Truth (Sydney, NSW: 1894–1954)
Sunday 6 December 1896
THE BLACK BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
(NEW SERIES.)
By John English.
No. I.
The System in the Country— James T. Ryan's Reminiscences under the Cognomen of 'Toby'— The Convict Revolt—Slaughter at Convict Hill—Tripping the Hangman—Jokes and Gibes at the Gibbet—The Military Aristocracy of Seventy Years Ago—'The Hell at Lapstone Hill— The Convict Golgotha— Quick Deaths and Quick Lime Burials— Cumberland County in the 'Twenties' and 'Thirties'— Iron Gangs Galore— Wholesale Flogging— Hanged for 15s. after Three Years— 'Tyrannical Demons of Aristocracy.
'I now proceed to make good the assertion that the horrors of ‘the system’ were even worse in the country than in Sydney. Fortunately for my purpose there has been published by one of the oldest living natives in Australia a very interesting volume entitled Reminiscences of Australia. The author is Mr. James T. Ryan, who, as stated on the title-page of the book, writes
UNDER THE COGNOMEN OF ‘TOBY.’
Concerning ‘70 years of his own knowledge, and 35 years of his ancestors,’ thus covering a period of more than a century. Mr. Ryan, who has thus entered on the eighth decade of his age, is one of the best-known men in New South Wales, and at one time sat in the Assembly as member for the Nepean.
Of his ability and right to speak of the working of ‘the system’ in the early days none who know him will doubt. To those who might feel inclined to dispute his claims as an historical authority, the following introductory lines of the first chapter of his book ought to prove convincing:
My grandfather and grandmother arrived with the first fleet in 1788, their son Robert being the first white male child born in Australia. He was born in the Soldiers’ barracks, Wynyard-square, nine months and ten days after the arrival of the fleet in 1788. After the birth of their son Robert, they went to live at Toongabbie, a few miles west of Parramatta, the first settlement formed after arrival. It was here that Governor Phillip gave grants of land of 40 acres each to a few married soldiers, also two assigned servants each, and rations for three years; with seeds of various kinds, and implements for farming and building purposes.
The author’s mother and other relatives were born at Toongabbie, and his earliest recollection is their account of THE CASTLE HILL REBELLION among the convicts in 1805, under King, the third Governor.
There were about 100 prisoners at Castle Hill, near Windsor, most of whom were transports from the Irish Rebellion of 1798. They secretly gave notice of their intention to each other, and the secret was kept until the day agreed on came, when the men assigned to the settlers in the district also joined them (having previously been made aware of what was about to occur). Having mustered 1000 strong, with vows of ‘Death or Liberty’ on their lips, they sallied forth, the whole district being in great alarm.
Governor King and Colonel Johnston, the military commander, went with the armed troops to encounter the rebels. Colonel Johnston came up with them at Vinegar Hill, and found them armed with pikes, old guns without locks (some unloaded), scythes fastened to the ends of poles, and other improvised weapons.
Here is ‘Toby’s’ account of THE TERRIBLE BUTCHERY and subsequent stranglings which ensued:
Colonel Johnston rode up to them, at the same time calling out to the leaders that liberty should be offered to them on surrender, citing at the same time the Governor’s authority. ‘No,’ they replied, ‘Death or Glory.’ Colonel Johnston then gave the order to fire by dropping a white flag, the result being utter confusion on the part of the rebels. During the retreat many were shot dead, others wounded, and the rest, seeing no means of escape, surrendered.
