Australian Dictionary of Biography

Lord Melbourne, by Charles Turner, 1839

National Library of Australia, 9900660

In 1965, Australian historian Lloyd Robson wrote that ‘convicts were neither simply “village Hampdens” nor merely “ne’er-do-wells from the city slums”. But if the Hampdens are placed on one side of the scale and the ne’er-do-wells on the other, the scale must tip towards the ne’er-do-wells’.[1] Following this, a consensus emerged among Australian historians that convicts were drawn from the ‘professional criminal class’ of the United Kingdom. By the 1970s, this idea was widely accepted by historians and remained so into the late-1980s and early 1990s.[2] This understanding has since come under scrutiny, as historians have begun to research the origins of convicts in greater detail. Their inquiries have shown that convicts were far more ethnically and socially diverse than previously realised. Convicts included Canadian rebels sentenced to transportation for their role in the Rebellions of 1837-1838 and American political prisoners who participated in the Patriot War of the same period.[3] Recent scholarship has also examined the presence of non-European transportees, demonstrating that convicts were transported from the furthest corners of the British Empire.[4] Convicts even included Aboriginals transported within Australia.[5]

This essay examines whether convicts should be primarily conceptualised as a ‘professional criminal class’ originating from England and Ireland. It is argued that far from being homogenous, convicts were a diverse group, in terms of place of origin and social class, that was closely linked to a global system of forced labour migration. Methodologically, the essay draws on the techniques of micro-history and biography, in that the lives of six convicts have been reconstructed from the archives. The convicts examined are Edmund Campbell Brewer, an English headmaster and clerk convicted of forgery; Charles Poole, an Indian-born Englishman tried in Calcutta for larceny; Jean Pierre Mounier, a French soldier tried in Canada for desertion whilst serving with the British Army; Gustavus Kissler, a German bookseller convicted of stealing in London; George Ironmonger, a former slave from Barbados convicted of stealing clothes; and William Field, an Indian convicted in Western Australia after having accompanied his master to the colony as a servant. Together, they demonstrate the complex origins and characteristics of convicts transported to Australia.

Convicts transported from England did not consist entirely of working-class poor convicted of petty theft, but also included respected members of society found guilty of committing serious offences. One such convict was Edmund Campbell Brewer, who was born in about 1799 in Cricklade, Wiltshire.[6] He was one of seven children born to Edward Brewer, an attorney, and Maria Harriot Campbell, the daughter of an Anglican priest.[7] He had an unstable childhood, with both his parents and a step-mother having died by the time he was twelve.[8] Brewer married Ann Whitehouse, the daughter of a broker, on 1 December 1825 in Bushbury, Staffordshire.[9] Between 1826 and 1834, they had three boys and two girls.[10] Brewer was educated and worked as a headmaster at Redhill School in Stourbridge, Worcestershire.[11] He also found employment as a clerk in the Stourbridge Canal Navigation Company.[12]

At the age of 35, Brewer was convicted of forging a bill of exchange and was sentenced to transportation for life.[13] His trial was widely reported at the time.[14] Two petitions for the commutation of his sentence were made, featuring the signatures of 259 inhabitants of Stourbridge and 218 residents of Willenhall. Brewer’s jailers and other visitors attested to his good behaviour while under arrest. His sister, Elizabeth Brewer, wrote to the Earl of Suffolk petitioning for the commutation of her brother’s sentence. Suffolk appealed Brewer’s case directly to the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who rejected the Earl’s request. Melbourne felt that it was ‘impossible’ for him to ‘interfere in favour of Edmund Brewer’ given ‘the prevalence of the crime of forgery’ and ‘that Transportation, as formerly inflicted, was little or no punishment to offenders of this description’.[15]

Forgery was a crime primarily committed by middle-class clerks.[16] It was considered so severe a crime that it had traditionally been punished with the death penalty. This was changed with the passing of the Forgery, Abolition of Punishment of Death Act in 1832. As Lord Melbourne’s letter testifies, Brewer was transported because forgery needed to be severely punished and transportation was perhaps the most severe punishment after the death penalty. Brewer was transported to Australia on board the Roslin Castle, arriving in Port Jackson on 15 September 1834.[17] Far from a being a member of a poor, ‘professional criminal’ class, Brewer was a part of a group of middle-class, white-collar ‘respectable criminals’ that emerged during the Victorian period.[18] Edmund Campbell Brewer’s story clearly demonstrates that the convicts transported from England did not consist entirely of working-class poor convicted of petty theft, but also included respected members of society found guilty of serious offences.

