Tiger Men (2 page)

H
OBART
T
OWN
, 1853

V
an Diemen’s Land was a place of profound contradiction. The sheer beauty of the island could stir a man’s soul, yet the savagery of life on its shores could rob him of all faith. This alarming paradox continued to disturb Silas Stanford, even after ten long years in the colony. He did not doubt that many a poor creature had lost sight of God in the midst of this glorious wilderness where His hand was so evident. Fifty years on, the history of Van Diemen’s Land remained, to Silas, a shocking condemnation.

The British had decided, in 1803, to extend their occupation of the Australian continent to include Van Diemen’s Land, roughly 150 miles off the south-east coast, and they had done so purely in order to prevent the French laying claim to it. A penal colony had quickly been established for the provision of labour, and a thriving new port had been created at Sullivan’s Cove, a picturesque bay on the west bank of the River Derwent. Convict settlers had been transported from Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to people the township and develop the land, and a new society had been born in the wilderness.

Over the ensuing decades, the busy port of Hobart Town, nestled at the base of mighty Mount Wellington, became home to rough, tough men: to jailers and convicts, and sealers and whalers, and to those seeking refuge from the law. Van Diemen’s Land, it seemed, was designed for the lawless. Whether they arrived in chains, or whether they simply walked off ships in a bid to escape justice, the island appeared a magnet to the wicked. Here was no haven for the weak or the squeamish; here only the toughest survived. Escaped convicts and bandits roamed the countryside, while settlers, men who considered themselves civilised, embarked upon the systematic eradication of those whose lands they’d invaded.

The eradication of the natives proved swift and efficient. The last of the surviving Aboriginal population was eventually rounded up and transported to the islands of Bass Strait, where they continued to die in the process of being Christianised and civilised.

The Aborigine of Van Diemen’s Land was not the only species to be brutally annihilated. While eliminating human competition on land, the invaders embarked upon a bloodbath at sea. The indiscriminate slaughter of seals and southern right whales soon put an end to the local sealing industry and, not long afterwards, to shore-based whaling. Undeterred, however, the merchants simply built bigger and stronger ocean-going vessels fit to meet the demands of pelagic whaling, and turned their attention to the highly productive sperm whaling grounds farther afield. In the interests of profit, all was fair game. Besides, the fine timbers of the island had made logging highly profitable and had introduced a burgeoning ship-building industry. There were limitless opportunities on offer in Van Diemen’s Land for those who knew how to avail themselves of its riches.

The plunder of land and sea had reaped rewards for many who were perhaps undeserving, but as free settlers started to arrive in numbers, wealth became the result of hard work and ingenuity. Among such men were those determined to lead the way in moral enlightenment. Philanthropy abounded. Rich benefactors built churches and funded schools, not only for their sons, but also for the poor. Worship and education was to replace licentiousness and ignorance. An influential lobby group of respectable colonists and clergy formed the Anti-Transportation League in a bid to call a halt to the convict system. Appeals were made directly to the British Government and to Queen Victoria herself. No longer should the island serve as a penal settlement and dumping ground for the dregs of humanity, they argued. Van Diemen’s Land must become a free and civilised society modelled along the lines of Britain, with a stratified class structure ruled by the powerful elite.

There was no man more dedicated to the cause of freedom and reformation than the successful wool grower and merchant, Silas Stanford. But Silas differed from many of his fellow benefactors in the way that he sought neither self-aggrandisement nor power. He considered it his bounden duty to care for those less fortunate. And of even greater importance, he considered it his mission to help lead the way out of a brutal past into a bright new future. He needed no reward for his efforts, at least not in this world.

Silas cut an impressive but austere figure as he marched solemnly down Collins Street in his signal black frock coat and top hat, his greying beard as neat in its trim as his well-tailored suit. He might have been leading a procession of mourners, or so his youngest daughter was wont to tell him.

‘Why must you always wear black, Father?’ she would tease. ‘Why not a pair of check trousers, or perhaps a grey waistcoat? Both are fashionable, and black is so very funereal.’

‘Black is dignified and respectful, Amy,’ he would reply. ‘One must avoid any show of ostentation, particularly when one is calling upon those less fortunate than one’s self.’