As affording an insight into ‘the system,’ and of the sort of leniency and liberty which the revolted convicts had to expect from such men as Governor King and Colonel Johnston, the sympathetic account of the sequel to this affair as given by the genial ‘Toby’ is worth reading:
Nine of the ringleaders were executed off the Windsor stone parapet. One of them TRIPPED THE HANG-MAN, who had a heavy fall, and it was only by great persuasion that he could be induced to return to duty, and then not until the prisoner was better secured. It was during this performance that the culprit kicked off his shoes, and at the same time saying that his mother always told him he would die with his shoes on like a trooper’s horse, but, said he, ‘I will make a liar of her!’ When the hangman had properly secured him and was in the act of pushing him off the stone parapet he (the hangman) made use of this expression, ‘Here you go without control, and may the devil receive your soul!’ A great many of the rebels were sent to the iron-gangs; others were flogged, and other modes of punishment were resorted to, often but too common in those barbarous days. About 60 or 70 of the number could never be accounted for; but ten years later, in Governor Macquarie’s time, a large quantity of human bones were collected on Vinegar Hill and were duly interred by the Governor’s direction. So terminated the first rebellion in Australia.
A system that could drive men to recklessly face death in this manner must have been worse than the worst forms of black slavery. While doing all credit to the humane forbearance exhibited by the free settlers towards the convicts assigned to them, Toby deals it out to what he calls THE MILITARY DESPOTS of the period, ‘who followed up their victims with terrible severity.’ He says:
One half of the crime in Australia might have been readily prevented had humanity been shown. The military aristocracy were responsible for a great portion of the crime committed, and no wonder, for tyranny begot tyranny, and sedition sedition.
Speaking of the breaking up of the Stock and Agricultural Settlement at Emu Plains, and its conversion into a purely penal establishment under military control, Toby tells:
A MOST HARROWING STORY of what he saw and heard:
Soon after were gathered the criminals under the military authority, who commenced operations under Lapstone Hill, where the present road through the Blue Mountains to Bathurst now runs. There were something like a thousand men with two hundred soldiers over them, with Williams and Brookes as overseers, who remained as such until the road was formed to Mount Victoria, and thence to Bathurst.
And now came the terrors of the poor unfortunate criminals. A stockade was formed on the spot where the burial-ground, church and school-house now stand. Rayner’s factory was the old soldiers’ barracks. In the centre of the stockade were fixed the triangles, where the lash was daily administered. The yells of the poor unfortunate wretches would have melted a heart of stone, and no human being to soothe or speak a word of kindness; to prevent, perhaps, a prospect of being sent to Norfolk Island or Tasmania, even though they were fortunate enough to escape a cruel death in the Blue Mountains.
TOBY’S FORCEFUL, GRAPHIC VERACITY:
Williams, the overseer, was subsequently killed by a prisoner, who rushed at him and struck him down with a spade, in revenge for being put to work on a bull-dog ant-hill. For this crime he was, of course, hanged.
In close proximity to the stockade there was a place called Billiot, where the dead were buried. It was a round hole dug out like a well, about 30 ft. in circumference, and of considerable depth. The bodies were stripped, thrown in, and covered with quick lime with some earth. This was their mode of burial.
THE CORRECTION HOUSE was well flagged, and kept thoroughly washed, but was bitterly cold in winter. There were cross-beams eight feet high, to which prisoners were handcuffed all night for bad conduct. Sometimes two or three were found dead the next morning, the doctor’s certificate being the only record of death. They were disposed of in the afore-mentioned manner.
In the second chapter of this interesting book the author describes the state of THE COUNTY OF CUMBERLAND between 1827 and 1835...
(The article continues in the newspaper with further descriptions of iron gangs, floggings, and the case of two youths hanged for a robbery of 15 shillings.)Note for your blog:
This is the complete extract from the 1896 article that covers the section you provided, including the full Billibot description in its original context. The newspaper article itself is quite long; the above includes all the key passages related to James T. Ryan’s reminiscences, the Castle Hill Rebellion, Lapstone Hill stockade, and Billibot.
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Truth (Sydney, NSW: 1894–1954)
Sunday 3 March 1895
THE BLACK BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
(BY John English.)
No. 2
Lessons of the Lash— An Instrument of Torture for Extorting Confessions— From the Innocent against the Innocent— Cases of Henry Bayne and Henry Watson— Multiplied and Daily Floggings — The Fruits of the Lash— How Women were Treated Seventy Years Ago— A Pair Of Siamese Twins— English Enthusiasm for the Freedom of Foreigners and Slaves While Maintaining Worse than Slavery in Australia— The Season— Example of Lord Byron— Who Transports His Valet— And Sings and Fights for the Freedom of Greeks and Italians.
