Mark Twain said, "History never repeats itself, but it rhymes". History, the history of our generations, feels much less than a rhyme. It is a half-held melody, a faint chorus at best—no cautionary tale wrapped in a nursery song. Ordinary families have modest pieces fading over time until only soft harmonies can be found in anecdotes.
Some bloodlines sing a saga, a ballad for heroes and hard times. The steady beat marks the time until the final lyric sounds. Their names are carried forward to honour their place in chronicles. Kings and queens, generals, and people of letters. Their lifespan is an orchestral movement capturing audiences for centuries to come. Their deeds are carved in stone.
Ordinary, lesser mortals' melodies are temporal, often fading after one or two generations. Ordinary people are not the stuff of legends. Yet, once resurrected, their songs can be legendary.
This is Mary Davis's ballad and the story of my search to find her refrain from her narrative. I am her granddaughter by five generations. I want you to hear her song.
Some lives sing a symphony with a chorus. Volumes are written, extolling their exploits, achievements, and splendour. Kings like George III are remembered for madness and the loss of the American colonies. His life reflected the political and social turmoil plaguing Britain. Slavery and exploitation reaped great rewards for the few and little for anyone else.
In 1806, King George III recovered from his second bout of madness to find that England had lost the American Colonies. They are now a fledgling Republic, a new opera performing on the world's stage. Republicanism was a unique style of radical music threatening the familiar drum of the Empire. Fear of revolution and the masses palpated through the new and old money. There were wars and rumours of wars. The British class system dug in jealously, guarding its privileges.
A decade of war with the French Revolution and Napoleon and America caused a time of uncertainty abroad and rising hunger at home. The Parliament was captured by Poor Laws and Corn Laws to keep control of the status quo. The East End was littered with the broken remnants of Wellington's Army. Serving men, victims of shot and shell now begged in the streets—the forgotten warriors cast aside while the great Naval hero Lord Nelson lays in State. Funerary hymnals filled the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, London.
Without fanfare, in the East End slums of London, Mary Rachael Davis was born, arriving on July 18 1806. Her life would progress like a silent movie from poverty in London to Australia's more fruitful life. She would own the keys to her home. Never rich when she died; neither poor. Her story is scattered amongst government files and newspaper clippings.
Her journey to Australia began when she was eighteen years of age. Convicted of larceny and sentenced to seven years of transportation to Van Diemen's Land, her innate resilience sustained her in harsh conditions and violence and struggled to survive. In Tasmania, two of her three husbands were found. She flees from her first husband, Robert and finds companionship and steadiness with her second, Joseph. They leave Tasmania and settle in South Australia. After Joseph dies, she marries a third convict, John. Her life ends in South Australia at the age of eighty-seven, the matriarch of a large family.
I happened across Mary when searching for convicts in my family trees. I have a modest share of convicts in my family tree. On my mother's branch, I found three. James Morris, Joseph Hatfield, and Mary. Tracing the men was relatively easy. Mary, however, was an enigma. Fellow researchers and cousins Ray Morris and the Liddy family, John, Maureen, and Terry, struggled to find the link between Mary Davis and the mystery wife of our common ancestor, Joseph Hatfield. She had us baffled. Joseph Hatfield had a clear line of public record. Some name changes were probably spelling or accent errors rather than attempts at concealment (Attfield, Adfield, Hadfield/Hatfield). Mary Davis eluded us. Who was Mary Davis? From where did she come? After many hours of detective work and trawling through the records of four women named Mary Davis, the one who travelled on the Providence II in 1826 was the most likely candidate. We all struggled to prove the link. Finally, we had a person who was probably Hatfield's wife but no positive identifying connection.
While Joseph Hatfield was the centrepiece of our investigations, I became intrigued and side-tracked with this young girl. What is her story? Every family has secrets, skeletons, and missing pieces, and Mary Davis is mine. I am of her flesh. Her DNA is coded within me. How much of her past was hidden from her children is unknown? Diligent research from the Liddy family and my efforts sifted through anecdotes and official documents, slowly uncovering a life and a character. The Liddy family, John and Terry, provided a sounding board for my theories and imaginings.
