The Ratbag Encyclopedia

Family history, Western Australian history, or just history

Category: Family History

Self explanatory?

  • Our George Dyson

    Our George Dyson

    I had nearly completed an article covering the first half of George Dyson’s life—I had had it illustrated and ready to go, when I had the urge to look up one more reference (as you do).

    Problem was, I found it.

    I also found another portrait of one of James Dyson’s many children. Cause to celebrate? Eventually perhaps, but for now I’m fuming that the carefully constructed narrative of George Dyson’s life I had lies in tatters and an incredibly more nuanced and interesting story still remains to be written.  I had wanted to publish something now! So instead I intend to present a brief overview of George Dyson’s life, the most accomplished Dyson you’ve never heard about.

    The West Australian, Wed 26 May 1886 p3

    The family twig occupied by George, one of the twenty-one children of James Dyson (former Tasmanian convict, later Western Australian civic identity), was the barest for the longest period of time. He was born 24 November 1864 in Perth, presumably at the family compound on the corner of Murray and King Streets, to James Dyson and his (by then) lawfully wedded second wife Jane. He was baptised in the Wesleyan Church, and he attended the Old Perth Boy’s school on St George’s Terrace, as had most of his brothers. There are records of young George’s involvement with various debating societies connected with the Wesleyan Methodist church, and then there is the strange incident at the Perth Town Hall during 1886 when he was boorish at a ball and had to spend a few hours in the Police Lockup to cool off. Strange behaviour coming from George, but absolutely what you would expect from nearly any other child of James Dyson during this time.

    He owned some property in Hardinge street in the city during the 1890’s but he was always an absentee landlord. (The cottages on these properties might be those mentioned here that were being used for the purposes of prostitution!) It was obvious that George had moved interstate (or to the eastern colonies in pre-federation speak). Slowly it emerged that George had been apprenticed to the printing trade (as had been another of his brothers), was involved in the union movement, and dabbled in politics (as his father had done) only he had done it in Sydney, New South Wales.

    The problem is that Sydney is many magnitudes larger in size than his birthplace of Perth, and there were many more people there called Dyson, and a significant proportion of those all seemed to be called George. This was one final complication that only a son of James Dyson (of Perth) could fall prey to:  Two George Dysons, both living in the Paddington area of Sydney about the same time, both with histories in the newspaper trade, and both candidates for public office in the same general electorate. Naturally enough, they were both on opposite sides of the political questions of the day, even more naturally our Dyson used the confusion to wind up his namesake.

    Not our George
    [The Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 27 Sep 1935 Page 16]
    Our George.
    [The Daily Telegraph, Mon 2 Jul 1894 Page 5]

    These are the portraits of the two George Dysons so far mentioned, not to be confused with a third George Dyson who was connected with a union of bakers in the area about the same time. Our George Dyson had a brother who was a baker back in Perth, so it was not unreasonable to suspect that there might have been a connection there. Nor does it seem that our George Dyson, who was at one time vice-president for the Typographical Association (An early union for print workers) was the same George Dyson who was secretary of the Papermakers’ Union and travelled to Britain in the early twentieth century to meet with British Unionist comrades…

    There were even multiple George Dysons among George’s own siblings. This George was the second of his name; the first was a half-brother who had died in a carting accident some five years before his namesake was born. Don’t get me started of the three nephews of our George named George Henry or Henry George…

    Our George was apprenticed to the Stirling brothers newspaper proprietors who were also associates of his father within the context of the Sons Of Australia Benefit Society. Whether by luck, family connection — or even natural talent — the young man was parachuted into a management and editorship position for a weekly newspaper in Albany in late 1886. He was twenty years old. After eighteen months he hopped on the next mail streamer for the eastern colonies. Six months later, that Albany newspaper abruptly closed. You must draw your own conclusions as to how successful his first gig had been (at least until I write up this period of his life properly).

    Settling in Sydney and working for a large publication called the Evening News, he seemed to have found his natural environment. He rose swiftly through the union movement as a delegate for that aforementioned Typographic Association, finally to be nominated as a candidate for what would become the Australian Labor Party in its first ever electoral contest in the lower house of the New South Wales parliament during 1891. He failed to secure a seat by a mere handful of votes. He was now aged twenty-three.

    Freeman’s Journal, Sat 20 Jun 1891 Page 16

    For a great number of complicated reasons, some possibly connected with the utter mess his family back in Western Australia were embroiled in, George seemed to have become disillusioned with the nascent labour political movement, and for his other political passion — Free-Trade — despite the strong personal following he had by now amassed — that movement’s leadership rejected him as a political candidate during the 1894 election cycle. However, he was passionate enough for this cause to continue campaigning vigorously for the other endorsed candidates, as he had also done during his time with the labour movement. The campaign trail took him to a number of towns in rural NSW including Moree and Molong. This proved to be a boost to his newspaper career: He was recruited for jobs as editor and general manager of the local papers in both these towns for a time:—

    We may here remark that Mr. George Dyson, the well-known democratic freetrader, who was at the last general election one of the Secretaries of the Free Trade and Liberal Association of New South Wales, has been appointed editor of the Molong Express, Mr Dyson is not altogether unacquainted with this district. At the last election he visited several centres of the electorate and addressed meetings in support of the candidature of Mr. H. C. McCulloch, who was at the time suffering from an illness and was unable to fulfil his appointments, hence Mr. Dyson’s presence here during the campaign. The speech which he delivered at the local School of Arts on the occasion was one of the most cultured and forcible ever delivered in Molong on the fiscal question. In addition to being a good and fluent speaker, Mr. Dyson is an able and fearless writer. In this district, he will have a splendid field for the exercise of his abilities.”

    Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, Sat 28 August 1897 p5

    By late 1898 George Dyson was back in Sydney in his preferred suburb of Paddington. He considered running again for colonial parliament that year as a single-issue candidate, but seems not to have done so. Next year he married. He was thirty-five years old. His new wife was thirty-six and a divorcee with three children by her former husband; a greatly respected former newspaper journalist and then current town clerk for the city of Paddington, Mr Augustus Vialoux. Awkward? I have no idea who got custody of the children but I suspect it was not George and his new wife. The former Miss Jane Annie Utting was herself the daughter of a distinguished and highly respected journalist Mr. John James Utting. Perhaps it was for this reason there is absolutely nothing about the Vialoux divorce in any of the newspapers when in any other instance they would be all over a story like this like flies on the carcass of a dead rhino. Perhaps it is also the reason that George Dyson’s newspaper and career in politics quietly fades away about this time.

    For roughly the last three decades of his life George Dyson lived quietly and relatively unobtrusively in the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo, running a small Grocer’s shop and general store, much as his father had done during his later life, but he would not have been a Dyson if he did not have at least one appearance before the local police court for some minor trading infraction:—

    The Sydney Morning Herald, Tue 5 June 1900 p8

    Like his father he had ambitions to be a city councillor, unlike his father he never succeeded, but he nominated for the Bligh Ward of the Sydney City Council in both 1901 and 1912.

    A few years before his death, he moved to 12 Griffin Street in Surrey Hills. It was there he died on 8 March 1928, aged sixty-three years. The next day he was buried in the Waverley Cemetery, but there were at least two more twists to his tale. George Dyson was buried in the Roman Catholic portion of that burial ground. Had he converted to Catholicism? When, and what had been the ramifications?

    He had married a divorcee— how was that reconciled? Maybe it wasn’t. He and Jane had no children of their own together; and the same year George died, Jane Annie Dyson remarried… her former husband Augustus Vialoux. It is by no means certain at this stage whether that wedding took place before or after George Dyson was laid in the ground.

    For a family member who had been nearly completely forgotten George Dyson has proved to have one of the richest historical records of any of his kin. Unlike 99% of his contemporaries, we have insights into what he actually thought and said about subjects including the behaviour of the rest of his family. He is the only Dyson I know of to have been immortalised in verse (other than Drewy!) and then by none other than by that stalwart of incipient Australian nationalism (and racism) the Bulletin Magazine.

    [The Bulletin Vol. 11 No. 605 (19 Sep 1891) p14]

    As has been said at the end of so many editorials of the time…

    …There shall be more to say about this!

  • Thomas Dyson: The Canny one

    Thomas Dyson: The Canny one

    When Thomas Dyson was a young boy, he shot the son of his father’s main business rival in the head. After that, his fortunes could only improve…

    Wheelwright, house builder, real-estate mogul, furniture manufacturer, poultry breeder, entrepreneur— Thomas Dyson was all of these things. Like his father, he was a success at most of his endeavours. Unlike his father, his success mostly endured.

    Thomas was the first child of James Dyson and Jane to be born after Jane’s first husband was no longer on the scene, but some years before his parents finally tied the knot. Perhaps it was to avoid the word “bastard” scrawled across his official birth certificate (as was the custom of time), his parents did not bother to apply for such paperwork. Nevertheless, Thomas Dyson was born in Perth on 15 January 1855.