Before quitting the ‘Reminiscences’ of Judge Therry it will be desirable to excerpt from them a few of the most striking instances of the infliction of the lash which they record as ordinary examples of the man-flaying system, which obtained in his time, for ‘maintaining law and order among prisoners in Sydney.’ Many of these victims of the lash, it must be borne in mind, had been transported for mere venial offences now punishable by light fines or short terms of imprisonment, while some of them were superior in birth, education, and morals to those who thrived by their labour, and rewarded them with stripes.
Reverting to some of the more objectionable features of the flogging system Judge Therry denounces it as an Instrument of Torture
used, very much like the devilish engines of the Inquisition and of the mediæval despots in Italy, for extorting confessions from accused persons. He says, ‘Less excusable still, the lash was used for the purpose of extorting a confession of guilt from vaguely suspected persons;’ and then goes on to say, ‘A few instances may suffice to show what monstrous cruelty and wrong may be, ay! and have been perpetrated by introducing such perverse and revolting principles into the administration of justice.’ Thus:
Henry Bayne, attache to the Domian party, sentenced to receive 25 lashes every morning until he tells where the money and property is, stolen from the house of William Jaques at Parramatta by him.
In reference to this particular case it has to be remarked that its authenticity does not rest upon the respectable authority of Judge Therry alone, but it is upon record, in full detail, in A Return of the House of Commons, in 1826, which is to be found under the title of ‘Papers Relating to the Conduct of Magistrates in New South Wales in directing the Infliction of Punishments upon Prisoners in that Colony.’Commenting upon this particular case of poor Henry Bayne, Judge Therry tells the following blood-curdling tale:
Touching this case, the Grand Jury present, that, upon this warrant or order, Henry Bayne was flogged five mornings successively; and, when taken before the Magistrate on the sixth day, he was ordered again to be flogged. On Monday, the 3rd day of April, 1823, the punishment was again repeated, when he received twenty-five lashes. On the 18th of May following he was brought before the Magistrates, and was further punished by a sentence of transportation to Port Macquarie for twelve months. The grand jury further present, that the first part of this sentence was to compel confession from the said Henry Bayne; that one witness only (Ellen Murphy) appeared against him, and her testimony merely attached suspicion, no property being traced to him.
Could the darkest chamber of the most diabolical torture enclose a more flagrant Example of Cold-blooded Cruelty than this!
‘Such a system,’ remarks the judge, ‘bore its natural fruit,’ and he proceeds to show how the victims of it, if innocent, fought to save themselves by telling lies, literally wrung from them by torture, or by accusing innocent persons. Here is a specimen case:
Henry Watson was charged with stealing five sheets, and appears to have confessed the fact. The prisoner is sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes, and if he does not lead to the discovery of the sheets by Saturday next, he is to receive further punishment of fifty lashes.
It would appear that this miserable man Watson, not only got the stipulated fifty additional lashes, but yet another dose of fifty soon afterwards for doing that which ‘the torturing cat-o’-nine-tails had literally compelled him to do;’ because on the 25th of the same month this identical be-flogged Henry Watson was again brought before his magisterial murderers, and here is the record of what took place:
Not having made the slightest effort to recover the sheets for the rightful owner, and having endeavoured to impeach an innocent man, and causing him to be apprehended and brought before a magistrate, when it appeared he was innocent, which is since corroborated by the prisoner’s own confession, he, Henry Watson, is sentenced to receive fifty lashes and work in double irons till the magistrates may think proper to release him.
How the blood boils with indignation at the mere recital of such a record of horrors perpetrated in the name of law and justice by a gang of inhuman brutes, impiously masquerading in the guise of magistrates, sworn to impartially administer the law and to temper justice with mercy. Rather was mercy to be expected from the man-eating tiger, thirsting for human blood, than from these fiendish monsters in the shape of men whose chief occupation and delight seem to be in flaying their fellow men, and listening to their agonising shrieks.
