in Limerick, Ireland, in 1833. He arrived in Sydney on the Parmelia in 1834.

However, there were still several other convicts who could potentially have fitted the bill. The next most likely after 'John from Limerick' was a John Mason, born in 1813, who was tried in York in 1835 and transported on the Royal Sovereign. I've now discovered from the New South Wales Convict Indents 1788-1842 (on Ancestry.com.au) that this John Mason was Protestant, and could read and write. Which means that he is very unlikely to have been the John Mason who married Catherine in a Catholic church, and who signed his name with an X.

Another small piece of information I gleaned from the New South Wales Settler and Convicts list, 1787-1834, was that the John Mason who arrived on the Parmelia was assigned to an Alexander Fotheringham in Sydney. As yet I haven't been able to find out much about Alexander Fotheringham except that he seems to have been a shipwright who owned several properties around Sydney.

If you would like a copy of a spreadsheet listing all the details I could find about 19 of the convicts named John Mason who arrived in NSW before 1841, please contact me and I'll email it to you.

Who wants to be transported? We do!

In modern Australia the popular image of the transported convict is of someone in prison garb and chains, breaking rocks in a road gang. But many convicts were assigned to land owners or businesses to work as labourers or, in the case of female convicts, as servants. And while they may have been used as slave labour, they were at least assured of food, clothing and a bed at night. That was more than many of them had back in their home country.

Here's an extract from a House of Commons committee report of 1838. It gives some interesting insights into the conditions in England and Ireland at the time, and attitudes towards transportation. (I've modified the formatting slightly to make it easier to read.)

 309 Chairman Have you had any opportunity of ascertaining the apprehension which is produced in this country by the punishment of transportation, distinguishing England from Ireland? -  

The Very Rev. W Ullathorne, D.D. ( a Roman Catholic Bishop who was in New South Wales 1833-1836) I have had considerable opportunities of late. One of the duties which I have imposed upon myself in this country has been to expose to the poor the corporeal and moral horrors of transportation; for that purpose, for the last three months, I have been employed in preaching in the manufacturing districts in the north of England. I have found, generally, that there was a great deal of delusion existing amongst the population; and I have been informed by the clergy, that that delusion exists to a considerable extent; and when I explained the real facts of transportation, a very great sensation of horror prevailed amongst the people. 

I had much communication with the relations of persons transported; they came to me frequently after my sermons, for the purpose of obtaining information with regard to the lot of their friends, or requesting me to take letters to them; and I found that, generally speaking, they had no idea of the fate of the convicts, or the immoralities and the punishment to which they were liable. And in this country even, clergymen have informed me that they have actually in some cases been consulted by persons in a state of starvation, as to whether they might do something or other for the purpose of being transported or not; and I have found that this delusion has been kept up a good deal by letters from the colony. 

I have seen letters written by prisoners soon after arrival to their wives, in which they represent themselves as very comfortable, and give extravagant accounts of their condition, the sole object appearing, from their letters, to be to induce the wife to go out; and I believe the object of the prisoner was that, if the wife did come out, he would contrive to be assigned to her. 

I have visited Ireland lately; I was there but a fortnight, but during that time I preached once in Dublin, and I found that the same delusion existed there. I have been told by the clergy, that were I to explain those things generally to the people it would be of the greatest benefit; and I was particularly struck by the observations of one clergyman, a parish priest; he has the largest parish in Dublin; he told me, and he told me with tears in his eyes at the time, that in his parish, which was within the liberties of Dublin, he had not less than 36,000 souls; that the number of sick calls in a day which had to be attended by his curates was not less than 45; and in case of severe weather for a few days, there were 6,000 of his parishioners who did not know where to get anything whatsoever, and who, generally speaking, had nothing between their bones and the floor on which they lay but the rags that scarcely covered them in the street; and he said to me "If you will explain the horrors of transportation to my people, you will do more good in one day than I can do in a year"  

310 To restrain them in time? 

Yes, and to acquaint them with the real result; but generally speaking they have an idea that to be transported is to better their circumstances very much. I was much struck with a remark made by a person when I was preaching in Wigan. This person was a respectable innkeeper; it was stated to him that I was going to preach upon this subject and he said, "What is the use of it? People had far better be transported than remain here; for there they will have abundance to eat and drink and plenty of clothing, and here they are in a state of starvation"; and such is the general idea and I believe it has led many to desire transportation.

House of Commons papers, vol 22, Reports from Committees, seventeen volumes _16_ Transportation, page 32, viewed at Google Books