The Haig family’s female convict servants - Part 2
Separated: Convict mothers and their children
Image 1: Hobart Town in 1848 (1848), Francis Guillemard Simpkinson De Wesselow (1819 - 1906).
Margaret Wright from Edinburgh had been a house servant. She was tried on March 16 1835 with her partner Alexander Fraser for ‘theft from lock fast place’. On arrival in Hobart Town on the Westmoreland on December 3 1836, she described her crime as ‘robbing my mistress Mrs Brown of wearing apparel’. Both she and Fraser received the sentence of 7 years’ transportation, but he arrived in Hobart 12 months before Margaret, describing himself as ‘a Gentleman’s servant who can wait on table’. His colonial conduct record shows many misdemeanours and punishments including time on the treadmill and several extensions to his original sentence. He received his Certificate of Freedom in 1844 [1].
Margaret was described as being 5’ 1 ¾” (157cm) in height, with a fresh complexion, a full oval face and light brown hair [2]. Accompanying her was a little boy whose name was the same as his father’s: Alexander Fraser. The surgeon’s journal shows that he had been treated twice during the voyage for diarrhoea - in July and again in August 1836 [3].
There is no record of little Alexander Fraser in official documents until he is admitted to the Queen’s Orphan School at New Town on 7 November 1839, now named Alexander Wright and aged 4 years and 6 months[4]. This is surprising as children were generally moved from the Convict Nursery at around the age of 3. Margaret’s conduct record is blank, indicating she was never taken before a magistrate while under sentence, so her assignments can only be guessed at [5]. Perhaps Margaret worked at the Nursery and found a way to keep her son there with her? It is also possible she was assigned to a master who was willing to accept a small child along with a competent servant. Would Captain and Mrs Haig have accepted such an arrangement? This seems unlikely, given that there were already five young children in their family - two of them infants under two. However it is possible that Margaret joined the Haigs on arrival (a month after the marriage of their previous servant, Sarah Maynard), with her son being placed in the convict Nursery - his record not having survived - and it is also possible that she was not assigned to the family until late 1839, after her son was admitted to the Orphan School [6].
A man called ‘old Nelson’ is referred to in Haig’s journal in January 1837: ‘Nelson becoming morose and unwilling to do anything without grumbling. I told him he had better leave if he was discontented… I have increased his salary, given him house room & trusted him with everything’. [7]
Image 2: Andrew Haig journal entry, January 12, 1837
But a note in June 1839 suggests Nelson is still working for him. On Monday 2nd March 1840, Haig’s journal notes - ‘Old Nelson married to Margaret Wright our assg’d servant, recently Ticket of Leave’. It is unusual for Haig to mention a convict by name: perhaps she had indeed been with the Haigs for some time, and had served them well while living above the warehouses at New Wharf and after that in their cottage in De Witt Street.
Image 3: Andrew Haig journal entry, March 2, 1840
Assuming she was assigned on arrival, Margaret experienced a number of changes in the household during her time with the family. Andrew and Elizabeth’s sixth child, Fanny, was born on 21 March 1838 and Haig’s half sister Mary Ann (who as a 17 year old had accompanied the family from England) married Mr. W E Lewis on 2 June the same year. According to Haig’s diary, this was the first such service conducted at St George’s church in Battery Point (where Haig was churchwarden). In May 1838, the three older Haig children (all under 7) had been sent to a local boarding school, but in July they were home again owing to sickness and the contract with Mrs Betts’ establishment cancelled and a governess employed. Elizabeth Haig was certainly meeting and managing a great many challenges, and no doubt any servant who was calm and capable enough to support her through this time would have been greatly appreciated.
The marriage of Margaret Wright and Niels Nelson took place at St David’s church. The record describes Neilson as a seaman and a 44 year old widower [8].
Margaret was granted a Ticket of Leave on 1 January 1840 and her Certificate of Freedom on 16 March 1842. She and Nielson had six children - four boys and two girls. The first child, Jane was born in December 1840 at which time Nielson was described as ‘storekeeper, Battery Point’. For the others, he is described as ‘Storeman’ with location either Old Wharf or Battery Point.