Such was the worse than Algerian treatment of Englishmen, by Englishmen in Australia some seventy years ago; and that meted out to the
Miserable Female Prisoners,
of that dark and terrible time, would seem to have been but little better, as the following instance will show:
Bridget Rock and Margaret Murphy, prisoners, brought forward in October, 1814, for making away with a gown belonging to Mary Carney. Bridget Rock acknowledged to have had the gown from Margaret Murphy, and suspected that it was stolen, and that she gave it to Kitty White, of Sydney, for some spirits.
In pondering over the following sentence, passed upon these two women, it has to be remembered (for the records show it) that there was not a tittle of evidence against Margaret Murphy:
Bridget Rock ordered to be chained to Margaret Murphy, and to remain so chained until the gown is restored to the proper owner.
Here, as in the case of Henry Watson, condemned to work in double chains, ‘till the magistrates think proper to release him,’ the term of punishment was not specified. Now mark the logical inference to be drawn from the ludicrous and outrageous sentence passed on these two women. It is authentically recorded that the missing gown was never recovered; hence it follows that if this sentence was carried out to the strict letter and in its true spirit, these two women were joined in chains for life like
A Pair of Siamese Twins;
they died together in chains, and were buried together in chains; and let us hope that they will be resurrected together in chains; to appear together in chains before the Judgment Seat to accuse and condemn their magisterial murderers to eternal chains in red-hot Tophet.
Judge Therry dismisses this particular phase of ‘the system’ in Sydney with the following significant observation: ‘Fifty similar sentences, in violation of all justice, reason, and humanity, might be cited, but the above will probably more than suffice, for the taste of the general reader.
’This is a very mild summary of what might be termed ‘Fifty years of Australian Horrors.’ Had the learned judge been called upon to tell the truth, and the whole truth, he would have been compelled to admit that instead of fifty similar sentences, at least 5,000 fully as bad, if not worse, could be cited from the official records of the colony, which literally teem, during a period covering nearly half a century, with examples of the fiendish ferocity of the magisterial man-flayers who ruled Australia in the name of England at the very time, when Englishmen were waxing wroth at the tyranny of Napoleon and shedding sympathetic tears over the cruel lot of the oppressed and down-trodden negro slaves.
This sympathy of Englishmen for Continental freedom, and for the Emancipation of Black Slaves, when taken in conjunction with their callous indifference towards, if not their direct condonation of, the horrid cruelties perpetrated in the name of ‘Law and Order’ on their own countrymen and women in Australia, suggests an interesting inquiry to the sociological student.
How came it that the great and generous English nation, which at different times has fought for the freedom of the world against Continental tyrants; for the emancipation of the Slaves; which made England a home and shelter for every foreign, political or social, refugee, bond or free, white or black; how came it that this gallant and chivalrous England, while fighting in the van of the battle of human progress and freedom in the other hemisphere, established and maintained in this brighter hemisphere one of the most dark and degrading and damnable systems of social oppression, accompanied by physical torture and wholesale slaughter by judicial military process, which has ever sullied the records of mankind in ancient or modern times.
The explanation is to be found in the Chauvinistic idiosyncrasies of the English people, who are ever ready to free others without always troubling much about whether they are really free themselves.
This is strikingly illustrated by the opinions held and expressed by the Celebrated Lord Byron.
On his first going abroad in 1809, Byron, on the eve of sailing for Lisbon, wrote to his mother a letter dated from Falmouth, in which the following curious passage occurs:
The town contains many Quakers and salt fish — the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country — the women (blessed be the Corporation therefore!) are flogged at the cart’s tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the Mayor.
Which was the more atrocious crime, for the Mayor to flog a woman, or for the woman to ‘damn the Mayor’ for flogging her?
The most startling or significant feature about this fact is not so much its occurrence in the country that was maintaining the Convict Hells of Botany Bay and Van Diemen’s Land, but that a great humanitarian poet like Lord Byron, should seem to approve and even exult in it.
