There is a particular family in Australia who trace their lineage back to a William Murrells who arrived in the colonies of Australia as a young man by some uncertain means during the gold rush era of the 1850’s. On 28 August 1862 in the Victorian settlement of Snake Valley (or Carngham) he married a very young lady called Emily Buffin and they proceeded to breed like rabbits.
Snake Valley, Victoria, Australia in 2011
Thirteen children and 68 years later, he died at the home of one of his many daughters in Caulfield, Melbourne on 6 April 1932. His age was recorded as being 94, and he had been in the colony for about 79 or 80 of those years. He had spent most of those intervening decades employed as a clerk or book keeper. It was stated on his death certificate that his father had been a saddler in the horse-racing town of Newmarket, in Suffolk, England where he had also been born. His father was also called William. His mother’s name was Sarah. They had forgotten her pre-married name.
And this was the limit of the knowledge of the back story of William Murrells (c 1838-1932) until fairly recently.
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1956) Monday 11 April 1932 page 1
His English birth certificate was identified. He was born on the 27 February 1838 in Newmarket, Suffolk, the son of William Murrells, saddler, and Sarah, maiden name Dike — Although as far as the story of the father was concerned, all was now as clear as mud. The closest candidate in the record that could have been he — was a 24 year old publican in Newmarket who died eighteen days before the birth of his supposed son. However his death notice in the local paper would remove any doubt this was the father —
The Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury (Stamford, England), Friday, February 23, 1838; pg. 3; Issue 7438.
So the backstory to the Murrells clan began to gently unfold. William’s father William (the saddler) was the third child christened William by his parents and the only son to survive to adulthood. There was also a slightly older sister named Ann, but neither child was an adult when their father (also named William) died in Newmarket during December 1827. William was a victualler, which is a fancy way of describing an innkeeper or publican. The family business was the Wellington Inn in Wellington Street, Newmarket, which before the Napoleonic wars (which ended in 1815) had been known as the Fox & Goose Inn in Fox & Goose Lane. William the Victualler was 46 years old when he died.
William Murrells’ (1781-1827) widow was Mary nee Peachey (1789-1860) who carried on her husband’s business after his death and raised their young teenaged children then aged 15 and 13. When Ann was 19 she married a man 12 years her senior named Thomas Aves. He was a bonding clerk from the nearby village of Exning. Whether they were happy together or not can not be determined: They were married nine years and died within days of each other in February 1841. Ann Aves outlived her brother by only two years. There were no children from this union.
Mrs Mary Murrells (or Murrell: both spellings were used) would outlive both her children, dying at the age of 70 in 1860 on the premises of the family Inn. She had seen her son apprenticed in the trade of saddler (one who makes riding saddles) — presumably when he was a teenager. She might have regretted this choice of career, for to complete his training he moved to London, 100km or more away to to the south. He was probably employed by someone associated with the local horse-racing scene at Haymarket and he lived in the Soho district of the city of Westminster.
He was also 19 and still an apprentice saddler when he married Sarah Dike, a native of the capital city and a domestic servant, in the incredibly grand parish church of St George, Hannover Square, on 26 October 1834.
Church of St George Hannover Square. Pretty bloody fancy for a humble apprentice saddler and his domestic servant bride…
They made their home in Marshal Street, near Golden Square, by the very beating heart of the capital of the British Empire. At an uncertain time between 1835 and his death three years later, he and his wife returned to Newmarket. He was by then a professional saddler, and being of age, perhaps only now he could take up his inheritance of the family inn.
But instead he died, leaving a widow and only a single child (that we know of). What happened to the newborn infant between that date and his own marriage in 1862, (when by coincidence, aged 24, he was same age as his father had been when he died) is a void.
Mrs Sarah Murrells may have remarried in 1839, — to a Milkman widower in Cambridgeshire no less! — but there are discrepancies in the record — there is no trace of the younger William Murrells at her new home in the university city of Cambridge and she died there in 1855 aged 57. This would imply that she was nearly twenty years older than her first husband — but this would fit with what little we might deduce about the former Miss Sarah Dike.
A few months after her marriage to William (the apprentice saddler) — a young man named Muffett, whose mother had been a friend, came to her early in the evening with the story that his father had just been arrested. Frederick Muffett wished to borrow a shawl so his mother could visit his father in gaol. This Mrs Murrells granted him, but after he departed, she found that her husband’s pocket watch and chain and a house-key were now missing. She immediately went down stairs and told her husband what had occurred.
William Murrells took his wife and a police constable around to the residence of the thief’s mother. It was there they discovered Mrs Muffett attempting to hide her son behind a curtain. Frederick begged them not to arrest him as his father (presumably the same father who was in gaol) would pay them back in a day or so. The constable charged the young man with theft. At his eventual trial on 2 March 1835 at the Old Bailey Muffett was swiftly found guilty and sentenced to seven years transportation for simple larceny.
That fact was not the interesting part of this discovery. Muffett served out his time on the hulks, and was never sent to Australia — so we are deprived of the astounding story of him eventually crossing paths down under with the family of the man whose parents he wronged.
What is tantalising instead, is the line the defence questioning took with Mrs Sarah Murrells at Murfett’s trial. Her replies are given in full, but it feels like more than half of the questions asked have not been accurately reported. It’s almost as if someone’s reputation was being questioned, and that it was not the someone who was on trial, or even present in court that day. It’s almost as if the defence was daring the judge not to go down a particular path, lest someone very powerful got be annoyed… If that was the tactic — it didn’t work. The powers-that-be merely withheld certain statements from the trial transcript records and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he got a harsher sentence for his defence daring to follow this line of enquiry.
What I want to know is WHO was Colonel Nicholson? WHY did Colonel Nicholson have REASONS for wanting Sarah Dike to marry William Murrells? What possible relevance could this have to a pretty straightforward account of theft by another party entirely?
Inquiring minds want to know — this one in particular as both William Murrells and Sarah Dike are also my GGGG grandparents…
My sister asked her Miss Nearly-three what sort of cake she would like for her impending birthday. Her mother hopefully showed her a picture of a cake in the theme of her new all time favourite television show “Bluey” (her psychopathic devotion to “Peppa Pig” having waned of late).
“Nah!” said my niece. “I want a FAIRY cake”
… And in that moment the family circle was complete.
Don’t mess with the GOOD Fairy
Miss Nearly-three’s grandmother had been required to play a fairy in a school play back in her kindergarten days. She had not wanted to play a fairy… she wanted to play the farmer. So when her moment in the spotlight came, out she stomped on stage and delivered her line:
“I’m THE GOOD FAIRY” she snarled.
It was a performance never to be forgotten.
But the family’s connection with the sylvan world went back much further than my mother’s generation. Her paternal grandparents both died before she was born but in their day they were great socialites and hosted many genteel garden parties at their Fremantle residence somewhat incongruently situated opposite what at the time was a very much operative Fremantle Prison.
Carrie and Albert Grigg in their garden c 1925
On more that one occasion musical items were performed by and for the guests. One such diva of the vocal variety graced her audience with a standard made popular by Hollywood actress and performer Beatrice Lillie during the 1920’s called “There are Fairies At The Bottom Of My Garden” penned by Liza Lehmann. The whole concept of fairies had been popularised a decade before that by the pretty-damn-obvious-in-hindsight fake fairy photographs of Cottingley that completely sucked in Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.
It must have seemed an appropriate choice for the venue for the Grigg family’s backyard was lushly verdant. What the singer had not taken into account was that Fremantle Councillor Bert Grigg and his wife Carrie had two young sons and that at the very rear of their Hampton street residence was the outhouse.
Jack Grigg (left) was my grandfather. On the right is Ede, his sister-in-law.
My own grandmother, who later married one of those two young boys, had a strange verbal tic I could never comprehend. I presumed it was a euphemism for modesty’s sake. My grandfather died months after I was born so I never got to know him. It was only many years after my grandmother had also passed that I finally discovered the truth. The outhouse at Hampton Street still stands. By outhouse I mean the bog, the crapper, dunny, water closet or shithouse.
Joy Turton (soon to be Grigg) acting the goat c1928. One of the joys of family history research is discovering these sorts of things.
Whenever my grandmother had need to announce she was going to the toilet, she would say: “I’m going to the fairies”
Help save the grave of James Dyson and his two wives in East Perth Cemetery
The bodies of James Dyson and his wives Fanny and Jane lie in the old East Perth Cemetery. The three were united only briefly together under the same roof in life, and when they died many years apart, they were not necessarily buried in the same plot. But eventually all three were reunited on (not under) a single headstone in a family grave, in the oldest burial ground for the pioneer residents of Perth in Western Australia.
