This was one panorama you did not want to experience on your visit to Van Diemen’s Land — back when it was Van Diemen’s Land.
A small speck of terror amid the rolling canopy of green.
Fire has cleansed it of much of it’s horror, so now it is Tasmania’s number one tourist destination once again for completely the opposite reason.
The convict James Dyson was never sent to Port Arthur, but I’m sure he was threatened with it on more than one occasion.
There’s a distinct possibility that the soldierly father-in-law of one of his children in Western Australia had served as a prison guard at Port Arthur in the past. That must have made the after-dinner conversations interesting.
Truth be told, there’s no good reason for this post, other than I wanted an excuse to look at my images from Port Arthur from my visit there, back in 2017. Time is running out so this will be the last post of 2024.
It should be fairly common knowledge by now that Mrs Jane Dyson, before she was Mrs Edwards, was Miss Jane Develing, or Develin, Devlin or Devling… a sixteen year old orphan girl sent to the Colony of Western Australia on the first of the bride ships in 1849.
Before that, she was an inmate of the Poorhouse of St Pancras parish in London’s north. She was sent there when she was six or seven years old. Naturally, she was the ringleader of a schoolroom revolt in the poorhouse by the age of eleven. Age thirteen or fourteen, she was giving evidence at a judicial inquest into the severe discipline at St Pancras. It was called for after the suicide of a fellow inmate — who decided that being dead was preferable to another stay in the workhouse. If Charles Dickens had not already written and published “Oliver Twist” by this date, Oliver Twist would have been a girl.
After newspaper-pages of bad publicity, and questions put to management even by the Home Secretary in the mother of all parliaments — if this feisty young lady had been disliked by the guardians of the parish before — she would have been utterly loathed by them now. It was not that Jane liked them much better, but she had nowhere else to go.
The depths of their hatred might be measured by the fact that they were prepared to spend cold hard coin to make the problem go away. Not by improving conditions or governance in the Poorhouse — don’t be silly! They paid for Jane and five other girls from St Pancras to leave the country forever.
St Pancras Hospital, London, re-using some of the old workhouse buildings. 2015. Author’s photo.
But that’s another story, and one that has been told before…
Untold, has been how a six or seven year old girl ended up in the St Pancras Poorhouse to begin with. Being orphaned has been a widely considered possibility. But even so, why has it not been possible to trace her family?
We know her precise date of birth: 1 September 1833.
We know that by the night of 6 June 1841, Jane Develin, aged 7, was incarcerated in the St Pancras Workhouse system.
1841 England Census Class: HO107; Piece 681; Book: 9; Civil Parish: St Pancras; County: Middlesex; Enumeration District: St Pancras Workhouse; Folio: 33; Page: 10; Line: 19; GSU roll: 438797.
“That architectural style is early Maniac”
The thing about workhouses, or poorhouses (the terms are used interchangeably), was that even at their most exploitative they cost money to run. Various districts got together to form poor law unions to split the costs by sharing a house between them. As they were paying the bills, the various parishes got a bit particular about who they provided shelter to. They would not willingly home paupers from outside their union districts.
St Pancras Poorhouse was something of an exception to the rule. It was not part of a Union, and as the second largest poorhouse in London, it’s destitute were supposed to come solely from the parish of St Pancras itself.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of St Pancras, in Camden and Middlesex | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time. URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/922 Date accessed: 27th December 2024
If Jane was an orphan, there should have been a trace of the death and burial of a relative in this parish, around about the time Jane was admitted. (There are no workhouse records surviving for the time she was admitted, they only exist after she blew the whistle on conditions inside, post 1848.)
There’s not a trace of any Develins or Develings to be found in death or burial records for the district during this time— the closest match, indeed the only match is for a burial record for a Mary Thivelin, buried in the parish burial grounds of St Pancras, by coincidence, right next to the poorhouse compound.
She was buried there on 8 February 1841. Her age at death was recorded as 35.
The chapel in 2015. Not the original building, nor was there ever likely to be a grave marker.
By this date, statutory records of births, deaths and marriages were supposed to have been kept in England. It should come as a suprise to no-one that the name Thivelin does not appear in the records for this district at this time. There is a death record for someone named Shovelin, but she was aged 25 or 26. That had to be another transcription error, didn’t it?
Yes and no. Mary Shovelin, (if she is aged 35), is still the most likely candidate to be Jane’s mother. She died in childbirth, as likely did the child as well. We know this because her husband was present at her death. This would make Thomas Shovelin Jane’s father.
Years ago, I asked a not-that-elderly relative what his father’s name was. He was puzzled by that question, but after a few moments of thought, replied “Pop?” (Well done Dad.) When you were six, would you necessarily have known your mother or father’s given names? Jane was 29 when she was asked that question, and the best answer she could come up with was “James Develing” as the name of her father. “James” was the name of the man she was about to marry that day. However, knowing what your daddy did when you were six is another matter entirely — when required to list his trade or profession on her marriage certificate, she put down “carpenter”. Thomas Shovelin also happens to describe himself as a carpenter on the death certificate of Jane’s potential mother.
By Survey of London, volume 35, The Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (1970)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101044
Here is a brief sketch of the family Jane seems to have come from.
Thomas Shovelin was born in Dublin, Ireland, about the year 1798. He was a carpenter, and there is good probability he came to England to work in the theatre district of London. Nothing is known about his wife Mary, not where she was born or where they were married, other than that she was ten years his junior, and neither of them were Roman Catholic.
A son, George Shovelin, was born in London before 12 February 1826. He was baptised at St Clement Danes, London, on that date. His parents were living at 140 Dury Lane in the city at the time. — The first clue as to possible theatrical connections for the family.
Another child, William Fawcett Shovelin, born about 1829, was born at sea. Which sea, under what circumstances, nothing yet is known. (Let’s for the sake of an argument, say it was on a boat.) There is still no record of birth for a Jane Shovelin on 1 September 1833.
George joined the British Army as soon as he turned sixteen. He enlisted in the 39th Regiment of Foot as a Private. Six year old Jane would never see him again and his mother was dead the following year. George may have served overseas, but more research is needed to determine that. What is certain, he was no longer with the regiment when it was stationed in Australia.
George was invalided out of the army by January 1853. He is on the books of the Royal Chelsea Hospital for a time. Then — and here is the second clue the family may have had something to do with the stage — he was working as a Theatrical Property Man at the time of his death, which occured at 21 Bolsover Street, Marylebone on 17 July 1858. He died of an epileptic fit. He was 31 years old. He never married.
St Pancras chapel, 2015 version.
After his wife Mary died in childbirth and he’d abandoned his daughter Jane to the St Pancras poorhouse, Thomas Shovelin disappears from the English records for most of the following next decade.
When he reappears he has married a woman thirty years his junior named Mary Ann Whitbread Green. She comes from rural Essex. There is no trace of a marriage. Their son, Thomas Charles Shovelin, was born in Notting Hill late in 1851. Then, a Daniel Shovelin was born at St Luke’s, Westminster during 1854. These boys grew up to be Hackney cab drivers, or grooms for Hackney cab drivers (The auto-mechanics of their day).
A daughter, Mary Ann Shovelin, was born in 1860 but died in 1862.
Jane’s only surviving full brother William Fawcett Shovelin married a woman named Mary Ann (because of course he did.) It is his name that is recorded in the England censuses as Shoveling. He abandoned his Mary Ann to the Workhouse in Westminster, and took up with a Julia, however he was dead before his first wife expired in the workhouse by 1872.
On 7 January 1868, seventy year old Thomas Shovelin was so reduced in circumstances that he too had to be admitted to the St Pancras Poorhouse. And that was the end of him the following year.
Tracing the Shovelin family though the genealogical records has been challenging and is far from complete. Either records are missing, or the family name has been written down in hard to search for variations including Shovelin, Shoveling, Shovling, Shevlin, Shivelin, Thivelin, etc. It no longer seems to me such a jump to get from Shovelin to Develing.