In addition to being diverse in terms of social class, the English convicts also varied in their place of birth, with some having been born in, and transported, from England’s colonies. One such convict was Charles Poole. Born in June 1802 in Calcutta, British colonial India, Poole was the son of Charles Poole and Roza Monthreau.[19] His father was originally from Shropshire, England, and had travelled to India, where he found work as a mailer in the Bengal Pilot Service, an arm of the East India Company.[20] As a nineteen year old, Poole married Eliza Rondeaw in Calcutta on 2 January 1821. At the time, he was employed as a writer by Mr Richardson & Co.[21] Charles and Eliza had one known surviving child, a daughter called Caroline Susan, who was baptised in late 1821.[22] His wife Eliza died suddenly, aged 24, in 1825.[23] The following year, Charles’ second child, also called Charles, was born on 23 February 1826. By then, Poole was working as a clerk in the arsenal department of Fort William.[24] The mother of this second child may have been Margaret Paterson, a woman who later travelled to Australia and had children with him there, although no record of their marriage has been found.[25] The early birth date of Charles’ birth indicates that his father may have been having an affair with Margaret while Eliza was still alive.

At the age of 28, Poole was arrested for stealing and was tried in Calcutta on 20 April 1831. He was found guilty and subsequently sentenced to transportation for fourteen years to the colony of New South Wales. Poole was transported to Australia on board the Research.[26] The ship departed Calcutta on 2 July. After four months at sea, it stopped in Mauritius on 5 November, before continuing to Sydney, where it arrived on 13 December.[27] Charles Poole’s story demonstrates that the Anglo-Celtic convicts were not completely from England and Ireland, but that some convicts were transported from Britain’s distant colonies.

Convicts were also not exclusively of English or Irish descent but included people from mainland Europe. One such European was Jean Pierre Mounier, a Frenchman born in about 1792 in Lorient, Brittany.[28] Lorient was a seaport and a base for the French India Company. Mercantile based, it was a gateway port to the ‘East’.[29] Initially, Mounier found work as a labourer.[30] At this same time, the British Army was suffering substantial losses during the Napoleonic Wars. To fill the gaps, men were recruited from British colonies and from European nations that opposed Napoleon’s empire. These included Germans, Greeks, Corsicans, and French royalists. One fifth of the British Army consisted of such recruits by 1813.[31] Among these was Jean Mounier, who was serving as a drummer in the Régiment de Meuron by the time he was about 21.[32] Originally a Swiss unit, Meuron’s Regiment was employed by the Dutch in South Africa and Ceylon during the 1780s. It came under British control in 1795 and went on to serve in India, Malta and Sicily.[33] As one of some 1,100 men, Mounier likely accompanied the Régiment de Meuron as it embarked from Malta on 5 May 1813. Passing via Gibraltar, the regiment arrived at Halifax, Canada, on 5 and 6 July after two months at sea. From there, the unit was assigned south to the garrison fort at Chambly.[34]

While stationed there, Mounier was arrested on a charge of desertion. He was likely part of a ‘party of twelve of Meuron’s corps [that] have, with their arms’ deserted.[35] He was tried at Chambly on 13 September 1813 and found guilty. The resulting sentence was ‘Transportation as a Felon for Life’ to New South Wales.[36] He was transported to Australia on board the Indefatigable, which arrived in Sydney on 25 April 1815.[37] Whilst serving his sentence, Mounier was recorded as possessing ‘an honest, sober and industrious character’.[38]

Convict soldiers have long been neglected by historians until relatively recently.[39] Many aspects of their stories, including their life experiences, skills, and places of trial do not conform to the stereotypes of convicts found in the older literature. Thousands of convicted soldiers were transported to Australia, with 3,275 being sent to Tasmania alone.[40] Mounier’s story demonstrates that convicts not only included former soldiers of the British Army, but also that these soldiers consisted of other nationalities with overseas military experience.

