Recently we had some very interesting training about one of our collections, namely the Quarter Sessions collection. Quarter sessions were courts that dealt with criminal and civil cases and were so called because they met four times a year, Epiphany (January), Easter (March or April), Midsummer (June) and Michaelmas (September).
A bit like our current justice system there were different courts that dealt with different types of crime. We have records in our archives relating to both the petty sessions (the most minor of crimes) and the quarter sessions (dealing with more serious criminal cases alongside civil matters including the licensing of pubs, registration of printing presses, hair powder taxes and many other matters.) Assize records are held at the National Archives in London.
Being inspired by what I had learned I had a look at our catalogue to see what records we hold, here at Northumberland Archives. A quick search brought me to Q/S/B/89/P26 which is entitled “Transportation Orders 1768-1808” it gives us a fascinating insight into early 19th century crime and punishment in Northumberland.
It is within our transportation records that we meet a certain John Mould, in a bundle of papers including his order for transportation along with a covering letter to Lord Percy (i.e. Hugh Percy the third Duke of Northumberland). The letter is dated 12th July 1807 from John Davidson, Clerk of the Peace of Northumberland and he writes enclosing the orders for transportation, sent to him by the goaler of Morpeth, asking for the Secretary of State’s orders for removal south and then abroad.
The transportation order tells us that John was “capitally convicted of the crime of High Treason in Counterfeiting the Coin of the Realm for which crime he received judgement of Death”. Fortunately for John he was reprieved by Sir George Wood, the judge in his case, and he was sentenced to transportation instead. Whilst, no doubt, this would have been entirely preferable to death, transportation was still a terrible sentence. If you were sentenced to a fixed number of years, then you would have the chance to return to your home. Only if, however, you could raise sufficient funds to pay for your passage.
John was not so lucky as he was sentenced for “the term of his natural life”. Presumably he knew little about the place he was being sent, although he may have heard about the dangerous and long journey to get there. He would have known that he would be travelling with strangers, desperate people, convicted of severe crimes.
At the time the UK transported its people mainly to Australia and Tasmania. The order relating to John says that he is to be transported to the coast of New South Wales or one of the islands adjacent. At the bottom of the page, it is written that John is in the thirty second year of his life and is a house-carpenter. It also says that he is “Of bad character and connected with a set of notorious people who infest Newcastle Upon Tyne and its environs.”…Charming!
A postscript to the letter to Lord Percy reads “I believe the order is to be removed to the hulks on the river Thames”. For anyone familiar with the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens the thought of being transported to the hulks sends a shiver down your spine. The Ancestry website holds the UK Prison Hulks Register and letter books 1802-1849 where we find John again, it gives the date of his arrival; 26th February 1808 onboard the Ship the “Retribution” (the very same one Dickens uses in his book and reputedly the one with the most fearsome reputation), it also gives us the date of his transportation, 27th May 1808.
Three months does not sound too long to wait but no doubt he would have been eager to leave, as the hulks had a lawless and vicious repute and not necessarily because of the prisoners. As illustrated in the press reports of the day, where it gives account of one of the prisoner’s awaiting transportation for life to Botany Bay. The newspaper says that “On his arrival aboard the Retribution…he was in the usual way ordered to strip…he swore he would not” it goes on to say, rather sinisterly, “The regular remedy according to the discipline of the hulks was applied, and his wrath was subdued.”
Not unsurprisingly this led some prisoners to desperate measures…
One incident that happened aboard the Retribution was between two convicts in 1809. It ended in murder; the weapon was a shoemaker’s knife…a lengthy report of this incident can be read in our search room using the British Newspaper Archive and specifically the report in the Saunders’s Newsletter and Daily Advertiser dated August the 30th 1809.
John was convicted alongside another Northumbrian, namely James Lowrey. James was sentenced to 7 years transportation, for committing burglary. His story was rather shorter however, as he died aboard the Retribution on the 20th of June 1813, four years into his seven-year sentence. Why he was not transported we do not know. James’ order tells us that he was 57 years old when convicted and was by trade a shoemaker. Perhaps it was his knife that featured in the murder referred to above!?
The court recorded that James was an “old and most notorious offender, and has for several years travelled the country leading a vagabond life.”
John Mould was transported aboard the Admiral Gambier under the command of Edward Harrison, she sailed from Portsmouth, on 2 July 1808, and arrived at Port Jackson (what we would now call Sydney) on 20th of December. She had carried 200 male convicts, of whom three died on the voyage.
If this blog has inspired you to learn more about our collections you may want to look at our website and in particular the LEARN page which features more information on Crime and Punishment including some striking “Wanted” posters. https://northumberlandarchives.com/test/learn/learn-topic-crime-and-punishment/
Berwick Record Office or yourselves may well have records of Grace Griffin (the last woman hanged in Berwick) also her son Robert Logan who was transported to Tasmania in 1829 but later came good.Here’s a post I did about him:
Here’s the third of my posts in the run up to Christmas. The last one, about Grace Griffin the last woman hanged in Berwick, wasn’t exactly filled with Christmas cheer. So maybe I should give you something more festive. Perhaps a rags to riches tale like Dick Whittington, or a lad who falls foul of a load of thieves but triumphs like in Ali Baba, or even ends up far far away in Never Never Land or an island like in Peter Pan or Treasure Island. Ok let’s see if this fits the bill since it’s panto season, oh no it’s not? Oh yes it is…
Robert Logan 1808 – 1882
Son of Grace Griffin
You might remember poor Robert, he was called as a witness at 14 yrs old to his mother Grace’s trial for the murder of her 2nd husband John Griffin. Now Robert was not John’s son, nor was he the son of Grace’s 1st husband William Logan, although he took his name. He was actually born illegitimate on the 13 June 1808, fathered by a Robert Inglis after the death of William and before Graces marriage to Griffin in 1812.