Like so many women, Mary lived on history's sidelines. Hers is one of those inaudible voices hidden in government files and family stories. One of the many silent women imprisoned through circumstance to spend their lives on the other side of the world. She was swallowed up in a larger scheme to populate new colonies and relieve England's prison population. Like many convict women, she came to Australia as an exile to become a thread in our nation's fabric. She makes a life far from her family, her known world of harsh cruelty, degradation, and despair. She entered a new world that offered something worse. The extreme experience did not kill her. After her misery in Van Diemen's Land, life as a pioneer in South Australia rewarded her with a long life. There was hope in her life. She sang her own tune.
Over 162,000 men, women and children were exiled to Australia between 1788 and 1886. They were the cheap labour force banished to the outposts of the British Empire. It was really a form of indentured slavery. Men were sent first and, later, women. Female prisoners were sent to stabilise and help populate the new colonies. Real fears that men would turn to unnatural practices (homosexuality) and rebellion without women's tempering influence. Wives would settle the men's behaviour and provide a servant class for the elite of the colonies. Of the 25,000 women sent to Australia, less than two per cent had committed a violent crime, and 65 per cent were first offenders.
Many convicts were illiterate, as were most of the destitute. Mary's maternal grandparents, Samuel and Sarah Agomar, could not sign their names to their wills. Mary's parents were also illiterate. So it is not surprising that Mary was uneducated and signing her name with an "X". She was a silk spinner by trade, as were her parents and grandparents. Her parents, Sarah and John, were very modest.
Figure 1 Sarah Agombar 1783 -1850 and John Davis 1784-1866 – Mary's parents.
Life was not easy for women in the 1800's. What work they could obtain was paid at a lower rate than men. As a result, women made ends meet by theft, prostitution and working in the mills. Often, wages were so dismal they combined all three activities to pay for rent and food. By the age of seventeen, Mary had been before the courts twice. How this played out with her family is unknown. Like most children, Mary would have been put to work as soon as possible. But, as the oldest child, she would have to earn her keep, minding siblings until she could be employed in the family's cottage industry or the mills.
If her court records were all we knew of Mary, it would be easy to define her as a thief, a criminal. A low life. In her defence, her actual circumstances, the deck was stacked against her. Society was stratified and labelled. Mary came from the slums and could expect her life to wallow there.
Her life was changed, not by a rich benefactor but by the wealthy's desire to rid themselves of the criminal class. The rise of industrial capitalism saw the poor as a burden on society. Prisoners were paid for clothing, meals, and accommodation. The expenditure could be offset by transporting labour to establish new colonies—far away from Britain, to a colony in which work would give them freedom.
There is no mention of Mary being a prostitute, though it is possible. Selling sex was one of the few opportunities for unemployed women. While prostitution was not an unlawful activity, it was a risky occupation. Standing before a magistrate, a woman was labelled as a 'prostitute', 'on the town' and 'unfortunate' to describe both behaviour and occupation in the records."Women were not transported for being prostitutes. Instead, the court transports them for larceny, theft. For example, a fellow traveller with Mary, Ann Clancey's prison report, describes her as "in custody before for vagrancy and misconduct and has been a loose, idle and disorderly person".The subjective nature of these comments exposed her as a woman lacking in moral character. Indeed, to be a prostitute was no more indictable than being a laundress or a housemaid. It was the criminal acts committed that brought them to NSW or Van Diemen's Land. Petty theft was a way of life for many, often the difference between starvation or time in the dreaded workhouse.
I am limited to a small bundle of primary records when searching for Mary in history. Her story gains substance when the context of history and secondary works by others is added. She lived in difficult times, perhaps with little protection and support. Like many who struggled, she found solace in gin. Wrapping her times and the historical environment around her frame reveals a complicated woman, strong, feisty, and pragmatic. She is small, only 4 feet 11 ¾ inches tall. Her hair is blonde, and her eyes are grey. She is a tough little fighter. She is often drunk.