As a matter of fact, in Byron’s time, neither law nor prison reform had been very seriously discussed in England: and he himself states in a letter to the Earl of Clare, in February, 1807:
My time has lately been much occupied with very different pursuits. I have been transporting a servant who cheated me—rather a disagreeable event— and performing in private theatricals.
As though sending a fellow creature to the Felon’s inferno was of no more consequence than playing a private farce. The person whom he got transported in such free and easy fashion was His Valet Frank, who was transported for a sentence of seven years, and as Lord Byron himself humorously relates in another letter, Frank was convicted several times after his arrival in Sydney.
His offence was cheating his master of a few pounds, which might well have been pardoned him, in view of the fact, recorded by Byron himself, that the poor fellow had gallantly risked his life, less than a year before, in destroying his Lordship’s dog, Nelson, who had gone mad, and fastened its fangs into the throat of a horse, after all the grooms and stable boys had fled in terror.
That Byron should have looked upon the transportation of such a servant, for so slight an offence, as a trivial affair, shows what a brutalising effect the ‘system’ had upon Enlightened Englishmen in England, and goes far to explain the toleration of its atrocious cruelties here.
For his day and generation, Lord Byron was a Liberal, and, as his immortal poems and his speeches in the House of Lords show, he could plead, most eloquently and sincerely for human laws, and for the emancipation of Italians from the Austrian yoke, and the freeing of Greeks from the Turkish thrall, under neither of which were such atrocities committed as those perpetrated in Australia under the horrible penal code of his own country.
In Italy, Lord Byron, for the sake of the Italians, risked his life by joining the Carbonari conspirators against the Austrians and actually sacrificed that life in the heyday of its glory, by fighting for degenerate Greeks against the Turks. Yet this great and glorious man had not a word to say, or a line of poetry to offer in denunciation of the cursed convict system which drove his fellow-countrymen in Australia to mad despair and ignominious deaths.
The fact is that though a poet, Byron was a Patrician, and a child of his own day, and he, like the majority of his class, then as now, was more ready to discover and remedy the wrongs of foreigners than those of his own countrymen. Byron’s fault was not peculiar to himself, but it was and still is a distinctly English one. It goes a long way towards explaining how “the system” in Australia was allowed to exist so long in all its horror, and why, even to-day, some of its most repulsive old regulations and methods still survive.
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Truth (Sydney, NSW: 1894–1954)
Sunday 17 March 1895
THE BLACK BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
By John English
No.3
I notice with pleasure that ‘A Very Old Resident,’ one of Truth’s esteemed correspondents, subjects the first chapter of the Black Book to some mild criticism on essential points, in a letter published last Sunday under the heading ‘Old Times and Old Sydney.’ He mildly but firmly takes me to task for, as he thinks, exaggerating the evils of ‘The System,’ especially the man-flaying branch of it; and while admitting that the treatment of the prisoners was atrocious, declares that I am quite wrong in concluding ‘that the same treatment was meted out to the “Government men” in the country under the humane assignment system.
’Such a conclusion may be wrong with regard to certain favoured districts and humane persons with whom ‘A Very Old Resident’ came in contact; but in the main, as applied to the bulk of the up-country convict settlements, and the majority of convicts and their masters and gaolers, that sad conclusion must stand as being only too true.
The desire of ‘A Very Old Resident’ to extol the humanity of his friends of younger days, and to paint the past as bright as truth permits, does credit to his heart, though I doubt whether some of his arguments in support of his reluctant and half-hearted justification of flogging can be regarded as creditable to either heart or head. As, for instance, when he says:
How sadly eloquent one could be upon the means resorted to for maintaining discipline in the army and navy and the merchant service. Were not sailors and soldiers flogged some years ago? Were not sailors on board East Indiamen flogged? I deprecate the horrid cruelty, but why single out this country especially as the place where the atrocious punishment was resorted to?