    He was not immune to the scandal and tragedy that dogged the family name, but perhaps because he got his own personal downfall out of the way at such a young age (even by Dyson standards) he was able to better weather the later catastrophes that befell the wider family; insulated by both physical distance and (perhaps) a lesser set of personal failings than his hapless parents, brothers and sisters. While he was more than capable of being a bloody idiot, Thomas was probably the most lucky Dyson of his generation at his chosen endeavours, and his family life appeared to be mostly a happy one. Thomas, essentially, was the non-dysfunctional one of the clan.

    The greatest event of moronic stupidity in his life he committed when he was thirteen. It was the year 1867 and the family fortunes were on the rise. His father was fast becoming one of the largest employers in the colony on the back of a growing business empire, the core of which was supplying timber and other building supplies, shopkeeping, a butchers and bakers, market gardening and horse trading. With such economic clout his father could no longer be socially ignored. He was treasurer for such societies as the Oddfellows and a rising member of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society, a seat on the Perth Municipal Council beckoned as the highest civic appointment someone of Dyson’s class could hope to aspire to. Then his teenage son shot the much younger child of a business rival in the head at near point-blank range with a rife.

    The wetlands around Perth have long been drained. This is the nearby Canning River.

    It was somewhat beside the point that the rifle was loaded with a blank charge and the eight year old Benjamin Mason junior seemed to have escaped with naught but a severe blow to the side of the head and powder burns. If Thomas’s intention was to scare the living daylights out of the young kids who accompanied him on his hunting expedition into the lakes that still sprawled to the north of Perth, he well and truly succeeded. Police Magistrate Edward Wilson Landor was not impressed. The only thing that saved young Thomas from a gaol sentence was the absence in the Colony at that time of any juvenile detention facilities. Thomas was confined to a cell for 24 hours before being returned to the court, and Landor saved his harshest language for Thomas’s father, whom he lambasted for “allowing little boys to go out shooting” in the first place. He then surrendered the lad into the custody of that same father.

    What happened next is not in doubt. Only the timing of “when” remains obscure. Most of Dyson’s sons by his second marriage were placed into apprenticeships for some mechanical trade. There were at least two blacksmiths, two print compositors — Thomas was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Those other sons often completed their apprenticeships at locations some distance away from Perth, such as Champion Bay (Geraldton) or York — Thomas was sent (or exiled, if you prefer) much further away than that. His apprenticeship was most likely served out in Geelong, in the colony of Victoria.

    An unrepresentative photograph of Geelong, Victoria taken by the author, 2017

    It was in that city that his future wife was born on 3 August 1857. Miss Margaret Wilkinson was the daughter of Thomas, a hat maker (deceased) from Cumberland in England, while her widowed mother was an Irish force of nature called Catherine (known as Kate). The youngish couple married on 15 February 1879 in the Anglican Church of St Luke, Emerald Hill (which was an early name for South Melbourne).

    The new Mrs Dyson lied about her age on her marriage certificate, presumably to smooth over the fact that Margaret was not quite 21 at the time. This must have been a subterfuge for administrative simplicity rather than deception, for as future events would demonstrate, one did not cross the iron will of Thomas’s new mother-in-law lightly. All the evidence so far suggests that Thomas did get on well with his new extended family and his marriage was a loving and successful one. They had six children together—all boys—at various locations around the Melbourne metropolis between 1879 (near exactly nine months after they wed) and 1888 (which was also the year Thomas’s father died).

    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 28 July 1888 p2
    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 28 May 1892 p2

    Thomas’s independent success at business came through work as a house-builder and real-estate agent operating in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray. One of the more appealing aspects of Thomas’s story (we’ll get to the less appealing bits eventually) is how his wife gave every appearance of being an active, equal— perhaps more than equal— participant in the family’s business affairs. Many commercial properties were in her name alone, as was newspaper advertising. Mrs Margaret Dyson’s properties did, however, have an unfortunate tendency to keep burning down.

    Thomas might have been insulated from the family’s implosion of fortune back in the west, he could not escape the whiff of scandal that being linked to a disreputable family could bring —  in this instance Thomas had married into the scandal. His brother-in-law was William John Henry Wilkinson. Back in 1880 William married Miss Ellen Teresa Bradford. In 1885 (at the urging of his mother), Wilkinson, now a government telegraph clerk, instituted divorce proceedings against his wife on the grounds that he had been under-age at the time of their wedding and did not understand what he was doing. William had been seventeen and his bride-to-be was eight years his senior. William, (like his elder sister) had lied on his marriage licence.

    The Argus, Saturday 3 October 1885 p9
    Launceston Examiner Saturday 7 November 1885 p1S
    Launceston Examiner Saturday 7 November 1885 p1S

    The continent-wide moral panic was vocal and furious. The idea that someone might end a marriage because they were merely young and stupid struck a chord with everyone across the continent stuck in a loveless union because the option to legally end it simply wasn’t there. The anger focussed on the young man for daring to think he could get away with what so many must have thought of, but dared not do. There was a strong stink of misogyny to the whole proceedings: He was held in contempt for the power his mother seemed to exert over him— and probably also his failure to dominate a much older wife. Wilkinson was not granted his divorce. Instead his case was discussed in the Victorian Parliament as the Postmaster-general recommended he be sacked from government service. Finally he was charged with perjury— for lying on his marriage certificate. But even worse scandal was to follow: By a jury of his peers William Wilkinson was acquitted on that charge.

    Williamstown Chronicle, Saturday 16 January 1886 p2

    This was where Thomas Dyson came to notice. By early 1886 the family had been settled in Footscray for about twelve months. One day William Wikinson and Thomas’s mother-in-law paid a visit. Outrage that she was living next to someone with scandalous in-laws was one provocation too many for his next door neighbour Mrs Scott. However, the offensive language charge she brought against Dyson was dismissed when it finally reached court. (In case you were wondering, a “Poll” is a type of cow.)

    Thomas Dyson (unlike the rest of his clan) tended to win his court cases.

    At the end of 1889, Dyson was listed as provisional director for a new company: The G. M. Pickles’ Melbourne and Suburban Carriage Company (Limited)— a similar style of business to that which his younger brother Drewy was attempting to run back in Perth. Thomas’s involvement with (and the company itself) was short lived. The last years of the 1880’s and the first years of the 1890’s was a time of economic depression in the eastern colonies. Meanwhile, back in the West, a gold-mining boom was getting underway, and the population of Perth was expanding at last.

    Thomas’s transfer back to Western Australia was a gradual process between 1893-1896. He occupied property on the west end of Murray Street, not far from his mother’s well-established brothel. He had maintained relationships with at least some of his siblings during his long exile, most notably sisters Mary Jane (Jacky) and Mabel Grace, who he may have housed in Footscray during 1892, given that the address where Mabel gave birth to an illegitimate child (who was then adopted by their other brother Drewy) was only a few blocks away from his home there.

    Part of William Victor Dyson’s Victorian birth certificate. The Victorian bureaucrats were not wimps—unlike their Western Australian counterparts.
    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 22 December 1888 p3

    The long period of transition to the west might have been to avoid disrupting his children’s education at schools in Melbourne, but eventually all the family was living in Perth, including at least one of Margret’s brothers (but not the infamous one). Their initial address was on George Street (a lost street of Perth) off Hay Street. There are advertisements for Thomas offering seeds for sale, and for recruiting an interior decorator, but by October 1893 the Dyson family were definitely established back on Murray Street and Thomas was advertising household furniture for sale.

    The Daily News, Saturday 5 February 1898 p5

    At some stage during the late 1890’s from premises on Murray Street, Thomas Dyson, was not just buying and selling furniture but manufacturing it in  as well. He might have been the first large-scale manufacturer of furniture in Western Australia, (but this might also just be family propaganda). He was however, considered a significant enough manufacturer in the Colony that he was invited to speak to at a Perth Town Hall meeting on the impact of Federation (of the Australian colonies) would have on trade. Dyson’s position was that the abolition of the tariff between the colonies would have no adverse effect at all and was in favour. Offering an opposing view was Mr James Pearse, who owned a large boot factory in North Fremantle. He stated that he would immediately have to close his factory if Federation went ahead (The Pearses then made a fortune selling boots to the army during the Boer and Great Wars, and the factory remained open to the 1960’s ).

    The West Australian, Monday 16 July 1900 p8
    Not Thomas Dyson [SLWA 9689B/118]

    It might have been more than just friendly commercial rivalry with his younger brother, Drewy. The two shared obsessions with animal breeding— both were contestants (and judges) for dog and poultry shows in Perth. They were both similar physically, much to the chagrin of the victim of Drewy’s more volatile tongue, when he dragged Thomas by mistake into court instead:

    “Yes, myself and brother are very much alike, only the brother is better looking”

    Thomas quipped.

