The Potato Factory (52 page)

Hannah's mouth opened in astonishment and she glanced quickly to where Bob Marley sat, but all she could later remember seeing was the dark gap between his two shining gold teeth as he grinned at her.

'Not guilty, yer worship,' she said, then added in a whisper, 'Oh, me Gawd!'

The first of the autumn leaves were starting to turn in Hyde Park and the geese on the Serpentine, plump with summer feeding, were increasingly feeling the primal urge to migrate to a warmer clime. On the 13th of September 1827, Hannah, a bird of a quite different feather, was sentenced to a less voluntary migration, though also to a warmer climate.

If her sentence at the Old Bailey to fourteen years' transportation appears rather too harsh, for a crime so small, it may be supposed that much frustration had gone before it in the many unsuccessful attempts to trap both Hannah and Ikey. The law has a duty to be both parent and teacher and sometimes, in order to wipe the slate clean, a recalcitrant child must be dealt with more harshly than a particular crime seems to merit, in order to compensate for successful crimes which have gone unpunished. Hannah's conviction may well have rendered an opportunity to balance the scales of justice.

Ikey's escape to New York, as proved by the evidence of his letter to his wife, was reported in
The Times
and was blown up to exaggerated proportions in the penny dailies, where it created much merriment in the rookeries and even some grudging admiration among the lower classes. The law is blind only when it does not wish to see and the embarrassment to the City police and directors of the Bank of England caused by Ikey's gaolbreak may well have condemned Hannah to a harsher sentence.

To Hannah's fourteen years' transportation was added the condition that she never be permitted to return to her native land.

On hearing her sentence Hannah brought her hands up to her face and wailed, 'Oh! Oh! What shall become o' me precious mites?'

Whereupon the judge, to prove that the severity of the law may be tempered by compassion, gave permission for her children to accompany her to Australia so as to be under her fostering care.

The
Mermaid,
carrying Hannah and her four children together with ninety other female convicts, some also with children, sailed from Woolwich on the 10th of February 1828.

The voyage proved no better or worse than most. There was the usual sea sickness, bouts of catarrh and rheumatism brought about by the dampness between decks on the voyage to Tenerife. These ailments soon yielded with the coming of the sun, though an obstinate form of constipation remained. This was thought to be due to the fact that the Irish women on board, as was the custom in Irish prisons, received only gruel and milk. Now the introduction of salt and beef and pork to their shipboard diet proved most deleterious to their unaccustomed stomachs.

As is always the case, bickering, fights, bad behaviour and thieving among the women prisoners were much in evidence. In the matter of whoring, though, which was known to plague even the most watchful of voyages, Hannah was to play a part so skilful that the surgeon-superintendent would state in his report that the prisoners had co-operated well and had shown little pernicious disruption and almost none of the moral turpitude so commonly experienced on a convict ship carrying female prisoners.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Can't do it, allowances have been had.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the news that Hannah was to be transported to Van Diemen's Land, Ikey sent a letter by means of a certain Captain Barkman, master of a whaler sailing out of Boston and bound for Sydney, and then directly to Hobart where it would commence upon a whaling expedition in Antarctic waters. In his letter Ikey instructed his eldest son John to take passage with the captain to Hobart Town, and there to negotiate whatever comforts or conditions would be to the benefit of his mother and his brothers and sisters.

John Solomon arrived in Hobart Town not two weeks prior to Hannah's arrival on the
Mermaid,
and was quickly acquainted with Governor Arthur's desire to place female prisoners with settlers or emancipists in a manner most favourable to the containment of government expenses. Arthur ran the colony like a small-town grocer, aware of the cost of every tin, jar and package on his colonial shelves. Even a single night's detainment in the Female Factory meant a debit in the government books.

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

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

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

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