But Amy never let him have the last word. She knew only too well that her father chose his sombre form of dress for pure personal preference. ‘The poor rather like a little colour,’ she said good-humouredly. ‘I always wear a bright scarf or carry a silk kerchief myself. Such items are greatly admired. So much so I must admit that I often find myself giving them away.’

‘You are of age, my dear, and it is your prerogative to dress as you wish – within the bounds of respectability of course . . .’ Silas knew that he sounded stuffy. He couldn’t help himself, it was his nature, but the twinkle in his eyes betrayed him as he added, ‘. . . just as it is my prerogative to dress in funereal fashion.’

‘So it is, and so you must.’ Amy laughed and kissed his cheek. It didn’t stop her playful nagging, however, just as it didn’t stop his enjoyment of the game, for Silas adored the youngest of his three daughters.

Nineteen-year-old Amy had always been her father’s favourite, even as a child, although Silas would never have admitted the fact to a living soul. And now that his older daughters, Harriet and Isabel, had left home, Amy was more precious to him than ever. He dreaded the day when she too would fly the nest, abandoning him to a solitary widower’s existence. But he was resigned to the inevitability of such a fate. Unlike a number of his contemporaries who had lost their wives, he was not one to keep a daughter standing by as a servant to nurse him into old age. Besides, Amy did not want for suitors; it would be only a matter of time before one would claim her heart. She was not as striking as her sisters, it was true, but she was pleasing in appearance, and her feisty streak of independence, which aroused in Silas a strange combination of pride and concern, was found attractive by many. Then of course there was the prospect of her substantial inheritance. In a place such as Hobart Town where scoundrels and opportunists abounded, a young woman like Amy Stanford, with or without physical attributes, was considered a worthy prize. Silas trusted implicitly in his daughter’s strength of character and sound common-sense, but he was nonetheless on the constant look-out for any who might seek to take advantage.

Upon reaching the intersection of Campbell Street, Silas halted and looked down towards Macquarie Street and the hustle and bustle of the harbour, where the cries of the hawkers could clearly be heard ringing out from Fisherman’s Dock. On any given day, there were vessels of all descriptions sitting at the docks, or resting at anchor, or working the harbour waters: whalers and merchant ships, fishing boats and barges. They might be the powerful ocean-going barques and ketches and clippers and schooners, all with masts towering above the highest of the nearby stone warehouses, or they might be the smaller boats and ferries that plied the river trade. Hobart Town revolved around the hub of its harbour, and the dockside was under constant development to increase its capacity. The newly created Constitution Dock was completed only three years previously.

Silas continued to gaze down at the harbour, oblivious to the traps and the drays and the pedestrians passing by as he watched the road gang of convict labourers. Work never ceased on the foreshore, and the next stage of dockland reclamation was well under way. The men toiled in silence like mindless beasts, paying no heed whatsoever to the brutal barks of their overseers. They were plainly accustomed to being cursed like dogs. Silas, as always, found the sight and the sound offensive. Little wonder, he thought, that spirits have been broken and souls lost here, for European settlement has brought to this paradise everything that is base in mankind.

Well, all that is about to change, he told himself with a surge of satisfaction. Oh yes indeed. Changes were most definitely afoot in Van Diemen’s Land, and not a moment too soon!

He crossed the road and walked on down Lower Collins Street and, by the time he reached the junction of Sun Street, he found that he was holding his breath. He always avoided inhaling deeply when he visited the suburb of Wapping, but today, in the heat of early December and with a strong southerly breeze, the stench from the Hobart Town Rivulet was particularly disgusting. More so than ever to Silas, because he had recently returned from his property in the southern midlands, where the air was pure and the river waters pristine.

He turned left into the narrow lane where Polly Jordan lived and, unable to hold his breath any longer, reluctantly exhaled to breathe in the stench of rotting animal parts and sewage and all the other forms of putrid matter that was washed down the rivulet from the abattoirs and households and mills upstream, only to end in Wapping.