Remnants of the burial ground at St Pancras, 2015. Author’s photograph
Selected Sources
Westminster, London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1919 Name George Shovelin Age 0 Birth Date Abt 1826 Baptism Date 12 Feb. 1826 Baptism Place St Clement Danes, London, Westminster, England Parish as it Appears St Clement Danes Father Thomas Shovelin, Carpenter, Drury Lane. Mother Ann Shovelin City of Westminster Archives Centre; London, England; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: STC/PR/1/17
UK, Royal Hospital Chelsea Admission Books, Registers and Papers, 1702-1980 Name Geo Shovelin Military Regiment 39th Regiment of Foot Military Pension Date 11 Jan. 1853 Residence Place 2 North London 3 yrs to 21/1/56 The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; WO 23: Royal Hospital Chelsea: Admission Books, Registers and Papers; Reference: WO 23/39
England Census 1861: 4 London Street, St Pancras Thomas Shovelin 58 Head, Journeyman Carpenter, b. Dublin, Ireland Mary A Shovelin 39 Wife, b. Essex, Farnham Thomas Shovelin 9 Son, b. Middlesex, London Daniel Shovelin 7 Son, b. Middlesex, London Mary A Shovelin 11mo Daughter, b. Middlesex, London Class: Rg 9; Piece: 102; Folio: 2; Page: 3; GSU roll: 542574
England Census 1861: 31 North Street, Lambeth, Surey, England William Fawcet Shovling 34 Head, House painter, b. at Sea. Mary Ann Shovling 31 Wife, b. St George Grosvenor Street George Oscar Shovling 8 Son, b. St Pancras Maryann Shovling 4 Daughter, b. St George Grosvenor Street Class: Rg 9; Piece: 351; Folio: 34; Page: 28; GSU roll: 542620
England Census 1871: 33 Maiden Lane, The Strand, London, England William Shoveling 40 Head, House Decorator, b. at Sea Julia Shoveling 28 Wife, b. Dorset. Mary Anne Shoveling 14 Daughter, b. London. The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1871 England Census; Class: RG10; Piece: 362; Folio: 22; Page: 38; GSU roll: 824611
London, England, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records, 1764-1921 Name Thos Shovelin Admission Age 70 Record Type Admission Birth Date abt 1798 Admission Date 7 May 1868 Admission Place St Pancras, Camden, City of London, England London Metropolitan Archives; London, England, UK; London, England, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records, 1764-1921; Reference Number: STPBG/166
I’ve been wading through the history of the Swamp lately. That is — the actual swamp that had Dyson’s name on it — not the metaphorical entity that represents the Dyson family’s life in early colonial Australia. This is the one that is currently known as Lake Jualbup.
Dyson’s Swamp was always Jualbup. Jualbup has sometimes been Dyson’s Swamp. Jualbup was, is, and always will be Whadjuk Noongar boodjar.
Truth be told, everyone’s favourite former Vandemonian convict in Western Australia was not in direct possession of the swamp that bore his name for very long. He wasn’t even the first settler to claim ownership of it — colonial style.
According to Geoffrey Dean in One controversy after another: A chronological history of Lake Jualbup (2011), an agreement to transfer ownership of the swamp from the merchant and chemist George Shenton to James Dyson was first drawn up in the year 1858. The deal was not finalised for another thirteen years — not until the year 1871.
As late as 1965, there were still some visible traces of the Swamp as it existed from Dyson’s time. Observe the lone post in the water on the left hand side of the photograph below — this would have been part of the three-rail fence that marked the boundaries between Locations 119 and 118 — the formal designation of Dyson’s Swamp on the title deeds.
144742PD: Shenton Park Lake, 1965 Photograph by Grace Roper State Library of Western Australia
Dyson’s name was only attached to the title deed for six short years. The Shenton family reclaimed it after 1877. However, until the suburb of Shenton Park swallowed up the bush surrounding the water in the early 20th century, those who actually lived by Jualbup (both Whadjuk and European) carried on their lives as much as before.
The independent timber cutters and cow herders leasing their paddocks and huts from whoever demanded rent from them that month, included identities such as—
JAMES MCKENZIE, who described himself as a gatherer of gum and bark, was charged with being drunk on the premises of Mr. Caesar, of the Emerald Isle hotel. The constable who arrested him said he looked like ‘a wild man,’ who had never in his life been introduced to soap and water, much less a razor or a comb. The prisoner himself did no deny the charge, but submitted that there were extenuating circumstances, which the Court might take into consideration. He said he lived in the gay neighborhood of Dyson’s Swamp, and, not being used to indulge in alcoholic beverages, a few glasses of beer had overpowered him. …
He had a neighbour out by the Swamp by the name of
James Thompson (no relation).
WA Police Gazette 11 June 1879 p98
James Thompson (no relation) had a hut and a paddock somewhere near the swamp during the years 1879 and 1880. He may have been in the district long before (or after) that, but because he did not report a brown pony or a bundle of firewood to the police as stolen in any other year, he remains effectively anonymous.
(The sons of Kain proved to be innocent of this particular misdeed. Apropos to nothing, they were the sons of a pensioner guardsman who came to Western Australia with the first convict ship, the Scindian in June 1850.)
Thompson (no relation), might be the same James Thompson (also no relation) who also worked for Dyson back in 1852, before the latter could even have dreamed of owning a swamp of his own.
James Thompson, Convict number 1184, arrived in Fremantle on 30 January 1852 per the Marion, the sixth convict transport to be sent to Western Australia. He had already served four years of a ten year sentence for burglarising a house in Coventry, England, so he was granted a ticket-of-leave the day after his arrival.
Dyson employed him from 30 August 1852 for seven months until the beginning of November that same year. It is only guesswork that Thompson (no relation) was one of Dyson’s pitsawyers, or if he had been employed back then anywhere close to his master’s future swamp.
At the time, Dyson had a contract to supply timber for the new colonial hospital down the other end of Murray Street (then Howick Street). Dyson was then living on the corner of King and Murray streets on the other side of town. His marriage had just disintegrated and his first wife had herself committed to the local lunatic asylum.
Against this backdrop, when Thompson finished his time with Dyson in November, he next worked for a baker named Joseph Freeman. His new employer was also a ticket-of-leave convict, but one permitted to run his own business. The address of that business just happened to be nearly next door to the Dyson family home on King Street in Perth.
By 1855 both Thompson (no relation) and Freeman had their conditional pardons, so they were both free to leave Western Australia … almost.
£5 REWARD. WHEREAS some anonymous writer has, within the last few days, sent letters to the several Storekeepers of Perth, setting forth that I, Joseph Freeman, Baker, of Dalton’s Terrace, Perth, was about surreptitiously to leave the colony for Melbourne, which slander has had a tendency to do me some degree of harm; I hereby offer the above reward of five pounds to any person who shall render such authentic information as will unmask the cowardly informant with a view to his prosecution; and I here also give notice, that all persons indebted to me, do forthwith settle their accounts; and to request that all persons to whom I may be indebted may furnish to me their accounts on or before the 20th of July next, that they may be examined and liquidated. JOSEPH FREEMAN, BAKER, PERTH.
Both made their way (eventually) to South Australia, which was about as far as it was safe for them to travel as the colony of Victoria had enacted some hideous laws about expirees attempting to enter that jurisdiction.
According to the laws of Victoria, any person once convicted of a transportable offence, and found residing in Victoria within three years of the full expiration of his sentence, is liable to penal servitude on the roads, either in or out of irons, for the space of three years. If, after undergoing this sentence, he remains in Victoria three months longer, he is liable to a repetition of the former sentence; and so on, as long as he lives. All property found upon him is confiscated. Any constable who “suspects” that a person resident in Victoria was sentenced to transportation, and had not, three years previously, completed his term, may apprehend him without warrant, and the burden of exculpatory proof is made to rest upon the person apprehended.
This debate in South Australia about how to treat former prisoners was ignited by the arrival of James Thompson (no relation) and others into their polity. He had been arrested for wandering the streets of Adelaide very early in the morning with no good excuse.