    Thomas might have shared the same wry sense of the ridiculous as his brother, but he also had a streak of arrogance, verging on bloody-mindedness, that could land him in serious trouble.  He was lucky in August 1899 not to be imprisoned for contempt of court when he told his fourteen-year-old son Gilbert not to front the magistrate for throwing stones in Wellington Street. It was only Margaret’s intervention on behalf of both recalcitrant father and son that saved the day. He also drove his work-cart through King’s Park at the end of the day to unwind… raising the ire of the Perth City Council. It is hard to work out who was being the more bull-headed on this occasion—The Perth city council passed a bye-law specifically targeting Dyson for doing this. But Thomas escaped a court-imposed fine on a technicality.

    If Thomas did not himself actively retire around the beginning of the twentieth century, he certainly stepped back from public view. It was his wife Margaret and several of their sons, particularly James and Percy Dyson who fronted the family businesses from this time forward. Eldest son Harry was a pearler, then a publican up in Broome in the north-west of the State (now part Commonwealth of Western Australia).

    The Daily News Friday 26 July 1901 p3

    The last decade-and-a-half of Thomas’s life was punctuated by several family tragedies that may have contributed to his own end. His mother died down the road from where he lived in August 1899. How close Thomas was to her is not recorded, but she left nothing to him in her will. Then in July 1901 his seventeen-year-old son Frederick, who was in training to be a jockey, was killed in a gruesome riding accident at Belmont. First on the scene was horse trainer George Towton, who cradled the dead boy in his arms. Several years later, Thomas’s brother Septimus (not to be confused with Thomas’s own son of the same name) would marry Towton’s widow—so it was very much a family tragedy.

    The West Australian Tuesday 26 March 1912 p1

    In March 1911 son Gilbert died, aged 25. It had been a long illness, and to his funeral came his uncles Joseph and Drewy, and his aunt Jacky, to whom Gilbert may have been especially close. Joseph Dyson himself was dead within a year.

    Thomas Dyson died at his home at 535 Murray Street on 22 July 1914. He was 59 years old. He was buried in the Methodist portion of the Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth by the undertaking firm of C. H. Smith & Co. (Founded by the former husband of his sister Hannah, who divorced her and remarried!) in the same plot occupied by his sons Frederick and Gilbert. His wife Margaret eventually joined him there in 1938,  They had the good fortune to be interred in a corner of Karrakatta that is (for the time being) immune from the renewal process that will shortly obliterate the monuments of most of his children and wider family.

    The grave of Thomas, Margaret, Frederick and Gilbert Dyson in Karrakatta Cemetery, WESLEYAN section AA no. 0238

    Thomas was canny to the last.

  • The Fate of The First Wife, Part III

    The Fate of The First Wife, Part III

    Fanny Dyson’s end was horrible and no-one comes out of this event looking good.

    Part 3

    Post Mortem

    As a rule, I’m not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. I believe it’s a mistake to attribute to planning what can just as easily be explained by laziness, apathy or plain forgetfulness. In the case of the death of Fanny Dyson, James Dyson’s first wife, I make an exception; there has been a calculated attempt to cover up the true circumstances of her death, and the State was complicit in this cover-up just as much as Fanny’s family were. Both family and state had failed to save her life.

    Within weeks or days of Fanny’s suicide in 1854, her newly widowed husband was negotiating with entrepreneur and Colonial financier George Shenton to buy the property later to be known as “Dyson’s Swamp.” Around the time of Dyson’s eventual marriage to Mrs Jane Edwards in 1862, Shenton presented the family with a bible (which he had a reputation for doing, for people he felt needed it). Shenton senior was an extremely complicated individual and it is impossible to judge what his attitude to Dyson was or how much he knew of events (It’s hard to believe he didn’t know everything). I am in no way implying that Shenton was involved in any way in the cover up of Fanny’s death, but that family bible he donated was the original means the family employed to obscure the circumstances of her death. It is within it that Fanny Dyson’s death is recorded as 12 May 1850, which, of course, is not possible. A later custodian of this bible also backdated the wedding of James and Jane from 1862 to 1852 which was not a senseless act only if it was wished to make it appear that the four children born to the couple before 1862 had actually be born to a married couple.

    Who gained custody of the family bible (and who has it now) is unknown to me, but Drewy Dyson and his family must be prime contenders for no other reason that it was Drewy who erected the headstone in the Old East Perth Cemetery after 1920.

    The champion male malaprop is Drewy Dyson, some of his howlers being guaranteed to put a kink in the side of a curry-livered misanthrophist. Last week he was asking as to the health of a friend’s wife, remarking that he hadn’t seen her lately. “I dare say you haven’t,” said the friend, and he whispered something in Drewey’s ear. The latter assumed a shocked expression. “You shouldn’t call it that,” he said in a mock remonstrance. “That’s vulgar. You should put it in French and say she’s eccentric” !!

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 3 April 1904 page 4

    The Wesleyan Methodist portion of the cemetery where the family grave site is located was not opened until decades after Fanny’s death, so that is not where she lies. But in Drewy’s defence his step-mother had died before he was even born. Who knows what stories he was told about her by those around him? Was he given the same answer that one of his future distant nephews would have when asking a relative who remembered Drewy:

    “Who was Drewy Dyson?”

    [THWACK] (the sound of a hand hitting a little boy’s ear)

    That the family were able to so successfully distort the record for so long is ultimately due to the failure of the government to maintain the standard of record-keeping that they demanded of others (and required from themselves). Where are the statutory death certificates for Fanny Dyson, or her infant daughter Hannah (died 1850); where are the birth certificates for Thomas, Hannah (Janes’s daughter), Andrew and John Dyson? Where is the inquest into Fanny’s suicide?

    Here is a contemporaneous report made by a police magistrate to the colonial secretary about another death in the colony.

    SRO CSR 36/308/93
    SRO CSR 36/308/93

    There should be a letter like this about Fanny’s case but there is not.

    I spent several days in the State Records Office (WA) going through the microfilm of ingoing and outgoing correspondence for the Colonial Secretary’s Office from 1852 to 1854, searching for any mentions of any of the Dysons, the Perth Lunatic Asylum or Police business that might relate to Fanny’s death. Other than the conversation between the Assistant Police Magistrate for Perth, the Colonial Surgeon and the Colonial Secretary on behalf of the Governor, all I have found is what I have presented in Part II: the Evidence. Outside the Colonial Secretary’s correspondence— which is considered to be largely intact—there are no repositories in the State Archives relating to the activities of the Police Magistrate, the Colonial Surgeon, or any Lunatic Asylum of this period that are not concerned with government convicts.

    It is hard not to conclude that from the time Western Australia became a convict colony in 1850, the sole interest of the government was the management of the convict establishment and civilian matters were an inconvenient distraction from this work. At the same time as the convicts made their appearance, there was an upswing in the number of government-sponsored free immigrants to the Colony, for which the local economy was ill-equipped to absorb. (This does begin to explain how Dyson could be short of timber-cutting work in the midst of a construction boom) The convicts had their own hospitals and mental institutions, but the existing civilian services also had to absorb the immigrant influx. Only the convict establishment (funded directly by the Imperial Government) maintained proper record keeping practices.

    Governor Fitzgerald ordered the construction of a new Colonial Hospital (i.e: a civilian one) with a custom-built Lunatic Asylum for Perth. This building, (which remains at the core of the existing Royal Perth Hospital) was not opened until 1855, and replaced numerous temporary structures before it. The absence of clear records makes it near impossible to work out where its predecessors stood or which ones Fanny was incarcerated in.

    There was a predecessor of the Colonial hospital next to the site occupied by the Perth Town Hall. It was demolished soon after the Hall was constructed in the 1870’s. This may have been where the mentally ill of Fanny Dyson’s time were imprisoned. However, there is also mention of a Female Lunatic Asylum in what became an immigrant depot at the end of William Street, but this was closed in 1852 before Fanny could have been admitted, which raises an unanswered question: Were there two Asylums buildings differentiated on sexual grounds, or were they one structure? Fanny was under the care of a Matron who appeared to hate her guts. I would very much like to know the name of this individual.

    There is mention of an Asylum on Wellington street in the converted stalls of a stable next to the old racecourse. Not being able to precisely identify this location, it seems at odds with a newspaper report from 1852 which implies that the Asylum was next to the office of the Inquirer newspaper.

    There are too many unanswered questions for me about Fanny Dyson’s last days and death, and we may never know the true circumstances of her end, however

    J’Accuse

    Her husband, James Dyson, who assaulted her, made it impossible for her to live in her own home. I always knew he was a bit of bastard, but this crossed a line for me that I cannot forgive. I cannot know whether his wife— my great-great-great-great-grandmother— really was insane or not. The Colonial Surgeon and the Police Magistrate didn’t think so, but they admitted her anyway. There’s a word for making someone believe they are insane when they are not—”gaslighting“. I’ve battled clinical depression much of my adult life. That fact has been used against me on more that one occasion. I have been “gaslighted“. I don’t forgive those who took advantage of me for their own petty purposes and I don’t forgive my ancestor for what he did and allowed to happen to Fanny.