By such arguments one could justify the flogging of English soldiers in England by German mercenaries, for protesting against which that sturdy old Radical, William Cobbett, was sentenced to several years’ imprisonment and fined several thousand pounds. Then, to logically extend the argument, if it was right to flog Australian convicts because English sailors were flogged, and to then deduce the conclusion that it was right to flog soldiers, by a parity of reasoning, it would be right, because there are white and black slaves in Persia, Turkey, and Egypt, to permit white and black slavery in England and Australia.
No, No, it Won’t Do;
the time for saying a good word for flogging, or for listening with patience to arguments in palliation of its past horrors has gone by long ago. It is only by exposing and denouncing the ferocious brutality of which human nature has proved itself capable in Australia—under the license of harsh and degrading laws—that we can hope to humanise our criminal code, and rationalise our methods of punishment.
Of course, it is pleasing to observe that even ‘An Old Resident’ admits that, in the main, my descriptions of the state of affairs in Sydney are fairly accurate. He admits that his recollections do not go further back than 1838; whereas my contributions are based upon researches dating from the day of arrival of the first convict-governor, Phillip, to the date of the final cessation of transportation to New South Wales. Moreover, it has to be noted that by 1838 some of the worst features of the system had been stamped out, owing to the growth of a free population, the establishment of a partially free press, and the consequent growth of a healthy, humane public sentiment. By 1838 the movement in favour of the cessation of transportation had begun; and it culminated 10 years later in that great demonstration at Circular Quay to protest against the landing of the convicts from the newly arrived Government ship Hashemy, which demonstration brought about the abolition of transportation two or three years later.
So that it will be seen that even ‘A Very Old Resident’s’ recollections do not go back to the darkest days of ‘the System;’ he only saw it in its discredited decline after it had been in full and unrestrained operation for nearly fifty years.
On this particular point I am able to quote so high and recent an authority as that of Sir Henry Parkes, who arrived in Australia in 1839, and soon after made his first plunge into the stormy sea of politics from the anti-transportation platform, which he thus describes in his book of Fifty Years of Australian History:
In the meantime the question of continuance of the transportation of the British convicts to this colony was assuming an irresistible importance; and it is curious to look back now on the effect which that question had in colouring the fortunes of public men of that day. Most of the leading men of the Legislative Council had been all their lives familiarised with the system of prison labor, by assigned service, as it was called, and some of the rougher and more impetuous resented the first murmurings of opposition to which the influential classes gave voice, by loudly expressing their preference for convicts over free immigrants. Others again took the pseudo-philanthropic view that the system was not only beneficial to the colony, but beneficial to the convicts themselves. Hence, then, the anti-transportation cause fell largely into the hands of the raw men supported by the free immigrant working classes.
This agitation, which began long before 1838, grew from year to year until it culminated in an almost universal demand (in Van Diemen’s Land as well as in New South Wales) for the cessation of transportation. Commissioner Bigge’s inquiry into the expediency of abolishing transportation began in 1819 and ended in 1823; but it was not till October 22nd, 1849, that the first representative public meeting of free citizens was held in the City Theatre, Sydney, to ‘petition against the renewal of transportation.’ It was in October, 1849, that the Governor, Sir George Gipps, informed the Legislative Council that transportation had virtually ceased in the preceding month of August. The real organised agitation, however, against transportation commenced in 1835; but as late as 1839 a public meeting was held in Sydney in favour of the continuance of ‘the system.’ Even as late as 1843 a public petition was promoted by the interested convict-labour-sweaters in favour of the continuance or revival of transportation; but its promoters and their proposal were not popular, and they were denounced as ‘The Squattocracy,’ who wished to thrive and fatten, literally, on the blood and sweat of their fellow creatures.