Once convicted, Mary's life became subject to continual scrutiny. Now, she is subjected to the prison system's bureaucracy, rules, regulations, and conduct codes. She is the focus of surveillance and continual recording. Now, she is enmeshed in the social engineering experiment of enlightened reformers of the Industrial Empire. She is a soul to be saved and a commodity to be shipped overseas. She could be reformed through honest toil, by marriage and bearing children.
Bethnal Green 1806
Mary's road to ruin began in her birthplace of Bethnal Green. Loosely translated, Bethnal Green means "Happy Place." Since Tudor times, the marshy forest of Bethnal Green has provided market garden produce for London. However, like a sleepy village, Bethnal Green slowly grew into a slum as the countryside was enclosed, and tenant farmers and labourers relocated to find work in the cities.
The traditional core districts of the East End include Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Stepney, Wapping, Limehouse, Poplar, Haggerston, Aldgate, Shoreditch, the Isle of Dogs, Hackney, Hoxton, Bow and Mile End. Bethnal Green is at the heart of the East End of London. The surrounding suburbs of White Chapel, Spitalfields, Mile End and Hackney were well-established slums by 1800. Inspired by the East End's dismal conditions, Charles Dickens lived there, writing the novel "Oliver Twist".
During the day, the streets and alleyways are bustling with street vendors and carts. The smell of meats cooking and food rotting hangs in the air with soot from factories. Grey washing hangs from lines strung across the alleyways. Women stand in doorways, gossiping, smoking and sharing their burdens. Children run and play as children do. High-pitched screams and laughter. Some were sullen and hungry and stole from vendors, causing upset and roars of protest. Babies cry, and women weep. Men are at work or slumped, exhausted inside, waiting for the night shift to begin.
At night, the sounds become angrier, louder, drunkards yelling, blaspheming. Roughly singing bawdy songs. Screams and curses as fistfights fall out onto the pavement, people fighting, whores calling out, plying their trade. Gin houses and pubs are safe harbours from the cold night and the callous streets. Under cover of the night, all manner of crimes take place. The night clamours were made more sinister by thick fog.
Mary would recognise her own accents in the babble of tongues. Like most from the East End, she spoke Cockney. The language of the street, with all its ribald humour. English that is cloaked in rhyme and idioms, a hidden code. It is a dialect almost indecipherable to those beyond the chimes of Bow Bells. To the outsider, it was the language of the uneducated vagabonds and ner-do-wells.
By the time Mary was a young adult, life for the working class had deteriorated from bad to desperate. Where in this did Mary fit? Was she poor through neglect? Was the girl a thief by nature or need? Was she rebellious, fed up with caring for her siblings? Her mother produced a child every 18 months. Did Mary, like any teenage girl, long to escape the grinding poverty? Did she desire pretty things?
We do know Mary must have been a sturdy child. But unfortunately, over 30% of slum children died before their fifth birthday. The Davis family lost one child, their firstborn Sarah, who died at two years old, making Mary the eldest of eleven children.
Mary's older sister Sarah's Baptismal Notice / top left
When Sarah was born, the family lived in Whitecross St. When she died, and they lived in Willow Walk, Bethnal Green. Child mortality on Bethnal Green was 20%. The State of the streets was abysmal. In 1848, Doctor Hector Gavin published an extensive description of conditions in Bethnal Green. Mary's family lived in District 4, where Weavers lived, of the four sections that formed Bethnal Green. He wrote
exceeds all those who have gone before it in filth, disease, mortality, poverty, and wretchedness; it abounds with the most foul courts and is characterised by the prevalence of the greatest nuisances perennial foulness. …Willow-walk, 1 .—There is one stand-tap to four houses in this court, there is no receptacle for refuse; there is a cow shed in it. The houses are two-roomed, and let at 3s. a week. None of the inhabitants earn 10s. a week[vi]
For children of the East End, staying alive would have been a significant achievement. Public hygiene was absent, and disease was rife. Many succumbed to tuberculosis, diphtheria and cholera, the latter the result of inadequate water quality. Mary must have escaped the worst childhood plagues: measles, mumps, diphtheria, scarlet fever, rubella, and typhoid fever.