    But James Dyson has been dead for 130 years. I now know what he couldn’t have know back in 1854 when it must have seemed that all the obstructions in his way were lifted. James Dyson would pay for what he did to his first wife. Only the veil of silence cast by the awfulness of what had gone down before obscured the magnitude of his failure.

  • The Fate of the First Wife, Part II

    The Fate of the First Wife, Part II

    Part 2:

    The Evidence

    Inquirer, Wednesday 11 August 1852 p 3
    Inquirer, Wednesday 11 August 1852 p 3

    On the 2 August 1852, James Dyson appeared before the Assistant Police Magistrate Charles Symmons in Perth and was fined eight shillings with costs for creating a disturbance the previous night. Those are the bald facts as presented in the local paper, which often preserve more details than survive in the official records. However, I discovered an exception: Police Magistrates sometimes wrote to the Governor via the Colonial Secretary’s office, and these letters were readily accessible on microfilm at the State Records Office (SRO) of Western Australia in Perth. I discovered that the correspondence mostly concerned re-offending convicts and rarely the day-to-day court processes. But I can safely assume from the later letters of Charles Symmons to the Colonial Secretary that on 2 August 1852 James Dyson was probably beating up his poor wife.

    Letter received by the Colonial Secretary from the Acting Police Magistrate for Perth:

                                      August 6th 1852 Perth

    Sir

    The wife of James Dyson, Sawyer of Perth, having been, in my presence, examined by the Colonial Surgeon, and reported by that Officer of feeble & unsound mind, although not actually insane, and as moreover, it has been proved before me as Police Magistrate, that the said woman is in the habit of being struck and otherwise illtreated by her husband who has received a woman of bad character into his house.

    I have the honour to request that the said Mrs Dyson may be received as an inmate of the Government Lunatic Asylum, and in and of her maintenance therein, I shall make an order on her husband for the weekly payment of (8) Eight shillings.

    I have the honor to be,
    Sir,
    Yr Very Obdt Serv
    Chas. Symmons
    Asst Police Magistrate

    the Hon, the Col Secretary, Perth

    The Governor of Western Australia, Charles Fitzgerald initialled his approval of this course of action.

    Letters sent by Colonial Secretary to the Colonial Surgeon and the Assistant Police Magistrate of Perth:

    August 6 1243
    [To the] Colonial Surgeon
    His Excellency having authorised the admission of the wife of a woman named Dyson into the Government Lunatic Asylum, I have the honor to request you will give the necessary instructions for her reception.
    Dyson has been ordered by the Police Magistrate to pay 8/. a week towards the maintenance of his wife.

    [To the] Asst Police Magistrate
    I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of this date applying for admission into the Government Lunatic Asylum for the wife of James Dyson from whom you will claim[?] the payment of 8/. a week. I am directed by His Excellency to enclose such admission.

    Sc. W.A.S

    But three months later Symmons was requested to update the authorities,—

    Letter sent by the Colonial Secretary to the Acting Police Magistrate for Perth:

    12 November 1852

    [To] C. Symmons
    Asst Police Magistrate
    Referring to your letter of the 6th August last I have the honor by direction of His Excellency to enquire whether the weekly payment of eight shillings is duly made by James Dyson for the maintenance of his wife in the Lunatic Asylum. The Woman is a sower of much trouble and the sum ordered to be paid barely compensates for the annoyance experienced by the Matron from the lazy and filthy habits of her Patient.

    Sec/ W.A.S.

    Letter received by the Colonial Secretary from the Acting Police Magistrate for Perth:

                                                  Perth Nov 16th 1852

    Sir,

    In reply & gen’s of the 12th Instant, I have the honor to inform you that I have received from James Dyson payments at the rate of eight shillings per week for the first three months of his wife’s location in the Perth Lunatic Asylum. I shall pay the sum, (amounting to £4-16), into the hands of the Colonial Treasurer.

                                                  I have the honor to be
    Sir
    Yr very Hond Servt
    Chas Symmons
    Asst Police Magistrate

    The Hon, the Colonial Secretary

    This letter was annotated with instructions to be passed back to Mr Symmons. “…

    Letter sent by the Colonial Secretary to the Acting Police Magistrate for Perth:

    Asst Police Magistrate
    Perth
    In acknowledging receipt of your letter of the 16th Inst reporting that James Dyson had made payments of eight shillings per week for the first three months of his wife’s location in the Perth Lunatic Asylum I am instructed by the Governor to inform you that he considers such rate of remuneration inadequate to the trouble and annoyance which this woman occasions to the
    Matron of the Establishment and that Dyson should be called upon to pay an increased sum of ten shillings per week; in addition to which he should also deposit something to purchase articles of clothing for his wife’s
    use.—

    sec / W. A. S.

    Symmons replied promptly:—

                                                  Perth November 20th 1852

    Sir,

    In acknowledging the receipt of your’s of the 18th Instant suggesting that James Dyson should be called upon to pay an extra sum of two shillings per week for the support of his wife now an inmate of the Lunatic asylum — I have the honor to report — that I find when inquiring that in this last 2 months Dyson’s employment as a Sawyer has been very slack, and his earnings comparatively small —

    He professes his utter inability on making a more liberal allowance, considering that he has three children to support — & the present dearness of the necessities of life.

    Dyson expresses his willingness to supply his wife with suitable & sufficient clothing.

    According to his statement, she has 4 gowns, 2 other under garments, & consequently, could namely, he supposed, be in that want which your letter would infer.

                          I have the honor to be
    Sir
    Yr very Obdt Serv
    Chas Symmons
    Assist. Police Magistrate

    And this was the situation until January of 1853 when it was the turn of Dr John Ferguson, the Colonial Surgeon, to write to the Governor. It was he who had responsibility for Fanny Dyson’s case.—

    Letter received by the Colonial Secretary from the Colonial Surgeon:

                                                  Perth 6 January 1853

    Sir,

    I beg leave to bring under His Excellency’s notice the case of Mrs Dyson, at present a patient in the Lunatic Asylum. Mrs Dyson has been an inmate of the Asylum for nearly five months, and during great part of that period has been under continuous treatment for her Disease, but I regret to say, with little or no benefit to herself — the knowledge that her Husband is living with another man’s wife, (a Mrs Edwards) has taken such a complete hold of her mind, and her animosity to return home has become so constant & intense that I consider her case, in this account a hopeless one for present treatment.

    I would therefore suggest the propriety of sending her home to her husband – I’d not present to her such an opinion as to her for the Govt. can interfere in her case, to see that the poor woman receives, from her husband, that kind treatment which she so essentially requires, or whether on such it would be practicable to have Mrs Edwards removed from Dyson’s house to her own Husbands’, who, I am informed, is still willing to receive her – but I am clearly of the opinion that no good can come to Mrs Dyson herself, under existing circumstances, by a further residence in the Asylum at present.

              I have the honor to remain
    Sir,
    Your most obedient Servant,
    John Ferguson

    The Governor’s response was chilling..

    Letter sent by the Colonial Secretary to the Colonial Surgeon:

    [To the] Colonial Surgeon
    In reply to your letter of the 6th Instant relative to the case of a woman named Dyson now a Patient in the Lunatic Asylum I have H.E.’s directions to authorise your sending her in charge of a Policeman to her husbands House, and to refuse receiving her again into the Asylum. The matter must then rest with Dyson and the Magistrates.—

    Sec.

    If there is more government correspondence about Fanny Dyson’s case, it has yet to be identified. If a policeman did escort Fanny back to her home he would also have observed that Mrs Jane Edwards— the other woman— was  just about to give birth to her first child with Fanny’s husband. Any possibility of reconciliation between any of the parties was most likely extinct by 27 April 1853 When James Dyson and the aggrieved husband of Jane brawled in the street. It’s possible Fanny stayed out of the Asylum for a time, but she was most probably back in the custody of the Government when she met her end.

    There is only one record which contains an indirect mention alluding to her final and tragic fate.

    Original Police records for this era in Western Australia’s history are very rare. The newspapers published court business, but not every week, and not completely. This criminal indictment book from 1854 lists a case prosecuted that the local pressmen decided for what ever reason, not to report. On 25 June 1854, James Dyson was charged with:—

    “Refusing to continue to support his Wife”

    But the charge was dismissed. The reason given:—

    “Dismissed by taking his [sic] life”

    James Dyson certainly did not take his own life in 1854. Substitute “her” for “his” and it all makes tragic sense.

  • The Fate of the First Wife, Part I

    The Fate of the First Wife, Part I

    This is a reconstruction of the last years of the life of Mrs Frances (Fanny) Dyson, the first wife of James Dyson, and mother to his first four children. This is a very different narrative to the one that which has heretofore been told, and has been accepted as the truth for nigh on one hundred and twenty years.