Margaret’s first son Alexander Fraser/ Wright was discharged from the Orphan School - ‘apprenticed by agreement’ - to N W Lord of Port Phillip on 26 September 1846, aged 11 years 6 months [9].
Niels Neilson (seaman) departed Launceston for Adelaide on board the Mary Clark on 4 May 1850 and appears not to have returned. Margaret, a widow, died at home in Trumpeter St, Battery Point on 16 October 1886. Her age was given as 75. She bequeathed her entire estate to her youngest son John Romane who had been born 5 weeks before his father left [10].
Image 4 : Convict Ship in Hobart c. 1840
Elizabeth Hore / Hoar / Hoare/ Flore
Elizabeth Hore arrived in Hobart on the New Grove at the end of March 1835. Elizabeth was from Bristol and was convicted on 13 October 1834, of ‘stealing from the person’, a second offence, having previously spent nine months in prison for the theft of a ring. Her record also indicates that she had spent ‘more than 12 months on the town’ (i.e.: as a prostitute/said to be a prostitute). She was sentenced to seven years’ transportation, and arrived in the colony with her three year old son William Jones. Elizabeth said she was 20 years old and single, a nurse and house maid. She had lived for two years with William’s father, Henry Jones, in Bristol. Elizabeth was described as being 5’ 1/4” (153cm) tall, with an oval face, pale complexion, brown hair and blue eyes. She had a scar under her left eye, near the cheek bone [11].
The voyage from England had been a long one. The ship had to put in to the Scilly Isles when the surgeon superintendent fell seriously ill, and a replacement had to be found. Dr David Thomson who had previously served as surgeon superintendent on two female convict transports had decided to emigrate to Van Diemens Land. He arrived on board with his wife, and five weeks after the ship had originally sailed the New Grove resumed her voyage. Dr Thomson was confident that the practices and procedures he instituted would ensure that there would be minimal serious illness or death during the voyage. Indeed, the only deaths during the voyage were two babies who were stillborn - but one of the convict women (Caroline Burnett) who had spent most of the voyage in the ship’s hospital died in the colonial hospital within a day of arriving in Hobart Town [12].
Elizabeth’s experience of colonial service was dramatically different from that of her ship-mate Sarah Maynard (see previous post). On arrival, she was assigned to William Watchorn, of Liverpool Street. The Van Diemens Land Almanack of 1831 describes him as ‘Staffordshire & Glass Warehouse & General Dealer’. Elizabeth’s son William Jones was immediately admitted to the Orphan School. For the first year with Watchorn she kept her head down, but in March 1836 the first of many misdemeanours appears on Elizabeth’s conduct record: she was found ‘rambling the streets at 11 o’clock at night, and representing herself to be free’ [13]. It is of course possible that she had ‘rambled’ in this way many times, without being noticed by a constable - but on this occasion she was unlucky. The Principal Superintendent (Josiah Spode) sentenced her to 10 days in the cells on bread and water. She returned to Watchorn’s service, but on 14 June was again before Spode in his role as Magistrate, charged with being out after hours, drunk and disorderly. This time she had to spend six days in the cells and remained at the Female Factory until re-assigned to a different Master.
There were many more misdemeanours, most being drunk and/ or absent without leave and/or out after hours. Once she was ‘absent from her master’s premises at a dance between 12 and 1 o’clock in the morning’. The arbitrary nature of sentencing is clear from Elizabeth’s record. For this last offence, she was simply admonished and returned to her service (presumably it was a constable and not her master who charged her) but on other occasions the punishment ranged from solitary confinement to time at the wash tubs and/ or in the crime class at the Female Factory, to assignment ‘in the interior’. On one occasion when in the service of a draper, Mr Swan of Elizabeth Street it was noticed that ‘a valuable gentleman’s cloth coat had been missed from her master’s bedroom’, and suspicion fell on Elizabeth. However, as there was ‘no legal proof against her, she is directed to be assigned only on the Launceston side, to break her supposed bad connexions’ [14]. Elizabeth served masters in Campbell Town, Bothwell and New Norfolk before returning to Hobart Town.