The stone in 2013The same stone in 2018
James Dyson was buried in the Methodist Cemetery, as that portion of the East Perth site was then known, the day after he died on 19 June 1888. Fanny died in 1854 (not 1850 as the headstone suggests) but the error is understandable as this monument was commissioned after the death of Mrs Jane Dyson on 12 August 1899 by one of her many sons with James. Andrew “Drewey” Dyson was born in 1858 many years after the death of Fanny (she is referred to as “Frances” nowhere else but on this headstone) and he was famous for many things including being a funeral director.
The Daily News, Friday 18 March 1892 p 2
Drewey (or Drewy) was famous for mostly the wrong reasons. As a funeral director he pioneered the use of advertising for his trade but there was substance as well to his notoriety :—
A Perth undertaker got it for the axe-ing last night — that is to say, somebody rapped him over the head with an axe. The undertaker was a Mr. Dyson ; but as no serious consequences are anticipated, he will not— ahem !— die soon.
He won the government contract to bury the paupers. Business was good in 1896 when a smallpox epidemic hit the town. How good? Drewy and a friend drank the profits and its always possible to date exactly when he went on a bender from the records of the police courts in the days afterwards:—
Andrew Dyson, the well-known coachbuilder and undertaker, of Murray-street, became involved in a very serious row yesterday. He had been drinking all day and was very violent and abusive. He caught one of his men smoking while at work, and he abused him soundly. Finally he made a rush at him to inflict summary punishment, but as he came on, the man struck him a heavy blow on the head with an axe, Medical assistance was at once summoned, and the wound was dressed. Dyson retained consciousness, though at times he become rambling and incoherent, No arrest has yet been made.
Drewy was a favourite of the press — he provided them with so many good stories — but the one told above had a sequel many years later when the Subiaco-Jolimont Cemetery was closed and the bodies transferred to the newer Karrakatta burial ground:—
THE COFFIN ROMANCE The Way “Drewy” Dyson—Buries Old Bones Drewy Dyson seems to have had a good deal to do with the burying, digging up again, and replanting of small-pox and typhoid corpses. The 48 who were buried in unregistered ground at Subiaco were entrusted, to “Drewy” and a friend named Lee to inter. The specifications, set out that the bones should be encased in jarrah coffins, but Drewy, if all accounts be true, packed them with much Christian ceremony into kerosene cases painted to a suitable hue. Then during the burial, he splashed up some of the profits in two dozen of ale, which he satisfactorily consumed while the bones were consecrated. This is not Drewy’s first experience of the same bones. He was the original planter, and probably thinks that anything will do for a secondhand burial. It is not likely that the bones will object to the nature of the coffins, but the imposition is there all the same.
(It wouldn’t have been printable!) Sunday Times, 28 October 1906 p 1S
Drewy Dyson’s notoriety overshadowed not only his own real accomplishments but those of his family. None of his parents were angels though. His father served his sentence in Van Diemen’s Land as a convict before starting afresh in Perth during the 1840s, rising up to be one of the largest employers of labour in the Colony (including ticket-of-leave Western Australian convicts). James Dyson built the town of Perth — It was his timber that paved the streets during the 1870’s, his bricks that made up so many buildings of the time (of which only the Wesley Church on William Street now remains) and his membership of the Perth City Council at a time when the Perth Town Hall was opened on his watch. He owned lake Julabup — known in his time as Dyson’s Swamp — an integral part of the network supporting the beef and dairy industry that kept Perth fed during the nineteenth century (pre-refrigeration) and the corner in Perth known as Dyson’s Corner where his butcher’s business and bakery operated out of.
Yet there are few other memorials to James Dyson, his two wives and they twenty-one children they produced together. Many of their children buried in the Karrakatta Cemetery that ultimately succeeded East Perth as the community’s principal burial place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Few had headstones, and the policy of that institution after 120 years of operation is to recycle the ground for new burials. As the years pass it will become near impossible to locate the unmarked graves or even the location of headstones once they are built over.
The destruction of monuments at Karrakatta is ongoing and deliberate. The damage to the monuments at East Perth Cemetery between the time of its closure to its protection as a heritage site was far worse, but in 2019 it is still possible to visit the family grave of Dysons with it’s fallen headstone and wrought iron railings around the plot. But for how much longer? The gravestone is snapped into multiple pieces and the lead-lettering is wearing away after 120 years exposed to the elements. The iron railings are rusting.
A plan has been drawn up to preserve the historic grave of James, Fanny and Jane Dyson for future generations to come. A quote from the conservators to do the work has been prepared… The problem is that it is expensive… bloody expensive. The estimate is $5,000 (Australian) if all goes well, up to $6,000 if something unexpected is discovered like the stone is especially fragile now.
None of us individually can afford anything like that amount — but collectively… how many children, grand-children, great-grand children and onwards did J,F&J produce? There were 21 in the first generation alone, of whom ten of these produced children too. For reasons of privacy it is difficult to accurately calculate how many living descendants there are today. A conservative guess is about four hundred people. If two-thirds that number contributed $20 each the amount would be raised, but every little bit would help.
John and Julie Dyson are great-grandchildren of James and Jane. They have set up a go-fund-me campaign to raise the funds to complete this vital restoration work. If you are able to contribute anything at all that would be grand, but if you could pass on a link to this page or the go-fund-me page to anyone else who has a passion for history and preserving the past could you please do so: —
Between the three of them, they gave birth to twenty-one children. Of these ten of them were able to produce children of their own. Across many different names and various DNA test results, these are the Dyson descendants who then produced children of their own:
1. Joseph Dyson (1845-1912)
married Mary Ann Elsegood (1853-1874)
1.1. Joseph Dyson (1872-1937)
married Jessie Christinson Strutt (1878-1955)
Leslie Guy Dyson (1900-1974), Roy Strutt Dyson (1903-1980), Dorothy Ethel Norton (1911-1991) all had families of their own.
2. Ellen Christina Edwards or Dyson (1851-1912)
married John Thomas Smith (1849-1934)
2.1. Hannah Jane Smith (1873-1917)
married John Thomas Maddock (1870-1966), then Arthur James Gliddon (1881-1962)
Hannah produced 16 children across two marriages. At least five of these also produced children.
2.2. Ernest Charles (Dick) Smith (1874-1941)
married Catherine Eliza Frances Cheeseman (1879-1944)
Stanley Edward Frederick Smith (1901-1971) had a family.
2.3. Emma Mary Louisa Smith (1876-1954)
married John Francis Brown (1874-1939)
Leslie Commonwealth Powell Brown (1901-1957) had a family.
2.4. Edric William Walter (Brusher) Smith (1881-1923)
Had at least one child to someone other than who he was married to at the time.
2.5. Ethel May Smith (1887-1960)
married Albert Richard Booth Casey (1885-1929)
Richard Baxter Casey (1924-2016) and maybe others.
3. James Edwards or Dyson (1853-1918)
married Emily Harriet Tuckerman (1850-1925)
Children by William Oswald Dyson (1881-1926) or George Mathew Beaumont Dyson (1887-1963) have yet to be identified or ruled out having families.
4. Thomas Dyson (1855-1914)
married Margaret Wilkinson (1857-1938)
4.1. George Henry Dyson (1879-1926)
married Miriam Myra Clifford-Thompson (1890-1977)
Irene Victoria Flegg (1912-2002), Ethel May Stokes (1915-1984), Archibald Henry Dyson (1920-2009), Blanche Violet Holycross (1926-2014) all had families.
4.2. James (Jim) Dyson (1881-1935)
married Susannah Theresa Cartwright (1882-1950)
Ernest Edward Sydney (Snow) Dyson (1903-1929), George Henry (Harry) Dyson (1905-1972), Ada Margaret Hand (1909-1992) all had families
4.3. Percival Leonard (Percy) Dyson (1882-1953)
married Theodosia Hannah Wallis (1880-1964)
Lillian May O’Hara or Sorragahn (1904-1991), Doris Evelyn Curry (1907-1988), Florence Edna Kirkwood (1909-?), Ernest Leonard Dyson (1913-1998), Charles Thomas Dyson (1915-1999), Robert Edward Dyson (1918-1994) all had families.
5. Hannah Dyson (1856-1902)
married Charles Henry Smith (1852-1925) then John William Stevenson (1862-1908)
5.1. Hannah May Smith (1875-1947
married Benjamin Horrocks (1873-1917), then after that, a cousin.
Christopher Norman Horrocks (1904-1977) had a family.