Local trades contributed to the rise in disease. There was no garbage collection or sewerage, and dung was collected and stored in the tanneries. Dr Gavin was appalled at the filth created by “Ragmen's yards, such as those in Bethnal Green-road, Contractor's yards, as in Rook's Place, Dairies, such as those in Cambridge Road, and in Strout-place, which is greatly complained of, and in numerous other places; pigsties abound, adding to the stink emanating from collections of dung and manure found in Pleasant-Place, and Thomas-Place. Slaughterhouses are scattered throughout the parish in the most densely populated districts. The slaughterhouse in Mount-square has been shown to have been exceedingly deleterious to health. Besides these, there are remelting of the "dabs," as the remnants of candles were named..
The most injurious occupations to the workmen carried on are a Lead Manufactory in Hollybush Gardens and Lucifer Matchmaking.
Eviction hung over the head of every family. While some earned ten shillings a week, many earned much less. Some barely made enough to cover the rent. Cheaper accommodation meant even worse living conditions.
The Silk Spinners of Bethnal Green
Mary came from generations of silk weavers. As a silk spinner, she prepared the threads for weaving. A descendant of the French Huguenot refugees of 1687, her family's roots returned to the Huguenot Refugees of 1687. They were French Calvinists persecuted by the Catholic King of France. The Agombar family fled from St Quentin in France to England. Like many refugees, they brought little with them. Samuel Agombar, Mary's great-grandfather, settled in Spital Fields. As with many others, they quickly assimilated into their new country. Many were skilled artisans, silversmiths, and watchmakers. The Silk Industry had its beginnings with the Huguenots establishing thriving cottage industries. By 1684, the inhabitants of Bethnal Green “for the most part, consist of weavers”. Over 20,000 looms worked continuously in rooms where people slept and lived. Weavers' houses were cramped. Those with looms lived on the top floors, which were well-lit by large windows. Though small, the rooms were scrupulously clean to protect the delicate fibres.
The Industrial Revolution brought significant change to larger English cities. The population of Bethnal Green trebled in size between 1801 and 1831. It was a town experiencing tremendous growth and upheaval. Wages were steadily falling, and harsh, unrelenting poverty, unemployment and hunger loitered in the streets. The cottage industry, which was silk weaving, was in steady decline, and by 1860, it was overtaken by the cheaper manufactured cotton factories. The repeal of the 1773 Spital Fields Act that had sheltered the silk industry from imported French silks opened the door to competition. Small individual looms lost their place to larger industrial looms, and the cheaper cotton products took over.
Spital Fields Weavers 1885
The French Style of building, favoured by the Huguenot weavers, has three stories or more and large rooms on each floor. The rooms surround a central staircase. As poverty increases, the houses are rented out to lodgers. While most are weavers, others are mechanics and labourers looking to earn rent for three to four shillings a week. A family of ten or more now squeeze into one room. They share a bed and living space. There are no facilities for bathing. There is one privy available to five or more houses that are deplorable. Human waste is kept in the room until someone has the stomach to empty it to the nearby privy or street. Many public houses and beer shops let out rooms above. The availability of cheap alcohol, mixed with despair and hopelessness, creates more social problems.
Little work is available for women. For some, it is in factories.
Wages in the factories were low, and work in the cotton factories meant relentless exploitation[ix]. For example, if Mary worked in a factory, she would begin at 9 or 10 years of age, and her wages would be meagre. Factory hours were unrelenting. A government report explains the slow betterment of conditions in 1833 when hours dropped from sixty-nine to sixty-seven. A child under thirteen worked forty-eight hours per week.
We have never worked more than seventy-one hours a week before Sir JOHN HOBHOUSE'S Act was passed. We then came down to sixty-nine; and since Lord ALTHORP's Act was passed, in 1833, we have reduced the time of adults to sixty-seven and a half hours a week, and that of children under thirteen years of age to forty-eight hours in the week,
Even with family support, hers was a hand-to-mouth existence. In 1838, her father, John Davis, was mentioned in his mother-in-law's will as a victualler living at Church St Bethnal Green[xi]. When Mary was born, he was a silk weaver. A "victualler" had many meanings. He could supply food or alcohol or be an innkeeper or gin shop owner. Gin shops abounded in London as they were cheap and potent. John was successful enough to leave an estate of under £3000 when he died in 1866. His sons Henry and Joseph were the executors. John was eighty-two when he died.