Image 5: Portrait of John Swan c. mid 1850s
During this time, two Ticket of Leave holders submitted applications to marry Elizabeth. The first request by William Green in July 1837 was approved, but by the time the approval was signed, Elizabeth had been found guilty of being drunk and insolent and was serving 3 months in Crime Class in the Female Factory at Cascades. The second application by Samuel Brinklet in October 1838 was not approved. No reason for the decision is recorded [15].
Elizabeth served her full seven year sentence before receiving Certificate of Freedom no. 845 in October 1841. Just one month later, the Police Report in the Colonial Times noted ‘Elizabeth Hoar per New Grove was charged with stealing a piece of ribbon from Mr Solomon’s shop; remanded’ [16] On December 18 in the Supreme Court, Elizabeth was found guilty of stealing 6 yards of ribbon valued at 12/- the property of Henry Solomon. Perhaps, having served in Mr Watchorn’s establishment years before, Elizabeth thought she knew how to get away with ‘a little pilfering’? The sentence was 7 years’ transportation, with the first 2 years to be served at the Female Factory Hobart, prior to assignment [17]
Image 6: Supreme Court, Hobart Town, 1838
After serving these two years, Elizabeth was assigned to a Mr Murphy. In March 1844 she was reprimanded for being absent without leave from his service and in April was sentenced to 10 days’ solitary confinement for being out after hours. In the same month there was yet another request for permission to marry Elizabeth, this time submitted by William Hunt, who had been granted a Ticket of Leave having served 10 years of a 14 year sentence for desertion (though his trade was shown as ‘plo’man and farmer’). But once again, Elizabeth was under sentence at the Female Factory when the approval was signed.
During the latter half of 1844, when the Probation System [18] had been instituted, Elizabeth was contracted for a month to each of three different masters including Andrew Haig [19]. She and another woman (Ann Holt per Royal Admiral) were listed in the Government Gazette on the same day, but Ann’s contract appears to have been cancelled immediately. The Haig family at this time was renting a house at 33 Macquarie Street [near the corner of Barrack Street] where Mrs Haig was taking in young ladies to educate alongside her own children. In later years, several women were specifically contracted to Mrs Haig. However, in this case the contracts were with Andrew Haig. Between contracts, female probation pass-holders were accommodated at the Brickfields Hiring Depot, located where the North Hobart football ground now stands. From 1844 onwards, both visiting magistrates and the local press expressed concern about the laxity of management at the site, and the extent to which bribery might have played a role in determining who was contracted to whom [20].
Elizabeth received her Ticket of Leave in November 1845. On 31st August 1846 she was granted permission to marry Phillip Walsh, a free man and tailor, aged 33 [21] They married at St George’s Battery Point on 26 October [22].Seven months later, on 24 March 1847, her son William Jones was ‘Delivered to his mother Elizth. Hoare/ now Walsh Free [23]. So it would seem that despite her colourful career in the colony, Elizabeth had maintained contact with her son. According to James Boyce, the [Orphan School] Committee of Management recorded in 1828 that "the following days be publicly advertised for parents seeing their children - the first Monday in the month of January, April, July and October from eleven till two in the presence of the master or matron”[24]. He had not been apprenticed, unlike Alexander Fraser/ Wright, despite being of an age (15) where any skills he may have acquired could have been useful to farmers or ‘mechanics’. No further records have been located for Phillip, Elizabeth or William.
Perhaps responses to this post might bring more information to light!