ADELAIDE: TUESDAY, APRIL 22. [Before Mr. C. Mann, Stipendiary Magistrate.] “CONDITIONAL-PARDON” MAN.— James Thompson was charged with wandering about the streets at 1 o’clock in the morning, and not giving a satisfactory account of himself. Sergeant Badman deposed that he stopped the man and his companion in Light-square, and on his refusing to give a proper account of himself, he brought him to the Station-house, as he had watched him ever since his arrival from Swan River, about seven weeks ago, and observed him under suspicious circumstances several times. On searching defendant a conditional pardon was found upon him. There were no fewer than 20 or 30 of them about the streets, and doing nothing (as far as could be ascertained) for a subsistence. The prisoner’s wife said they brought a good deal of money with them, and she had taken in washing, and her husband was going to work that very morning. She then pleaded for him, and hoped His Worship would look over the matter, as it was the first time. His Worship said he had a duty to perform. He must commit the prisoner for a week; for though it was the first time that he had been brought before the Court, the police had watched his motions for the last few weeks, and the course now pursued was necessary for the protection of the public.
Only twenty five years before, the good burghers of Western Australia were complaining about exactly the same thing concerning riff-raff from Van Dieman’s Land and NSW.
It entirely possible that this James Thompson (no relation), who is definitely the same convict formerly employed by James Dyson, is not the same individual who returned to Western Australia at some date afterwards and worked by his former master’s swamp.
Let’s now take it as read from now on that any time I invoke the name Thompson (or any of it’s variant abominations), the suffix “(no relation)” can safely be appended to it.
There were thirteen transporteés sent to Western Australia named James Thompson and four were James Thomsons. After a time, none of them are readily distinguishable from the other James Thompsons who were born free and stayed that way even if maybe some of them shouldn’t have been.
Jualbup/Dyson’s Swamp. Always has been, always will be.
In conclusion, I have no idea who James Thompson with the paddock near Dyson’s Swamp during the 1880’s was. I don’t know his backstory, or family, or whether any of his descendents still live in Western Australia. I only know he’s not related to me.
Stephen Hallpike (1786-1844) was a convict from Lancashire sent to the Australian colonies. It was in Liverpool that he was finally busted for the most Lancastrian crime it was possible to commit — stealing 100 yards (91.44 metres) of cotton cloth.
This was not his first (or even his second) offence, but this time it was going to stick. He was sentenced by the Liverpool Sessions Court in October 1817 to be transported over the seas for seven years. By February 1818 he was on a hulk in Portsmouth. He was transferred to another at Woolwich in May, prior to embarkation on the Lord Sidmouth at the end of August.
The Lord Sidmouth set sail on 20 September 1818 for New South Wales. This vessel with 158 convicts on board arrived in Sydney on 11 March 1819.
It was what Hallpike was up to in the weeks immediately before his arrest, conviction and transportation that are most cognisant to this story. Stephen Hallpike was allegedly a married man. The qualification “allegedly” has to be made, as no formal record of Hallpike’s first marriage has so far been located, and to muddy the waters still further, his second wife will have the same first name as her predecessor (but we get ahead of ourselves).
You do the sums
A baby boy was born in Liverpool on 8 March 1818. Six months elapsed before he was baptised in the church of St Peter on 6 December 1818. Stephen Hall-pike is described as being the son of Stephen Hall-pike, a whitesmith, and Ellen (his presumed wife).
Liverpool Record Office 283-PET-2-5. Found on findmypast.co.uk
Strangely enough, we can only know this child’s actual date of birth because 46 years later he would apply for in job in the Colonial Convict Service of an entirely different Australian colony to the one his father had been sent to. By then, he had also dropped the “Aitch” in his name from Hallpike to Allpike.
Whitesmith or Blacksmith?
While Stephen Hallpike (the elder) had proven to be profoundly ineffectual both as a thief and a father, he possessed other skills that were highly prized in the land he was exiled to. As a blacksmith, he was assigned to the New South Wales civil engineer’s department headed by Major George Druitt. After this Major resigned his commission in July 1822, Hallpike was retained by Druitt as a blacksmith on his estate until at least December 1824.
It is worth noting that in the NSW Colonial Secretary’s Index to correspondence mentioning him as a convict, his name is spelt “Allpike”. It is also worth noting that the reason why he was mentioned in dispatches was that he was discovered working at his own business when he should have still been employed by Druitt.
Nevertheless, the day came when he really had earned his freedom after serving out his sentence.
Since this was published in 1824, its a bit strange that another mention in the Colonial Secretary’s office (Reel 6064; 4/1788 p.10) states he was still not free by servitude until 5 April 1825.
Buildings in Singapore from the seafront of Padang, ca. 1837, showing the Palladian references recommended by Governor Fullerton. View of Protestant Church (right) (Voyage autour du monde, 1837: plate 47). National Museum of Singapore, available through the National Archives of Singapore, Accession No. 128537, https://www.nas.gov.sg/ archivesonline/photographs/record-details/ad5c305f-1161-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad.
He set up trade as a blacksmith, boat and coach builder, then he opened what was possibly the first hotel in Singapore’s history…
ADVERTISEMENT S. Hallpike returns his thanks to the Public for the encouragement he has hitherto met with, and begs to state that he has opened a Board and Lodging House in High Street, where Families visiting the Settlement will meet with every attention for their comfort. N.B. S.H. continues to execute Ships Blacksmith Work in general, and paints and repairs Carriages of all descriptions on moderate terms. Carriages lent on hire. Singapore, 11 May 1831
The boarding house part of his little empire was apparently managed by his wife. Quite when there was a Mrs Hallpike again on the scene and if this was the same Ellen who gave birth to his child back in Liverpool are all mysteries.
Whether their thirteen year old son was also in Singapore too is another unanswered question, however the younger Stephen also followed the trade of a blacksmith later on, so his apprenticeship may have begun at his father’s forge.
It is not until December 1832 that the first hard evidence emerges that there really was a Mrs Hallpike in Singapore … and that was only because she was leaving him, this time.
NOTICE. MRS. HALLPIKE being about to leave the Settlement, the Undersigned requests that all claims against her and himself may be sent in before the expiration of the current month, after which they will not be attended to. S. HALLPIKE. Singapore 3rd Decr. 1832.
Where she went next, remains as obscure as why she departed. The only certainty is that well before 15 July 1834 she was known to be dead, for that is when Mr Stephen Hallpike married Miss Ellen Richardson, also of Singapore, in the original St Andrew’s Church in Singapore (to the left in the picture below).
Ouch.
Once his father started breeding again, that son from his first marriage needed only have seen this birth notice in the newspaper for August 1837 to know he had no future in Singapore — If he had not worked that out already, many years before.
BIRTH. On Monday the 14th. Instant, MRS. HALLPIKE of a Son and HEIR.
The new Hallpike family wound up their business affairs in Singapore, then travelled back to England sometime after September 1838. but Hallpike, senior, at least, returned to Singapore sometime before July 1842.
There he died on 22 June 1844.
Sacred to the memory of Mr Stephen Hallpike, one of the earliest European inhabitants of this settlement who, during his long life of active usefulness, acquired the high respect of all who knew him and died deeply regretted on the 21st June 1844. Aged 56 years.
If it wasn’t a respectful family that paid for his headstone in the Fort Canning burial ground, he definitely had some greatly appreciative friends… or he was really was that greatly respected by the community he returned to.
Not bad for a former convict whose speciality proved to be driving away his family.
Coincidence time
I’ve visited the Fort Canning burial ground in Singapore. I most definitely would have seen Hallpike’s headstone then, but that it would later be significant to the Dyson story, ie: my story, would have completely passed me by. Instead, here are some generic images from 2006.
The Fort part of Fort CanningThe walls where the surviving grave decorations are displayed. Hallpike’s stone will be among these somewhere.
Coda.
Stephen Allpike, son of Stephen Hallpike, was certainly knocking about the Australasian colonies by the end of the 1830’s. He spent some time in Van Diemen’s Land, not as a convict though. His business there is unknown.
