Blankets for June



Blanket purchased by Roland Doe

  I was handed the blanket. There it was, wrapped in a plastic bag, with a cake of scented soap to keep the musty odours away. It's yours. "Oh," was all I could say. Old, faded and worn into holes, wrinkled edges fraying into loosened threads, it did not look like something one would value. Then came the words, This is the blanket that Nan sent Pop out to buy ....................to bring the baby home from hospital, in the pony and cart when your mother was born. Suddenly, this worn set of fibres had new meaning. I connected. It did not look at all like a baby blanket, pink, blue and fluffy but it certainly had a purpose.

June in Tasmania is cold and the birth took place at Latrobe. A trip home on the Wilmot road would have been long and wearying. Even in the fifties when I first travelled its surface, it was rough, unsealed and potholed. Uncomfortable in the latest Holden, we looked forward to the end of the trip. In 1923, baby June, named after the month in which she was born, was wrapped cosy and warm in the folds of this blanket as she was carried about 30 miles up through Gentle Annie between the tall gums growing along the edges of the deep gorges of the Wilmot Road.



June Doe and Ivy Doe
at Lower Wilmot

Another photo and another time.
"Why is Mum wearing gumboots?" I asked. Over 20 years later, baby June was grown and had come home for the weekend. The coat was for warmth on the same Wilmot Road. The boots were for riding a horse. Mum was working at Chudleigh and had travelled the last part of the journey, from Forth by horse. It is hard for me to imagine my mother riding a horse but that was the mode of transport at the time. The horse was hired at Forth and upon arriving at the destination 18 miles later, it was turned around to face the direction from which it had come, given a whack on the rump and it took itself back to the stables.

Mum never learned to drive a car. Apart from walking, this was the only time she was in control of her transport. It was so for so many women. They rode horses and drove ponies and carts but with the advent of the motor car, transport became  male dominated and for a generation of women dependancy on menfolk became the norm.

A Contrast in Accomodation

While Bridget was doing hard labour at the Female Factory, Ephraim was at Ross. I have found very few references to the Probation Station there. The gaol was converted into a female factory in 1848 and it seems men were sent to the probation station. These two exerpts from newspapers, both a few years before Ephraim arrived there, tell a little of what was going on. I really think it was kind hearted of them to remove all the invalids to Launceston and allow them to break stones. Maybe the definition of invalid at the time was a little different from that we use today. You can be assured that it would shorten the lines at Centrelink!


Cells at the Female Factory where Bridget was held




Remaining walls at the Cascades
Female Prison



The second article shows the difficulty authorities had in employing all the men under their control and echoes the thoughts of many on how gaols are conducted.

25 March 1848 The Cornwall Chronicle

THE CONVICT DEPARTMENT,

It has been known for some weeks that his Excellency has been in possession of ' Despatches' directing the speedy breaking up of the Convict Establishments, with a view to save the enormous outlay connected with the department in these colonies, and in order that all available funds might be appropriated in giving the ' separate' system at home a fair trial. With this, intention, a large number of tickets-of-leave have been latterly granted and many conditional pardons recommended by his Excellency so as to facilitate the intentions of the Home Government as much as the circumstances of the convicts here will permit The sane object will, we under stand, induce the Comptroller-General to re commend a change in the mode of regulating indulgences, so as to be assimulated to the orders sent out to New South Wales last year, by which the Government was directed to give tickets of leave to all prisoners of the Crown indiscriminately who had been three years in the colony free from offence, and in like manner conditional pardons to those who had held tickets-of-leave for three years. In the course of a few weeks several convict establishments are to be broken up. The hiring depot for females in St. John Square will be discontinued immediately, and the women eligible for service be removed to a wing of the Female House of Correction prepared for the purpose. The children at present in the Female House of Correction with their mothers are to be removed to the Ross station. The Probation stations at Fingal, Rocky Hills, Lymington, and several other places will be broken up, and all available labor placed on the main road. About a hundred invalids will be forwarded to Launceston from different stations, to be employed in breaking stones for repairing the streets, and a suitable shed is to be erected on the Commissariat green to protect them from the inclemency of the weather, so that their operations may not be impeded by rain, & c. We are likewise informed that a new hospital is to be commenced on the Cataract Hill, it having been long felt that the situation of the present Colonial Hospital is unhealthy, contagious, and otherwise inconvenient.