    Part 1:

    The Death of Fanny Dyson

    This is a narrative of events. Evidence for these events are presented in Part II

    At some point between early 1851 and the middle of 1852, James Dyson received into his house on the corner of Murray and King Streets, Perth, the extremely young wife of Mr Richard Edwards of Guildford. Jane Devling married Edwards during August 1850 when she was only sixteen years old (and four months pregnant with child)— so when she arrived into Dyson’s household, she also brought with her an infant daughter named Ellen Christina, who would be raised as a Dyson. By 1852, the future second Mrs Dyson was 18 years old and her new hubby about 42. James had three surviving children from his own marriage: George, aged 9; Joseph, aged 7; and William, aged 5. A daughter, Hannah, survived only a couple of months back in 1850.

    But still alive and under the same roof with her husband and his new mistress was James Dyson’s first wife, Mrs Frances (Fanny) Dyson.

    There did not seem to be a formal mechanism for divorce during this early period of the Swan River Colony’s history, but to give James Dyson his due, he did not just throw his wife of nine years and mother of his children out into the street when the newer and shinier model arrived. No, instead he beat her and abused her so that by the time she arrived in a state of catatonic shock before the desk of the Assistant Police Magistrate and the Colonial Surgeon, those two gentlemen felt they had no option—even though they acknowledged that she was not actually insane— but to recommend to the Governor that Mrs Dyson be committed to the Perth Lunatic Asylum. Governor Charles Fitzgerald, supreme ruler of the Colony, gave his assent to this proposal on 6 August 1852 and Mrs Dyson was sent to the converted stables on Wellington Street (next to the old race course) that served as the hospital/asylum for Perth.

    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (WA : 1848 - 1864) Fri 9 Apr 1852 Page 3
    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, Fri 9 Apr 1852 Page 3
    Inquirer, Wed 14 Mar 1855 Page 2
    Inquirer, Wed 14 Mar 1855 Page 2

    Again, to Dyson’s credit: he was content to pay for his wife’s maintenance in the asylum to the value of eight shillings a week and even to (eventually) hand over her wardrobe— consisting of four gowns and two sets of undergarments. He only protested when the colonial authorities attempted to up the payment to ten shillings a week— due, they said to the extra trouble and work Mrs Dyson’s needs placed on the asylum staff. He pointed out that his work as a sawyer had been a bit “slack” lately—also, he did have three young children to feed, and the cost of living was so expensive those days… The authorities seemed to have accepted Dyson’s excuses.

    Five months later, Dr Ferguson, Colonial Surgeon, responsible for Fanny’s care, wrote to the Governor to express his concern that he could do nothing further for his patient. In his opinion, Mrs Dyson was obsessed with that other woman living in her house with her husband. Ferguson made inquiries and discovered that the man that the other woman was actually married to would be all too pleased to take back his errant spouse. The Doctor’s question to the Governor: Was there anything the State could do to compel Jane Edwards to leave Dyson’s house and return to Richard Edwards?

    The governor seems to have taken something of a personal interest in this case— up till now. Ferguson was instructed that he could send Mrs Dyson home with a policeman and bar her admission back into the Asylum, but after that it was solely the business of the Police Magistrate… and James Dyson. Fanny would have discovered, arriving home, Jane Edwards heavily pregnant with Fanny’s husband’s child. Just to ram home the point, when the child was born three weeks later, on 25 January 1853, the boy was christened “James” and there has never been any real doubt about who his father was.

    Two months later occurred the famous street fight between Dyson and the husband of the mother of his most recent child. It would be a fair assumption that reconciliation between any of the parties was now impossible. This was the last public appearance of the luckless Mr. Richard Edwards, junior, in the records of Western Australia.

    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (WA : 1848 – 1864), 6 May, page 3

    Wherever he disappeared to, everyone were so confident he was no longer alive by February 1862, James and Jane could finally have the church wedding they may well have so long planned. But if this was the case, it meant that Mrs Fanny Dyson also had to be dead as well.

    ***

    There is no death certificate for Mrs Fanny Dyson. Her gravestone in East Perth Cemetery has a patently wrong year on it of 1850, but it was erected it nearly fifty years after her alleged death, and by someone not born when she died.

    Fanny most likely died some time before June 1854. 12 May 1854 is the best guess at an exact date.

    Fanny was most likely back in the Perth Lunatic Asylum. She certainly was not being looked after by Jane and James. Five months previously, Governor Fitzgerald who confirmed her original commitment to the asylum, presented a school prize to her son for academic achievement. It was unlikely she was allowed to attend the ceremony. Jane and James were also expecting their second child together (assuming Ellen Christina was not also James’s daughter) before Fanny finally was no more.

    It was 1861 before a purpose-built building began construction in Fremantle to finally replace the Perth Lunatic Asylum. Records concerning mental health don’t even begin to be preserved in this colony until the opening of the Fremantle facility so the exact circumstances of Fanny’s death have not been preserved. Another possible explanation for this silence might just be embarrassment, or shame. Shame over the stigma of mental illness and official embarrassment that her end had occurred while she had been in the government’s care. The only formal record that the first Mrs Dyson had passed comes in the form of a rare surviving Police charge sheet from 1854, describing how James Dyson was called before the police magistrate yet again, this time charged with refusing to support his wife. The local newspapers, which published most court proceeding, also chose not to report this event. The charge was dismissed because by 25 May 1854 James Dyson had no lawfully-recognised wife to support.

    The Fremantle Lunatic Asylum Fanny never lived to see.

    Fanny Dyson had taken her own life.

    The inconvenient truth of her existence could now be comfortably ignored.

    the Evidence

  • On Cemetery Hill

    On Cemetery Hill

    Firsts are a tricky thing. The Old East Perth Cemetery was certainly not the first colonial burial site in Western Australia. The unmarked graves of the thirty-odd settlers who died at Clarence by what is now known as Woodman’s Point were filled around about the same time in early 1830, when the first recorded interment at East Perth was taking place. Talking of records, the record-keeping skills of the early Swan River Colonists were pathetic. There is no formal burial register for the unified aggregation of denominational Christian cemeteries that make up Old East Perth Cemetery. There has been a lot of research into who actually might be buried in the ground, but there are certainly many gaps in our knowledge.

    Educated guesses are just that—guesses—there is always the possibility of being proved gloriously and magnificently wrong.

    The colonial burial ground today.

    For a site with at least 10,000 interments within it over a seventy year period of use (roughly 1830-1899), there are mere handful of headstones surviving. While wilful vandalism during the 20th Century can account for a lot, haphazard usage over the course of its life (If Cemeteries can be said to be alive?) account for much:—

    Sunday Times, Sunday 26 February 1911 p6

    Most of the surviving monuments appear to be from the last years of East Perth’s formal operations in the 1890’s. There were probably many more family crypts on the ground than are visible today. Wood rots, Slate delaminates, sandstone crumbles, iron rusts, lead lettering peels away.

    Drewy Dyson’s name is taken in vain when discussing the state of the cemetery in 1911. Of course most of Drewy’s immediate family were buried in a family plot on the site. The iron railings and tombstone that still exist in situ were most likely erected by Drewy himself in his capacity as funeral director:—

    WHY live miserable when you can be buried comfortably by A. DYSON, Undertaker?

    The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Friday 18 March 1892 p 2

    But the occasion of his mother’s death as an excuse for a refurbishment of the family plot was the one time Drewy did not spare every expense. It contained a tribute to his late father who had died eleven years ago and his father’s first wife who, according to Drewy’s monument, died forty-nine years ago. The problem is, Drewy was almost certainly— deliberately— lying about the dating of certain events.

    The Dyson family plot lies in the Wesleyan Section of the Old East Perth Cemetery. A stone’s throw away (but I could not condone this sort of behaviour) is the monument to George Shenton, the pious druggist, the merchant philanthropist whose story seemed to intertwine with that of the Dyson family (and every other significant family in the early years of the Colony).

    The Grave of George Shenton, senior.

    The Wesleyan Methodist portion of the cemetery was not inaugurated until 1854, so, as the helpful guides from the National Trust can point out to you, how could Frances Dyson have been buried in that location in 1850?Visiting the family grave in June 2018, I was sorry to see how much the Dyson grave stone has deteriorated in the five years since my last visit:—

    The Dyson stone in 2018
    The same stone in 2013

    I hasten to stress this is no reflection on the current custodians of the cemetery grounds. The grave is surrounded by iron railings and its hard to see how it could be better protected, short of obscuring the stone entirely. The reality is that the money available for any sort of restoration is not there, and while I’d love to see all the surviving stones in East Perth stabilised, possibly something else, like reinstating marker numbers for lost grave sites— they have numbers for existing headstones only— would be more worthwhile. This way many more hundreds, if not thousands of now anonymous grave sites could be identified for visiting, providing a focal point for the pilgrimage of many more families.

