A Commonwealth of Thieves (39 page)

A
S FOR
N
EW
S
OUTH
W
ALES
itself, in his 1814
Voyage to Terra Australis,
the navigator Lieutenant Matthew Flinders, dying of consumption, wrote, “Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term Terra Australis, it would have been to convert it into Australia.” This latter name crept into use. The children of convicts and settlers found it easier to say they were Australians rather than New South Welshmen. William Charles Wentworth son of D'Arcy Wentworth and Catherine Crowley, advocated the use of the name “Australia” in his
Statistical Account
of the colony, and another early settlement child, Phillip Parker King of the Royal Navy, son of Philip Gidley King, used the term in his maps which the Admiralty published the same year, 1826.

A confusing range of opinions would be uttered in Britain and in New South Wales about the children of Australia, the issue of the first free or convict settlers. It was assumed by many that they would be criminal spawn, abandoned by their “unnatural parents” or raised amidst scenes of criminal activity and daily debauchery. In fact the colonial experience and later research shows that they emerged “as a remarkably honest, sober, industrious and law-abiding group of men and women.” By comparison with British society, the family life of early New South Wales children would be stable and sturdy. In New South Wales the child labour, hunger, and vicious treatment which characterised the factories of Great Britain were missing, and although convict families sometimes lacked funds, they sought to apprentice their children to stay their hands from the youthful follies that had seen their parents transported in the first place. “The family links among these skilled workers,” writes one expert, “were strengthened by the marriage of sons and daughters of men who had been convicted together in Britain, or had arrived on the same ships, had served in the Royal Marines or New South Wales Corps, or who had worked at similar or allied trades in Sydney or Parramatta.” Former convicts actively sought apprenticeships for their sons, often with government concerns in the Sydney dockyards and lumber yards. Firms such as Kable and Underwood, and Simeon Lord's enterprises, also trained colonial youths in a range of crafts. “Apprenticeship in the colony, therefore, had none of the connotations of exploited child labour.”

The native-born New South Welsh folk of that first generation, also known as Currency children or cornstalks, would be the first Europeans to escape the limits of the Sydney basin, the Cumberland Plain, and begin to occupy land north and south of Sydney and west of the Blue Mountains. All the interracial incomprehensions and savageries would be played out again, as Australian wealth abounded, and the law, the King James Bible, the songs and plaints of Britain and Ireland reached corners of deepest wilderness beyond the wildest imaginings of their creators.

A
S FOR OPPONENTS OF THE
Sydney experiment, Jeremy Bentham was to prove tenacious. Throughout the 1790s, he sought information on how much per head “the Botany Bay scheme” was costing. He had some success lobbying for the adoption of his panoption prison plan, and would continue to collect information about the ineffectuality of penal colonies. Throughout his career he decried transportation as a poor punishment because it was so uncertain, since no one knew beforehand how much or how little pain was going to be inflicted by the experience on the offender. Death might in practice be occasioned by scurvy or drowning, while for another convict, transportation might be a favour. When criminals had been sent to America, Bentham argued, they entered an established society with its civic and moral virtues. In New South Wales, they
were
the society. There were not enough people to supervise them, or to impose order and discipline from above. Pointing to Collins's journal, Bentham argued that it did not give evidence of the reformation of humans by transportation to New South Wales.

Bentham was given enough ammunition to persuade Prime Minister Pitt to inspect a model of the panopticon, and Cabinet authorised him to proceed with the work. But the project met savage opposition from citizens and business interests in every neighbourhood in which Bentham proposed to build it. New South Wales won for the time being. It was too distant to infringe on the amenity of any British district except its own.

Bentham himself was eventually told by the Home Office that New South Wales was successful enough to relieve the kingdom of any need for his panopticon, and this caused him in 1802 to publish an impassioned tract,
Panopticon Versus New South Wales.
For the next thirty years, a number of parliamentarians would attack transportation using Bentham's arguments. Bentham also found a disciple in the charming evangelical activist William Wilberforce, who would oppose transportation on philosophic grounds—for one thing, its kinship with slavery. It did have such a kinship, and native Australian patriots and liberals would be the ones who, ultimately, put an end to it. But only a few of the felons of our story would live to see that day.

A
RTHUR
P
HILLIP'S ESTRANGED WIFE
, Margaret, had died by the time he returned to Britain, but in her will she had released him from all obligations he had acquired during their relationship, so that he did not need to repay debts on the New Forest estate. As he defended and explained his administration to officials in Whitehall, spoke to Lord Hawkesbury at the Board of Trade, and to Sir Joseph Banks, he became by July “convinced by those I have consulted that the complaint I labour under may in time require assistance which cannot be found in a distant part of the world.” So he asked the Secretary of State and the King for permission to resign his governorship permanently. By October, his resignation had been accepted and he was back on half-pay. But early the next year, he received a spacious pension of £500 per year in honour of his New South Wales service. Phillip now had adequate resources to take a residence in Bath, consult specialists, and begin to take the Bath waters.