There he could have met a young lady. She was also not a convict, but she may have felt like she had being treated worse than one. Her name was Hannah Dyer. She had been sent from Western Australia by her employer, the brother of that colony’s Colonial Secretary, to give birth to his child away from the public eye. It was not even the first time he had impregnated his maid servant, but his wife had already adopted the resultant daughter for her self.
This time the baby had not survived, but Hannah did. She was permitted to return home during the year 1839. If she did meet Stephen Hallpike in Van Diemen’s Land it had to be before that date.
Libraries Tasmania POL459-1-2 page 5
When Stephen Allpike made his first visit to the Swan River settlement in Western Australia is not entirely certain. However, on 4 May 1841 he boarded a barque called the Napoleon at Launceston in Van Diemen’s Land, bound for Port Philip Bay in was would one day be the future colony of Victoria.
There is no evidence he reached his intended destination. Nor is there any record that he did not. He is not alone in that regard. At least one other passenger known to have been on board this vessel for the entirety of her two month voyage between Van Diemen’s Land and Fremantle in the Colony of Western Australia is likewise completely absent from any contemporary paperwork as well.
If he was on the colonial barque Napoleon, one of his fellow travellers was a fellow Lancastrian and recently freed Van Diemen’s Land Convict by the name of James Dyson. and they had two whole months to get to know one another.
Once in Western Australia, Allpike married Hannah Dyer in the year 1844.
During 1864 he applied for a job in the Convict Establishment of Western Australia.
In the last six months, something odd happened. Many (not all) of the shadow wives and husbands of the Dyson children — AND a parent of a parent too — inadvertently stumbled out of the historical shade.
I have written up some of this (but it is nowhere near ready to go), the rest is being assimilated into the book… so before we all die of old age — here is a brief taster of some of the latest discoveries in the works.
Emily Bates
Andrew Drewy Dyson’s girlfriend and mother of his child.
ss Gulf of Martaban
All that was known about her previously:
Attended a theatre performance in Perth where Drewy Dyson made a scene.
Gave birth to his son Andrew Samuel Dyson a few months later in 1894 on the family property near Dog Swamp.
What we have now:
Emily Bates was born in 1875 to a desperately poor family in south London. The family name might have been Betts rather than Bates. She sailed to Western Australia on an immigration ship named Gulf of Martaban in 1891.
Apparently employed by the Dysons as a domestic servant — getting pregnant by her boss resulted in some horrific internal injuries after the birth of the child, and that child was then taken away by her employers as their own. She fled to the recently established Salvation Army Women’s refuge in Perth, and that organisation smuggled her out of the colony for a new start in South Australia.
She continued working as a domestic servant in Adelaide, but was continually in and out of hospital for the rest of her life until she died there in 1926. She was 52 years old.
John William Stevenson
Second husband of Hannah Smith, nee Dyson
Approximate location where the All Nations Hotel in Kalgoorlie stood. Photo May 2024.
What we knew before:
The couple hooked up (but never actually married) in northern Tasmania. He was a hotel publican. Hannah gave birth to a child at Launceston in 1893.
They return as a family to Perth, Western Australia. He was next involved in a public scandal involving fraud against the government railways by the Perth Ice Company. He was a clerk for that company.
After the charges against him are dropped, the family moves to Kalgoorlie (as you do) but Hannah Stevenson died there in 1902, aged only 45, and John Stevenson himself drops dead only a few year later in 1908. They leave a 14 year old orphan girl living in a Kalgoorlie brothel, as the hotel the family lived out of was known to be…
What we have now:
John William Stevenson immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland as a young man and set up in Wellington as a merchant, then as a sharebroker.
At age 36 (but looking ten years or so older) he abandoned respectable career, wife and child for a life of adventure in the Australian colonies.
It took his lawfully married first wife seventeen years to finally pin him down and serve the divorce papers. The case was heard in absentia by the court in New Zealand, so by the time the divorce was finalised in 1902, his second wife Hannah had already been dead two months.
The story of his 14 year old daughter has a surprisingly optimistic ending…
Only that Mrs Mary Jane Robinson, nee Dyson, also went by the name Mrs Grant, and went to her grave as Mary Jane Grant-Robinson
What we have now:
Henry Seafield Grant was a young and up-and-coming theatrical impresario who threw off his showgirl wife in Victoria for a life of thespianism and heavy drinking in the boom-time gold-rush colony of Western Australia.
Several years later in Perth (1903), his luck ran out after he got blind drunk one evening. He went indoors and searched for something in the wardrobe. Instead he found the barrel of a revolver pointed at his nose. He had wandered into the wrong house. Not only was the residence not his own, he had managed to be caught red-handed burglarising the family residence of a serving police constable.
He never crawled out of the bottle again.
He rented a house in East Perth where Mrs Jacky Robinson nee Dyson lived as his “housekeeper”. She always denied she was married to Harry Grant, who is described as the “Manager of a Club”.
Jacky’s family detested her housing arrangements. A nephew by her younger sister Mabel, trashed his auntie’s house and wanted to beat the crap out of Grant at 1 a.m. in the morning.
But for the prurient press coverage of this family dispute after it ended up in court (1921), we might never have learned of the existence of Harry Grant, or that Mary Jane was fostering a seven year old child in his house.
Robert Jordan was the son of a soldier who was killed in France in 1916. The boy’s mother had recently (1920) married another man. What happened to this child in the aftermath of Mary Jane’s own death two years later in 1923 is not immediately obvious.
A year after Jacky died, Grant remarried. He died in 1939.
Mary Thivelin
Might be the mother of Mrs Jane Dyson: neé Edwards, Devling, Develing, Devlin, Develin, &c., &c.
A name and an abode in the Parish of Saint Pancras burial records for February 1841.
What we knew before:
Bugger all.
What we (might) know now:
The future second Mrs Dyson was committed to the St Pancras poorhouse near King’s Cross in London around about the year 1840 or 1841 when she was about six or seven years old. This year range comes from the testimony she gave at an inquest into the death of a former inmate of the workhouse held during 1846. Her name is recorded as “Jane Develing” in contemporary newspaper and poorhouse records.
While Jane has long been described as an orphan, that does not necessarily discount one or both parents still being alive when she was admitted to the poorhouse. However, there is no trace of any convincing matches in the 1841 census for those who possibly could have been her parents, either in the poorhouse with her, or outside it in the immediate vicinity.
Jane herself, is listed in the England census of June 1841. Her name is recorded as “JaneDevlin.” Her age is given to be 7 years old. She is within St Pancras Poorhouse.
This poorhouse had some very specific conditions of entry compared to elsewhere in the country. Because it was not part of a Poor Law Union, those eligible to be admitted were restricted solely to residents of the parish district. In the case of a child, that would include her parents, either the living or suddenly deceased.
Therefore, the parish burial ground for St Pancras should retain the records of someone who died in the age range to be one of Janes’s parents, and expired sometime between the years 1839-1841 (just to be on the safe side).
The burial record of Mary Thivelin, aged 35. Address: Undecipherable Squiggle St in the Parish of St Pancras is the nearest credible match. She was interred in the ground on 8 February 1841, four months before her possible child is recorded as being in the poorhouse located immediately next door to where she was buried. Her marital state is not recorded.
To muddy the waters still further, the official register of deaths transcribes her name as “Mary Shovelin” What it actually says on paper is anyone’s guess.
There is far too much research required before this identity can be fully confirmed or ruled out as Jane’s mother, or her actual family name. It raises some interesting lines of inquiry, including origins in Ireland, or Huguenot ancestors from northern France or Belgium known to have settled in the south of England.
A guide to the diorama of central Perth before 1880 on display in the Museum of Perth
This was the administrative heart of the colonial settlement. Some of the oldest surviving structures in the city are located on this diorama which you might recognise today.
The black shapes represent other buildings remaining to be added to this representation of pre-gold rush era Perth.