England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995 for John Davis https://www.ancestry.com.au/search/collections/1904
Poverty increased levels of criminal behaviour in England. The industrialisation era, enclosures, government policy, and an attitude within the middle and upper classes that the poor were indolent—policies and attitudes created social inequality. For the privileged, it was a time of plenty. For the underprivileged, it was a time of desperation. It was still possible to face the hangman for stealing a piece of bread. The French Revolution gave rise to insurrection fears. Society's poor were seen as a danger to the status quo. One solution was to exile offenders to prisons far from England. The concept was not unique to Britain. Other colonial powers did likewise.
The loss of the American Colonies greatly inconvenienced the British legal system. Fortunately, the discovery of Terra Australis in 1776 provided a solution. The colonialization of the southern lands was encouraged. The Pacific islands were strategically important, and acquiring them prevented the French from claiming the territory. Moreover, colonisation promised undiscovered riches and lands to exploit.
The local native populations were curious—a peculiar primitive noble savage type. No thought was given to their existence or their worldview. The prevailing wisdom of the day only saw the benefit of exposing these people to the Christian God and Britain's superior technology. The Colonisers were ignorant of the distinctiveness of place, time, and name of the land, labelling its protectors as Aboriginals or Blacks. The entrepreneurs gave little credence to the thought of being invaders. The pursuit of profit brushed aside any concept of individual rights.
Affluent Englishmen believed the criminal class existed because they were lazy and lacked any desire for honest work. There was no recognition that the rush to industrialise and increase rural profits created unemployment. The destitute were so because they were unwilling to work. Changes in the Poor Laws shifted the focus away from a Church responsibility of almsgiving, providing 'charity to the deserving poor" to management by the State. The State systematically designed workhouses to be a little better than subsistence poverty. The Workhouse was a harsh, disease-ridden environment. The Workhouse was seen as a last resort. The old, infirmed, despairing men, women and their children came and went. Unable to find work, they returned again and again until they slid into a pauper grave.
With the loss of America, England had to find new places to send convicted felons. Prisons were full. As a stopgap, the Government repurposed decommissioned ships into prison hulks. Some prisoners were sent to cane fields in Bermuda and an early grave. Captain Cook's news of a southern continent solved two problems. First, as a strategic outpost of the Empire and second, with ample room for a convict colony. The First Fleet of lawbreakers set sail in 1788, just 18 years after Cook's landing in Botany Bay. The Colony in Sydney was well established when the British government established a settlement at Risdon Cove, Hobart, in 1803. Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) grew into a settlement and attracted free settlers and government administration.
Prison Hulk
While Jack the Ripper would not make his appearance for another fifty years, violence and bloody murders in the East End were commonplace. Poorly paid Nightwatchman patrolled the streets, dragging criminals to a constable for processing.
Throughout the period 1674 to 1829 many victims of crime were able to identify and apprehend the culprits before contacting a constable or a justice of the peace to secure their arrest. Those who witnessed a felony were legally obliged to apprehend those responsible for the crime, and to notify a constable or justice of the peace if they heard that a crime had taken place. Moreover, if summoned by a constable to join the "hue and cry", inhabitants were required to join in the pursuit of any suspected felon.[I}
The night watchmen patrolled the streets between 9 and 10 pm until sunrise. In London, daytime patrols were conducted by the City Marshall and the Beadles. They were responsible for the examination of suspicious characters. They apprehended minor offenders. A night watchman was to "apprehend those suspected of conveying, between sunset and sunrise, any goods or chattels suspected of being stolen".[I]
The wrongdoer is held in the local watch house and then to a nearby prison for trial.
On April 11, 1825, a Night Watchman spied Mary behaving suspiciously. She is questioned and handed over to the constables. Mary waited twenty-six days in Newgate Prison for her trial at the Old Bailey, London.
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