His health improved and he offered himself to the service again. He began to visit and then married Isabella Whitehead, the forty-five-year-old daughter of a wealthy northern cotton- and linen-weaving merchant. Though Phillip had shown a tendency to “marry up,” his relationship with Isabella was a happy one, possibly not blurred by excessive passion or sexual appetite. Passion seemed reserved still for possible government appointments, and for glory as an administrator or a warrior. He was still bedevilled by a sense that he lacked connections, important friends who felt that he
must
be advanced.

Under Major Grose, he learned to his distaste, liquor had been used as a vehicle of exchange by powerful interests in the New South Wales Corps at Sydney and Parramatta, and the ewes and goats, crops, and even land of some of his emancipated convict farmers were sold in return for spirits. In 1796 he complained to Banks that news from New South Wales was that individuals, including officers of the corps, were making fortunes at the expense of the Crown.

In 1799 Philip Gidley King was appointed to take over governorship of the colony, and Phillip advised his friend that he should expel those officers and officials “who had been the principal means of ruining the colony.” Serving officers should not be granted land, and the Irish convicts should be separated from the rest, lest they infect the whole at this time of rebellion in Ireland.

Phillip continued to suffer galling reminders that he was just another competent captain. In February 1796, he went down by coach along the rutted, icy highways from London to Portsmouth to take command of the
Atlas,
but found that by a bureaucratic mix-up the command had been given to someone else. The following month, however, he was appointed captain of the
Alexander
and later in the year of the
Swiftshore,
a seventy-four- gun battleship. In 1797, a number of naval mutinies broke out, one at Spithead, one at the Nore, the work of men engorged by American and French revolutionary ideas. As Admiral Collingwood complained, the problem was the work of sailors who discussed constitutional issues and belonged to “corresponding societies,” organisations which passed on revolutionary material to each other.

Phillip dealt with any mutinous infection aboard the
Swiftshore
as he had dealt with New South Wales—with decision, adaptability, the weight of law, and dispassion—and Lord St. Vincent of the Admiralty declared the
Swiftshore
“in the most excellent order and fit for any service.” The
Swiftshore
helped Nelson blockade Cádiz, but then Phillip was sent north to guard against an imminent Spanish-French invasion which did not develop. Soon Phillip was ashore again, once more the replaceable element.

Later in the year, he was sent to take over the
Blenheim,
a ninety-gunner, a ship seen by the Admiralty as being in spiritual and physical dis-repair, with many of its crew ill and given to revolution. At the age of nearly sixty, though seemingly well-recovered from the renal problems which had plagued him in New South Wales, he was brought ashore and in 1797 made Commander of the Hampshire Sea Fencibles, a home-defence unit raised to man the Martello towers along the coast of England and to resist a French invasion. Next he was put to work inspecting the ships and hospitals where French and Spanish prisoners of war were confined. By force of seniority, he rose to be Rear Admiral of the Blue in January 1799. As a brief peace was arrived at in 1802, he was employed as an inspector into the Impress Service, the process by which men were coerced into the Royal Navy. He made no remarks in his report about the justice of such procedures, but he did suggest a central register of exemptions to save individuals in essential community services from the infamous gangs, and various methods to end corruption, the paying of bribes, and so on.

In 1803, when the war began again, he became Inspector of the Sea Fencibles throughout the entire nation. He recommended that single men should not be free from impressment at this dangerous time, and that the Sea Fencibles be reduced to allow men to be freed for naval service. He travelled the coastal roads of England, Wales, and Scotland, an aging man who had not yet had his due from destiny and who was acutely aware of that fact.

He therefore asked Nepean to convey to the Lord Commissioners “that in case an enemy should attempt to land on that part of the coast where I may be . . . their Lordships are pleased to authorise me to take the command of such armed vessels, gunboats and Sea Fencibles as may be there for the defence of the coast.” Thus he cherished the daydream that his flag might be hoisted on an armed vessel or atop a tower standing between the French and the British heartland, and that his name might become a byword for grit, endurance, and good organisation. Nepean, however, chastised him for the idea: “Applications upon subjects unconnected with the duty on which he is employed ought not to be received or transmitted by him.”

He was retired in the middle of the wars against Napoleon. Able to settle down again in Bath at 19 Bennett Street, in February 1808 he suffered a stroke, recovered, suffered another, and was now, at last, untroubled by ambition. Old New South Wales hands such as Philip Gidley King, Henry Waterhouse, and John Hunter, back from his governorship of New South Wales, came to visit him. He lived another six years, partially paralysed, and was felled by a final stroke and buried in the churchyard of St. Nicholas at Bathampton on 7 September 1814.