European convicts transported to Australia were not only soldiers in the British army, but also included Europeans who had migrated to England from their homeland. One of these was Gustavus Kissler, a German who was born in Leipzig, then in the Electorate of Saxony, in 1802.[41] He was the son of Major Leprecht Kissler, a military officer, and his wife Rosalia Skerl.[42] Kissler worked as a bookseller in his home city.[43] Leipzig had an old and strong connection to the German book trade. From the eighteenth century, it had been recognised as the leader in German printing and publishing.[44] In 1770, the city featured ‘an assembly of five- to six-hundred booksellers from all countries’ making it ‘the only location suitable for the book trade’.[45] Leipzig became the centre of book publishing for all of northern Europe.[46] One contemporary work even claimed that the city was  ‘the centre of the World’s book trade’.[47] As a bookseller, Kissler would have almost certainly participated in the annual Easter Book Fair. He may have also been a member of the Bookseller’s Exchange, which was founded when he was about 23 years old in 1825, an organisation that would eventually achieve a monopoly on the trade of German books.[48]

In 1836, Kissler departed mainland Europe for England. At Hamburg, he boarded the Columbine, a steamship operating under the newly formed General Steam Navigation Company. The ship arrived at Hampton on 13 November 1836 and Kissler disembarked three days later. He seems to have travelled alone.[49] It is difficult to determine his motivations for emigrating to Britain without consulting German archives. German migrants to Britain during the nineteenth century were ‘a heterogenous minority with little inner coherence’ that had ‘left their country of origin for a multitude of reasons, and pursued a large variety of aims and interests while in Britain’.[50] Cultural historian Panikos Panayi argues that German migration to Britain during the nineteenth century was fundamentally driven by economic factors, with political and religious motivations also playing a role.[51] Kissler might have migrated due to economic reasons, as two years after his arrival he appears to have associated with a German merchant called Shindler.[52]

After his arrival, Kissler remained in London. On the afternoon of Saturday, 20 October 1838, he was caught breaking and entering the residence of Samuel Carter. Kissler had searched through all of Carter’s possessions.[53] He was found to have stolen a brooch, one coat and a waistcoat. Convicted at the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, Kissler was found guilty and sentenced to transportation for ten years.[54] Like Brewer, Kissler’s story effectively shows that not all convicts were ‘professional criminals’ and that some could be described as belonging to the middle-class. This biography also testifies to the ethnic diversity of the convicts, with Europeans being present alongside the English and Irish.

The fifth convict biography to be discussed is that of George Ironmonger, who was born in 1816 in Barbados, a British colony in the eastern Caribbean.[55] No records have been found regarding the identity of George’s parents, but it is likely they were slaves. At just 11 months old, George was one of 38 slaves owned by John Ironmonger junior.[56] John was the son of John Ironmonger, a prominent white merchant on Barbados who owned vessels that traded in the Leeward Islands, and his wife Mercy.[57] John Ironmonger junior died suddenly on 10 November 1817 and, for an unexplained reason, John’s father died the following day.[58] As a result, George was transferred into the possession of John’s mother Mercy Ironmonger, who owned 39 slaves in 1820.[59] George would remain with her for nine years, when he was sold to Mary Ann Pollard in 1826.[60] Pollard died the following year at the age of 73.[61] Following her death, George was gifted to Elizabeth Jane Ironmonger, a sister of John Ironmonger junior.[62] He remained her property for the following five years.[63]