19 May 1847
TO THE EDITOR OF THE LAUNCESTON EXAMINER. THE SYSTEM. Sir,-Allow me to bring under the notice of the public, through the medium of your widely circu lated Journal, the working of the probation sta tion at Ross: the colonists may judge how all the stations are managed. The station at Ross con sists of about 80 men, who being colonially sen tenced, are supposed to be employed on the roads, but few of them are so employed. The party are distributed pretty nearly as follows :
Servants to the officers ..3 Watchmen.., 4 Wardsmen .. 2, Washermen .. 1 Drawing water and harnessed to the hand-cart like beasts of burthen.. 5 Messenger to the gangs..0 , Cook at the station ... 1, Baker at the station .. I ,Assistant cook at the station. 1, Cook to the gangs .. 1, Gatekeeper .. 1, Labourer to the storekeeper .. 1, Clerk to the Storekeeper.. 1, Cook to the Military ... 1, Minding tools.. 1, Watching the government pigs..1,  Burning charcoal ... 1, Blacksmiths ... 2, Employed raising vegetables for the party to compete with the settler.. 6, Total ... 35. Thus sir it will be seen, that out of about eighty men, thirty-five are billited. These men can finish their daily tasks by about eleven o'clock, the remainder of the day is then passed away in sheer idleness. To look after these eighty men, there are no less than eight officers, whose united salaries amount to the enormous sum of eight hundred and four pounds per annum,-a sum sufficient to pay as many useful officers as could make all the roads required in the colony. I could give you an account of the work per formed at this station both on and off the roads, for the last three years; but it would be useless, the public being already aware that probation in this colony is nothing more than teaching the men the most idle habits, as my list will plainly show, and of which I defy refutation.-I am Sir, your obedient servant, A WAY-FARING MAN. Antill Ponds, 13th May, 5th month '47.

Not the castle he was expecting



Three months later and Ephraim and Bridget were really finding it hard to stay home. Their area was now Sorell and Prossins Plains. Maybe there was no work in their area and they had to look further afield. Ephraim was now a boss with an offsider, and along with Bridget, they were out of their area without a pass. The judge was not so lenient this time and all three were off to gaol with hard labour. William Toplis was difficult to track down and finally I discovered that he was also registered as William Topley or Toplay. William had carried a lot of lead in his life, 128 pounds of it to be exact. He managed to procure it from the roofs of buildings at Castle Donington in Nottinghamshire. How he removed it and carried it away I am not certain but it must have happened over time. How much lead can you carry home in one go without being noticed? And where do you put it when you get it there?



A washing tub at Cascades femake factory



It seems that Castle Donington is a place, not a Castle though there probably was one there once. They have motels and hotels, buses and bikes, everything the modern tourist could want. They are waiting and anxious for all of us  to book a holiday there.

William did not win a holiday to Castle Donington, he won a ten year cruise to Van Diemen’s Land, and now,  a side trip to prison and an instruction that he was not to reside in Hobart upon release. Ephraim was off to Ross for three months hard labour out of chains and for Bridget, it was off to trial the stone cells and wash troughs of the female factory at South Hobart.

Archealogical dig reveals remains of cells at Cascades.

Nomads of the Midlands



The sign at Colebrook




The Mill at Campania, now part of the local school
where I taught for two years



Ephraim and Bridget had been residing in an area known as Jerusalem. Some documents state Lower Jerusalem and I believe they were probably working towards the Campania area. Jerusalem is on the Coal River and the area is now known not as Coalbrook but as Colebrook. Guess someone did not pass spelling at school.

This was at one time the granary of Australia and oats and wheat grew prolifically. It is quite warm in summer and for some years the industry flourished. Ephraim had worked on farms in England but had probably not grown grain in such enormous quantities.They were still working on a piecemeal basis for other farmers and looking further afield to find work when only a few months after their problem with the Williams family, Ephraim and Bridget were found out on the township of Sorell at 10 pm without a pass. They must have had a good excuse as they were found guilty and admonished but given no gaol time. Either there was no money to celebrate or they did it in a more controlled manner this time as the next couple of months passed quietly.