And even after the first abolition of ‘the system’ no less a person than the Right Honorable Wm. Ewart Gladstone (who in 1838 had championed black slavery in the House of Commons) proposed, in a dispatch which he wrote in 1846 as Secretary for the Colonies, that transportation should be revived in New South Wales. It was this characteristic Gladstone proposal which gave rise to the first organised public meeting above referred to. A petition against the proposal, and bearing no less than 2,000 authenticated signatures, was signed within four days, and Sir Henry Parkes in his book, already quoted from, thus describes the culmination and final success of the anti-transportation movement:
The question of the revival of transportation had been raised by an address from the Legislative Council, ‘expressing the willingness of that body to concur in the introduction into the colony of convicts holding tickets of leave or conditional pardons,’ on condition that an equal number of free immigrants should be sent out at the expense of the Imperial Government. The English Minister did not wait long before acting upon the official communication of the Legislature in Sydney, and though he was not prepared to send the immigrants asked for, he supplied the convicts in advance. It was long known beforehand that ships were on their way to the colony with English prisoners, and the feeling of opposition discovered itself in murmurous uneasiness and resentment among all classes, the defenders and apologists of the Secretary of State and his policy being confined to individuals and small sections. Little else was talked about for days before the arrival of the first ship. On June 6th, 1849, the convict ship Hashemy entered Port Jackson, and anchored off the city of Sydney. On the same day, and on the following day, several ships with immigrants arrived under the old regulations, the immigrants having left England, it was presumed, in the belief that transportation to New South Wales had ceased for ever. On June 8th the ship Emigrant, with 320 immigrants on board, and the ship John Bright, with 236 on board, arrived in port. On the 9th the Emma Eugenia, with 181 immigrants, the Diana, with 229, and the James Gibb, with 281, also arrived. Thus to furnish material for the anti-transportation orators, the detested convict-ship lay upon the waters of Port Jackson, surrounded by ships full of free-immigrants, whose total number had reached within the two days 1,180. Immediately an open-air meeting was called to protest against the landing of the convicts; the place chosen was at the Circular Quay, almost in sight of the ships. The day of meeting opened very unpropitiously, heavy rain falling all the morning; but, regardless of the weather, most of the places of business were closed, and the people assembled to the number of 7,000 or 8,000, in the pouring rain. This meeting was of a character which, for its self-reliant spirit and enthusiastic resolve, was hitherto unprecedented in Australia, and it was long known as The Great Protest Meeting, from which must be dated the final and absolute overthrow of the accursed system.
At this memorable meeting a most remarkable public protest was formulated and adopted against the revival of convict transportation. The terms of this Protest are at once so energetic, and indicative of the real state of public opinion at this particular juncture of the colony’s history, that it is worthy of being quoted in extenso:
We, the free and loyal subjects of Her Most Gracious Majesty, inhabitants of the City of Sydney and its immediate neighbourhood, in public meeting assembled, do hereby enter our most deliberate and solemn protest against the transportation of British criminals to the colony of New South Wales.
Firstly— Because it is in violation of the will of the majority of colonists, as is clearly evidenced by their expressed opinions at all times.
Secondly— Because numbers among us have emigrated on the faith of the British Government that transportation to this colony had ceased for ever.
Thirdly— Because it is incompatible with our aspirations as a free colony, desiring self-government, to be made the receptacle of another country’s felons.
Fourthly— Because it is in the highest degree unjust to sacrifice the great social and political interests of the colony at large to the pecuniary profit of a fraction of its inhabitants.
Fifthly— Because, being devoutly attached to the British Crown, we greatly fear that the perpetration of so stupendous an act of injustice by Her Majesty’s Government will go far towards alienating the affections of the people of this colony from the mother country.For these, and for many other reasons — in the exercise of our duty to our country, for the love of our families, in the strength of our loyalty to Great Britain and from the depth of our reverence to Almighty God — we protest against the landing again of British convicts on these shores.
I have deemed it essential to thus quote from those to whom the abolition of transportation is mainly due, in order to show that even before 1838 the public spirit had arisen in its organised might against ‘the System,’ which, thank God, it is my privilege and pleasure to denounce. This great Constitutional agitation brought to the front some of the most Prominent and Able Public Men which the colony has produced, among others Messrs. Daniel Henry Deniehy, F. B. Mort, W. B. Piddington, E. C. Weekes, Robert Campbell, John Lamb, Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke), Sir Archibald Michie, and James Norton. These political pioneers, backed up by every decent disinterested citizen in Sydney and suburbs, gave the first impetus to Constitutional Progress and Freedom.