    Bloody hell! its worse than I thought. This was the Dyson grave circa 1980. [thanks to Lorraine Dyson for the photo]
    More grave numbering please!
    This Star Wars-opening scroll-type stone is for Captain John Septimus Roe who surveyed the site for this cemetery back in 1829.
    Our old friend, Ben Mason
    Also in the Wesleyan section, Francis Fraser Armstrong himself.


    The Old East Perth Cemetery is located (surprise surprise!) in East Perth, Western Australia. It is only open to the public for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons. There is a small admission charge. I cannot over-stress how helpful the volunteer guides of the National Trust on duty at the cemetery have been to me for my research, particularly on the Dyson family, over many years.

  • I demand the right to be labelled a bastard

    I demand the right to be labelled a bastard

    The government has censored our vital documents!


    Read what has happened here.

    A bit over a decade ago I was recording a corporate video out on the Burrup peninsula up in the Pilbara region. Without naming names — myself and a young local film-maker were supposed to be filming some of the rock carvings for which the region is famous. They were in a site controlled by a certain big resource corporation. I had to talk to a minion of that company to finalise the details of access. This dickhead told me that while the company would be fine with me being out there, they wouldn’t allow my colleague out with me. According to this white guy, it would give great offence for my colleague, a local man, to see certain rock carvings.

    Not these ones

    Offence to whom? Not apparently, to me — a white guy — who had only been there for a few months — and wouldn’t have known what was restricted or not — and would have filmed everything he had seen, rebroadcasting it unknowingly. Offensive to the local Aboriginal community? My colleague, although a young man, was a member of that same community and had been initiated into the Law.  This meant he had been extensively tutored in the customs and laws of his culture by his Elders. So were “they” protecting him from the trauma of seeing something that might be personally offensive to him, or were “they” protecting someone else from being offended that he might have seen something that they felt he was not entitled to see? Who the hell were “they?”

    The situation was that an untutored white guy would be given access to an Aboriginal sacred site but an educated Aboriginal person would be barred. “I” was offended by this development. Needless to say, after I reported this situation to the Aboriginal boss of the Aboriginal media organisation I was then employed by, we did not go filming out on the Burrup that day — or the next.

    This was my first proper introduction to the casual unthinking institutional racism in this State that my co-workers had to endure on a day-to-day basis. Petty discrimination enshrined in the very rulings that were supposed to protect their “feelings” even as it barred them from accessing their own country. But unknown then to me, at the same time, something just as insidious was taking place nineteen-hundred kilometres to the south. In the city of Perth, Western Australia, a programme was in place on to digitise all the official records of Births, Deaths and Marriages from the time such records were started in 1840’s until the present.

    When you order a duplicate of an original certificate you will receive (provided you have not asked for a transcription) a very dark single colour reduction of the document printed on patterned and coloured paper. Not being in grey scale, the black and white image will be so small as to be nearly (if not actually) illegible. In the case of death certificates, it is sometimes possible to compare the modern scan to the original by calling up the micro-filmed photographs of the Probate files of that particular individual (if it exists). These microfilm records can be accessed FOR FREE at the State Records office next to the Alexander library in Perth. Take a USB drive along if you want to make a copy.

    Here is an example of a purchased digitized record and one from the microfilmed source. You may judge for yourself which is easier to decipher:—

    Scan of official printout (click to enlarge)
    Scan of microfilm photograph (click to enlarge)

    “Any alteration of the substance of this certificate will render the document valueless. Any person attempting an alteration is liable to prosecution”

    This slogan is printed on the bottom of the officially issued, certified copy of the duplicated original register. Fair enough, you could falsify someone’s identity by changing these documents. However that is what some faceless bureaucrats have been doing between 2004, when the digitisation process started, and 2015 when it was concluded. Although it wasn’t formally required, many certificates have (up until the nineteen eighties when it became obligatory) listed whether the child being registered was aboriginal or not. Historically, being considered aboriginal in this state meant that you would be discriminated against— you could be arbitrarily removed from your parents or your children taken away from you. Your wages could be confiscated if you worked, or you could be paid nothing at all for the same, then gaoled for refusing to work. Your property rights would not be respected and you could be randomly killed in the street or in judicial custody without any notice being taken by the authorities at all.

    It is these same “authorities” who have decided that being confirmed as “aboriginal” on a historical birth certificate is “offensive” to someone. I ask the question again: To whom?

    I will not speak on behalf of who, or who does not, claim to be offended by being described as “aboriginal,” or whether they have the right to be offended (or not) at all. A lot of the past  can be deemed offensive—That does not necessarily make it untrue. If some offensive remark does prove to be factually false, how on earth can you learn to understand the mind-set of the culture that uttered such a falsehood when the evidence of their malfeasance are suppressed because evidence of that lie might be “offensive”?

    But to move on to a subject I do feel qualified to quantify my disgust thereon:— It is not just Aboriginality that is being censored on these government documents that it is supposed to be a criminal offence to tamper with: “bastard”, “illegitimate” and “incinerated” are all words on the redacted list. There are probably other interesting terms as well that we don’t know about because we haven’t been told that they are no longer there.

    Speaking as an illegitimate bastard from a long line of illegitimate bastards I am deeply offended that someone else has taken it upon themself to decide what I may or may not be offended by. I am offended that my ancestors’ stories—even the ones who were complete and utter bastards—have been suppressed even in (my case) such a trivial way.

    There is only one thing left to say:—

    semprini

  • Recognise this face?

    Recognise this face?

    Consider this a sequel to the article The Stranger in the Mirror where I bemoaned the lack of available images of the earliest generations of the Dyson family in colonial Western Australia.

    Of the patriarch, James Dyson—at best, we have an identikit image based on his alleged convict record. Of his two wives, and the vast majority of his twenty-two children (his own and the one he inherited), we have little or nothing.

    It unlikely there ever will be any images to be found of the seven who died as infants, children or teenagers. Then there were his children who lived to adulthood but never were able to have children of their own. If their photographs survive in any anyone’s family album they may not even have a name attached to them.

    Then there were the regrettably prominent number of Dyson’s children who had families but probably shouldn’t have. When the going got tough, these big tough men ran like hell. Sometimes their families survived, sometimes they did not. It’s nearly seventy-five years since the last of James Dyson’s children passed. I can’t really blame the descendants of those who were abandoned for not keeping the family portraits—assuming they even possessed any in the first place.

    The family of John Dyson (1860-1913) is one example. He abandoned his three young surviving children after the death of his wife in Collie in 1906. Many decades later one of his grandsons had the temerity to ask a question about his grandfather’s family. The conversation went something like this:—

    “Who was Drewy Dyson?”

    <Whack!>

    Andrew “Drewy” Dyson is the metaphorical and literal elephant in the room when it comes to any discussion of Dyson’s children. There are seemingly more images of Drewy than the count of all his siblings, and this was a man who also ‘enjoyed’ a turbulent family life. Until a short time ago Drewy was the only one of Dyson’s children for whom a photograph was known to exist— And being Drewy, this meant many photographs were available.

    They date mostly from towards the end of his life, from the mid nineteen-tens to the time of his death in 1927, and are a testament to how much the press of the day loved him for his ability to fill column inches of content in the scandal section for pretty much every newspaper in town.

    But there is now in circulation the image of another of James Dyson’s children, and dating back to 1906, this is the earliest photograph of a Dyson that I know of.

    I have a good reason for not reproducing the full face here. This image appears in the book “Prisoners of the Past“, Compiled by Calliope Bridge, Celene Bridge, Angela Teague, Mark Chambers & Tom Hogarth and published by Hesperian Press in February 2017. The book contains mug shots of all prisoners released from Fremantle Prison between 1899 and 1919. There was a certain inevitability that one or more Dysons would be among their number.

    Octavius Charles Dyson was the youngest surviving son of James Dyson and Jane Devling. I was not planning to ever say to too much about Octavius on this blog. His wife, Maud May Broun, (niece of Western Australia’s first Colonial Secretary Peter Broun) was finally able to divorce him in 1922 and a good thing too. One of his sons died on the battlefield of the Somme aged 20 during the first world war. Another drowned in the surf off Scarborough (The Perth suburb, not the English town one) in the mid 1930’s. This one may also have had a hand in introducing mechanical refrigeration into Western Australia.

    All I have to go on about Octavius Dyson as a person is his criminal record as listed in the pages of the local papers of the time. It is not pleasant reading. However this is not the reason I obscure his face. I suspect the photographs published in “Prisoners of the Past” are all in the public domain and I likewise suspect that if I had asked I could have got permission from someone to publish in full what is, after all, a 112 year old image. I don’t because the publishers of “Prisoners of the Past” have taken the time and effort to make this material available to the general public and both the book’s introduction and this review by Julie Martin on the Western Australian Geneology Society Web site make it clear this is very rare material indeed.

    If you want to see the picture buy the book, and make sure that those who try to make this stuff available get some sort of encouragement.

    “Prisoners of the Past” is available for sale from the Hesperian Press. I have also seen copies for sale at the bookshop of the Alexander Library in Perth.