He makes a dissatisfied ghost. But as already noted, it is in New South Wales and the ultimate Australia that his spirit is most visible, pragmatic yet thorough, caught between sparks of both authority and compassion, a bleak white icon who conducted the Sydney experiment and made it a success for the likes of Henry Kable, and a catastrophe for Bennelong and his kind.

notes

My thanks for the research assistance of my daughter Jane, and to the staff of the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, and the National Library of Australia, Canberra.

ABBREVIATIONS

For fuller details on all books referred to in the notes, see Bibliography.

Chapter One

On the journey of the First Fleet, a chief source is Hunter's journal: Captain John Hunter, Commander HMS
Sirius,
with further accounts by Governor Arthur Phillip, Lieutenant P. G. King, and Lieutenant H. L. Ball,
An Historical Journal, 1787–1792
(p. 24 quoted here). See also Arthur Phillip,
The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay.

As for complaints: Ralph Clark,
The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark, 1787–1792.

For “musty pancakes”: Clark, p. 83.

Tasman and Cook: J. C. Beaglehole,
The Life of Captain James Cook;
Nicholas Thomas,
Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook,
London, 2003; John Robson,
Captain Cook's World: Maps of the Life and Voyages of James Cook RN.

Expelling convicts from Europe: A. G. L. Shaw,
Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and Other Parts of the British Empire,
pp. 20–57; G. B. Barton,
History of New South Wales from the Records,
vol. I, pp. 1–20, 439–42.

Bacon,
Of Plantations:
“The people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, labourers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fisher men, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks and bakers.”

Transport to North American colonies: Shaw, p. 33.

On top of the numbers of convicts sent to the North American colonies, it was estimated by Thomas Povey, the Secretary to the Council of State and a leading London merchant with Barbadian interests, that up to 12,000 political prisoners, in addition to felons and vagabonds, had been received into Barbados by 1655. They helped to bridge the escalating demand for labour until the transition to black slavery in the 1660s: http//:iccs.arts.utas.edu.au, Andrea Button, University of the West of England.

Death rate in Virginia: Niall Ferguson,
Empire,
p. 72.

American complaints: “The body of the English are struck with terror at the thought of coming over to us, not because they have a vast ocean to cross … but from the shocking ideas the mind must necessarily form of the company of in-human savages and the most terrible herd of exiled malefactors.”
The Independent Reflector,
quoted in Barton, p. 558; Shaw, p. 17.

Transportable offences: Barton, vol. I, p. 218; J. M. Beattie,
Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800;
Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, E. P. Thompson, John G. Rule, Cal Winslow,
Albion's Fatal Tree, Crime and Society in Eighteenth
Century England,
London, 1975, pp. 17–63.

Opposition to death sentences for theft: G. D. Woods,
A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 1788–1900,
p. 19.

Leniency of juries: Shaw, pp. 25–26.

Benefit of clergy: Beattie, pp. 88–89; Hay, p. 22.

Convict attitudes to hanging: Robert Holden,
Orphans of History: The Forgotten Children of the First Fleet,
p. 57; Hay, p. 66.

Executions in number and as public spectacle: Beattie, pp. 451–55; Hay et. al., pp. 66, 69; Roy Porter,
English Society in the Eighteenth Century,
p. 157.

Boswell attending executions: Frank Brady,
James Boswell; The Later Years, 1769–1795,
p. 282.

Pardons: Shaw, p. 28. In the 1770s, two-thirds of the Norfolk and Midland circuits' death sentences were remitted to sentences of transportation; Beattie, pp.430–31, 472–73, 475–79, 530–33; Hay, pp. 40–49.

Between 1770 and 1772 a number of convicts had been pardoned on condition that they join the navy. But the Lords of the Admiralty soon “expressed their wishes that no more convicts may ordinarily be ordered on board HM's ships, as such persons may not only bring distempers and immoralities amongst their companions, but may discourage men of irreproachable character from entering HM's service.” Dr. Samuel Johnson put it with more bite. “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a gaol,” declared Johnson famously, “for being in a ship is being in gaol, with the chance of being drowned.” Shaw, p. 28.

On prisons: Porter, p. 91; Holden, pp. 69–70; John Bonwick,
Australia's First Preacher, the Reverend Richard Johnson,
pp. 26–27; Beattie, pp. 289–313, 560–608; Hay.

John Howard: Beattie, pp. 288–308, 572–629; Shaw.

