Land of the Second Chance by Lois Calvert

http://norfolkislandfirstfleetersandfamilies.blogspot.com.au 

The Voyage of the Lady Juliana July 1789 - June 1790.

Lady Juliana.

With Lois Calvert's permission I am including her well written and thoroughly researched document "Land of the Second Chance" in my Blog. 

"Land of the Second Chance" by Lois Calvert

More Women

The Lady Juliana was chartered in January 1789 and left Plymouth some six months later, loaded with 226 female convicts. This was contrary to Arthur Phillip’s request for more food and stores, more skilled men, and more women: in that order of priority. The Lady Juliana is sometimes counted as part of the Second Fleet, but is usually recorded separately as she was chartered much earlier and was run on different lines to the rest of the Second Fleet. Women from many gaols were brought together for the final embarkation.

The shipload of women took 309 days to reach Port Jackson with leisurely stops at ports along the way to take on fresh food. The officers in charge of Lady Juliana kept a healthy ship with regular fumigation and care for the women’s health. There could not have been a greater contrast to the conditions on all the other ships of the second fleet. Discipline was lax on the Lady Juliana, and the ship’s steward John Nicol wrote in his memoirs “when we were fairly out to sea every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath”.

The women were hardly in a position to be loath about such arbitrary sexual arrangements. Historian Sian Rees has written a book The Floating Brothel describing in detail the voyage of the Lady Juliana (also known as Lady Julian). Many of the convicts were prostitutes, who also operated as thieves and pickpockets. Some others were shoplifters, receivers of stolen goods, and opportunistic thieves without any conviction for unruliness or prostitution. Ann Hannaway had been listed to sail on the Lady Juliana, but perhaps due to illness or the timing of baby James’s birth she did not board that ship.

Sian Rees describes the deterioration in the social and economic situation of poor women after the 1783 defeat of the British in North America. The disbanded army swelled the ranks of those seeking employment and accommodation in London by tens of thousands. Men were given jobs previously held by women in shops, workshops, and household service. Thousands of women were left unhoused if they had no family home. Beds were rented by the night, or even by the hour, and many slept rough in alleys and sheds. In spite of the discomforts of life at sea on board the Lady Juliana, the voyage must have seemed a respite to most of the women after their struggle for existence in London.  In his memoir John Nicol recorded one of the women saying:  “We have good victuals and a warm bed. We aren’t ill treated.........banishment is a blessing to us. Haven’t we been banished for a long time in our native land, the most dreadful of all situations.”

Lady Juliana’s passage from Cape Town was rough, and the reception at Sydney Cove was far from enthusiastic. The colony was starving and threadbare, and the shipload of women represented more mouths to feed rather than the future of families and domestic comfort that many of the women envisaged. They had to bid farewell to their “husbands” on board Lady Juliana and set up camp in huts. They finally came ashore on 11 June 1790. The plan was to transfer them all to Norfolk Island as soon as the ship they arrived on could be made seaworthy again, or another ship arrived.

The Sydney Cove settlement was saved from destitution by the unheralded arrival only two weeks later of the store ship Justinian. This ship had made a very swift passage, bypassing Rio and Cape Town, and arrived one week ahead of the rest of the Second Fleet with its shameful cargo of starved and abused convicts. The women of the Lady Juliana were able to help with tending the sick and restoring some decency to them while their former floating home was made ready for departure to China. When Lady Juliana finally sailed on July 25 there were many “wives” sorry to see the ship and their temporary husbands depart. Sian Rees records that on the night of 24 July the marines had to be sent in to remove the women from the ship.

Two of my ancestors, Ann Hannaway and Ann Lavender Brooks finally connect at Sydney Cove, along with Mary Oakley a friend of Ann Hannaway’s from Holborn days. Ann Lavender and Mary Oakley (sentenced for pick-pocketing offenses) were transported on the Lady Juliana. Mary Oakley, and possibly Ann Lavender, would have helped Ann Hannaway and baby James recover from the ordeal they endured on the Neptune. Less than one month later they were all embarked on the Surprize for transfer to Norfolk Island.