1. Perth Town Hall
Started 1867, opened 1870, and still here today!
A civic centre for the capital of Western Australia was merely an afterthought by Governor Hampton after he had spent most of the imperial funds vested in him to develop the colony, instead blown most of it to finish a flashy new home for himself. A new Town Hall was his farewell gift to his subjects. The citizens of Perth would have no say in any of the design and construction process, all that was required of them was to be obsequiously grateful that they were granted his magnanimous condescension at all.
The foundation stone was laid near the corner of Barrack Street and Howick Street (Now an extension of Hay Street) in the year 1867. Only after the handover to the Perth City Council in 1870 were all the aspects of the ornate design that were not properly thought through, laid bare.
The most potentially lethal flaw was the single wooden staircase that was the only way up and out of the great hall above the arches of the undercroft. If a fire had ever broken out, hundreds would have been crushed in the stampede to escape. If the fire came from the stairwell every single person in the upper storey would have died. Such a catastrophe arround that time and place might even have ended the colonial experiment right then.
Governor Robinson, Hampton’s successor, pointed this out after attending one of the first functions held in the hall after it was opened. So, amongst the first modifications to to the original design were the addition of further stairwells located in the otherwise ornamental turrets at the corners of the hall.
Soon after that it was realised that no public lavatories at all had been provided for use in this new centre of the town’s life.
2. The Legislative Council building.
Started 1867, opened 1870, demolished 1968
If the Town Hall itself was an afterthought by a former ruler of the colony, this small hall attached to it was a last minute addition to the plan to house the “gift” of incoming Governor Robinson’s grant of limited representational government. The new Legislative Council chamber was ready for use when the first few elected members took their seats to find they had no ability to influence events. The Governor retained, by and large, the option to rule as an autocrat, whether he chose to exercise that power or not.
It was not until 1890 when responsible government was granted (and the dictatorial powers of a premier supplanted those of a governor), that the Legislative Council moved down the road into the old 1837 Government office building on St George’s Terrace while the new second chamber of the Legislative Assembly replaced them in to the Howick Street chamber. After the two branches of the legislature were reunited up on Harvest Terrace after 1904, the redundant chamber was sometimes repurposed as a government bank, but was finally demolished in 1968, only two years shy of the centenary of its construction.
3. St George’s church.
Started 1841, completed 1845, demolished c. 1890s
When what became St Georges Terrace was first surveyed out in 1829, it was listed on the map as King George Street. Then King George IV dropped dead a year later, and there was no reason left to pretend anyone had liked him. The words “King” and “Street” were discreetly erased and substituted by “Saint” and “Terrace” instead. When the adherents of the Church of England finally got sick of time sharing their existing place of worship with local court cases and school classes, the proposed St George’s Church was named after the street it overlooked, rather than the patron saint of ye olde England.
After three years of fund raising, the ruling class of Perth had raised just enough for a foundation stone to be laid in 1841. But by then the alternative Wesleyan Methodist sect had long ago opened their first chapel in town and laid the foundation stone for a second later that same year. It was possibly not now the best of times for the Colonial Chaplain Wittenoom to have a brain-snap and denounce his co-religionists as schismatics and dissenters.
Not only had many prominent Wesleyans donated to the Anglican church building fund (just as many Anglicans had contributed to the first Methodist shed), they also counted a disproportionately high proportion of the town’s sawyers and carpenters within their comparatively tiny congregation. Maybe it was not that that much of a coincidence that the church builders’ budget flew out the windows they could no longer afford to build when all the sawyers of the town colluded to suddenly raise their prices.
The barn-like St George’s Church was eventually completed in 1845. It took another three years for the bishop of the local diocese to make it over west from Adelaide to actually consecrate the place for worship.
Perth was next informed during 1856 that their very small town was henceforth a cathedral city. Part of that newfound status involved rebranding the church as Cathedral. A rectangular extension was tacked on to the north end of the structure a few years later to form its final, awkwardly proportioned, T-shape profile.
The writing was on the wall metaphorically if not literally for the old St George’s Cathedral from the late 1870’s onwards when work on a replacement began immediately to it’s east. After a decade of construction work, the two structures existed side by side for a short time until the old church was torn down during the early 1890’s
4. The Freemason’s Hall.
Built c. 1866, demolished 1970s.
After their first club house was erected on Howick Street in about 1866, the lodge members of the Freemasons no longer had to fraternise in public houses along side to common hoi poli in such locations, as say — “The Freemason’s Arms”? Their club house was later extended, but this is the earliest iteration. The lodge members moved to a different location entirely during the 1890s, so their old hall was reused by various government departments, the R&I bank, and finally the Public Trustee Office before it was knocked down in the 1970s.
5. Swan Mechanics Institute.
Built 1853, demolished 1897.
The oldest part of this structure, located on the corner of Howick and Pier Street, was constructed in 1853 — The 1851 sign on the frontage denoted the year the society that operated out of this building was formed. Further wings were constructed westwards until room on the block ran out, by then it consisted of hall space, meeting rooms, a lending library and a display of curiosities that was the origin of the WA museum’s collection. This was also where the council for the City of Perth held their meetings before the construction of the Town Hall. It was one of the few spaces outside a liquor vending establishment or a private home where a quiet meeting could take place on somewhere other than government property.
Re-branded as the Perth Literary Institute, the original buildings were entirely replaced in 1897 to make way for a far grander structure that also failed to survive until the 21st century.
6. Government School.
Built 1854, demolished after 1930.
This was erected about the same time, or only a couple of years after, the Old Boy’s School was built away down on St Georges Terrace in 1854. This was the classroom for the girls. Somewhat less money and effort was spent on this school building, although the ventilation was certainly better that the earlier effort. At some indeterminate date it stopped being used as a school and was occupied by a government department related to the land and surveys office. The government lithographic office reproduced maps, plans and other printed documents as needed. After a government print works was finally set up across town, the site was leased or sold for the strangest change of use yet. Before it was torn down sometime after 1930, this was the disreputable location of Perth’s public bath house.
7. The Deanery.
Built 1859, still standing!
Formerly on this site stood the original Perth lock-up. It was not for long-term prisoners — they were sent to the Round House in Fremantle. However, in a moment of official panic, the first quasi-judicial execution in the colony took place on this spot.
When the lock-up was moved down to the waterfront into the newly built Water Police Complex, and the Army moved away from the original barracks next door, this site of evil memory was marked for a touch of 19th century gentrification. On this spot, a genteel residence for the churchman who was to look after the newly upgraded Cathedral was constructed, complete with gardens and trellises hung with grapes surrounded by a picket fence.
8. Officer’s Barracks.
Erected early 1830’s, demolished 1917.
There were two barrack buildings that made up the British Army establishment that gave nearby Barrack Street it’s name. One was for the regular soldiers, the other housed their commanding officers. They were both completed very early in the Swan River Colony’s history, with the Officer’s barracks at least, in use by 1834.
Both barracks were roughly of a similar layout and covered about the same surface area. Obviously there would be considerably more comfort for one group than the other as there were many more regular soldiers (with their wives and children) than there were of the men who commanded them to fit into one of those spaces. Obviously enough, the officers of the Swan River Colony were always going to get the better deal of it.
However, when Governor Sir James Stirling returned to his capital in 1834 after a two year absence, he compared the rude shack he would otherwise be returning to, with the solid Officer’s barracks constructed by architect Henry Revelley during his absence. Quite where his officers had to bivouac while the Governor appropriated their gaff until his new house was completed, is not spelt out in the records. RHIP – Rank Has It’s Privileges.
After the British army were replaced by pensioner-soldiers during the convict era, the fine officer’s barracks structure was repurposed as a police station. After a local Worthy’s son died on a distant battlefield during 1917, his grieving father decided to salve his loss by having what should be the earliest surviving colonial landmark in the city replaced by a murky grey red brick hall.