5.2. Ethel Graham Stevenson (1893-1970)
married Harry Opal (Opie) Hicks (1885-1931) then John Joseph Brown (1876-1947)
Desmond Graham Hicks (1926-2017) had a family.
6. Andrew Drewy Dyson (1858-1927)
was married to Charlotte Ashworth (1862-1941) but had no children with her. The sole child he fathered was by a mistress named Sarah Bates.
6.1. Andrew Samuel Dyson (1893-1944)
married Mabel Ursula Gould (1896-1974)
Cyril Samuel Dyson (1917-1999), Douglas Frederick (1919-1982), Ronald Eugene (1928-2014), Stanley Mervyn (1930-1999) all had a family.
7. John Dyson (1860-1913)
married Alice Louisa Ridley (1875-1906)
7.1. Louisa Sarah Dyson
married Alfred Frederick Brookes (1890-1962)
Basil Alfred Brookes (1913-1976), Sidney George Brookes (1914-1993), Dulcie Alice Louisa Davies (1916-1996), Herbert Thomas Brookes (1916-1993), Bernard Allen Brookes (1918-1990), Living child, with families.
7.2. Sydney John George Dyson (1899-1964)
married Elizabeth MacKay (1907-1987)
Shirley Nash (1929-2011), Donald Sydney Charles Dyson (1938-2016), and living children with families
7.3. Jack Hilton Dyson (1904-1970)
married Adeline Evelina Wright (1908-2002)
Three living children with families.
8. Matthew Dyson (1861-1911)
married Emma Holloway (1877-1952)
8.1. Elizabeth Mary Dyson (1895-1984)
married William George Macfarlane Metcalf (1889-1943)
Ivy Rose Jones (1920-2019), William Matthew Metcalf (1922-2004), Elizabeth Jane Brown (1928-2013) had families.
8.2. Samuel Dyson alias Holliway (1901-1972)
married Julia Darby (1902-1960)
Two living children with families
8.3. Ethel May Dyson (1903-1988)
married Alfred Thomas Gorringe (1900-1969)
Patricia Gwendoline Haysey (1924-1989), Veronica Jean Lowe (1926-2012), and living children have families.
8.4. Louisa May Dyson (1908-1990)
married Arthur Robert Fickling (1903-1967)
Living child, family unknown.
9. Octavius Charles Dyson (1870-1929)
married Maud May Broun (1866-1932)
9.1. May Grace Dyson (1893-1968)
married Albert Ernest Jude (1887-1964)
Albert Ernest Jude (1915-1966), Thelma Grace Dilley (1916-2003), Kenneth George Jude (1920-2006) had families.
9.2. George Henry Dyson (1900-1936)
married Louisa Esther Rowe (1906-1994)
Beryl May Inglis (1927-1999), Ronald George Dyson (1929-2002) had families.
9.3. Alfred William Dyson (1903-1979)
married Mona Adelaide Shaw (1910-1976)
Gwendoline Margaret Roberts (1930-2008), Alma Patricia Retell (1931-2012), Maureen Grace Retell (1939-2010), and living children had families.
10. Mabel Grace Dyson (1874-1944)
married Burleigh Stuart Wilson (1868-1954)
10.1. Madge Grace Wilson (1898-1946)
married Leslie George Gabriel Johnson (1899-1988)
Possible living families
10.2. Hector Wilson (1901-1963)
married Dorothy Josephine Carrol (1901-1988)
Winifred June Crabbe (1931-2009), and many living children who may also have families
10.3. Leslie Stuart “Judy” Wilson ( 1903-1945)
married Edith Marjorie Foster (1917-2001)
living children who may have families
10.4. Hazel Gladys Wilson (1905-1968)
married Joseph Brandon “Don” Langley (1905-1958)
living children who may have families
10.5. Winifred Bessie Wilson (1913-1966)
married Walter Temby (1910-1942), then Frederick Edward Lacey Fricker (1915-)
living children who may have families
Have I missed out your ancestor on this list? If so, it was not deliberate. Contact me and I’ll add the names. Names of living people will not be made public unless I have their permission to do so personally.
Fanny Hoffingham or Hoffington. It might even have been Skeffington, but I’ve seen the original document from which that transcription arose and I now know that it was Hoffington too. She was the first wife of James Dyson, ex-Tasmanian convict and future West Australian property owner and entrepreneur. Mother to his first four children and cruelly discarded by him in favour of the nubile and teen-aged Mrs Richard Edwards (junior)… better known to history as Jane Devling, or Mrs Jane Dyson.
We now know she is not buried in the same family plot as her husband and his second wife, and that she was alive for several years after the date inscribed on her headstone in that cemetery. She took her own life probably in state care, probably in the Perth lunatic asylum during the year 1854 — an institution so badly represented in the the archives that not only is there no death certificate for Mrs Fanny Dyson, its not even clear where the asylum was located in Perth at that date.
That was the extent of what we knew about the first Mrs Dyson. Before her name appears on her marriage certificate dated 25 October 1842 the name Fanny Hoffington or any of its variants appears precisely nowhere.
It’s a useful mantra to employ, I suppose: If someone tells me “I guess we’ll never know for sure”… That’s a green light for me to bloody mindedly be sure. Then… once I’m convinced that “Yes, we probably know all that can be known, and that all the avenues of research have been finally exhausted..” … that’s when a vital piece of new information that totally upsets what you thought you knew about a particular subject is revealed.
Such was the case with Fanny — but it was instinct, not evidence, that made me suspect I had uncovered her secret, via a series of outrageous coincidences possibly even linking her to her future husband before either had left England’s shore. The trouble is that even outrageous coincidences may still be just that, merely coincidences. I was looking for hard evidence, but the documents from 190 years ago were not providing that. However, neither were they providing proof that my theory was false.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” is quote I was certain came from Ambrose Bierce, but looking it up it appears to be from Samuel Johnston made at least a century earlier in 1775. Here is my own riff on the sentiment:
“DNA is the last refuge of a family historian”
Alan J. Thompson, 2019
A certain commercial genealogy website to which I have linked my own DNA test also provides a long list of others who share segments of the same chromosomes that I possess. A subset of these distant biological cousins also have publicly searchable family trees back to the generation of Fanny’s possible parents or grand-parents. Two of these trees contain Fanny’s proposed true family name and a match with an individual that might be an uncle, grand-uncle, grandfather, or even father for her. This name does not appear in any other context on my current family tree, nor do any other matches with my known family names appear in these other trees.
This would not be conclusive proof on its own, nor can it be said that further documentary evidence may not still be uncovered that will demolish the baroque, Byzantine story of the first Mrs Dyson that I believe I have successfully constructed. But I’m now prepared to state my theory and die on this hill if that be my fate.
Fanny Hoffington was an alias for her real name which was Fanny Johnstone nee Dewhirst. A false name was necessary as her first husband Lorenzo Johnstone was very much alive and serving out the last days of his fourteen-year sentence as a convict in Van Diemen’s Land. The two had married in Launceston on 15 January 1840. At that time Fanny was also a convict — but despite that her conduct had been terrible to the extent that eighteen months had been added to her seven year sentence for theft, she was granted her absolute freedom on 3 July 1840. This was the same day that another convict felon received his freedom. His name was James Dyson.
Both had much in common: Both were from the same part of the world — both were sentenced in the same court house in Yorkshire, for similar crimes committed in Halifax in the West Riding of that county. They could well have known each other back in that town. He was a Bad Boy, she was a Bad Girl. In all probability she fled Van Diemen’s Land with Dyson on the barque Napoleon when she (the boat) sailed from Launceston on 1 May 1841. They were both much closer in age than what either had stated on their marriage certificate. He was closer to thirty than twenty-three, and Fanny was probably a couple of years older than James rather than a year younger (as she claimed) at twenty-two.
So James Dyson’s first wife was a one-eyed sex-worker from Halifax, Yorkshire, convicted of stealing from one of her clients, and would have been found guilty of bigamy if her track-covering had not been near-perfect.
This is the tale of two convicts in Van Diemen’s Land. Their story does not have an end yet: happy, sad or otherwise. Can you help?
The man
Lorenzo
Johnstone was an Irishman born around the year 1808. His complexion
was brown and his face deeply pitted with the scars of acne or maybe
smallpox. A labourer from the village of Muckney in County Monaghan,
he may have very soon realised he had made a terrible mistake joining
the British Army.