He had no really close family, he had an older half sister Margaret and an aunt Isabella Pearson. He grew up in the poor end of Berwick in the jumble of seedy tenements in Shaws Lane (Chapel St) in a grog shop/drinking den and some say knocking shop. By 1828, aged 20, he was working for a butcher called Shanks and living in a room in a tenement letting two younger boys James Shortridge and Roger Bryson stay there as well. An older man James Penman lived on the same floor as Robert. He fell in with a bad crowd, filling their days with playing cards and drinking whiskey at Robert’s place.
Things got worse, on the 19th March 1829 after a bout of drinking from 3pm to near 1am the group above plus a lad called Ralph Todd and John Shanks, the son of the butcher broke into a warehouse on Hide Hill. It was owned by a Mr David Chartres a cabinetmaker and upholsterer. Various items including brass fittings and bolts of cloth were stolen. Some of the haul was hidden in Robert’s flat, some behind a stone bastion by the Walls, some was passed to his aunt Isabella who tried to sell or pawn it.
The mad plan, suggested by John Shanks, soon fell apart, they were all arrested on 11 April and Shanks turned Kings Evidence “dobbing“ then all in it. Robert and Penman were sentenced at the trial on 6 May to transportation for life, Ralph Todd transportation for 14 yrs. The two young boys were ”shown mercy” and sentenced to two months prison and two whippings.
On the 29 May the three men under armed guard were put on the smack Susan and taken from Berwick to the Thames at Woolwich to await a ship in the prison hulk Gannymede. They didn’t have long to wait. On the 13 July 1829 they were part of the 200 prisoners sent to Van Diemens Land (Tasmania) on the Surrey. They were lucky, a surgeon was on board, Henry Gordon Brock, and they only lost 1 prisoner to sickness on the voyage. 16 prisoners did become sick with Scurvy but recovered with treatment. They arrived in Hobart Town in the 14 December.
This must’ve been Robert Logan’s lowest point. He was now held in prisoner barracks, in the penal system run by the man in charge Lt. Governor Sir Arthur George. He was prisoner 474 and we get a full description of him too from the meticulously kept records .
5’4”, dark complexion, long head, high forehead, dark brown hair and whiskers, brown eyes, Roman nose and thick lips, short chin fleshy underneath!
It’s at this point that Robert strikes lucky. Prisoners were assigned jobs with settlers who had come to the island freely. His two accomplices weee cabinetmakers and were given jobs in Hobart Town, falling prey to temptation there and ended up in the road gangs chained. Robert because he was used to animals in his past job. Aged 21 he was described as a butcher and undershepherd used to cattle, could draw animals and thraw?
He was assigned for his 8yrs penal service to James Sinclair Brodie, a farmer of 1250 acres from Caithness in Scotland. His farm was away from Hobart near the River Clyde in the Bothwell area.
At the end of his service he was given his ticket to leave and his grateful employer gave him £100 in recognition of his work. Free to leave his job, but not to return to England unless he got a full pardon, he returned to Hobart Town, but not to his old ways. With his capital he started as a merchant/general dealer then branched into timber.
He possibly did some butchers work as well. At the age of 33 on the 31 May 1841 he married a widow Sophia Lloyd age 37 who’s 1st husband had been a butcher. He signed his marriage certificate with an ‘X’ but did learn to read and write afterwards. She came with a ready made family two children Sarah Ann and James. They would have a child of their own Isabella in 1842
More importantly Sophia had a plot of land with 2 houses on it, 1 brick 1 wood in lower Collins St where her late husband had his butchers, a poor part of town liable to flooding.
Hard working and with profits from his timber business due to the need for wood for building and the gold rushes on the mainland Robert would steadily acquire 14 properties by his death in 1882. He would also move into shipping, a trade his stepson and son in law were involved in.
Robert never got the full pardon he applied for, the British government were not keen on former convicts returning to the UK. He did receive a partial pardon. He steadily climbed from his low status upwards, moving to the merchant houses of Battery Point in 1847 from the poor district of Wapping in Hobart and then to a brick Victorian villa in Sandy Bay in 1875.
His stepchildren married well. His daughter Isabella married a businessman Alfred A Butler, had 11 children, although some were lost in childhood, and died in the same year as her father in Melbourne. Nine of the properties remained in the family and exist today including Berwick Cottage, an Air B’n’B rental property you can hire, if you want to follow in the footsteps of our fellow Berwicker. I hope to visit some day as I have rellies who came to Tasmania and Melbourne by a slightly different route in the 1950’s!
(Merry Christmas my Sutherland family x)
He has a street in Hobart named after him Logan Street, not bad for a one time Berwick lad, our very own Dick Whittington
Sources :
Ancestry and Thesis by EM Finlay, if you’d like to read about Robert’s life in more detail follow this link
https://eprints.utas.edu.au/19591/1/whole_FinlayEleanorMargaret1993_thesis.pdf
What a shame, the link doesn’t work. I was looking forward to reading the thesis.
Hello, We have tested the link & it is working.
Dorothy – The link didn’t work for me either. But I could access it from
https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Making_good_in_Van_Diemen_s_Land_Robert_Logan_convict_and_merchant/23234165
It went straight into my Downloads folder.
Margaret
👍