9. Soldier’s Barracks
Erected early 1930’s, demolished late 1880’s
No architectural plans or photographs exist of the totality of the structure where the regular rank and file were housed in Perth before the early 1850s. Only a pencil sketch dating to 1841 and some other distant depictions of the barracks within the town from across the water on Mt Eliza suggest that its initial layout was very close to that for the officers. What is clear is that the soldier’s barracks were both expanded and remodelled over the years as, up to the time it became the nucleus for the latest expansion of government offices during the 1880s. For at least two decades before that date, the former military establishment was entirely obscured from the view of the street by densely planted trees. Only a field canon pointed across the road towards Stirling Square provided any clue as to what lay behind foliage.
A ground plan of the complex does survive from the early 1860s. It does show the expansion of the original form to cover all the ground on the site. What these extensions looked like remain mostly in the realm of educated guesses. One of the more researchable of the features that may or may not ever have been constructed were the fives courts. This was a handball game similar to squash played in special designed three-sided ball courts. The game is still played in certain elite British Public (i.e: private) schools.
The end of the soldier’s barracks came as the old structure was slowly surrounded by the two storey (later increased to 3) office block erected on the west side in the late 1870s. A second wing of this new office block was later built on the east side. When the two wings were connected, the last traces of the old barracks vanished underneath the new colonial General Post Office. Today this new structure is better known as the Old Treasury Buildings.
10. The Guard House.
Built c. 1855, demolished c. 1910s
Also known as the Pump House, and later modified to include a court room for the Police magistrate to do his work, the Guard House was erected about the same time as the pensioner barracks on the west end of the ‘Terrace and in a similar corporate style. Neither were part of the original British army complex that gave Barrack Street its name.
It’s possible the pumping house part of this building’s design was one of the reasons the decision was taken to house Perth’s first fire fighting appliance in the understory of the Town Hall immediately next door from 1878 — but this is just idle speculation.
At some date during the early 20th century the Guard House was replaced by a nondescript two storey structure that did service as the Government Tourist Bureau, until it was in turn replaced by an anonymous concrete box (also since demolished). An anonymous glass box now occupies the site. It does, however, contain a court house once again.
11. Commissariat Stores
Built 1837, demolished by 1902
The British army’s supply depot or Commissariat was was once all that stood between the settlers, one bad harvest, and starvation. It was built close to the water front, near the Barrack Street jetty, for easy transit of stores. After this three storey warehouse was no longer required for its original purpose after the last British regiments were removed from the colony, it saw out the remainder of its lifetime as the Supreme Court building for the colony.
By the end of the 19th Century the former Commissariat Stores lay marooned far inland from the reclaimed shore line. It was then replaced by the vast new Supreme court complex still on the site.
12. The Old Courthouse
Built 1837. The oldest surviving European structure in Perth city.
It was built to be used as a public hall, court house, school room, and Anglican place of worship. While there is marginally more space within than appears from without, The Old Courthouse is known as the Old Courthouse because that was the last original purpose it was still used for. Today it is a law museum.
Look at the strange alignment of the Old Court House on the diorama. The model has not been bumped out of place by accident. The foundations for this building must have gone down in 1835 before the re-alignment of the street plan for the town was completed by the survey department.
13. Water Police Barracks/Lock Up.
Built c 1850, demolished by 1902.
Beneath the limestone cliff underneath the Old Court House was a long complex of buildings the made up the residence of the Water Police. From it’s erection soon after the dawn of the convict era in 1850 to it’s demolition beneath the edifice of the 1902 Supreme Court building, for most of that time it was the centre for law enforcement duties across much of the city. The lock-up cells saw far more business that those at the Perth Gaol on the other side of town. The only holding cells specifically for women were located here. Among the other buildings about the place lay boat sheds, stables, and store rooms.
14. Government Offices
Built 1837, demolished 1861.
The city of Perth has been home to many office buildings, but this was the the first constructed by the Government as part of a suite of new architecture that included a court house, church and school room (all one building) and the commissariat store. This was where the post office, survey department, and Records office (among other functions) were going to be housed.
The structure was too small almost the moment it was completed and a wing was immediately extended out one side of the rear to form a lopsided Y shaped structure down the side of the slope towards the river front. What made the design so interesting was the way different levels evolved as the building extended. One side was a maze of walkways and stairs. It looked great, but was hell to work in. After “responsible” government arrived in 1890, the Legislative Council moved in to these old offices. The building was then reprieved for a few decades more when the recommendations of a royal commission to build a unified Parliament house on the spot was over-ridden in favour of a site on Harvest Terrace.
It was eventually flattened in 1961 in favour of the current Council House.
15. New Government House.
Built 1857, still here.
In the opinion of the Governors who ruled Western Australia during the height of the convict era, the sarcastic observer who described the old Government house built for Stirling by Revelley as resembling more a lunatic asylum that the residence of a head-of-state— was entirely on the money. Speaking of money, Governors Kennedy and Hampton both had a lot of it courtesy of the revenue from the Imperial Government for the maintenance of the Convict establishment. They could have invested those funds in roads and bridges, or removing the impediment to navigation on the Swan River. Instead they blew most of it on a grand new gaff for themselves. Kennedy started the work in 1859. Hampton arrived as construction was nearly completed, decided he didn’t like what had been done and ordered hugely expensive alterations so work was not complete until 1863. Maybe it was as a sop to his more observant critics that he “gifted” his city a new Town Hall as a present.
16. The Old Government Ballroom/Banqueting Hall.
Built by 1867, replaced 1890’s.
This was a modest appendage to the New Government House. It lay half in the Governor’s domain, and half in the Government domain- to make a distinction between the two. The public entrance to the ball room lay on the public side of the border, so the Governor need never have to tolerate undesirables turning up his driveway. The Old Ball Room was eventually replaced by a monstrously scaled New Government Ball Room. By this date in the late 19th Century, the power of the monarch’s representative in this colony, now a state, was much diminished.
He was at his most successful when was running a pub. He was at his most dangerous when he ventured outside his areas of expertise.— then, not even his gift of the gab could save him from wrathful creditors, business partners, or the local magistrate.
He was not in Western Australia for long — He was not to remain in any one jurisdiction long enough to be claimed by any as their own. Even those doing genealogical research on his family have managed to miss the bleedingly obvious because they were looking in the wrong place at the right time.
Hint: He nearly lived here. Buckingham Palace engraved by J. Woods after Hablot Browne & R.Garland. 1837
He called himself Edward Hales Taylor and claimed he was born in London in the year 1815. This was the same year his parents were married in the Church of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, a few weeks after Napoleon met his Waterloo. Edward Taylor and the former Elizabeth Jenkins had their son baptised in the same church eighteen months later on 5 January 1817. They actually gave him the name Edward Hale William Taylor, but they were only his parents, so what would they know?
The family lived at 23 Crown Court, London (just a couple of blocks away from a gaff known as Buckingham Palace). There is still a public house at the address, and The Red Lion Tavern was probably where Edward (senior) worked as a waiter in 1817, as well as where his son was born.
To SA (not that one)
At some date in the intervening quarter century, Edward Hales Taylor emigrated to Cape Colony in South Africa. This territory was only absorbed into the British Empire after 1815 due to the Netherlands and the Dutch East India Company backing the wrong side at Waterloo.
Harriet Jane Colman married Edward with the consent of her mother and step-father. She was 19 years old at the time and he was 25 (or 28). Their first child (out of eight) was born in Cape Colony exactly one year and eleven days later. There was a gap of seven years before the next child arrived.
To SA (the other one)
She was a pregnant with that same child when they all sailed from Cape Town on 30 January 1850, east across the Indian Ocean. The brig Mary Clarke landed the Taylor family at Port Adelaide in South Australia on 20 March 1850.
Quite why the had decided to trade one SA for another is anyone’s guess. The assets they carried with them on arrival amounted to £90 in cash, with a further £35 raised from selling a dinner plate service after they landed.