The surface of the narrow laneway, which for much of the year was a soggy, muddy mess, particularly when the rivulet flooded as it often did, had dried in the summer sun, and several scruffy little girls were playing hopscotch in the dust. Silas scowled. They should have been at school. Women leant against the doorways of conjoined tin shanties and squalid wooden huts, gossiping and enjoying the pleasant weather, seemingly mindless of the fearful stench. In deference to their feelings, Silas resisted the urge to hold a kerchief to his nose. Instead, he tipped the brim of his hat as he passed by. They waved. ‘’Allo Mr Stanford,’ one of them called. The women of Wapping knew Silas Stanford, just as Silas Stanford knew them.

To Silas, Wapping epitomised the shameful dichotomy that was Hobart Town. Here, where the rivulet wound its way into the Derwent, the muddy streets and the network of poverty-ridden back alleys and lanes were little more than a cesspit, while barely a half a mile to the west were the grand homes of the prosperous and powerful. Silas, in his mission to help redress the balance in whatever way he could, was today making one of his many routine house calls on behalf of the Hobart Town Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society. A whaler by the name of Albert Jordan had died accidentally six weeks before and had been buried at sea. The society was providing his pregnant widow with a monthly rental allowance and weekly supplies of fresh rations for her children.

Polly Jordan’s poky tin shack was at the far end of the lane, and its front door opened directly onto the street, where two boys were squatting in the dirt playing marbles. Upon his approach, Silas recognised the older boy.

‘Charlie Jordan,’ he said sternly, ‘you should be in school.’

‘Oh. Hullo, Mr Stanford.’ Nine-year-old Charlie scrambled respectfully to his feet. His mother’s instructions had been well drummed into him for the past month.

‘I want you nice and proper, whenever anyone comes from the society, Charlie,’ Polly had ordered, ‘your best behaviour, mind. They’re good people, that lot, and they deserve our respect.’ Her son had correctly read the warning to mean: W
e need that lot, Charlie. Don’t go messing things up
.

It had been Silas himself who had founded the Businessmen’s Philanthropic Society five years previously, but most people had lost sight of the fact. Bigger names than his had attached themselves to the cause, many for the purposes of self-promotion, which did not in the least bother Silas. So long as they offered money along with their names, he was perfectly happy for them to reap whatever benefit they wished.

Respectful though Charlie’s manner was, the boy didn’t appear too dismayed at being caught playing truant.

‘I haven’t been able to go to school, Mr Stanford. I’ve had the grippe something awful this past week.’ He gave a pathetic cough to emphasise the fact, then before any further discussion could take place he charged for the open front door. ‘I’ll tell Ma you’re here,’ he called as he disappeared, and the shriek of ‘Ma! Mr Stanford’s here!’ echoed back out into the lane.

Silas looked down at the urchin still squatting in the dust. ‘You should be in school too,’ he said.

The urchin grinned back with a cheeky arrogance. His dad was a fish-hawker and his mum was a washerwoman: they didn’t need handouts from the HTBPS do-gooders.

‘Hullo, Mr Stanford.’ Polly Jordan was at the front door in an instant. ‘How nice to see you; do come in.’ She smiled a welcome that was meant to be winsome, but her once-pretty face was weathered well beyond her twenty-nine years, and two missing front teeth did nothing to help, although they gave her a girlish lisp, which was strangely coquettish.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Jordan. Thank you.’

She stood to one side and he edged his way past, trying not to make contact, but she was so hugely with child it was difficult to avoid her altogether as he clutched his top hat to his chest. She seemed to have grown to twice the size in the month since he’d last seen her. He wished she would take more pains to cover her condition; the cotton dress, which was designed to hang loosely, clung to her distended belly in a most distracting fashion. He wondered whether he might suggest Amy bring a smock with her when she next visited the household, although perhaps that would be insensitive.

‘Sit down, Mr Stanford, do.’ Polly indicated the mothy armchair, which had clearly been her husband’s and which dominated the tiny room, then she plonked herself heavily onto the small hardback chair that sat beside the rickety table where upturned packing cases formed the remainder of the family’s seating arrangements. A little girl of around four was perched on one, solemnly watching the proceedings, and an eighteen-month-old infant lay sleeping in a cradle, also assembled from the wood of packing cases. There was no sign of Charlie, who’d ducked out the back door into the rear of the neighbouring house, and was currently making his way through to the front lane to resume his game of marbles.