  • Astley 3: The Gallant Ship Australia

    Astley 3: The Gallant Ship Australia

    (or Orphans of a Perfect Storm)

    …concluded.

    a more worthless set of men he had never before sailed with.”

    The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954) Sat 11 Jun 1853 Page 4

    …Captain Benjamin Avery stated, as he stood once again before the magistrate in the Water Police Office and denounced nearly half his crew now paraded before him in the dock. Seventeen large and aggressive men shouted angrily as they were, as one, sentenced to twelve weeks hard labour in prison. They cursed their Captain in the vilest language and their threats grew louder and more violent. They had, after all, been found guilty of disobeying his orders, and one had even stuck the master and started to draw a knife on him. In a military service such as the Navy, they would have all been hanged—if they were lucky. But this was a civilian court and the three suddenly very civilian-looking Police Constables on guard duty that day began to realise that if the prisoners chose to act on any their blood-curdling threats, there was very little they could do to stop them…

    What Mary Chapman, spinster, twenty-six years of age, from Carlow, in County Carlow, Ireland, thought about this ugly sequel to her journey to Australia, on the sailing ship Australia—we have no record at all. Had George Astley (her beloved) been down there waiting on the docks for her, waiting to catch sight of the lass he had not seen for two long years? He had part-paid for her passage to join him, so it would be more than slightly odd if he had not. But both would have been disappointed on that day.

    8 June 1853, as the ship Australia hove into sight of the harbour, that was the final spark which Captain Avery was unable to keep clear of his powder keg of a crew. They had been at sea for one hundred days. One hundred days during which they had been expressly forbidden from even speaking to their cargo of one-hundred-and-forty-four young, nubile, single, Irish maidens…

    James McCloud was the ringleader, it seems. He struck the Captain and was about to draw his knife when his limited powers of self-preservation (perhaps) exerted themselves. The crew (not quite to a man) refused any further orders from the Captain and sat down. They hoped this would induce the Captain to dismiss them so they could jump ship and head to the gold-diggings which had probably been their plan signing on to Avery’s vessel in the first place. The Captain had soon realised that only seven out of his crew of thirty-seven were real sailors, so the remainder probably had no idea how this scheme of theirs must inevitably play out. One would suppose, so close to their destination, that all the immigrants who were able to would have crowded on the top deck for their first proper sight of their new land. Presumably they would have seen what was going down—namely their Captain and protector from the lascivious gaze of McCloud and his comrades, felled by a blow. They had travelled so far, would it really now all end here?

    But Captain Avery did re-assert his authority. On shore, in the government depot some time later,  Mary Chapman was interviewed by a immigration inspector and gave the same answer to the question asked of every immigrant who had been on that particular voyage.

    “Any complaints reported [of] treatment on board the ship: None.”

    Captain Avery had well and truly earned the bounty payment for delivery of his cargo.

    Miss Mary Chapman provided some other details about her situation on the immigration form. Her “calling” was as a kitchen maid, her state of bodily health and strength was classified as “good”, as was her “probable usefulness” to the colony. Confirming that she was an orphan, and knew nothing of her own parents, the inspector would not have been surprised when she stated that she had no relatives in the colony. However, unlike most of the other immigrants from this arrival, she did not have a future employer’s address recorded against her name. Which raises an important question: Where was George Astley at this time?

    Was he outside the immigration depot gates awaiting her to walk beyond them? (its unlikely they would have let a single man in to visit a single woman. Totally inappropriate!) To re-iterate, there is a large gap in the record at this precise time, but it’s worthwhile stating just where the immigration depot Mary was probably housed was located.

    Conrad Martens – Campbell’s Wharf, Sydney, 1857 [NGA]

    In the days after her arrival, the ship Australia was moored at Campbell’s Wharf in Sydney Cove. It is nothing less than gobsmacking to me that nearly 170 years after the fact, the warehouses associated with this wharf that Mary Chapman might have seen with her own eyes still exist in their original location between the famous Circular Quay and even more famous (much later Sydney landmark) The Opera House.

    If Mary Chapman was not collected immediately by George Astley, nor was hired by some local family as a house servant, she would have been lodged in what is another miraculous survivor to the present day in the form of the Hyde Park Barracks. Now a museum, it appears to contain a permanent display for the 4114 Irish orphan girls that passed though the building, housed in a structure first built for convicts. Although Mary exactly matches the description of “Irish orphan girl”, she was not one of that particular number. But she would have matched the candidacy pretty much perfectly for the “Earl Grey Scheme” that operated between 1848-1850 during the height of the Irish Famine. She may even have been in an Irish workhouse during that time. But this immigration scheme was well and truly over by 1853 and prejudice against the Irish Catholics was one cause of its curtailment. Mary would have been housed with a non-specific cohort of female migrants recruited by immigration agents who were paid a bounty for their safe delivery. Some as yet unidentified agent was paid £1 for Mary’s arrival into Australia. How much George Astley’s contribution to the ticket fare counted for anything is not known.

    Hyde Park Barracks c 1820 (when it was used to house convicts) [SLNSW]

    The point to be made is that Mary Chapman was now in Sydney, capital city of the self-governing British Colony of New South Wales. When last heard of, her lover was working for a punch-drunk farmer on the outskirts of Melbourne, once part of the Port Philip District of the Colony of New South Wales, but now capital of the wholly independent Crown colony of Victoria.

    As a famous song of the time reminded everyone, Australia was “ten-thousand miles away” from the British Isles. Looking at a map when contemplating such a voyage, the 444 miles between the two capitals must have seemed trifling… It’s not, though. Even in this age of asphalt highways its still an all day drive by automobile and you still have to cross a mountain range.

    By 1853, Astley’s employer (from the time had had stepped off the boat in Hobson’s Bay a year ago), Mr Edward Bailey (or Bayley), the Pentridge farmer, had not quite yet reached peak lunacy, but was probably well on his way there. In later years he (Bailey) would locked up for being out of his mind—this was attributed to drink. It is probably a coincidence, (as we know nothing of his parents’ actual habits), that the Astley’s future son George (defying all cultural stereotypes and societal norms) attributed his eventual long life to rarely touching alcohol.

    Bailey’s mental health could not have been aided by an incident in 1856 when Mrs Bailey and he left their home for a few days to visit friends in Melbourne. In their absence, a recently dismissed employee who came from Ireland ransacked their house. I know what I’m trying to make you think, and you would be right… Miss Mary Ann M’Cormack was arrested in central Melbourne a few days hence, red-handed with all the stolen property. Regardless of the fact that I am shamelessly trying to ramp up the drama, there is next to no chance the Astleys were involved. Yes, Astleys: plural.

    At some time in 1856 (The registration record is lost or was never created), George and Mary Astley were celebrating the birth of their first child, a daughter they called Susan. They were probably living somewhere near the present settlement of Huntly, a few kilometres north of the gold mining boom-town of Bendigo and some 142 kilometres north-north-west of Melbourne. Susan was the first of ten children they would produce together over their three decade marriage. But theirs was not a goldfields marriage.

    King Street, Sydney looking east, ca. 1843 watercolour by Frederick Garling.

    On the 17 April, 1854, a year after arriving in Sydney—another year of uncountable travails— a ceremony took place in the Church of St James, Sydney town, conducted by the Reverend Charles F. D. Priddle, pastor of the Church of England. George Astley was married to Mary Chapman in another building that remains today— and It is worthwhile to observe that from this church’s convict-built (and designed) spire you could look down onto the Hyde Park Barracks building that was located just across the road. Their witnesses were Abraham Summons and Ann Marshall (connection with the happy couple unknown).

    The back road in to Huntly, Victoria, 2017.

    They had made it. They had survived. They were together. By the end of that year, by another route unrecorded, George brought his bride back to Victoria and they made their way out towards the Bendigo goldfields, one of the richest goldfields the world would ever find. There they would find their fortune. Not monetary fortune perhaps, but a home and a family who would outlive them…

    …and remember them, as I do.

    Postscript

    SYDNEY POLICE COURT.
    […]
    WATER POLICE OFFICE.—Friday.—
    […]
    Seventeen seamen belonging to the ship Australia, recently arrived with emigrants from Plymouth, were charged with refusing duty. Captain Avery produced the official log, containing an entry of the refusal, which had been duly read over to the men. The second mate gave corroborative evidence. The prisoners on being asked for their defence, made the usual groundless complaints of ill-treatment. They were found guilty and sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment with hard labour. A disgraceful scene then took place, the men abusing the Captain in the Court, and as they were such a numerous body, and evidently reckless and disorderly characters, the position of the reporters, who were in personal contact with them, was anything but agreeable. They were ultimately removed and locked up.

    Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1875) Sat 11 Jun 1853 Page 5
  • Astley 2: For Sail

    Astley 2: For Sail

    (or Orphans of a Perfect Storm)

    …continued.