Nevertheless, on 10 June 1850, Edward Hales Talyor acquired a publican’s licence to run a drinking establishment named the “Billy Barlow” on Currie Street in the grottier northern portion of Adelaide. The general licence was transferred to him from a Mr Frederick James Coppin. Coppin had a very famous brother whose biography might give you some idea of the world of pain Taylor was about to find himself in:—
Edward Hales Taylor attempted to ingratiate himself with the locals. He joined the local Licenced Victualler’s Society where those in their profession could get together and complain about how hard done by they were by life in general. At a special meeting in August, he volunteered to be appointed a special constable in town, so he could legally throw out the rowdies in his new establishment.
The arrival in September 1850 of a celebrity newcomer to Adelaide from Van Diemen’s Land might have been the moment Taylor’s fortunes were irredeemably blighted. Charles Axtelle was another professional entertainer, acrobat, and (incidentally) also a recently freed VDL convict. Three months later the results of his and Edward Hales Taylor’s collaboration were thrust upon an unsuspecting South Australian public.
NOTICE. TWENTY POUNDS REWARD. WHEREAS some evil disposed persons have circulated a report that I am about clandestinely to leave the colony, such said report being injurious to my character, I hereby give notice that the above reward will be paid to any party who will give such information to H. Johnson, Esq., Solicitor, King William street, as will enable me to take legal proceedings against the originator or originators of the Report. N.B.—It is particularly requested that all parties having claims against me, will immediately forward the particulars to my Solicitor as above, in order that the same may be examined and discharged. EDWARD HALES TAYLOR, “Billy Barlow Tavern,” Currie-street. Feb. 20, 1851.
By May, Edward Hales Taylor was not just insolvent, he was in prison for debt. (Cue sad trombone.) He remained in the Adelaide Gaol until the beginning of August 1851. During September, the publican’s licence for “The Billy Barlow” was transferred to Charles Edward Walsh.
Issues relating to his debts in South Australia were not resolved until after November 1853 — If they ever were at all.
WAh WAh WA!
Harriet and Edward’s third child together (and first son) might have been born either in South Australia or Western Australia, or even at sea between the two colonies. Either way, they were all safely relocated to Fremantle in Western Australia by the time Charles Henry Taylor was christened in a Catholic church on 11 December 1853.
Fremantle, 1853
Taylor immediately got to work ingratiating himself with the locals. The the local issue of the moment was news of the discovery of gold over in the eastern colonies — and how the majority of the Western Australia’s free labourers now seemed determined to hop on the first boat they could find bound for Victoria.
The horror of the situation that the great and the good in Western Australia were now facing, was that that they might be left solely with the company of the convict workforce they lobbied so hard to get sent to them not so many years before. They had got the convicts in because the free mechanics and labourers about seemed to prefer working for themselves and not for masters who treated and paid them like rubbish.
Only now was it beginning to dawn on the merchants and traders of the colony was that it was those same independent men and their families the had recently scorned as “drunkards and wastrels” who spent real money in their establishments and kept the economy ticking over.
A very serious meeting was held in Fremantle to discuss the crisis (which, naturally, Edward Hales Taylor attended). The decision was taken that only the discovery of gold in their own colony, could persuade theircustomers respectable citizens to stay.
The meeting resolved to raise £1000 as a reward for the one who could find gold in Western Australia. About a third of that amount was promised during the evening. One of the largest amounts pledged to the cause was £20 from one “E. H. Taylor”. It was money he certainly did not possess. Fortunately for him, another three decades would pass before a payable gold discovery was made in Western Australia, and by then, he had long moved on.
Instead, Taylor formed an informal partnership with a ticket-of-leave convict named Theodore Krakouer to speculate in trade goods between Fremantle and Bunbury. Krakouer brought with him his experience as a teamster to make a land journey between the two port towns, plus the money to buy the cart to transport the goods— which seemed to consist mainly of a great quantity of tobacco. Taylor brought to the enterprise — his gift of the gab?
Krakouer was a Polish Jew. Poland was another of those territories which backed the wrong side in the Napoleonic wars. Here, the spoils went to the Russian Empire who made it a policy to persecute those of his religion. Krakouer was highly literate, but that literacy was confined to Hebrew and study of the Talmud. Then refugee in England, he could not write that language and could barely speak it. A little bit of petty swindling (just to survive) saw him sent to Britain’s last convict colony. Taylor wrote letters and dealt with various other businesses on Krakouer’s behalf. Sometime along the way, Taylor also manage to convince himself that he was the senior partner in their enterprise.
The speculation was a disaster.
Taylor returned to Fremantle alone with horse and cart. Krakouer remained in Bunbury, detained by the customs office down there. Dodgy tobacco was dodgy tobacco. Taylor returned the hired horse to it’s owner up in Perth — Mr George Haysom of the Horse and Groom Hotel. He still owed Haysom money, if not for horse hire, then for his outstanding bill on his bar tab. It was Taylor who offered to sell the cart to the publican. Haysom did not really want the cart, but he must have realised this it was the only way he was ever going to see any of what he was owed. He had no idea yet there was another party involved.
The cart was valued at £25. Taylor demanded £26. Haysom was firm. Taylor folded. Haysom offered Taylor a drink gratis, to seal the deal. Taylor pocketed the money, minus expenses owed. There were now a lot of expenses.
After Krakouer managed to extract himself from the clasp of the Bunbury authorities (only temporarily as it turned out), he was understandably livid with his alleged business partner. From the resultant court case it is unclear if he was angry because Taylor had sold his livelihood for a bar tab, or he sold the cart too cheap. Either way, Taylor’s now sublime bullshitting skills deflected that fury on to Mr George Haysom instead.
They had a meeting with Haysom, after which he agreed to return the cart to Turner, but only to Turner. Why would he have handed it over to Krakouer when Taylor was the one he had been dealing with up till now? So Krakouer consulted a lawyer and sued… George Haysom.
LOCAL AND DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE. It may be remembered that at the July Sessions, Edward Hales Taylor was convicted of perjury and sentenced to a term of 18 months for his crime. We understand that already this man has been allowed a remission of the remainder of his sentence upon representations which have been made to the Government, acting more upon their kindlier feelings than their better judgement. We merely notice this case from a feeling that justice should at all events be carried out, in our present position, and no handle given to our bond population for finding fault with the manner in which our laws are dealt out to our free inhabitants.
Quite how soon after his release Edward Hales Taylor and family fled from Western Australia cannot yet be determined with any accuracy. The last possible date that can be inferred was before May 1856 (nearly two years later), when the postmaster-general for WA reported that correspondence for both “Mr and Mrs E. H. Taylor” remained uncollected in his office.
The last three children of Edward Hales Taylor and Harriet were born in Cape Town, Cape Colony, between 15 February 1857, 1 August 1859, and 3 May 1863. They had returned to the land of Harriet’s birth, while Edward Hales Taylor (senior) returned to the profession he was born into — that of victualler and publican.
Edward Hales Taylor died on the job in the Masonic Hotel, Wymberg (a suburb of Cape Town), Cape Colony on 18 October 1875. He was buried in the churchyard of St John Wynberg, on 21 Oct 1875.
This ratbag should be an intensely interesting subject for further study, however I will not be the one to do it. Edward Hales Taylor is but one of many examples of rabbit holes I could dive down (and to be fair — I usually do —whether I can afford the time or not).
This and the proceeding article on the court case were the result of about four days of intensive research.
I don’t get paid to write any of this, so it’s now back to writing that bloody book about James bloody Dyson… something someone one day might even hand over bloody money to see.
There was nothing particularly unusual about the citizens of Perth suing each other in the civil courts during the 19th Century. It was more out of the ordinary not to be embroiled in some sort of legal action at any given moment. Being able to sh*tpost on social media instead, as a means of passing the time, lay a century or more into the future.
George Haysom (1822 – 1868) was a successful carter, publican, horse-breeder and wheelwright — among his many positive personal attributes. His eternal fame in Western Australian history should be inviolable, for he was the first man ever in Perth to roast a bullock in public AND be the owner of the first ever horse in the colony to die of snake bite (that anyone knew of).