UPDATE 9 June 2020
Information provided after this post was published has shed more light on Niels Nielson…
Niels Nielsen did in fact return to Hobart where he died on November 22, 1850 of ‘inflammation of the kidneys’ (acute nephritis), when his youngest son was only 6 months old. The death register is a rare example of Niels’ whole name being spelt correctly! https://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD35-1-3$init=RGD35-1-3p39
Author: Felicity Hickman
Felicity has been volunteering at Narryna for the past three years and is also a Visitor Services Officer and volunteer guide at TMAG. For Seniors Week 2019, Felicity created a special tour of Narryna focussing on the experience of the Haig family’s female convict servants: this blog expands on the information presented in the tour.
NOTES
[1] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Conduct Registers of Male Convicts arriving in the Period of the Assignment System, CON 31/1/14 p135 https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON31-1-14$init=CON31-1-14P135
[2] Ibid. Series Description Lists of Female Convicts, CON 19/1/4 p471 https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/CON19-1-4
[3] Surgeon’s Journal of Her Majesty’s Female Convict Ship Westmoreland, www.femaleconvicts.org.au/docs2/ships/SurgeonsJournal_Westmoreland1836.pdf
[4] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Register of Children admitted and discharged from the Male and Female Orphan School, SWD28/1/1 Boys p12 https://stors.tas.gov.au/SWD28-1-1$init=SWD28-1-1P28
[5] Ibid. Conduct Registers of Female Convicts arriving in the Period of the Assignment System, CON40-1-10 p163 https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON40-1-10$init=CON40-1-10P163
[6] The Orphan Schools - one for boys and one for girls - were first known as the King’s Orphan Schools and from 1837 as the Queen’s Orphan Schools (http://www.orphanschool.org.au). They were commissioned by Governor George Arthur and built in 1828 in New Town, along with St John’s church - the whole complex being designed by John Lee Archer. Arthur’s intention was for the children of convicts and the ‘dissolute’ to be transformed into respectable and industrious members of society. The vast majority were not orphans as we understand the term today. Arthur saw it as essential that the children should be separated from their parents in order not to follow in their criminal footsteps. His expectation was that they would be taught the skills necessary to become useful and compliant servants/ labourers. The children who arrived in the colony with convict mothers or born to women in the colony would remain in one of the convict nurseries - often but not always co-located with the Female Factories - until they were aged between 2 and 3, at which time they were transferred to the Orphan Schools. At least on paper, the curriculum included reading, writing and arithmetic, with two afternoons a week devoted to religious education. The girls did plain needlework and laundry’s while some of the boys worked under a shoemaker, tailor and baker. In practice, the conditions in the schools were appalling - as many inquiries and reports attest: in the words of Kim Pearce ‘It was an open secret that the Orphan Schools were rife with abuse’ (https://archivesandheritageblog.libraries.tas.gov.au/the-orphan-schools/).
Kickstart Arts now has its home in the former Girls’ Orphan School and has secured funding to renovate the Boys’ Orphan School as a community cultural precinct. (https://www.kickstartarts.org/1831)
[7] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Captain Haig Journal 1838-40, ‘Diary - Remarks, occurrences, memorandums : Hobart’ https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/CRO83-1-6
[8] Ibid. Registers of Marriages in All Districts, RGD37-1-1 p176. https://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD37-1-1$init=RGD37-1-1P176
[9] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Register of Children admitted and discharged from the Male and Female Orphan School, SWD28/1/1 Boys p12 https://stors.tas.gov.au/SWD28-1-1$init=SWD28-1-1P28
Apprentices: See Cornwall Chronicle 19 Jan 1839 (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65952242) re legislation governing the apprenticing of children from the Orphan Schools. Basically, masters/mistresses entered into a contract with the government to teach the apprentice a trade/useful skill and provide them with ‘bed and board’. As with adult convicts, masters were also expected to ensure that apprentices attended church at least once every Sunday. The children were not paid a wage and were bound to the master until they were 18 - or, in the case of girls, until they married (if under 18). Perhaps the most interesting part of the Act in relation to Margaret Wright and little Alexander is that ’no child whose education and maintenance have been defrayed, in the whole, or part, at the expense of the parents or parent, or any friend of such a child, should be placed out as an Apprentice, under the authority of this Act, unless the consent in writing of such parents, parent or friend hath been previously given’. The fact that Alexander was apprenticed ‘by agreement’ might indicate that Margaret (or someone else?) had been providing financial support for his education - or perhaps particular agreement was needed for an orphan to be apprenticed to someone in another colony?