The 1st
Regiment of Foot was stationed in Ireland until about the time
Johnstone turned seventeen. Then the Regiment was split in two, and
the 1st
Battalion of the regiment to which Johnstone was attached transferred
to Scotland. His first Court Martial for desertion took place on 20
November 1829 in Fort George, Inverness. He served 25 days in the
stockade for that infraction. The question that must be raised is
whether Johnstone was trying to get back home to Ireland, or he was
in dread of returning there — the Regiment was scheduled to return
to Ireland in 1833.
If his hope
was to return to Ireland, that wish was to be fulfilled — albeit
briefly. One year nearly to to day after he first absconded, His
second Court Martial for desertion took place at Glasgow on the 13
November 1830. He was sentenced to fourteen years transportation. His
convict ship Larkins,
sailed from Downs, Ireland on 11 June 1831, and arrived in Van
Diemen’s Land on 19 October. His military career was most certainly
over and he seemed destined never to see Ireland or Scotland ever
again.
Lorenzo Jonstone’s conduct record in VDL [CON31/1/24 p81]
Johnstone
is one of those infuriating oddities — an Australian convict with a
completely clean conduct record during his sentence. By May 1832, he
was most certainly in Launceston (or its environs), for that is where
a fellow felon, Thomas Quarrie, was convicted for nicking some of his
clothes (to the value of four shillings). He was assigned to someone
in the Launceston district on 9 December 1834.
On 3
November 1837, at about the midway point of his sentence, he was
granted his ticket-of-leave. This effectively paroled him to work for
whoever he chose, or work on his own account. He could even be an
employer, or take on apprentices. There were however, stringent
restrictions on his movements, who he could associate with, or how
late he could be out at night. But Lorenzo Johnstone remained
resolutely on the right side of the law. So it was on 11 April 1838
that he submitted his application to the relevant authority for
permission to marry. Within two weeks the reply was made via
correspondence with the Colonial Secretary in Hobart. Permission was
duly granted. Johnstone should have been a very happy man — He
owned outright — or at the very least had unencumbered use of — a
horse and cart, so he may have felt secure in providing a service
that should always be in demand—transporting things from one place
to another. He was thirty years old. Maybe for the first time in his
life he felt that everything was moving in the right direction. If so
it was a sentiment his bride-to-be may not have shared. The wedding
date was delayed, and delayed again…
permission to marry in 1838 [CON52/1/1p42]
The woman
Fanny
Dewhirst claimed (or it was estimated) that she was born about the
year 1813 — however if her parents were William and Mary Dewhirst
and she was baptised in Heptonstall, near Halifax in Yorkshire on 28
August 1808, she was several years older than that. It might be a
modern sensibility to hope that the later is true, for if it was the
former, she was barely 16 when it was recorded that she was “on the
town” a euphemism for having no home or protection, or more
commonly — supporting herself by prostitution. At some stage before
her arrest in 1832, she lost her right eye.
Town of Halifax, Yorkshire, from The Penny Magazine, 15 March 1834Leeds Intelligencer, 12 Jan 1832, p4
On a winter’s day 5 January 1832 she was sentenced to seven year’s transportation for the theft of a very large sum of money from a man publicly identified as a Mr George Schorah of Northowram (a location a mile or so north-east of Hallifax town centre). £25-£26 was a vast sum of money for the time, and the sentence handed down at the West Riding Christmas General Quarter Sessions in Wakefield seems almost lenient until it is understood that Mr Schorah was most certainly also Fanny’s customer and the chairman of the court was a Reverend. Fanny Dewhirst was imprisoned at York Castle until March when she was transported down south to Woolwich, near London, then cross country west to Plymouth in Devon, where she would board her transport vessel to Van Diemen’s Land. The convict barque Hydery departed England on 11 April 1832 and arrived in Hobart Town on 10 August 1832. Within a month she was sent north to Launceston, and assigned to work as a domestic servant for someone named Hubbard. On 13 September 1832 her extensive bad conduct record gained its first entry.
Fanny’s conduct record in VDL [CON 40/1/3 p79]
She refused
to do the laundry as ordered to by her mistress, so Fanny began the
long relationship with the house of correction for female prisoners
back south in Hobart Town — at the Cascades Female Factory where
she served a month at the wash tub. It was the first of many
sentences for a multitude of infractions of the rules. These
included:— [being] out
after curfew and falsely representing herself to be free; Absent all
night without leave; Absent from her service at 3 o’clock in the
morning; Absconding; Destroying a handkerchief (property of the
crown); Refusing to go back to her service; Being in public (out
after hours)…
etc. This is only a small sampling of the cause of her subsequent
punishments. “Being out after hours” is by far the most common
offence for which she was charged (16 times) but “being absent
without leave” (12 times) comes a close second. There were more
than a few occasions when she could be found guilty of both at the
same time. The usual punishment was solitary confinement on bread and
water. It has been calculated that she spent 176 days (nearly six
months) this way.
One of her
masters was Major Wellman of the 57th
Regiment. He was stationed in Launceston and was assigned lands at
Norfolk Plains (both locations associated with Fanny Dewhirst).
Whoever he was, she must have detested this soldier or his family
with a passion, for two times during 1836 when assigned to him she
ran away. For the crime of absconding, her sentence of transportation
was increased by eighteen-months.
On 17
November 1837 she was sentenced to ten days of solitary confinement
on bread and water for being out in public after hours. She was
employed by someone called Moore who resided Launceston. This was the
third time she had received the same sentence for the same crime
while in Moore’s service. It was to be the last offence she was
charged with for the remainder of her time as a transportee, now due
to expire in July 1840. Then on 11 April 1838, Lorenzo Johnstone
applied for leave to marry her. The government had no objections, but
did she?
Fanny
Dewhirst could neither read or write. Those life skills she had
acquired she had learnt the hard painful way. According to the
conventional morality of the day she was supposed to just curl up and
die when her situation failed to match the expectations of those who
made the rules. If her life in Van Diemen’s Land and her life
before that in Yorkshire suggests any thing it was that this was a
person who would fight passionately to survive in the moment,
regardless of the long term consequences. If survival was a moment by
moment affair, then so would be pleasure. If she lived by the minute
then Lorenzo Johnstone gave every indication of being someone who
played a long game in life. A soldier’s life had taught him
discipline, but she had already run away from one soldier. Did she
really want to spent the remainder of her life with another?
“We said yes, okay?” [CON52/1/1p43]
Something
strange happened on 28 November 1839. Lorenzo Johnstone applied a
second time to marry Miss Fanny Dewhirst. Why he needed to apply to
the authorities again is not remotely clear. Maybe too much time had
elapsed between the first permission and the wedding ceremony? Once
again, the Lieutenant-Governor initialled assent to the lawful and
permanent union of the two convicts, which was communicated back to
the parties on 26 December 1839. On 15 January 1840, Lorenzo
Johnstone, aged 31, was married to Fanny, who gave her age as 21
(pull the other one), according to the rites of the Church of England
in the Launceston parish church of St John. Lorenzo listed his trade
as a gardener, but he would not have owned his own farm. He could not
legally own land — yet.
Lawful matrimonyThe Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen’s Land Gazette, Friday 3 July 1840 p4
For Mrs Lorenzo Johnstone, there was one final hurdle to overcome before her past as Fanny Dewhirst was definitively behind her. The moment came six months after her marriage on 5 July 1840 when she granted her Certificate of Freedom. She was free by virtue of servitude — She had served every hour, every day, every month, of her eight and a half year sentence. Now she was utterly free to go where she wanted to, live the life she chose. It would be a fair guess she hated Van Diemen’s Land and would want to get away from that island as soon as she was able to. But of course, she wasn’t free. She was married to Lorenzo Johnstone and he was still a Ticket-of-Leave convict. He had four years left of his sentence to serve. Here was the bitter irony — She had never conformed to the rules — she had flouted them at every opportunity (and paid the price). She was never granted a Ticket of Leave, much less a Conditional Pardon which was the next reward for good behaviour — yet even with an extension to her sentence by eighteen months, she now had more legal rights than her husband — who had started his sentence three years before hers — had a spotless good behaviour record, but could not legally leave the Launceston district.
In the
circumstances, it reads like a cruel joke that Lorenzo Johnstone’s
conditional pardon mooted as early as January 1842 but not valid
“until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known” was finally promulgated
on 31 August 1843, for the following cause:—
“Having served ten years in the Colony without a charge of misconduct”
On 30
November 1842 Johnstone had been fined by a magistrate for a trivial
cart-riding offence. Maybe that had been enough to delay his
Conditional Pardon? He received his Certificate of Freedom by
servitude in 1844. Now he could own land or leave the Colony anytime
he chose — or was able to. In previous eras expired convicts were
granted free land to work, but those days were long past. But had he
time left to save his marriage?