On Tuesday, 9 May 1854 it was Mr George Haysom’s turn to appear before the Commissioner as a defendant. He was represented this day by lawyer George Frederick Stone. His two prosecutors retained George Walpole Leake to represent them.
Back in January, Haysom hired out one of his horses to this pair of speculators so they could transport some trade goods from Fremantle down to Bunbury. His horse was returned to him a couple of weeks later, but he still awaited a settling of the account, and that was when one of the customers returned to him with a proposition to sell him the cart used for the run — some of the proceeds from the sale would be returned to him to cover what he was owed.
After some intense haggling over the cart’s value, they agreed on the sum of £25. To seal the deal, Haysom produced a bottle of ale (at his own expense) — “to wet the bargain” — That was how he rolled.
Haysom had only been in possession of his new ride a couple of days when he was accosted by the other man who demanded to know why he had possession of “his” cart.
Soon afterwards, the first individual who sold him the cart returned and begged him to let them both have it back. Haysom was fundamentally a decent sort. After a conference in the small parlour of his “Horse & Groom Tavern” with both the partners present this time, he agreed to return the cart if he was repaid his accumulated debt — a sum of £7 11s 2d.
They agreed. Haysom was not paid in cash, but with a promissory note due at six weeks in the future. The following evening he received a letter from Mr George Walpole Leake, the lawyer for one of the partners, demanding damages for the detention and injury of the cart.
[…]what the deuce did you send me such a letter for ?”
The case was heard in the Old Court House building (the one impossible to take seriously once you have heard someone ask if it is the public toilet block for the Supreme Court gardens). The testimony of all the witnesses, who included Haysom and both his prosecutors, were presented in excruciating detail three day later in one of the local papers.
All that really needs to be explained is that one of the prosecutors had sold their cart to Haysom without consulting his co-owner beforehand.
The verdict was duly delivered in Haysom’s favour — as it should have been. None of this would be remotely interesting were it not for the summing up of the prosecutor’s legal representative after the last witness had delivered his testimony and was thoroughly cross-examined over it. Remember, Leake was being paid to advocate on behalf of the plaintiffs in this case…
Mr Leake said he felt so disgusted with the cross-swearing which took place in that Court, that in the present instance he must request of His Honor to commit one party or the other for trial for perjury —he did not care which.
And here is where this article might ordinarily have concluded.
George Haysom is an important figure in James Dyson’s story, alongside that of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society, and the history of the Perth City Council. — but it is his (carefully unnamed up to now) prosecutors that deserve a bit more attention.
Theodore Krakouer (1818 -1877) was the one who initiated the legal action against Haysom. He was a Western Australian ticket-of-leave convict about who a lot has already been written because he has descendents famous for playing Australian rules football.
He was the wronged party in this court case, however the one who he should have taken to court was not Haysom, but his erstwhile business partner, a shadowy figure by the name of Edward Hale(s) Taylor. It was he who sold the cart they co-owned while his partner was otherwise detained. It was Taylor who was subsequently sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for perjury after the civil trial.
Krakouer deserves to be better known, but as far as I can tell, no one has ever put together all the pieces of Edward Hale(s) Taylor‘s story before. A rough attempt begins next.
There was one frustrating absence from all the convict documents digitised and available through the Libraries Tasmania site that directly pertain to the convict James Dyson. The link to the General Correspondence File of the Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO1) tells you what it is, but not what it contains.
Much as I would dearly love to visit Tasmania again and wallow amongst the microfilm, that’s not going to be possible any time soon. Then, thanks to a lead not affiliated with any of the “official” sources of knowledge, I learnt that a certain religious sect have in their possession the entire lot on microfilm and offer it free on their web site.
These images are catalogued on familysearch, but give no searchable clue what these scans contain. The Tasmanian Archive’s site gives you slightly more than a clue but refuses to connect to the scans the Mormons have published. Or even let you know this source exists at all!
5 November 2024 Update:
Beware of the Leopard
The scanned CSO documents are on the Library Tasmania web portal. Its possible they may always have been, but were so difficult to find they may as well not have been.
The Convict Ship Moffatt arrived in Hobart Town on 9 May 1834 carrying convict James Dyson. I’ve managed to piece together a pretty detailed narrative of the voyage by piecing together contemporary newspaper articles, The Surgeon-Superintendent’s report (translated from the Latin), the way the voyage was supposed to proceed (according to Thomas Braidwood Wilson’s book and Lieutenant Governor Arthur’s evidence to a parliamentary committee), and what actually happened (according to the diary of a private passenger onboard ship.)
The hitherto un-transcribed dossier of letters from the Colonial Secretary’s Office have proved to all be about the arrival of the Moffatt at Hobart and I’m relieved to find that I seemed to have got most of the facts straight — working it out the hard way. You, the potential reader of Dyson’s Swamp will have to endure many fewer “possibly’s” or “probably’s” when I review this chapter.
What makes me happiest is that it confirms to me that Thomas Braidwood Wilson (R.N) Esquire, Surgeon Superintendent in charge of the welfare of every Convict on board the Moffatt was as full of shit as I always suspected him to be.
I am also delighted to discover Captain William Moriarty plays an additional role in James Dyson’s history – it turns out he was the first new face he ever saw in Van Diemen’s Land.
Sir I have the honor to acquaint you that agreeably to your request I have inspected the Transport Ship Moffatt arrived in this Port on the 9th Instant and have mustered the Convicts on board of her. The appearance of the vessel was creditable and cleanly, and that of the men healthy. I individually interrogated them as to the treatment they met with during the passage, and they expressed themselves perfectly satisfied thencewith, in regard to their provisions and in every other respect. Four Hundred Prisoners were embarked on board this Vessel five of whom have died during the passage, one drowned, and one absconded since his embarkation * I do myself the honor of forwarding herewith the papers called for by your instructions A. the Surgeons Superintendent with the exception of No. 4 which as Dr Wilson had [not?] closed his Accounts was not yet ready and Which he has promised to forward on Monday the 12th Inst
I have the honor to be Sir Your very Obedient Servant Wm Morriarty Port Officer
Jno Burnett Esq Colonial Secretary
CSO1/1/719 Page 15674 no 39, 40
* Then there was this glorious annotation to the report by the Colonial Secretary obviously on the behalf of an incensed Colonel Arthur:
Prepare a letter to Dr Wilson R N The Surgeon Supt requesting him to state the particulars of this man’s escape & where & when it took place
CSO1/1/719 Page 15674 no 40
Wilson’s reply from onboard Moffatt proves once and for all that a medical man’s handwriting is always borderline unreadable (at least it was not in Latin this time). My interpretation of this scrawl is underneath the image (I’m not quite that much of a bastard). —
N.B. the original scans on a certain web site are of a much higher resolution.
Sir I have received your letter of this day’s date requesting me to state for His Excellency’s information, the particulars relative to the escape of a prisoner from this ship. On the 3rd Jany about 6 A.M. it was reported to me that a prisoner named J. Davies was missing. This man was one of a party who assisted in getting water from the hold & consequently was always on deck at daylight. On the morning of the above mentioned date, the prisoner went into the drop[!] on pretence of being unwell, the next person who had occasion to go there found the prisoners apparel & half of his chains near the privy. A boat with a non commissioned officer & party of the guard was immediately depart south to search all the Vessels in the sound & another to examine the lee Shore. Information was given to the proper authorities at Plymouth. & I also wrote to the Home office on the Subject & I enclose Mr Cappers answer No fault can be attributed to the guard nor to any other person
I have the honor to be Sir your most Obedient Servant [Mostly Illegible signature]
CSO1/1/719 Page 15674 no 41
So this is it. Probably the last post of 2022. A year I discovered this site still banned on Western Australian government filtered servers for reasons of … pornography. I am guessing this is down to my use of a certain … word. When I discovered this some years ago I removed what I thought was the offending word on a certain page. As I seem to be permanently on a black list with no obvious way of appealing the ban or even finding out on what grounds my domain was banned in the first place, I may as well use what words I feel like without filtering myself.
.png)