Doe versus Williams

Let’s  hope that Ephraim did not have hay fever or a cold in early November of the year 1850. He and Bridget had been married less than three months and they were before the courts again. This time, it was Ephraim preferring the charges. He maintained that Mary Williams had stolen his handkerchief, his cap and his stays. When I first saw this I thought he was in for a bit of cross dressing but I came to the conclusion that the stays must have been braces for holding up his trousers. There he was in court, bare headed, no bulge in the pocket, badly needing a belt and also short of wages. Mary’s husband, Edward also had done him wrong and not paid wages owing. These charges had been laid a month previously and it seems that Ephraim had worked for Edward and Mary for about 4 weeks, prior to that. What they had been living on in the meantime is something to wonder about.

The interesting part of this record is that part of the wages was to be issued as rations as follows: 14 pounds of flour, 7 pounds of pork, 2 pounds of sugar and ¼ pound of tea per week. He had also taken 6 figs of tobacco as part payment. He must have been smoking pretty heavily to have gone through that much in so short a time. He stated that he had a wife to support, so I can understand how they could use most of this but that is a lot of sugar.

Edward and Mary Williams had been convicts too, he had stolen a horse and she had stolen two umbrellas.  Neither had a good reputation. The charges against Mary were dismissed, but Edward had to pay up. A whole 15/- went to Ephraim who promptly went out and started to spend it.. Three days later he was in court, out of a job and fined 5 shillings for drunkenness. I wonder how Bridget took all of this. I am pretty sure she would have been enjoying her tipple too.

Ephraim Doe takes a wife



Reverend Arthur Davenport
who performed the ceremony



Ephraim decided he had had enough of batchelorhood. He had been recommended for pardon on June 25 1850 and now had much more control over his life. He must have thought long and hard about his earlier intention to marry Ann Connors and the demise of the romance. That had been six months previous, and now , with freedom, he had to be responsible for himself. A man needed someone to look after him: cook, wash, and clean house. He no longer had to live in a probation station where these things were organised. After all, a real man could not be seen hanging his own socks on the line. On July 30 he received permission to marry Bridget Norton, a convict laundress from Athlone in Ireland.  

On 19^th August, they met at the church. Traditionally, Monday was washing day but on this particular Monday, Bridget decided to leave the suds and the bluo behind, and meandered down to St Lukes to attach herself to Ephraim Doe. Was this a marriage where two people decided to support each other or was there love involved? Women had a far greater choice than men when finding a husband in Van Diemen’s Land. Many of the male convicts remained unmarried as there were simply not enough women to go around.

Bridget would have had little time to organise her wedding dress and flowers. Did she have something special or was it her everyday wear? Maybe Ephraim made a little more effort to flick his hair over that bald spot which was beginning to appear at the top of his head. The Banns had been read over the previous Sundays and the ceremony went ahead. Mr and Mrs Doe carefully signed the register with crosses next to their names and turned to saunter down the aisle to meet their future.

Possibly, Ephraim had found a hut for them to live in now that he was a family man. He had no steady job and for a time work was on short term contracts, wherever it could be found. Setting up a proper home and gathering belongings would take some time.

Fight the Good Fight

Sometimes, when there seems no other way, we try to do the impossible. That's how it was when I decided to try to find a convict ancestor of mine, named Thomas Smith, by going through all the Thomas Smiths, checking their records and eliminating those which looked unlikely. This was bound to fail. There were 300 odd convicts who shared that impossible name. I rejected the first half dozen and the next one brought me to the end of my search, not because I had found my answer, but that right at the bottom of one the indents I found the words "assaulting and maltreating Ephraim Doe". At that moment, I realised the futility of my search and I had another direction to follow. I eventually found my ancestor Thomas Smith through the "permissions to marry" when I came across his wife's name.
What had caused the incident in 1849 when this other Thomas Smith, convict number 4748 had treated Ephraim so badly and earned himself ten days hard labour? It has taken me several years to frame a theory. Ephraim had, at that time requested permission to marry a convict maid called Ann Connors. She was not the shrinking violet type. Ann was a wily wench, a woman of the town, a prostitute and a drunk. She was certainly not up to scratch for the makings of a good wife. On the very same day of the assault on Ephraim, Ann Connors was charged with making use of indecent language and a fine was levied against her. It seems too much of a coincidence that Ephraim and Ann parted ways at this time, even though they had gained permission to marry. Was there a fight over a woman? In whose direction was Ann's wrath pointed? Ann did not marry anyone and ended her days drunk on the streets of Hobart. Ephraim was back on the market and found himself at the altar at St Lukes, marrying a far different lady the following year.