    They were two young orphans who had somehow survived the worst years of the Great Irish Famine, if not together, then at least near by. If they had, as George Astley’s younger sister had been, compelled to enter the local poorhouse, George and his sweetheart Mary Chapman would have been strictly segregated. But George’s sister would never leave the poorhouse and was buried in a pauper’s grave in the poorhouse grounds in Carlow, County Carlow, on 14 March 1848. George and Mary were both aged twenty-one, no longer children, so no school or orphanage could protect them now. If they wished to have any future together they would have to get out of Ireland.

    On 5 November 1851, a ship sailed from Portsmouth, England with a cargo that included 287 mostly Irish emigrants. The Joshua was under the mastery of Captain H. H. Varian and this was her maiden voyage. Constructed in only three months at Bideford, in the English county of Devon, she (and ships are always she) was bound for the south-eastern colonies of Australia, passage paid for by one of the Colonial governments. Gold had recently been discovered in the colony of Victoria and while it may have seemed that the entire population of the planet were attempting to flock to that place only for their piece of the fabled yellow wealth, yet more souls were needed to replace those farm workers, mechanics, servants and menial labourers who had abandoned their regular employment for the hope of striking it rich on the fields.

    But only George Astley sailed with this ship. Mary was still back in the old country. On 15 November, ten days out, in the North Atlantic Ocean, 1000 km from the nearest land, a squall blew up. For a young man who might have spent his entire life in the land-locked Irish county of Carlow and may never have seen the sea until recently, yet alone a storm at sea, this would have been nothing like he could ever have imagined. Then the ships’ masts came crashing down.

    Ships disappeared at sea all the time. There was no such thing as GPS, It would be another half century before wireless radio was invented. Passing vessels hailed one another and exchanged names with their captains, who would report who they had encountered, where and when, at the next port they arrived at. It was at the very best, a three month voyage from Britain to Australia. To send a letter and receive a reply would take half a year—If you were lucky. Mary Chapman waited. A whole year passed. Then the letter arrived.

    Example of a stamp from the Colony of Victoria circa 1852

    If it had a stamp, it was probably similar to the one illustrated here, but this letter was not written by her love. George Astley was alive and living in Australia, but neither he, nor she, knew how to write. If the letter had a postmark, it was probably for the best that Mary would have been unfamiliar with the evil reputation that name was acquiring. George Astley, from the day of his landing in Melbourne, capital of the Colony of Victoria, had been bonded to live and work seven kilometres or so north of the city in a place called Pentridge.

    The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Mon 2 Feb 1852 Page 2
    The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Wednesday 4 February 1852 p3
    The walls of Pentridge Prison in 2011

    The remains of Her Majesty’s Prison, Pentridge, are located in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg. The locality of Coburg was once also known as Pentridge, but such was the embarrassment associated with the name that the locals changed it in 1870, when the final form of the prison was established. Victorians embarrassed very easily.

    In 1849, a year before the stockade that became the prison was inaugurated, Edward Bailey (or Bayley) was the owner of a farm located near the local watering hole, which in turn was located somewhere between the Police compound and the land of a neighbour named Francis Gough. Gough had released some cattle from the station pound and was driving them towards his home when he decided to stop for some liquid refreshment. While he was so engaged, his cattle wandered off into the nearby fields and proceeded to feast upon the young crop of barley. When Gough finally emerged from the tavern, his cows were gone. Following what must have been a pretty obvious trail, he came upon Mr Edward Bailey herding his cattle—right back to the Police pound from whence they had originated. Gough proceeded to beat the living daylights out of Bailey (and presumably retrieved his cattle). It should now be mentioned that Gough was also the local police constable.

    The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Mon 12 Nov 1849 Page 2

    This story has an ending you may not expect—Bailey took Gough to court for assault, and what is more—he won. The jury did not buy Gough’s version of events wherein Bailey just tripped and fell on a fence post—which then brutally kicked him while he was down multiple times. Gough was fined £3 but seems to have remained a policeman. Any policeman, good, bad or just plain terrible was increasingly very hard to recruit in the colony. Bailey remained on his Pentridge farm, even as gold was discovered in the hinterland and the labourers he required to tend his fields (quite literally) headed for the hills.

    On 4 February 1852, Bailey travelled down to Melbourne and paid a visit to the Immigration Depot. From there he collected a young man, twenty-two years of age, whose trade was listed as that of a farm-labourer. Mr Bailey seems to have been a realist—although his new employee was only bonded to remain in his service for six months, the fee for his services, which included food and board, was much higher than the colony’s average wage for a farm labourer. Servants were known to head to the goldfields regardless of their legal obligations to their masters. George Astley was contracted to Mr Edward Bailey for the sum of £36. Now it would be only a matter of time he could raise the money he would need to pay for the passage of his beloved to join him…

    The Pentridge Stockade as it appeared in 1852 [SLV]

    Nearly the same date, in a police court in Sydney, Captain Benjamin Avery, master of the sailing ship William and Mary (and there’s a fine Protestant name for a ship) was eyeballing the five members of his crew he had up on charges of mutiny. Avery was entrusted with the care of immigrants to Australia and he took that responsibility very seriously indeed, well beyond the fact he was unlikely to get paid his if charges were harmed.

    WATER POLICE OFFICE.—FRIDAY.
    (Before the Water Police Magistrate.)
    MUTINOUSLY COMBINING, &c.—James Cain, Thomas Evans, Lot Gooding, James Jackson, and Henry Evans, five seamen belonging to the William and Mary, were brought before the Court, charged with mutinously combining to disobey the lawful commands of their captain, Mr. Benjamin Avery. This gentleman having been called, produced the ship’s articles and log book, proving that the prisoners had engaged with him on the 19th of August last, for a period not exceeding three years, that on Sunday last they refused to stow the maintopsail when commanded so to do, making use of the most offensive and disgusting language, to the great annoyance of the emigrants and all on board. One of their remarks was, “that the captain wanted to give them a drill, and they would like to knock his b—— head off.” They also quarrelled with the emigrants, and if it had not been for the interference of the captain, serious consequences might have resulted.

    The prisoners persevered in their insubordinate conduct for two or three days, still threatening the captain, and using the most offensive epithets, at times rushing aft in a body and making themselves masters of the poop. In cross-examination by the Bench, witness stated that both himself and the surgeon-superintendent, and the surgeon’s lady, had done their utmost to induce the prisoners to desist, but they met with nothing but insult and annoyance in return. He believed, however, that the prisoners were mad drunk the most of the time, and that if it had not been for one or two of them, who appeared to be the ringleaders, it was probable this disturbance would never have occurred.

    Cain, on being asked what he had to say in his defence, denied that he and his companions had taken possession of the poop in a body, explaining that he alone was on the poop, and that he happened to be there for the purpose of asking the captain for a glass of grog. Thomas Evans, on being called upon to defend himself, admitted that he had refused to furl the sail, but contended that if he and his four companions were to be brought up for this offence, the whole of the crew ought to be brought up also, as they were all equally guilty. Gooding, in his defence, simply stated that the Captain had called him a lazy idle fellow, and promised to kick him out of the ship when she arrived in Port Jackson. On being asked what he had to say in defence, wanted to know what he was brought here for, and receiving no answer, he said nothing further. On the question, “what have you to say in defence?” being put to Henry Evans, he replied, that after the manner in which the answers of his companions had been treated, it was very little use for him to say anything, as it was very evident that a poor seaman would stand very little chance in that court.” He concluded by observing, that the Captain had not “treated any of the seamen like gentlemen.”

    They were each sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment with hard labour, at the expiration of which time, to be returned to their ship.

    Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1875) Sat 10 Jan 1852 Page 2

    Avery might well have wished the five were not returned to his ship, but in common with nearly all employers within the land and territorial waters of the Australian colonies during this mining boom-time era, he had to make do with what he could get. At least at sea, employees could not run away. Benjamin Avery was one of the most experienced mariners on the route from Britain to Australia and his reputation transporting immigrants was good. Maybe he had just been unlucky with his crew on this occasion. His next ship, surely, would have a superior crew?

    A little over a year later, Avery sailed from Plymouth, England with his latest command, sailing once again for Australia on what would be his fourteenth voyage on that route. He had a similarly experienced ship’s surgeon on board in the person of Dr Davidson (four tours), who was the superintendent in charge of the welfare of the 326 emigrants his brand new ship was carrying, — there was even a school master, Mr. Pennington, to instruct the fifty-four children of the requisite age. Being a new ship, he had recruited a fresh crew of thirty-seven, and he had learnt his lesson from what had gone wrong last year and introduced some new strict regulations to ensure that after what his former passengers, particularly the female ones, had gone through last time, they would never had to experience that kind of thing ever again, under his watch.

    What must of given Captain Avery some cause for concern, was that close to half of his charges, 144 of them, were single young women. One of them was Miss Mary Chapman from Carlow in Ireland, bound to be reunited with her beloved in a far distant land…

    Avery’s new ship was called the Australia, and this was her maiden voyage. What could possibly go wrong?

    to be concluded