A Life of Crime; Anne Lavender Larsom Brooks

As with many of the convicts the spelling and attribution of Ann’s names(s) appears to be quite arbitrary, according to the decisions of the recorder. She appears in the convict records under all the above names. Records on Norfolk Island consist of victualing records of people on and off government stores, which were recorded two or three times in the course of the First Settlement. Births are only recorded by visiting clergy in the course of registering baptisms, and marriages only appear if recorded by a minister of religion. Such records are fragmentary at best. Deaths are often not recorded, so there is no explanation for gaps in the victualing lists from one year to the next. Inscriptions on early graves have mostly been obliterated.

Ann Lavender was born around 1762. She seems to have been on her own without family support from the age of 16 when her life of crime began. The name Lavender is from the French Lavandier which first applied to workers in the woollen textile industry who were employed to wash raw wool or rinse it after fulling (felting). The term was later applied to washerwomen or laundry workers.

Ann’s first appearance at the Old Bailey was on 3 June 1778. In company with Richard Moulds and Sarah Wood she was charged with theft and receiving a variety of clothing and household linen. No details of the trial are given, but all three were found Not Guilty. Ann was not so fortunate when she next appeared on 13 January 1779, indicted for stealing clothing, shoes and a linen sheet. Two character witnesses swore that she was a very honest girl, but the verdict was Guilty. She was sentenced to be branded and imprisoned in Clerkenwell House of Correction for one year. Branding consisted of the letter “T” (Thief) being branded on the thumb of the offender. She was released at the height of civil unrest in London.

Ann Lavender very soon re-offended. She was indicted on 18 October 1780 for stealing a silk gown and coat, value 20s, a muslin gown value 10s, a linen gown value 10s, a quilted petticoat value 8s, five muslin aprons value 25s, four linen shifts value 20s, two pair cotton stockings value 2s, a linen handkerchief value 1s, a metal watch value 3 pounds, a pair of stone shoe buckles set in silver value 2s, and a pair of silver shoe buckles value 8s, the property of William Adams, a tailor, and his wife Mary. Ann had the smaller valuables concealed in her bosom and her stays. When she was caught she went on her knees and begged forgiveness, saying she had been affected by liquor, although no one present could smell it.

No character witnesses came forward, and Mr Justice Heath pronounced the sentence of Death for Ann’s crime. However this sentence was respited, and she was ordered to be held and remain in New Prison “until discharged by due course of law”. She appears to have been held for two years, as by the end of 1782 Ann Lavender’s name no longer appears on the lists of prisoners.

Ann soon reappears at the Old Bailey with a new name and more fully prepared for a life of crime. She had formed a relationship with a man named William Brooks who equipped her with pick lock keys. Ann Brooks was convicted of feloniously stealing from one Benjamin Talbot a pair of sleeve buttons value 6d, a lawn cap value 1s, and a half crown and a shilling and 24 half pence. She was sentenced to whipping and 12 months hard labour in the House of Correction. William Brooks was convicted on 15 September 1784 for burglariously and feloniously stealing various items of clothing and was sentenced to death. This was later reduced to transportation to Africa for fourteen years. Very few convicts survived transportation to Africa, and it was soon abandoned as a place to send convicts, probably because the military and government officials also frequently died. Nothing more is heard of William Brooks; he disappears from the records. However almost nine months after his sentence was passed, Ann Brooks gave birth to their son, also named William.

Ann Brooks’ criminal career continued. When baby William was only a few weeks old, she was indicted on 29 June 1785 for stealing women’s and children’s clothing, the property of Francis Hunt. She was sentenced to hard labour for another year in the House of Correction at Clerkenwell. It would be the closest thing to a home that she had known for the past six years, and she may even have looked forward to incarceration as a place of refuge and stability.

After serving her year in Clerkenwell Ann seems to have avoided arrest for almost a year. She appeared at the Old Bailey again on 18 April 1787 charged with stealing women’s and children’s clothing. She was released “through humanity, she having a child” prior to coming to court. Ann’s defense was that she was now a dealer in the Rag Fair and had bought the goods in question to sell at the Fair the very same day. She was found Not Guilty by Baron Hotham, the same judge who sentenced William Brooks to death.