The leaving of Launceston [POL220/1/1 p223]
It took six more years before he finally departed from Van Diemen’s Land. Gold had been found across the Pacific Ocean in California, USA, back in 1848, and on 9 May 1850 he sailed from Launceston on the Jane Francis bound for San Francisco. Being who he was, he dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s on the paperwork. This is how we can be fairly certain that his wife, Fanny Johnstone did not sail with him on that vessel. This is the last verified record of Lorenzo Johnstone and (in the negative) his wife. There are any number of unverified sightings. Here lies the point of danger in concluding this story…
In Pennsylvania USA, in the year 1995, a man named Lorenzo Johnston was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. After seventeen years behind bars he was freed by a higher court on the grounds that he had been falsely convicted due to insufficient evidence. Four months later, yet another court sent him back to prison to resume his original sentence. As of today (April 2019) Lorenzo Johnson was a free man living with his family in New York. He spent twenty-two years of his life behind bars for a crime he most certainly did not commit.
Now
it should be fairly self-evident that Lorenzo Johnson and Lorenzo
Johnstone are not the same person (Nor is it slightly feasible that
one could be the great-great-great-great grandparent of the other).
The stakes for me in a theory I have about the fate of the
nineteenth-century individual after his wife’s freedom was granted
in 1840 are immeasurably lower than that of a man wrongly convicted
of a capital offence on circumstantial evidence and prejudice against
him for the colour of his skin. I’m not going to state my theory
here (though it shouldn’t be too hard to work out my line of
reasoning from other articles on this site) because the case of
Lorenzo Johnson — the one who had the misfortune to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time and not be a pitted-faced Irishman — should
be a warning about leaping to conclusions without being in possession
of all the facts, or any proof at all. At the moment, all I have are
coincidences — as did the jurors at Johnson’s first trial. The
result was a gross miscarriage of justice.
The dilemma…
Herein lies my problem: I have a theory about this couple. However I cannot prove my theory, but I cannot conclusively disprove it either. Conclusive facts that would disprove my case would be records of husband and wife together after the year 1840, or records of Mrs Fanny Johnstone after that date living a life away from her spouse. There is some evidence in Tasmania that the latter is what might have occurred.
Unfortunately
Johnstone and its variants Johnson
or Johnston
are all too common as family names. Lorenzo Johnstone (the Irishman)
was recorded as being capable of being able to read and write, so
while others might have misspelled his name (and did) we can be
reasonably certain that Johnstone is the variant that he
prefered.
There are records of a Fanny Johnstone having involvements with the
law in Launceston between the years 1863 and 1871, However in only
the earliest instance was she actually found guilty of something
(fined 6 shillings for disturbing the peace with one Thomas Crawford)
(In the last recorded, she was employed as a sick-nurse for the
family of a police constable). The difficulty is that there were
other families of Johnstones in that town during the era, and of that
subset of the population were a number of other women named Fanny —
both of the Mrs and Miss variety. I cannot prove the Fanny Johnstone
I wish to trace is one of the above — nor can I disprove it yet.
There is no death or burial record that I can identify for Fanny
Johnstone that plausibly fits the former Miss Dewhirst, nor can I
find evidence that supports her remarriage.
As for Lorenzo Johnstone, his movements after 1850 are similarly hard to interpret:—
In October 1852 a Mr Lorenzo Johnson [sic] aged 37, sailed from the colony of Victoria to Launceston on a vessel called the Launceston…
But a Mr L. Johnson [sic] and wife sailed from San Francisco to Port Jackson, New South Wales on the vessel Abyssinia in the year 1853…
In 1876 an occupant of the Victorian goldfields named Lorenzo Johnson [sic] died, but according to his death record he was only a young man of 25 years. If this is correct, he was born sometime about the year 1851. The names of his parents are unrecorded and no record of his birth has yet been found.
… So the fate of Lorenzo Johnstone remains as uncertain as that of his wife and for much the same reason.
In Summary
Can
you help? Are you a researcher or even
a descendant
of Lorenzo
Johnstone (or Johnson) born Muckney, County Monaghan, Ireland about
the year 1808, or
Fanny
Dewhirst (or Dewhurst) born Halifax, the West Riding of Yorkshire,
England about the year 1813 (or as early as 1808)?
If
you have come across stories
concerning either of these two convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, or
are connected to either by ties of family, I would love to hear from
you and complete their story. If you
know
Lorenzo and Fanny are your ancestors or you wish to claim them as
your own, please make that claim. That is what I would be doing…
if I had the evidence.
Convict records for Fanny Dewhirst at Libraries Tasmania
Fanny Dewhirst’s convict record has been completely transcribed by the Female Convicts Research Centre. Registration is required to view these transcriptions, but I can’t overstate how useful access to this database has been. https://www.femaleconvicts.org.au/
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Geraldton in 2011. It would be fair to say the port did not look like this in 1876 and does not look like this today.
There was no doubt he did it.
Geraldton, Western Australia, January 3, 1876: A man had just murdered his spouse. It was his second marriage, they had two young children together and a third was on its way, but they were far from being a happy couple. His business acumen had deserted him and money was tight. He drank a lot now — and they were packing up to move house yet again. He had been drinking that day and they had been arguing yet again. Then he produced the shotgun. He threatened to shoot his wife.
The removal-man took the weapon away from him, telling him him he “was mad.” The gun was hidden in a locked room and his wife was given the key. How scared she was is not entirely clear: earlier she had dismissed the concern of the removalist by saying “Take no notice of him.” It was probably to the relief of everybody when he went out to the pub.
He returned later in the afternoon and the couple engaged in their last childish argument together over the affordability of a pair of child’s shoes. Bridget Mountain was their domestic servant. For most of that day she had been occupied in the kitchen which was slightly separated from the main house across a court yard. About 4 o’clock she heard her mistress cry “Oh! Bridget! the gun! the gun!” The servant girl ran to the kitchen doorway which her mistress was running toward — then a shot rang out.
The sound drew the next door neighbour outside, and caused the master of the nearby government school to look out his window. Both saw the man in the yard with the shotgun raised to his shoulder aiming at the kitchen door. Bridget saw him too and felt the shot particles that hit her in the leg. The wife cried “Bridget, I’m shot! I’m dying!” as she fell through the kitchen doorway. Bridget caught her and closed the kitchen door. What her mistress did next makes sense only if she realised the eldest of her two children was still outside with the husband who had just shot her. One deliberate minute later she opened the kitchen door and stepped back outside. The door slammed shut and then a second shot rang out. Both the schoolmaster and the next door neighbour witnessed the man raise the gun and fire the shot which killed his wife. He aimed for her head, the top of which he blew off. Also watching as her father murdered her mother and unborn sibling was their two-year-old daughter. When the police constable arrived, the man was holding the child in his arms and was seated next to the body of his wife. “I’ve done it.” he stated. After being allowed to whisper something in the ear of the corpse, he was lead away unresisting to the police lockup.
He had been charged on the spot with murdering his wife. That was
also the conclusion delivered by the inquest in Geraldton held the
very next day. The man was held in custody in the lock-up until he
could be shipped down to Perth for his criminal trial which was
scheduled to be held in the Supreme Court in Perth three months
later. While in custody he admitted to his gaoler:
“I wish to God this had never happened; for the sake of them that’s gone ; but what’s done can’t be undone.”
On 10 April 1876, when his first trial began, one thing was never questioned, he had killed his wife in the circumstances described above. But this was a colony where who you were was infinitely more important than the gravity of the crime you had committed. This man belonged to a culture where it was considered an insult to his society for a trained lawyer to mount a defence for an aboriginal prisoner. It had shaken that same society to the core when a white man had recently been found guilty by a magistrate of manslaughter of an aboriginal man and sentenced to a couple of years in gaol (that magistrate was promptly sacked). But the prisoner in the dock was not an aboriginal man, and he had the most expensive legal team a scion of the colonial gentry could afford. Most crucially, the man on trial for his life was called Kenneth Brown and he was the older brother of Maitland — probably the most popular white man in the colony. A verdict of guilty was by no means assured.
Maitland Brown was also a killer — and in open celebration of the blood on his hands he was the undisputed hero to a significant proportion of settlers, particularly the elite property owners of whom he was an exemplar. His reputation was made by the ruthless extermination of a number of aboriginal people he had deliberately gone to their country to destroy. A career in politics beckoned. By 1876 he was virtually a one-man opposition party to the Governor and Government of the day. If responsible government had existed in the colony at the time (ironic, as Brown opposed this system at this stage of his career), he would have been elected unopposed head of that new government. When his brother shot his wife and unborn child to death Maitland was at the apex of his influence. The question was how far was he prepared to leverage his popularity to save his family’s honour (and his brother’s life). The popular perception that Maitland Brown was all powerful in the colony of Western Australia was about to be tested against the reality of that perception.
