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Dear Father and Mother
Judy Cannon discovers convict letters, written to families back home, that resonate with both nostalgia and optimism It takes a moment to envisage a time when news of family and friends was at least three months and 12 000 miles away. Like anyone else, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century convicts needed to write home and in doing so left us word sketches of their lives and concerns. The National Library is a safe haven for a number of convicts’ letters, some sad, some historically interesting and others more concerned with seeking funds for the voyage. Even in only a brief letter, something of the writer’s character—although a writer knew an official was likely to read it—seeps through, along with a sense of how an individual really felt about being transported to the other side of the world, aware that return was unlikely. An acute need for news of home and families and perhaps reassurance that their own still care about them troubles the reader; there is a haunting echo of loneliness. Griffith
Bowyer (MS 1909) wrote in excellent script on a page headed ‘Prisoner’s
address’. He had arrived at
Urging them to do what they could for him at home because ‘I take it very hard to suffer innocent’, he asked for locks of hair from them in return adding that he was working at ‘my own trade of plate-laying in and about the prison yard’. A quick check
of Fremantle Prison’s database gives information about a man, who may
or may not be the same as Griffith Boyer, Convict No. 4027, aka Bowyer,
who arrived aboard the Runnymede on
In 1855 Fremantle Prison superintendent Thomas H. Dixon decreed that prisoners could write one letter on arrival and another every two months, and could receive one letter (pre-paid) every two months. ‘All letters of an improper, or evil tendency either to, or from the prisoner, or containing “Slang” or other objectionable expressions will be suppressed’, he said. No articles could be included, otherwise both sender and receiver would be liable to punishment. So what might have happened to, or over, Bowyer’s lock of hair and postal order? On 2 May
1832 John Wimble wrote from the Spithead, Portsmouth, to his parents in
He wrote again in December from Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was then known, when his prospects had improved considerably: ‘Dear Mother I am doing Extreemly well thank god for it I have got a Situation as Messenger at the [Colonial] Secetarys office … all I have to got to Doo is to conduct myself and I may, if please god I live, return to england again in about 12 or 14 Years … this country is far better for any one than england a man and his family may live cheap here … Dear Mother you will I know like to hear of my doing well and Believe me I am doing as well as any tradesman in england at this time thanks Be to god for it as I have plenty of clothes plenty of victuls a good bed to lay Upon and can always have a few Shillings in my pocket … you always said it might Be for the best and it is, so depend Upon it … please write soon and never mind expense.’ As a PS, he added, ‘I have left my country for my own and my countrys good’. In a letter to his father, brothers and sisters on 12 December 1834 (MS 8140), Edward Murry was reflective, ‘I have now wrote to inform you that I am about to leave you all for ever for i am now embarked on Board of the Ship George the Third Bound for Hobart Town, Van Deimans land which is now lying in the River Thames at Woollwich’. He continued, ‘There is now 220 of Convicts embarked and we expect to set sail from here to Morrow but we shall Stop 14 days at Portsmouth Before we sail for good’. He was sad to read in his father’s letter that his mother was dead and was very sorry to have the idea that his own trials and troubles had caused her death, ‘But let us hope that she is happier and in a place of Rest’. He asked his brothers and sisters to send him a sovereign for the voyage and concluded, ‘I must now leave you all for good for never expect to return to england any more so I must now Bid Adieu to you all friends and Relations. Adieu Adieu Sweet Liberty Adieu. E. Murray’. Twelve years
later, Edward wrote a first letter to a brother, who was possibly a courier
in Stockport, Chester. Writing from Rofs [Ross], Van Diemen’s Land, on
In the same
letter he said, ‘When I last wrote you from the Downs, I was on board
the George the 3rd Barque, bound for Van Diemens Land’,
he clearly recalled the events of the voyage. A fire had broken out when
some spirits caught alight and burned for two hours: ‘We were expecting
to be blown up every Moment with the Gunpowder that was Between Decks
belonging to the soldiers but with the exertions of the prisoners the
Fire was got under’. According to the Encyclopedia of Australian Shipwrecks,
also held by the National Library, when the George III convict
transport was nearing the equator, a fire broke out and but for the heroism
of two convicts risking death to remove nearby gunpowder, the ship would
probably have been lost. The fire destroyed much of the provisions but
as the captain refused to put into port for more, 12 died of scurvy and
60 became seriously ill. Later, in sight of land, the ship, it appears,
took a short cut through the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and was wrecked near
the Acteon Having told authorities he was a ‘ginger bread batter’, he was assigned to a good master. Later he was in shipbuilding, became a shepherd and then a dairyman, eventually starting up on his own. At Ross,
so belatedly writing home, he said he intended to move to Hobart He gave his
brother the name of the police clerk at Campbell JUDY CANNON is a freelance writer and researcher who lives in Brisbane and contributes regularly to issues of National Library of Australia News |
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