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/
A heinous crime had been committed the previous evening, Mr Robertshaw had been viciously attacked and robbed in the street that night. That Tuesday morning the wheels of early nineteenth century justice began to turn. A suspicious character was apprehended that very morning. He was from across the border in Lancashire, Winterbottom was his name. By useful coincidence there happened to be an officer from the constabulary of that particular county; Mr Heyward from Oldham, present in Halifax that very day.
The scene of the crime: Halifax in 2015
Yorkshire Gazette 13 July 1833 p3
Heyward had been on the trail of villains from his own jurisdiction, so he eagerly secured an interview with Winterbottom, wherever the Halifax authorities were holding him. He immediately identified Winterbottom as one of those he sought, and Winterbottom instantly recognised he. This Javert, this Lestrade of Oldham swiftly secured a confession and the names of his accomplices. Heywood hastened away back across the border into Lancashire to apprehend those suspects. By Thursday evening, he had all four in custody.
They were examined before Christopher Rawson, Esq., back in Hallifax on Friday, in a process described as exhaustive. The prisoners were committed to stand trial at the assizes to be held in a few weeks time and ordered to be sent to York Castle until that date.
The ordered Place of Remand: York Castle in 2015
Enough of the debtor’s prison remains in York to get a very clear idea of what the holding conditions of the prisoners was like. However there is no record of James Dyson or any of the other accused being present at the relevant period in the Gaol facilities’ database. They may not have been transferred to York at all, and may instead have been held at Bradford, which was where their trial was eventually held on 3 July 1833.
The place of judgement: Bradford in 2015.
The four young men were charged with stealing from the person. They were:
James Dyson James Schofield James Butler Thomas Jackson
The Jurors were:
Joseph Cox of Bradford, Draper John Collier of Bingley, Farmer Robert Ellis of Bradford, Grocer Benjamin Ellis of Gunessal, Farmer Jonathan Foster of Clayton, Farmer Thomas Farnell of Bingley, Spirit Merchant John Hutchen of Clayton, Manufacturer Johm Hainsworth of Adele cum Ecculs Cow, Miller John Mawson of Rawden, Clothier Robert Nunns of Hasfull, Joiner James Peekover of Munton, Shopkeeper.
But wait, is there not a name missing from the charge sheet? Hold on, here is the list of witnesses called:
Thomas Robertshaw Henry Naylor Joseph Winterbottom George Hulley William Heywood.
Obviously a deal was done with Winterbottom to deliver up his accomplices, presumably he was forgiven not only this crime, but whatever crime Heywood had been chasing him for to begin with.
Court documents that should have been for this trial but weren’t. Kew, 2015
Somewhere in an archive in Bradford, there may be the complete trial notes for Dyson, Schofield, Butler and Jackson. The search for these records lead me on a fruitless search through the archives of Britain in late 2015. It culminated in the National Archives in Kew, London, on my last day in England, was when I discovered that these particular trial notes were back in Yorkshire— where I had started the search. Its only on TV that you can fly back and find what you have missed…
Possibly the Hulk Justitia: The original image was engraved by Cooke after Prout as ‘Convict Hulk off Deptford’ in Cooke’s Views in London and its Vicinity completed in 1834.