Among Equals
Maitland F[#$]ng Brown
The legend of Maitland Brown’s omnipotence was very much reinforced
by the outcome of the first trial. The jury failed to reach a
verdict, a miss-trial was declared when a sole member of the panel
refused to go along with the majority’s wish to acquit Kenneth
Brown on the grounds of his being of unsound mind. A significant
amount of gaming the system had gone into play to engineer this
near-win for the defence. The population of Western Australia was
still quite tiny, and only a small subset of this population — men
with a certain quantity of money or real estate — were eligible to
serve on juries. The size of the population was such that everyone in
this category would know everyone else — related by family,
friendship or business ties. The defence did not leave this to chance
— half the names on the roll they objected to, until the only ones
left were exactly the subset of the population who would do anything
for Maitland Brown, their hero — even pervert the course of
justice.
Some of the supposedly confidential deliberations of the jury members
were leaked into the public domain during the weeks that followed —
and it appears that Maitland Brown’s supporters had overplayed
their hand:—
“He was ready to listen to reason [the hold-out juror], but when the leading spirit among the eleven, in a last attempt to convince him said, ‘Don’t think of the prisoner, he is a scoundrel; think of the family.’ He replied, ‘If that is your best argument I have nothing more to say.’”
The Weld Club in 1874. The tossers on the front verandah may well include jurors in Ken Brown’s trials. [Battye Library]
The names of the twelve jurors are all known, but in the reverse
situation of the member of the firing squad randomly given a blank
(so as to assuage his conscience that he did not fire the killing
shot), the identity of the man with a conscience remains a secret.
His name belongs to one of the following: George A. Letch, Dennis
Brennan, William Britnall, John D. Manning, James R. Mews, John
Allpike, Walter Easton, William Rewell junior, Alfred Minchin, Henry
W. McGlew and James Manning. Captain George F. Wilkinson was foreman
of the jury as well as being a foundation member of that exclusive
Perth club for gentlemen: The Weld Club. Maitland Brown was also a
member, as was an unidentifiable member of the second jury who was on
record bloviating at the bar or at the billiard tables:
“… He would not agree to a verdict of guilty, whatever might be the evidence…”
The jury of the second trial comprised Selby J. Spurling (foreman), Thomas Connor, George W. Smith, James Allpike, Thomas Jones, E. W. Haynes, William Coombs, Henry Caphorn, William Smith, Alexander Cumming, Charles Watson and Reginald Hare. It may have been more than just the failure of the previous trial that spurred the prosecution to make their case out more aggressively — In the intervening month, six Fenian political prisoners had broken out of Fremantle Gaol and made good their escape by sea on an American-flagged ship. A colonial vessel hastily commissioned as a gun boat gave chase, but when reality dawned that recapturing the escapees would also start a war between Great Britain and the US, the colonials backed down and the prisoners got away. There might have been a begrudging acceptance before this that the brother of Maitland Brown might be allowed to get away with murder. — but now a second public official humiliation could no longer be stomached.
This time the attorney general explained in great detail how the evidence raised could not excuse a murder and called further witnesses attesting to Kenneth Brown’s sanity. The defence likewise upped the ante. They called the aged mother of Kenneth and Maitland to the stand. The palpable embarrassment leaps off the page of the court transcripts as she testified that madness ran in her family and that her own mother allegedly tried to kill someone. Expert witness after expert witness was called to confirm this assertion, even Maitland Brown himself took the stand. In 1876 the Supreme Court occupied a barn-like structure on the same site as the building that replaced it at the beginning of the 20th century. It was formerly the government commissariat for Perth, but where the sacks of corn or gunpowder were once stacked, as many members of the public who could cram the galleries were there to watch their justice system in action. It may be that an increasing number of them did not like what they heard. Maitland Brown, even on the witness stand, was consistent in his guileless honesty (or gobsmacking hubris, if you prefer). He (in rather more words than less) attributed his brother’s mental decline to the fact that he had made a match with someone of significantly lower class than himself. The weekly newspapers covered both trials in minute (to the point of being libellous) detail. That was the contention of the defence who attempted to bring writs of contempt of court against a couple of them. The judge dismissed this action.
After three days of evidence and a careful summing up by the judge, the jury was sent into isolation to consider the verdict. A few more days later and it was clear that this jury was not going to come to an unanimous verdict either. As was the case with the first trial, the defence had made any number of objections against potential jurors who might not have taken to heart that Maitland Brown was their peer as much as his brother was. It was a successful strategy (in the short term) for it bought the defence time. By the end of the sessions the list of suitable jurors on the roll had been exhausted and ordinarily wouldn’t have been regenerated until the next sitting of the court — in another month’s time. But rejecting jurors wholesale who didn’t meet the defence’s criteria of “friendliness” carried with it an increasing risk the more times a conclusive victory eluded them. The same family, friendship or business ties that bound those they had accepted were near identical for those they rejected — those who now realised that the family of Maitland Brown who heretofore they may have admired, or at least been neutral towards, had as good as said they were not to be trusted. Then there were those members of that class Kenneth Brown’s late wife belonged to. Ordinarily, they would not have been called to serve on a jury, but they were present in the gallery in great numbers.
The judge called for a third jury to sit in a trial that would start the same day the old one closed. The defence challenged the remaining dozen men in the juror’s-book and when it was over only ten had passed muster — too few for a trial. It seemed that it was all over for another month. The attorney-general made a suggestion. The Judge concurred. The doors of the courthouse were shut, so as not to allow any of the gallery visitors to escape, and officers of the court also headed outside to sweep the nearby docks. The judge was Sir Archibald Burt, chief justice of the Supreme Court. He may have been a fellow member of the Weld club, drinking along side Maitland Brown and any number of the jurors called to date, but he was also a lawyer, and one thing no member of that profession can ever tolerate is having the piss taken of their office. An ancient ritual called a tales was called.
Telling tales
Two special jurors were sworn in by the court — then in turn, they
called members of the public in the courthouse (or just passing
outside) to the stand, and questioned them rigorously as to whether
they were eligible to be a member of a jury. Each of the tales, both
of them, was a miniature trial in its own right, with
cross-examinations by the defence, prosecution and the learned judge.
By the end of the process the full jury compliment of twelve were
empanelled. They were Rice Saunders (foreman), Michael Benson junior,
James Green;
Harry Williams, Frederick Tondout;
John Urquhart,
Sydney Chester,
Francis Armstrong junior,
Frederick Platt and
Alexander Halliday; with
John Summers and
James Snowball the two
dragged in off the street.
The evidence of the third trial was a carbon-copy of the second. The conclusion of the jury was not. Kenneth Brown was found guilty of wilful murder by unanimous decision. He was promptly sentenced to death.
Twelve days later behind the walls of the Perth Gaol, Kenneth Brown was hanged. His brother Maitland stood by him on the scaffold while he died. From the moment of the “guilty” verdict onwards, legend supplanted fact as far as the fate of Kenneth Brown was concerned. Such was the influence Maitland Brown was supposed to exert that the prison guard was doubled around the gaol in the days up to the execution lest the wardens could be simply bribed to let their prisoner go. Maitland himself was only supposed to have been allowed to see his brother before the end on giving his personal word of honour to the Governor (of the Colony of Western Australia, not the governor of the gaol) that he would not aid his brother’s escape. Even so, long after the body of Kenneth Brown had been returned to his family for a private inhumation, the story arose (and was believed to be true by even Kenneth Brown’s own descendants) that he escaped the gallows with his brother’s help, and made his way to America, much as the Irish political prisoners had so recently successfully done.
