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NLA News - home November 2004 Volume XV Number 2

Dear Father and Mother

click to enlarge
C. Knight
Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, 1840  1840
oil on canvas painting;
40.7 x 51.0 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection,
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an2260849
click to enlarge
Henry Wary (1824–1900)
Convict Prison Accommodation 870, Fremantle, W. Australia, Designed and Erected by Captains Henderson & Wray, R.E.  1859
watercolour; 17.4 x 48.0 cm
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an5758270

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 Western Australia’s Fremantle convict establishment and on 21 November 1856 wrote to his parents back in Barnsley, Yorkshire. The letter was addressed ‘Mr John Boyer, Platelayor, Church St Barnsley Yorkshire’:

Dear Father and Mother

you hoping they will find you all at home in good health as they leave me here at present thank the Almighty for it. Dear parents I am very anxious to hear from you I wrote a letter to you on the 18th September last and I hope that you will have received it, there was enclosed in it that post Office order for £5 which you sent to me when we lay at Plymouth ...

I like this Colony very well for I am informed that a man when he gets his ticket of leave he may do very well if he is only steady and keeps out of bad company. And dear parents I have not the least doubt of this … Dear parents the time of my probation is from the time I received my sentence (of) 4 years and six months before I shall be entitled to a ticket of leave but the Governor informed us that by good conduct and willing industry at our work we could shorten our time a great deal … Dear parents I promised for to send you a lock of my hair platted upon a card. I am sending it to you in this letter … I am sure that you too [are] often troubled that I have been transported away from you innocent.

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 7 September 1856. His birth date was given as 1834, a platelayer by occupation, unmarried, Protestant and literate. He was sentenced in 1854, at York, to 15 years for manslaughter. His ticket of leave date was given as 9 July 1858 and his known whereabouts as Perth and Toodyay.

click to enlarge
Griffith Boyer
Letter dated 21 Nov. 1856 [facsimile]
Manuscript Collection, MS 1909
click to enlarge
Edward Blackhouse (fl.1842)
A Chain Gang, Convicts Going to Work Near Sidney [i.e. Sydney], New South Wales  1843
etching print; 22.0 x 33.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection,
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an24747399
click to enlarge
Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827)
[Convicts Embarking for Botany Bay]  [c.1800]
pen and wash drawing;
17.3 x 15.7 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection,
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an5601547

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 Fleet Street, London (MS 1060/3). At the time, he was due to sail the next weekend and asked his ‘dear mother’ to send him a handkerchief, some stockings and a small keepsake’, as you are the only friend I have except my sisters and William … [but] if any of My Friends can send me a trifle of money …’

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 31 August 1846, Edward said he had now received his liberty in the colony and had a dairy of 10 cows. Still single, he wrote, ‘I would try to Return to England only I think I am doing better in this Colony than I would do at Home. I can get my living without Hard Work and I could not do that at Home … This colony is very fruitful …’

click to enlarge
Edward William Cooke (1811–1880)
Prison-ship in Portsmouth Harbour, Convicts Going Aboard  1828
hand col. etching;plate mark
16 x 24 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection,
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an9058453

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 Islands. Of the 294 on board, 133 including 127 convicts lost their lives. Edward appears to have survived ‘Floating about on the Wreck’ from 9 pm until 2 pm the next day when survivors were picked up by a passing schooner and taken to Hobart Town.

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 Town and hoped his brother would not take as long to reply as he had been in writing to him. The letter was signed, ‘I am yours Truly Affectionate But Unfortunate Brother, Edward Murry.’ That may have been how he saw himself but considering his survival in the face of fire, scurvy and wreck, he was somewhat more than fortunate.

He gave his brother the name of the police clerk at Campbell Town as a forwarding address. According to a list compiled by Jackie Browne of Burnie, one Edward Murray, who arrived on George III and was described as free, applied in February 1848 for permission to marry Ann Anderson, both residing at Campbell Town. If this is our man, maybe he came to feel fortunate after all.

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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