Ann Lavender Brooks’ s ten year life of crime finally came to an end on 15 November 1787 when she was indicted for burglariously and feloniously breaking and entering the dwelling of William Gould, a shop keeper on High Holborn, and stealing therein two linen sheets, value 5s, his property. She was in company with another woman, unnamed. Ann was found guilty of the stealing but not the burglary. She was sentenced to transportation for seven years.

Ann and her son William Brooks were imprisoned in overcrowded Newgate Gaol. They would have spent a whole year there before Ann Hannaway was sentenced, and the two women would have been in Newgate at the same time for only a short time before Ann and William joined the Lady Juliana. Ann Lavender Brooks and her son William were transferred from Newgate Gaol to the Lady Juliana on 12 March 1789. It took several more months to fully load the ship with female convicts from various parts of Britain, and the necessary stores and supplies. Ann Lavender was 26 or 27 years old. She had a long criminal record, but there was no evidence that she had ever been drunk, disorderly, violent, or a prostitute.

On board the Lady Juliana Ann may have become the “wife” of a seaman named Larsom or Larson. Almost nine months after the Lady Juliana sailed from Port Jackson en route for Canton, Ann Lavender gave birth on Norfolk Island to her second son whom she named Richard Larsom. The name Larsom is a corruption of the Scandinavian Larson. On some genealogy internet sites he is described as a convict, but there is no record of that name, or anything like it, in the convict lists of the First and Second fleets. There was a later convict with the name of Richard Larsom, born 1750 and died 1839, who had not arrived in New South Wales at the time of Richard’s conception and birth.  I think Richard’s father was a seaman on board the Lady Juliana, which would fit with the circumstances and dates of Ann’s journey. Unfortunately there are no lists of crew, only of officers.

The Surprize set sail for Norfolk Island on 1 August 1790. Among those on board were Ann Hannaway and her son James, and Ann Brooks with her son William. Already established on Norfolk Island was James Morrisby who had arrived on the Scarborough with the First Fleet and transferred to Norfolk Island on the ill-fated Sirius. He was to become the husband of Ann Lavender. Still almost a year away was Robert Nash who would arrive with the Third Fleet on the ship Albermarle, and would marry Ann Hannaway.

Avoiding Starvation

Norfolk Island, like Sydney Cove, almost succumbed to starvation. In March 1790 Governor Phillip despatched the ships Sirius and Supply to Norfolk Island with a large number of convicts to relieve pressure on Sydney Cove, along with a company of marines and their families. As there is no natural harbour on Norfolk Island it has always been difficult to land people and freight through the breakers. The human cargo from the two ships was landed over a period of days using lighters and a lifeline at low tide. A storm blew up, and when it abated the two ships attempted to land the supplies and personal possessions of the passengers. A change in the wind blew the larger ship, Sirius, onto the reef where it was fatally holed through the keel. The crew threw various items overboard, but much was lost. The crew were rescued, and added to the island population, which had grown from 150 to almost 500 within a week. There was virtually no compensatory increase in supplies to feed and clothe the multitude, or to provide even such basic utensils as cooking pots.

Major Robert Ross of the Marines had the authority of Lieutenant-Governor. He declared Martial Law to control theft and looting at this vulnerable time. It was obvious that although the island was productive in agriculture there would have to be rationing. He set convict farmers the task of clearing and bringing into production more land. The main saviour of the settlers was a migratory bird, the shearwater petrel known as the Bird of Providence, or more prosaically as the muttonbird. The birds arrived to nest on Mt Pitt, and Martial Law was discontinued. So great was the reliance on the birds for food that their entire population was extinguished within a year. In recent times a surviving colony has been discovered on Phillip Island, a small uninhabited island six kilometres south of Norfolk Island. Some genetic memory of slaughter kept these birds from approaching their old breeding ground on Mt Pitt.

Sharing a Pig

The Surprize, carrying the women and some male convicts, arrived in August just after Martial Law was lifted. Major Ross’s aim was to get the convicts more involved in the production of their own food and off the government stores. One of his ideas was to base units of production around the pig. There were not enough pigs to go around, so when the pigs were issued at the end of the year they were allocated one to every three people. No doubt some strange menage a porc resulted from this policy. When the July 1791 muster was taken, Ann Lavender Brooks was listed as sharing a sow with James Morrisby. Possibly Ann’s son William had the third share of the sow, and by this time Ann had given birth to her son Richard Larsom, so they would have been a household of four. In November 1791 James and Ann were married in a marriage service held by the visiting Reverend Richard Johnson for almost 100 couples. Previous marriages in England were no barrier to new unions between the exiles.

