The year was 1817. A description of Irish society at that time noted how it was comprised of wealthy people and poor people; unlike England there were no middle classes. John Best was a labourer and herdsman
(shepherd) of about 34 years of age. It's safe to assume he fell into the poor group of Irish people. John was a native of the small town called
Kinnegad in Westmeath County, Ireland. As the crow flies, Kinnegad is 23
kilometres south-west of Trim and 57 kilometres west of Dublin.
John was married to Mary (maiden name unknown) and by 1817 they had
four children:
Michael (born 1807),
Eleanor (born 1810),
Thomas (born 1813) and
Joseph (born 1815).
Life in the early 1800s must have been something of a struggle
for Kinnegad townsfolk. Like most other small Irish towns, commerce revolved
around agricultural pursuits. No real
wealth flowed to those who toiled on the land.
Unlike England, which at that time was experiencing industrialisation,
Ireland lacked iron and coal resources and so remained a land of agriculture.
Most Kinnegad residents leased a small plot of land from a landowner (usually an absent English landowner). On this plot, a family could live in a
dwelling of their own construction – often a stone cottage – and they had the
right to grow their own personal supply of vegetables and keep an animal of
two. But the majority of the land was
given over to raising potatoes as a cash crop.
With the income raised from selling their potatoes, a family could then
meet their rent obligation to their landlord.
The town’s cottages were largely constructed of field
stones, with pitched, grass-thatched roofs and a stone chimney at one, or sometimes
both, ends. Small clusters of cottages
had been built close to each other, with fields surrounding them, fenced by
low, field stone walls. The town centre
had grown where the main roads to Dublin, Galway and Sligo intersected.
Buildings in Kinnegad town centre were more substantial – a number of two
storey stone buildings, often with a shop at ground level and the proprietor’s
residence on the first floor. Here also
was the Catholic Church, St Mary's, built in 1793 but now a mere ruin sitting behind the modern-day St Mary's Church. The old St Mary's was a fine stone building for its time and John and his family would have
regularly attended. By 1817, the muddy streets in
the town centre were covered with gravel to give the Dublin to Galway
stagecoaches a firmer surface, thus faster and more reliable passage in wet
weather.
By spring time 1817, a long wet spell had become a very
serious problem across most of Ireland.
For some farmers, their potato crop was destined to be a complete
failure. Others were lucky enough to grow
a crop that reached harvest and so made themselves a financial return. In Kinnegad, John Best was perhaps among the
not-so-lucky ones. His potato crop probably
did fail. If so, he would have faced a year until the next harvest with
virtually no income whatsoever. The need
for farm labourers had largely evaporated, because many tenant farmers couldn’t
pay for help. John faced a dilemma - how would he and Mary feed and clothe
their family? Things took a turn for the worse sometime during the spring or
early summer of 1817. John was arrested
for ‘burglary and robbery’ (what we today might describe as breaking and entering).
John was probably motivated by need, not greed. But he was,
nevertheless, arrested and locked up. There is a possibility that he committed the
crime purposely, with the intent of being sentenced to transportation. Others were certainly doing that, because
life in Australia as a convict was, in 1817, already recognised as being better than the
difficult conditions endured by poor folk in Ireland.
Kinnegad did not have its own gaol. So John would have been quickly transported
to the Trim Gaol, about 23 kilometres to the east (longer by road).
Trim was a walled town; its walls had been built over 150
years earlier to defend it against Oliver Cromwell’s English forces, but the
town had surrendered before the walls could be put to any test. Amongst its public buildings were a church,
two Roman Catholic chapels, a market house and a court house for holding the
assizes (periodic criminal courts held around England and Wales). A gaol adjoined the court house and it
contained a tread mill that prisoners were forced to operate to supply water to
the prison. When Mr William Smart, the Governor of the Trim county gaol, locked
John away, John would have recognised two other prisoners in the cell – George
White and 28 year old Patrick Grenan (or Grehan), also of Kinnegad. Both White and
Grenan had also been arrested for ‘burglary and robbery’ – perhaps the three of
them were involved in the same crime? Also locked up in the Trim gaol was a Brian
Bennett, native to County Cavan, charged with mail robbery. All faced trial at
the summer assizes.
In early August 1817, the Trim summer assizes were held.