On Newgate: Daniel Defoe,
Moll Flanders,
p. 28; Peter Ackroyd,
London: The Biography,
p. 251; Holden, pp. 65–66; Tom Griffith (gen. ed.),
The Newgate Calendar,
1997, pp. 3–5.

Barrington:
Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB),
Vol. I, alphabetical listening; and at least as far as Barrington's legend goes, Suzanne Rickard (ed. ),
George Barrington's Voyage to Botany Bay, Retelling a Convict's Travel Narrative of the 1790s.

Campbell: Shaw, pp. 34–36; The Blackheath Connection, a superbly researched Web site by historian Dan Byrne, is devoted to the study of activities and motivations of the men, generally Scots, of the Blackheath area and friends of Duncan Campbell's, who supplied the ships for the early penal fleets. Assembled with the help of Blackheath librarian Leo Rhind.

Hulks: Beattie, p. 567; Shaw, p. 43; Frost, p. 41; Blackheath Connection.

Lemane settlement and opposition: Shaw, pp. 46, 48, 57.

Matra's
Proposal:
HO 7/1 microfilm, ML; Shaw, pp. 44, 45.

Banks's testimony: HO 7/1 microfilm, ML.

Lord Sydney details: Atkinson, pp. 99–100; alphabetical listing,
The Australian Encyclopaedia;
C. M. H. Clark,
A History of Australia,
vol. 1,
From the Earliest Times to the Age of Macquarie,
pp. 68–69.

Banks before the Commons Committee: C. M. Clark (ed.),
Sources of Australian History,
pp. 61–69, from
Journals of the House of Commons,
vol. xxxvii, pp. 311–14.

Reaction to Committee, and Home Office reaction: Shaw, pp. 45–46.

Final selection of New South Wales: Lord Sydney to the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury, August 18, 1786,
Sources,
pp. 69–72.

Jeremy Bentham and the panopticon: J. B. Hirst,
Convict Society and Its Enemies: A History of Early New South Wales,
pp. 10–15.

Evan Nepean:
ADB,
vol. II, alphabetical listing.

Chapter Two

Phillip's early life: Alan Frost,
Arthur Phillip, His Voyaging;
M. Barnard Elder-shaw,
Phillip of Australia;
George Mackaness,
Admiral Arthur Phillip, Founder of New South Wales, 1738–1814.

Geography of London criminals: L. L. Robson,
The Convict Settlers of Australia: An Enquiry into the Origin and Character of the Convicts Transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land 1787–1852,
pp. 11–12; Thomas Beames,
The Rookeries of London,
pp. 25–27; Beattie, pp. 253–262.

Tawny Prince and
flash
or
cant:
Captain Watkin Tench of the Marines,
Sydney's First Four Years,
reprint of
A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and a Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson,
p. 297; Captain Grose,
1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Enclosure Acts: Porter, pp. 225–30; Hay, pp. 275–76, 313–14; digital search of Enclosure Act sites recommended.

Oliver Goldsmith,
The Deserted Village.
This version taken from Representative Poetry Online, a Web site of the Library of the University of Toronto.

Sarah Bellamy and her trial: Madge Gibson,
Belbroughton to Botany Bay,
booklet; PRO, Assizes 2/25; Mollie Gillen,
The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet,
alphabetical listing; Arthur Bowes Smyth,
The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn, 1787–1789,
p. 5.

John Hudson's trials: OBSP, 1783–84, on microfilm, ML, 10 December 1783, p. 49.

William Blake:
The Poetical Works of William Blake,
pp. 74, 104. The first continues:

And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and King
Who make up a Heaven of our misery.

Hudson, posttrial: Robert Holden,
Orphans of History: The Forgotten Children of the First Fleet,
p. 72.

Mary Marshall, trial: OBSP, 1783–84, p. 935.

Hippesley: OBSP, 1784–85, p. 438.

Mullens: OBSP, 1785–86, p. 525.

Peat: OBSP, 1784–85, p. 532.

Martin: OBSP, 1781–82, p. 454.

Chapter Three

Howe's opinion: HRNSW, vol. I, pt. II, p. 22.

Phillip's maritime and naval career:
ADB,
Vol. II, alphabetical listing; Frost,
Phillip;
George Mackaness,
Admiral Arthur Phillip;
M. Barnard Eldershaw,
Phillip of Australia.

Phillip's marriage and resultant matters:
Observer of London,
15 December 1793,
Anecdotes of Governor Phillip.

Phillip as spy: Frost, p. 55 onwards.

Phillip's Portuguese naval career: Kenneth Gordon McIntyre,
The Rebello Transcripts, Governor Phillip's Portuguese Prelude,
especially pp. 79–161.

Phillip's return to Royal Navy: Frost; McIntyre, pp. 162–76.