[10] Ibid. NAME_INDEXES:638451, Margaret Nielson, Will. AD960/1/17. https://stors.tas.gov.au/NI/638451
[11] Ibid. NAME INDEXES:1403065 CON19-1-14. https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON19-1-14$init=CON19-1-14P56
[12] Jeanette Hyland, Maids, Masters and Magistrates: Twenty women of the convict ship New Grove - maidservants in Van Diemen’s Land, Clan Hogarth 2007
[13] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Conduct Registers of Female Convicts arriving in the Period of the Assignment System, CON40-1-10 p121 https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON40-1-5$init=CON40-1-5p121
[14]Ibid.
[15] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Marriage Permissions, CON52/1/1 page18. https://stors.tas.gov.au/NI/1244435
[16] Colonial Times 23 November 1841 - Police Report https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8752218/669450
[17] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Supreme Court Minute Book, 1829. https://stors.tas.gov.au/SC32-1-4$init=SC32-1-4P102JPG
[18] The probation system replaced the assignment system in 1840 for men and 1844 for women. From 1840, male convicts were generally sent to Probation Stations around the colony to undertake a period of road-building or timber-cutting for the first 6 months of their sentence. The length of the probationary period was determined by the length of the original sentence. Instead of being assigned to colonists on arrival, women had to spend a probationary period of six months working at tasks including sewing, washing and making straw hats on board the converted hulk The Anson, anchored in Prince of Wales Bay.(https://www.femaleconvicts.org.au/convict-institutions/probation-stations/anson). They were then contracted to work for colonists for fixed terms of not less than a month. They were paid according to regulations promulgated on a regular basis. https://stors.tas.gov.au/TGG1844 pp 882-884
[19]The Hobart Town Gazette, August 16, 1844 p978. https://stors.tas.gov.au/TGG1844
[20] Female Convicts Research Centre, Convict Institutions, Brickfields Hiring Depot, www.femaleconvicts.org.au/convict-institutions/brickfields
[21] Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Registers of Applications for Permission to Marry, CON52/1/2 p395. https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON52-1-2$init=CON52-1-2P205
[22] Ibid. Marriage permissions, CON52/1/2 Page 395. https://stors.tas.gov.au/NI/1254136
[23] Ibid. , Daily Journal of Admissions and Discharges to Queens Orphan Schools. (SWD7) 27 Dec 1841 - 15 Dec 1851 https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/SWD7-1-1
[24] James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land, Black Inc, 2009 p.184.
IMAGES
Image 1: Francis Guillemard Simpkinson De Wesselow (1819 - 1906), Hobart Town in 1848 (1848). Pencil, watercolour and chinese white on six sheets. Presented by the artist 1900, Collection: Royal Society of Tasmania, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Image 2: Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, W E L H Crowther Collection, Diary - Remarks, memoranda &c New Wharf, Haig journal entry, January 12, 1837. https://stors.tas.gov.au/AI/CRO83-1-5
Image 3: Ibid, Haig journal entry, March 2, 1840
Image 4: State Library of Victoria, A Convict Ship, c circa 1840, Hobart Town, Little, David Michael Hartigan, 1884-1963, artist. http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/148040
Image 5: City of Hobart Local Heritage Precincts Description, Statement of Local Historic Heritage Significance and Design Criteria / Conservation Policy January 2019, City of Hobart p. 212
Image 6: State Library of Victoria, “Supreme Court & Police Office, Murray St Hobart Town, 1838”. http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/289468
Blog cover image: Toby, 10, Sculpture by Rowan Gillespie, MACq 01, Hobart Waterfront