Following the abolition of slavery in 1834, Barbados transitioned to a system of apprenticeship. As apprentices, former slaves under the age of 21 could continue to receive support from their masters.[64] Under this new system, George became an apprentice shoemaker. Just one year after legally becoming free, he was charged with stealing shoes. George already had a criminal record, having received a one-week sentence for a previous crime. He was tried on 10 December 1835 and was sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to transportation to Australia.[65] Historian Dawn Harris has argued that ‘deterrence was not the major aim of those who administered the punishment’ of transportation in Barbados.[66] Instead, she argues that transportation was used against those considered unnecessary to maintaining the plantation economy and as a means of removing unreformable criminals from society.[67] This does not seem to have been the case with George’s sentence, as he was tried alongside 26 cases of burglary. According to one account, it was ‘no wonder’ that the ‘imperative duty’ of the court was to utilise the ‘deterring influence of punishment’ for ‘apparently trivial felonies and minor offences’.[68] George was shipped to England, where he was loaded onto the prison hulk Justitia while awaiting the journey to New South Wales.[69] After nearly a four month wait, he was loaded onto the Moffatt, which departed Plymouth on 7 May 1836. The ship arrived in Sydney on 31 August 1836.[70] Upon arriving in the colony, George was assigned to work at Hyde Park Barracks.[71] He died the following year, having drowned whilst attempting to escape.[72] George Ironmonger’s story has several implications for the origins of convicts. It demonstrates that convicts were not only ethnically diverse, but that they were also a part of a global system of forced labour migration, and that some transportees experienced both slavery and the convict system. 

The final biography to be considered is a significant one not just because it illustrates the ethnic diversity of convicts, but because it also shows that convicts were transported within Australia. William Field was born in about 1820 in Bombay, British India. Standing at just over five feet tall, he had a dark sallow complexion, black hair and dark chestnut eyes, indicating that that he was a native Indian.[73] As a young boy, Field was an indentured servant employed by John Lawrence Morley, a mariner in the East India Company.[74] When he was about nine years old, Field migrated to Australia. He was accompanying his master John Morley, Morley’s wife, and three other Indian servants. They travelled on the Cumberland, which departed from Bombay in August 1829 and arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia, on 12 October.[75]

In Australia, Field continued working as an indentured labourer. He is recorded in the 1836 census as working as a servant in Albany.[76] In 1838, he was still working as a servant but in the employ of Sarah Lyttleton.[77] Lyttleton had arrived in the newly settled Swan River Colony in 1829 with her husband John Prendergast Lyttleton (who became the assistant colonial surgeon) and their two children. She became a widow following the death of her husband in 1835.[78] While in her employ, Field worked as a cook and waiter.[79] In January 1838, Field stole £30 British pounds from Thomas Mellersh and Sarah Lyttleton.[80] He was tried in Perth on 2 April 1838 and found guilty of stealing money.[81] Admiral Sir James Stirling, first Governor of Western Australia (at the time Governor of the Swan River Colony in Perth) used his authority to have Field transported to New South Wales, along with two other men. He issued a warrant to have the convicts transported to Sydney on board the Elizabeth.[82]

Despite being established as a free colony, many of the labourers present at the first settlement founded in 1829 were indentured to masters.[83] Indentured labour was part of a global system of coerced labour migration, which included transported convicts and children brought out from Britain.[84] William Field’s story shows that the convicts existed within a system of forced labour migration and some of whom were subject to more than one system.

This essay has recreated the lives of six transported convicts from archival materials and analysed their lives within their broader historical contexts. It has shown that the convicts were not simply members of a ‘professional criminal class’ from Britain and Ireland. Rather, it has demonstrated that there was significant diversity among the convicts in terms of ethnicity, social class and life experiences. Edmund Campbell Brewer’s story illustrates that among convicts transported from England were respectable members of the middle-class convicted of serious offences. The life of Charles Poole demonstrates the global and interconnected world in which Australia’s penal settlement operated and that convicts were also transported from other British colonies. The analysis of Jean Pierre Mounier’s life reveals that convicts included former soldiers convicted of military offences and that these soldiers were not entirely Anglo-Celtic. Gustavus Kissler’s biography testifies to the presence of European migrants in Britain who found themselves subject to the convict transportation system. The histories of George Ironmonger and William Field are clear examples of how the three major systems of unfree labour operating during the nineteenth century were interconnected, in that some convicts experienced more than one system. Field’s story also demonstrates that convicts were not only transported from overseas, but that they were also transported between Australia’s colonies. Together, these biographies speak to the diverse nature of convicts as a group.