The character and effect of which Sir Henry Parkes thus describes in his book:
The proceedings of this new combination of men surprised and produced something like consternation in the minds of the old colonial magnates who had hitherto ruled with a peculiar order of absolutism (representing the artificial feeling of domination on the one hand, and of submission on the other) which characterised old Virginian society. Mr. James Norton, long regarded as the leading solicitor of the colony, was a stately old gentleman of Patrician appearance and peremptory manner, who lived on a fine estate out at Sydney, which is now (1895) a popular suburb. He was unquestionably a person of much consequence in those days. I heard Mr. Norton addressing a public meeting, describe the effect of the convict system upon the character and manners of the ‘country gentlemen’ of the period as similar to that produced by slavery on the slaveholding planters of the Southern States of America. It had enervated their character, depraved their manners, given them false notions of labour and capital, and in many instances had sown the seeds of their own ruin. At first the outspoken condemnation of Mr. Norton and others like him gave much offence to their own class; but a rapidly-forming public opinion had set in, which soon became too strong for any attempt at social ostracism. Nine out of ten of the immigrant classes had from the first joined the movement against the revival of transportation, and most of the merchants and storekeepers, and the whole artisan body of the metropolis, gave breath and force to the wave which in a short time swept all before it. On the one side was loyalty and the large country employers — the men who having obtained free grants of land and the assignment of convict servants, appeared to look upon as the one great end of life the ambition to found families, and combine with them, the few officials who were appointed direct from Imperial authority in England, with a few aristocratic sympathisers about Sydney. On the other side were united all the independent elements of the population, and of these it might have been truly said of the Hamlet that — ‘One was for a Party and all were for the State.’
The first great agitation deserved the celebrated Australian Anti-Transportation League of 1850; the effects of which splendid and steadfast patriotic organisation resulted (as Sir Henry Parkes says in his book) in the revocation of Gladstone’s ‘hateful Orders in Council, which authorised the revival of transportation’ in 1852, and thus ‘the fair land of Australia was now free for ever more.
’Thus it will be seen that the horrors of ‘The System’ in 1838 must have been appreciably mitigated by the glorious agitation. Those whose reminiscences go no further back than that year can know little or nothing of the worst features of the Convict System, which, as will be shown in a future article, was worse in the country districts than in Sydney and its suburbs.
About the Author
James T. Ryan (also known as James Tobias “Toby” Ryan, 1818–1899) was the author of Reminiscences of Australia.
His Parents
Father: John Michael Tobin Ryan (also known as John Ryan), a printer.
Mother: Mary Rope (1791–1872), daughter of First Fleet convicts.
His Maternal Grandparents (Most Famous Ancestors)
These are the ones Toby Ryan highlighted in his book — he covered “35 years of his ancestors” through them:
Grandfather: Anthony Rope (c.1756–1843) — Convict on the First Fleet aboard HMS Alexander. Sentenced to 7 years transportation.
Grandmother: Elizabeth Pulley (c.1762–1837) — Convict on the First Fleet (originally aboard HMS Friendship, later transferred). Sentenced to 7 years for theft.
Anthony Rope and Elizabeth Pulley were among the very first couples married in the new colony (May 1788 at Sydney Cove).
Their eldest son, Robert Rope (born late 1788), was claimed by Toby Ryan to be the first white male child born in Australia (nine months and ten days after the Fleet’s arrival).Summary of Toby Ryan’s Direct Line
Maternal Grandparents: Anthony Rope + Elizabeth Pulley (First Fleet convicts, married 1788).
Mother: Mary Rope (born 1791).
Father: John Michael Tobin Ryan.
James Tobias “Toby” Ryan himself (born 4 January 1818 near Penrith / Castlereagh).
Toby Ryan was therefore a second-generation Australian with deep First Fleet roots on his mother’s side. This gave him strong credibility when writing about early colonial life, convict conditions, and the Pennant Hills / Emu Plains / Nepean district.