For a period there was on Norfolk Island a convict by the name of Simon Lavinder. He was transported to Port Jackson, departing England on the Surprize on 26 June 1790, arriving in NSW on 11 September 1790 and then transferring to Norfolk Island on the same ship as Ann Lavender Brooks and Ann Hannaway. He was part of the notorious Second Fleet in which so many died. His crime was to steal a “hammercloth”, a loose rug covering a coachman’s seat. Because his name is similar to Ann Lavender Brooks it has been assumed on some web sites that they were married. There was another Ann Brooks (listed as Ann Brooks the Younger) on Norfolk Island, and Simon Lavinder may have been in relationship with her, but I think it is the co-incidence of the name and the fact that they transferred to Norfolk Island on the same ship that has led to speculation about marriage. Ann was already pregnant with her child Richard Larsom, and soon after he was born she was recorded as living with James Morrisby prior to their marriage in 1791.

Simon may have appeared previously at the Old Bailey under the name of Samuel  (sic) Lavender, who on 15 January 1785 was found guilty of stealing a firkin (small cask) of butter, for which he was sentenced to public whipping and fined one shilling. The name Samuel/Simon appears on some of Simon’s records. If he had no previous criminal record he would have been unlucky to receive a sentence of transportation for the theft of the hammercloth. There is no age recorded for him on the transportation record. It is just possible he was Ann’s brother or cousin. By 1805 he disappears from Norfolk Island when he is no longer recorded on the victualling list.

Fate of a Guardsman

James (sometimes identified as John) Morrisby was a convict of the First Fleet. He arrived on board the Scarborough in 1788, and was one of the convicts transferred to Norfolk Island on the Sirius. Prior to transportation James had been held on the prison hulk Censor on the river Thames. Convicts on the hulks were often rowed ashore to undertake labouring work if they were deemed useful and trustworthy.

James Morrisby’s life began in Cawood, a village in Yorkshire about 17km south of York. It is now an insignificant little place, completely dominated by the larger centres of Leeds and York, but it does boast a ruined castle that used to be the residence of the Archbishops of York. The River Ouse forms the northern boundary of the village and in James Morrisby’s time it could only be crossed by ferry. The Ouse had the habit of regularly flooding the village in winter, a problem that has now been largely overcome.

James was born on 23 January 1756, and christened one year later. His father was Luke Morrisby (born 1723) and his mother’s maiden name was Dinah Bland (born 1729). His father was said to be a Guardsman who had served in America. He died in 1758 when James was only two years old. James qualified as a blacksmith and in this capacity he enlisted in the Scots Guards on 3 April 1776 when he was aged 19. He is described in the Guards’ records as being 5 ft. 7 ins. tall with brown eyes. He married Mary Donaldson on 20 November 1782 and they had a daughter Catherine Dorcas born on 11 March 1784. It is recorded that Catherine Dorcas Morrisby married William Alex Davison on 25 October 1807.

Following the defeat of the British in North America and the evacuation of their forces in 1783, James no longer had a future in the Guards. He joined the many seeking employment in London, and was able to get a job as nightwatchman. On 6 July 1784 he was arrested for trying to remove an iron bar, weight ten pounds, value ten pence, from the dwelling of Thomas and William Morris. On 7 July he appeared in the Old Bailey and was sentenced to transportation for seven years. He called three witnesses who all gave him a good character, and this may have saved him from a harsher penalty.

In his defense James claimed to have a wife and five children to support. This hardly seems true, although he may have been supporting a household of five if it included members of his wife’s family who were possibly children. It is a strange case that does not have the typical features of a break and enter or burglary. Rather it seems that James really wanted that loose piece of iron. As a blacksmith he possibly had a money making project in mind or even under way. His marriage appears to have ended when he was sentenced and I do not know what then became of Mary Donaldson and Catherine Morrisby, except for the record of her marriage. James left England forever on 27 February 1787, at the age of 31, bound for the unknown future colony of New South Wales.