In reality, Maitland Brown’s fortune had been largely spent by the time of the conviction on exorbitant legal bills accrued by the defence. Politically, he was now damaged goods and he resigned his place on the Legislative Council after the third trial. He would return to politics in future years, but he was no longer the universal hero of the colony he once had been. He never stood for office once responsible government was introduced a decade-and-a-half later. The affair publicly revealed the fault lines in Western Australian colonial society that had been baked into it since it creation nearly half-a century ago, but maybe this was something that could only be discussed openly in a neighbouring colony —
“[…]‘trial by jury was on its trial in this colony.’ It is almost impossible for any one who has not resided here to understand how the small population of this place is united and connected by relationships or by mutual interests, how little public feeling there is, and how greatly private feelings or interests guide the actions of people in matters great and small. The country wants new blood and increased commerce with the outer world, from which it has been so long excluded […]”
However, in the Fremantle Herald, a local paper despised by
the local elites for if no other reason than it was founded and
written by expired convicts (the very bottom of the heap) felt
confident enough to editorialise —
“Public feeling, which in the first instance was quiet, was roused by the challenging of the jury and the extravagance of the defence; […]”
One member of the public so roused, was so indignant that the legal
system of his home town was being subverted, made his opinion known
to the world at large, and if the following memoir of him can be
believed, influenced the court on the course of action that they
followed in the third trial —
“Dyson pere it was who was so insistent, during the trial forwilful murder of the scion of a celebrated W.A. family, that some of the first and second juries which had disagreed had been got at, that when a third trial was about to commence the judge suddenly issued an order to police and warders to go out into the public street, preferably down towards the waterside, and bring in a dozen working men in their shirt sleeves for choice to act as a jury. This was done and the accused man was promptly found guilty deservedly and executed.”
This Dyson pere is, of course, James Dyson, until recently Perth City Councillor and still an elected member of the Perth Road Board. There is no contemporary evidence of him ventilating his opinion at this time, but seriously — knowing what is known about his character, what were the chances of him remaining silent if his temper was riled? And James Dyson had cause to have the judicial system fresh on his mind. His son had just been gaoled for theft. Andrew “Drewy” Dyson had a somewhat unique vantage point to observe what subsequently unfolded while he served six months hard labour in Old Perth Gaol. Drewy might not have heard his father speak publicly on the subject — but he might have heard Maitland Brown and the defence team discussing his father… If James Dyson had so publicly set himself against the family of Maitland Brown and his influential friends what then were the consequences?
Old Perth Gaol
One year later, first Dyson’s Corner then Dyson’s Swamp, the bedrocks of his family’s economic security, went up for sale. James failed to be re-elected to the Perth Road Board, thus ending his civic career. His marriage failed and the husband of one of his daughters repudiated their marriage. He was forced to move into the residence of his eldest son Joseph.
Fifty years or more after the trial and execution of Kenneth Brown, the tale of Dyson’s alleged influence on the proceedings was published. It came to light during reminiscences on the occasion of death of James’ most famous son Drewy. The Sunday Times article is uncharacteristically coy about the identity of “the scion of a celebrated W.A. family” who his late father helped send to the gallows. Something else was going on at about the same time.
A child of Kenneth Brown, a daughter from his first marriage to the daughter of the Colonial Chaplain, Frederick Wittenoom, was attempting to run for the WA parliament for a second term. She was not successful in that year, 1927, nor would ever succeed again. If the coded message of her family’s shame in Drewy’s obituary was a bit of political gaming and did influence the vote in anyway, it would be the second time a Dyson had interfered with the political fortunes of this influential family. Edith Dircksey Cowan (nee Brown)’s place in Australian and Western Australian history was assured in any case. She was the first woman elected to any parliament in the Commonwealth. She has a university named after her and her face is on the Australian $50 note. She was also a founder (in 1926) of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society.
Money talks.
Is
it any wonder the Dysons were effectively wiped from the living
memory of Australian history?
James Dyson served the last few years of his sentence as a convict in Van Diemen’s Land in the district around Launceston. One location that is named in his record is now a suburb of that city called King’s Meadows. It would not be accurate to say we did not know what Dyson was doing while he was stationed there — We do — He was on a chain-gang, performing hard labour on the roads around that town.
The clear as mud portion of James Dyson’s convict record about his time at Kings Meadows
What ever the crime was that got him an [obscured] number of months on the chain gang, we know it involved violence, and that he was sentenced to work on the roads from King’s Meadows by Robert Wales, police magistrate for the Morven district — better known today as Evandale — 18km south of Launceston.
Dyson was assigned to northern Van Diemen’s Land in July 1837. He was assigned to Morven on the 4 December, then was sent (back?) to King’s Meadows barely a week later. This suggests he probably wasn’t involved in digging the irrigation tunnel tunnel that had been started in Evandale but was abandoned around this time, but he might have been put to work constructing what is now the highway between Launceston and Hobart.
I visited King’s Meadows in 2017. Before I visited, I could find no record of where the convict depôt was located, and now I know if I had stood right on top of it, there would have been nothing above ground for me to see back then. So I found some parkland in the region near a light industrial zone that I chose this as being the closest I would get to the James Dyson convict experience for this area:—
Look’s sort of meadow-ish, doesn’t it? [2017]
However, thanks to some superb detective work by local historian and surveyor John Dent that was presented to the Launceston Historical Society in February 2018, followed up by an archaeological dig later in this year, I now know a lot more about the King’s Meadows Convict station then I did before. More to the point, the Convict Station has been located, even if it will soon disappear again, this time forever under the foundations of a new housing development:—
“Constructed in 1837, the Kings Meadow Convict Station housed more than 150 convicts, as well as officials and military personnel. It was built to assist with the Evandale to Launceston Water Scheme, which proved to be unsuccessful. The structure, which was about 40 by 40 metres, was abandoned as a convict station the in early 1840s, before being sold to a private landowner in 1854.”
But the icing on the cake to this story is the discovery of the artefacts associated with this site, including a convict hat, of a design hitherto completely unknown.
As we know, there could have been over 150 convicts on the ground at any one time to whom this hat could have belonged, so the probability that this one hat could pinned down to the possession of one named convict who was confirmed to have been there at the time has to be fairly infinitesimal… for this to be so, would be far too great an outrageous coincidence, and as we know, outrageous coincidences never happen in this family….
…
… so here I present, for your edification and amusement, James Dyson in Tasmania:—
“Where did you get that hat?… Where Did you get that Hat?”
The Members of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society 1837 – 1897
Complete membership lists exist for only two out of the sixty years this weird little Western Australian institution existed, and they only record the members on the books for that particular year. Twenty-six names are listed on the inaugural member list sent to the government in 1837, and eighty-four different names are recorded on the return sent to the Western Australian government in August 1895 listing those entitled to a share of assets of their society at it’s impending dissolution.
That’s 110 authenticated names. There are 171 names on the list below. The difference has been made up by mentions in the local newspapers for those who joined, resigned, or died, between the two years mentioned above. These additions also includes some names who have confirmed associations with the society, who could (in theory) be members, but probably never were. These include members of the Stone family and some of the caters for the anniversary dinners over the years.
I’m sure there are between 40-100 actual paid up members that are still missing from the historical record. If you know your ancestor was a member of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society please let me know so I can add them to the list.
P.S. This list is now a downloadable spreadsheet for ease of perusal.
It could be argued that by 1872, James Dyson, owner of a Swamp and an urban block on the corner of Murray and King Streets in the City of Perth, was at the height of his wealth and influence—He had been elected to the Perth Municipal Council back in 1867, and was an inaugural member of Perth Road Board in 1871—so it would seem that there would be no end to the local government contracts he would be able to steer his way.
The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, Friday 3 March 1871 page 3
But this article is not about James, but about his son, Joseph, for this was the year that Joseph stepped (ever so slightly) out of his father’s shadow and established himself as a Perth identity in his own right. Until this moment, when Joseph’s name appeared on a historical document, it was not immediately apparent whether it was in the context of his own interests or that of his father’s. For example: both he, his father, and his younger brother William are all recorded as being major employers of convicts but it is certain that James, given the age of his sons, was the real manager of this workforce. Press reports also tended to use the initial before the Dyson name interchangeably: “J” could stand for James or Joseph and there is one court case featuring William and convict labour that makes no sense until you realise that they probably are referring to James, his father.
1872 was also the year of the birth of Joseph’s first (and only child), and James’s first grandchild, and the end of that same year saw the beginning of a new Dyson’s Corner. The two events were probably not unconnected…
Joseph Dyson junior was born on 17 August 1872, but his birth was not registered until nearly a month after the event. This was presumably to give his parents time to have a wedding, which they finally achieved in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Perth, close to the houses of both Dyson and Elsegood clans.
Note the lack of evidence for bastardry
Joseph married Mary Ann Elsegood (aged 19) daughter of William Hunt Elsegood on 2 September 1872. The birth certificate for their son was signed on the 10th, (minus the scrawl of BASTARD on it, that some find so offensive, for some reason). While I speculate that it might have been a shotgun union (literally?) between the two, I haven’t identified anything to suggest they were not a loving couple, for while their union would be tragically short, Joseph would never remarry, and there is every indication he retained a close connection with his Elsegood in-laws long after Mary’s death.