There was much ado when they began. The Irish patriot, Roger O'Connor faced a
charge of robbing the Galway mail coach in December, 1812 in order to capture
love-letters incriminating his friend Sir Francis Burdett. O'Connor had been " ... removed thither, by habeas corpus, from Newgate [prison in Dublin]". O'Connor was tried at
the Trim assizes before the Right Hon. Sr. George Daly on Monday and Tuesday,
August 4 & 5, 1817. This trial attracted much public interest ...the Newgate
Calendar described it as: “The court was
crowded to excess, and O'Connor, with his friend Sir Francis Burdett, were
allowed to sit within the bar”. O’Connor was acquitted. Of much less note were
the trials of John Best, George White, Patrick Grenan, Brian Bennett and other men,
which probably followed over the next day or so. John, George White, Patrick
Grenan and Brian Bennett were all found guilty and each received a sentence of
transportation for life.
John, along with White, Grenan, Bennett and any others
sentenced to transportation, would have then been transported to the Dublin gaol
at the earliest opportunity. Convicts brought to Dublin were housed, along with
other offenders, mostly in Newgate and Kilmainham gaols. Dublin's city gaol,
Newgate, was under constant criticism from reformers because of its deplorable
condition and the fact that all categories of offender were housed together.
Kilmainham was Dublin's county gaol, with arrangements for convicts much the
same as in Newgate, except that transportees were separated from debtors and
petty offenders. It is unknown which gaol John was sent to. But John would have
spent several months (August to December?) in a crowded gaol in Dublin. While
he waited under difficult conditions, arrangements were underway for
transporting him and his cohorts to Port Jackson.
In Cork, a port city south of Dublin, the transport ship Minerva was being prepared to receive
the convicts. Read about the Minerva here: [http://www.mightyseas.co.uk/marhist/lancaster/minerva.htm]. A ship’s
surgeon – Dr James Hunter - had been assigned to the ship and he took up his
post on or about 5 September 1817. Soldiers of the 48th Regiment
were also quartered aboard the ship during September. Fortuitously, Dr Hunter’s
journal survives.
In about November 1817, John and his fellow transportees
were removed from the Dublin gaol and placed aboard a brig in Dublin harbour. Because
of delays, transportees sometimes had to wait on board these vessels for
extended periods in appalling conditions. Sometimes, convicts had to remain aboard
their vessel in dock at Dublin for six weeks awaiting suitable winds. They
received neither clothing nor bedding, which were considered an unnecessary
expense due to the shortness of the journey to Cork. Because only a few were
allowed on deck at once, they spent most of the time in irons in the hold in
very unhealthy conditions. The journey from Dublin to Cork only took two days,
but it was not uncommon for such vessels to again be detained once they arrived
in Cork harbour and before the convicts could be removed to their transport
ship. We get a sense that John Best and
fellow Dublin transportees were, in fact, delayed board their Dublin-Cork
transport vessel, because, In Dr
Hunter’s journal, Hunter wrote:
“John Cartwright, aged
35, convict; disease or hurt, typhus mitior, having a wife and many children,
the anxiety and lowness of spirits coupled with the fatigue experienced in a
passage from Dublin has induced the fever which he is now affected; taken ill,
26 December 1817;”
The convicts appear to have been loaded aboard the Minerva on or about 23 December 1817.
Once aboard, conditions improved for the convicts. They were required to wash and had clothing
supplied. Once the convicts were properly settled, a routine of chores alternating with confinement to cells would have been
introduced.
At Dublin Castle, on the 30th of December 1817, Charles
Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, signed his
approval for the convicts to be transferred to the Governor of New South
Wales. A copy of the approval was
shipped from Dublin to Cork and couriered to the master of the Minerva, Captain
John Bell [read about Capt. John Bell at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bell-john-1763].
Two days later, on a cold, mid-winter’s day – New Year’s Day
1818 –the Minerva pushed away from
the wharf and caught a fresh breeze out of Cork harbour and headed south.
Some convicts were used to help with tasks
aboard the ship. Dr Hunter wrote in his journal:
“William McCormick,
convict; disease or hurt, contusion in the right side resulted by heaving at
the capstan in weighing the anchor; taken ill, 1 January 1818; well 7 January
1818. “
On board were a number of other convicts with whom John
would get to know over the years to come:
·
George White (age 30) of Kinnegad,
·
Brian Bennett (age 30) of County Cavan,
·
Patrick Montgomery (age 41) of County Antrim,
·
William Campbell (age 38) of County Armagh,
·
Leslie Ferguson (age 17 ) of Colerain; and
·
John Bell (convict, age 35) of County Antrim.
As the Minerva sailed south on a brisk breeze, John would
have known he’d never see Ireland again. Mary and the four children were
left behind to cope as best they could without him. How gut-wrenching must that have felt?
No comments:
Post a Comment