James Morrisby became a model settler. He received a conditional pardon after four years and had 12 acres of land under cultivation. This was doubled after his pardon became absolute in 1791, the year he married Ann Lavender. By this time he was aged 35 and Ann was in her late 20s. As well as farming he became a crewman on the Reliance which plied between Port Jackson and Norfolk Island. In 1802 he was appointed Constable on Norfolk Island. When the time came for the former convicts to leave the island James was one of a handful who were specially commended by the Lt Governor.

James built a fine house for his wife Ann on Mount Pitt path, and they had five children together, all born on Norfolk Island; George, Grace, Diana, Henry and John. I am descended from their son Henry, born 1803, who was my great grandfather. Henry had 14 children. His youngest daughter Eliza was my grandmother. The Morrisby family travelled to Van Diemen’s Land on the Porpoise, leaving Norfolk Island on 26 December 1807, just months after James’ daughter Catherine was married back in England.

William Brooks and Richard Larsom did not accompany the family to Van Diemen’s Land. They were both young men by now, and set out for Sydney to make their own way in life.  Nothing more is known of William Brooks. Richard Larsom arrived in Hobart Town several years later, and on 24 February 1812 he married Ann Kidner who was born on Norfolk Island. Richard and Ann were included in the extended Morrisby family. Ann Lavender Brooks died in 1813, a year after Richard’s return.

James married for the third time, an Irish convict Eleanor (Alice) Murphy. They had no children and Alice died in 1821. James died on 29 May 1839, aged 83. He is buried in St. Matthew’s churchyard, Rokeby.

The Invisible Web

Approximately 570 people were removed from Norfolk Island to the Derwent Settlement in 1807-08, thereby doubling the population. This number represented fewer than 80 families, who soon began to multiply as their children married and produced grandchildren. In less than a decade the Invisible Web had formed. This Web surrounded me as I grew up, but I was not even aware of it because of its invisibility and pervasiveness. Some Norfolk Islanders invented new identities to hide their convict origins, but most simply did not talk about the way in which they came to the colony.

The 80 families represent almost perfectly the anthropological concept of Dunbar’s Number. In the 1990s Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. Other people are known as well, but they are peripheral to these stable relationships. My parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, would spend several hours every week over cups of tea keeping one another informed about this network of familiar people.

Marriages between members of the 80 families, and between their many children meant that eventually there were marriage relationships linking almost every family in southern Tasmania. My mother was descended from Ann Hannaway and Robert Nash, and Dad was descended from James Morrisby and Ann Lavender. Dad’s cousin George Morrisby married Sarah Wood, the granddaughter of Ann Hannaway and Robert Nash, so Dad and Mum had some cousins in common from that marriage. Mum’s sister, my Aunt Freda, married Douglas Webster. He was a great grandson of Henry Morrisby and his first wife Elizabeth Mary Mack, and Dad was a grandson of Henry and his second wife Christina Smith. In such a way the Invisible Web was created. My parents and grandparents knew exactly how the threads were woven, but it was never made explicit. Tasmanian historian Freda Gray was advised by her mother, a Norfolk Island descendant, “Never mention names in the bus dear, you don’t know who is sitting in front of you”.

The descendants of the first settlement on Norfolk Island were my clan. Virtually all of our family business and social transactions were with other members of the clan, from lorry drivers to solicitors. In this way I think we were probably a lot like the later groups of immigrants and refugees to come to our shores. Their lives and families in their countries of origin had been damaged or broken by war and its aftermath, but they rebuilt communities in Australia and assisted one another. This need to bond together was often reinforced by problems with language, and tags such as “reffos” which set them a little apart from the mainstream. Similarly the Norfolk Islanders were bonded by their shared identity as a group tainted by their convict origins and subjected to incarceration and servitude, a past they were trying to put behind them.

I grew up in a family that was sympathetic to newcomers; they felt that anyone who was prepared to work should be given a second chance to make good. I’m sure they still retained some atavistic memory of what it was like to be exiled, and of the hardships and effort involved in rebuilding stricken lives.

Scarborough

HMS Sirius

I am sure Lois would be very happy to converse with you about her research and discoveries on this most fascinating subject - kayelle.37@bigpond.com