By the time of his marriage, the first Dyson’s Corner would have been bursting at the seams. Apart from his father, step-mother and brother, there might have anything up to ten or eleven half-siblings in residence (and a twelfth was born in May of that year). There would have been at least two or more domestic servants living with the family, and more employed by the various family businesses. According to a later anecdote, James Dyson was one of the biggest employers of labour in the colony. Many of these employees were ticket-of-leave convicts. Dyson may well have employed his in-law as a carter for his timber business—or Elsegood’s sons— builders and carpenters, may have purchased his products.
William Elsegood was a prison guard at Port Arthur, Van Diemen’s land. James Dyson was not at Port Arthur: He was on the other side of the island at the time.
That William Elsegood (senior) had arrived in the colony as a soldier guard and had once been posted in Van Diemen’s Land when James Dyson was also a prisoner would have been a deeply embarrassing subject never to be mentioned (if the connection was realised at all). The short of it was that Joseph Dyson and his new instant family needed a home of their own. They found it just down the road on Murray street, on the north-west corner of the intersection with William street. On the south-west side of this intersection was the city property owned by the Wesleyan Methodist congregation in Western Australia. On either side of the two chapels built in 1833 and 1842 respectively, was the new Wesleyan Church that had only recently been opened, and had been constructed by materials in part supplied by Joseph’s father. Opposite the Dyson’s new residence was the Methodist Sunday School building. Joseph Dyson’s connection with the Methodists was certainly a part of his life that he greatly valued—It’s hard to see how one could be a volunteer Sunday School teacher for one’s church without being so committed.
William Street and the Wesleyan Quarter about 1885. Joseph Dyson’s store is on the far right [SLWA]
One of the harder facts to establish when researching Australian colonial history is whether a trade or profession assigned to an individual by the records refers to them actually practising that trade or them employing someone else to do it for them. This is particularly the case with those who involved themselves in public life—How on earth could they afforded the time to attend all those meetings as well as do a day’s work for themselves? To participate fully in the public life of the colony there was also a financial barrier to entry. A citizen required assets or property worth at least £150 to be eligible to serve on a jury. Both James Dyson and William Elsegood passed this watermark about the year 1860. Son Joseph’s material assets are not so clearly defined: He did not own his new residence on the corner of Murray and William Streets: It was leased from a frustratingly obscure individual named H. Williams about who I know very little. Dyson opened his new concern on the first day of the New Year, 1873.
The Inquirer & Commercial News, Wednesday 29 January 1873
The question remains whether Joseph did the baking himself or relied on staff. His father had employed a handful of ticket-of-leave men specifically as bakers since the mid-1860’s, the last so described was a William Maynard whom James employed in December 1874, but there were many more ticket-of-leavers employed by both James and Joseph for whom their employment occupations have not been recorded. It might also be that the “general” part of the general servants that Joseph mostly employed might have included work in the bakehouse. The names and occupations of the non-convict workforce in any of Joseph’s (and James’s) concerns have never been identified, but there is one recorded story that might relate to Joseph’s bakery (or another one on Murray street):—
Perth’s Early Bakers. Dear “Cygnet,”—About the early bakers. There was G. Marfleet, for a start. He was at the corner of Hay- street and William-street; John Scollard, opposite the Town Hall, in Barrack-street; T. Molloy, in Murray-street; John Liddelow, in Hay-street; J. Dyson, in Murray-street; Donald Camerson, at the corner of Hay and King streets; and Denis Metheringham, in Murray-street, where the Bohemia Hotel now stands. A little experience I had with one of the abovenamed. It would appear that this baker had had some trouble with an employee named Toby in the bake house, resulting in the baker being placed in the dough trough. I was not aware of this incident, and, whilst walking along Murray-street with a boy friend, this baker approached us on the same footpath. My boy friend said: “Do you see that boy on the opposite side of the street?” I said: “Yes.” He said: “You are not game to call out to him, ‘Toby, who fell in the dough.’ ” I very promptly called out, and the next thing I knew the baker had me in his grasp, and you can imagine what followed. For years this baker was taunted with this call by the boys of Perth.
The other of James Dyson’s sons (the ones at least, he remained capable of providing for) had been given some training in a trade; printing and blacksmithing primarily—maybe Butchering and Baking had been Joseph’s chosen skill. He also continued his father’s business as a general dealer. After a year in business on his own account he was now described as “well known” in the City:—
One of those cases of BAREFACED THEFT which are remarkable for the audacity displayed by the perpetrators in their efforts to secure the object of their search, came under the notice of Mr. Landor, our worthy police magistrate a few days ago. One Mr. Daniel Johnson who had but recently returned from one of his periodical visits to the charming establishment presided over by Mr. H. M. Lefroy, in your town, where he had been rusticating during the summer months, was proceeding along Murray Street one day last week, admiring the architectural improvements of the metropolis when his eye—was it by chance?—fell upon a pair of elastic side boots, suspended from a nail in the shop of Mr. Dyson, the well known baker and storekeeper. “Shall I have nought to encase my pedal extremities and protect them from the wild blasts of this wintry weather?” said he; and at that moment he walked up to the door of the aforesaid baker and storekeeper, drew from his pocket a penknife, gazed cautiously round, nerved himself for the action, and with the words, do or die, on his lips, rent the cord in twain, extended his right arm, and vanished with the boots. The hawk eye of the proprietor however caught sight of him, and the police were soon on his track. When charged with the theft before the magistrate he stoutly denied the impeachment, but Mr. Dyson as stoutly asserted that he could not be mistaken in his identification of the thief, who, failing to prove an alibi, was invited to return to Mr. Lefroy’s establishment, where he will remain a guest for the next two years.
So Joseph was most certainly behind the counter of his general dealership. Professionally, he was doing all right, but in the domestic sphere there was the the agony of his young wife’s illness and the losses within her own family. Mary’s seventeen-year-old sister Elizabeth died in September 1874; Then in November died her father, aged 55. Three other siblings died in infancy or early childhood, Mary Ann was the fifth child out of thirteen.
The Cloisters about the year of the accident [SLWA]
That was the situation on 4 December 1874 when Joseph saddled up a trap to take his sickly wife out to visit her recently widowed mother who was now living by the Swan River foreshore under the shadow of Mt Eliza. He was passing what is now known as the Cloisters on St George’s Terrace when his horse took fright and bolted.
The out-of-control horse and cart plunged down Mill Street, which is on a steep incline. At the end of the street was a stony open drain or culvert, and it was here that the terrified horse tripped up and the cart and its occupants tumbled out. Joseph’s arm was badly broken. The poor horse’s leg was broken and the beast had to be put down. Somehow Mary Ann escaped injury, but the truth of it was she was in the last stages of a terminal illness.
But not Mary Ann
She died of tuberculosis four weeks after the accident. She was only twenty-two years old. She was buried in the newly inaugurated Wesleyan Cemetery in East Perth and she was probably the first to be interred in the existing plot that contains the remains of her husband’s father, step-mother and various other siblings. Her name is not on the surviving grave stone.
When he lost his mother, their son was only two years and four months old. The mystery remains as to which side of his family had have more influence on the upbringing of this child: Dyson or Elsegoods? Joseph Dyson junior attended school with various Dyson half-uncles and aunts, but it was the husband of an aunt on the Elsegood side: Richard Tremlett Hardman, who may have assisted Joseph getting a job in the postal service during 1894. Hardman was later the Deputy Postmaster General. It can’t have hurt his career to have such a family connection.
The Western Australian Times, Friday 6 November 1874 p3
But by 1877, the negative influence of his Dyson side would have become impossible to ignore. Joseph the Elder’s father (and an indeterminate number of siblings) had moved in with them to that house on the corner of William and Murray street. His dad’s finances (and second marriage) had both collapsed. Joseph’s half-brother Drewy was gaining a reputation as one of the worst hooligans in the colony and other brothers were now presenting themselves before the city magistrates as well.
The targets for their larrikinism were often the Wesleyan Church and the Temperance Movement—both causes close to Joseph Dyson the Elder’s heart. Was their elder brother’s… pious?.. nature getting right up their noses? The original Dyson’s Corner, the old family property on the corner of King and Murray Street was sold to cover debts, it fell into the ownership of one of Joseph’s brother-in-laws: John Joseph Elsegood.
Elsegood transformed the old place into a hotel: The City Hotel, and the first Dyson’s Corner was no more. But that was not the end of the name… for the remainder of Joseph Dyson’s tenure on the corner of Murray and William street, and for many years afterwards, this location was also known as Dyson’s Corner.
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