janilye on Family Tree Circles

Because of embarrassment and the desire to gain status in their community, there was a widespread cover-up involving ordinary families and officials to keep their convict past secret. During the early nineteenth century some families who had aquired wealth thought their convict antecedants were a handicap to them attaining status and respect. A case in point is Mary REIBY, nee HAYDOCK 1777-1855, the first female retailer in Sydney. At 13 she was transported to New South Wales for dressing up as a boy and stealing a horse. She arrived in 1792 on the 'Royal Admiral' and spent two years as a nursemaid. She married Thomas REIBY 1769-1811, an irish officer she had met on the voyage from Britain. Mary and Thomas set up a store near Sydney Harbour. Thomas spent a good deal of time buying ships and travelling and Mary looked after the business and their 7 children.
Thomas died in 1811 and Mary was left with the lot including a new warehouse in George Street. Mary was one of the earliest settlers of Hunters Hill. She built a cottage?later known as Fig Tree House?on land that fronted the Lane Cove River; Reiby Street is named after her.
In 1821 She travelled back to England and bought valuable property and buildings over there, She lived off her investments and died a very wealthy woman.
Mary was far-sighted and when a sequence of official musters culminating in the census of 1828 came around she recorded the ship on which she had returned on after her visit to England, thereby appearing in the 1828 muster as came free on the 'Mariner' in 1821.
If Mary had not been so well known this stratagem would have created a huge puzzle for her decendants and family researchers.
*The full story of Mary REIBY as Mary REIBEY 1777-1855 can be obtained online.
**Dr.Alison Alexander an academic historian at the university of Tasmania asked 127 of her students if they were decended from convicts. Of nearly 20% who knew they were. 60% had only, discovered the information through research done by a family member.

Some people believed that finding gold would be easy!

Indeed! The reality was hard work. Intense heat and dust in the summer, bringing clouds of flies and mosquitoes then very cold winters and of course there was the mud.

Wives and children had little choice but to accompany their men to the diggings and they were among the thousands of people who became ill with dysentery and typhoid.

Drinking water was polluted by panning and by sewage that escaped from the thousands of holes the miners dug to use as toilets. The diet was inadequate, the basic food was mutton, damper, tea and sugar and nobody escaped the inflated food prices. You truly had to find more than a few specks to afford fruit and vegetables. Most diggers didn't bother to wash and shared their beds with fleas. 'Cures" for just about every imaginable ailment were available from the 'quacks, Sunday was observed everywhere as a day of rest. On this day men repaired their equipment mended their clothes and wrote letters home. Some sought out the sly-grog shops and drank away their aches and pains and blot out the fact they had failed to find gold and relieve their homesickness. Overall, the diggings were not a very pleasant place to be for most people.
Even getting to the goldfields was a life and death struggle.

As news of Australian gold rushes swept the world all available ships were crammed with people hoping to make their fortunes. Up to half of the children on those ships died of contaminated food and water and diseases like Scarlet fever, measles and typhoid. On the diggings children continued to be at risk. In the first half of the 1850s 200 European and chinese children under two died at the Mt.Alexander diggings alone. Goldfields cemeteries are today resting places for thousands of children.

Official estimates have reckoned the total population on the Victorian goldfields in 1853 as 46,550 men, 10,747 women, and 11,590 children. Gold digging was an almost exclusively male activity.

Women on the goldfields have often been stereotyped as entertainers and prostitutes but most women were wives of miners or single women accompanying their families. Many women died in childbirth and had to cope with poor diet, the threat and fact of disease, the loneliness and the worries of trying to bring up a family on the goldfields. As towns developed , women played an active role in changing them into places where children could go to school and where the sick could be properly looked after.

A woman by the name of Ellen Clacy recorded her observations of life on the goldfields in Victoria in 1852:-

"But night at the diggings is the characteristic time: murder here-murder there- revolvers cracking-blunderbusses bombing-rifles going off-balls whistling-one man groaning with a broken leg.....Here is one man grumbling because he brought his wife with him, another ditto because he left his behind, or sold her for an ounce of gold or a bottle of rum. Donnybrook Fair is not to be compared to an evening at Bendigo. Success at the diggings is like drawing lottery tickets-the blanks far outnumber the prizes; still, with good health and strength, and above all perseverance, it is strange if a digger does not in the end reap a reward for his labour. Meanwhile he must endure almost incredible hardships. In the rainy season, he must not murmur if compelled to work up to his knees in water, and sleep on the wet ground, without a fire, in the pouring rain, and perhaps no shelter above him more waterproof than a blanket or a gum tree.....In the summer, he must work hard under a burning sun, tortured by the mosquito and the little stinging March flies....."

Some women were successful miners in their own right. Alice CORNWELL 1852-1932 known on the goldfields as "Princess Midas" or "Madam Midas" began mining on her father George CORNWELL's lease at Ballarat. She supervised miners who worked for her and instructed them where to dig for gold. She was so good at finding gold that she once paid 20,000 for a mine. The mine yielded her 100,000 in one year.
In 1887 she went to London and listed her Midas mine on the stock exchange. She also owned the London newspaper, The Sunday Times for five years.
She was enormously wealthy, with many financial and industrial enterprises.
Her financial operations were not less notable than her diamonds which were the talk of London. There is a book and a stage play based on her life.Also the National Gallery does own some biographical cuttings which may be viewed.

*The Photograph of Alice Ann Cornwell, below, was taken in 1900.

The Australian Roadside Inn was a witness to a grand parade of history, characters and communities. The roads that passed their doors carried on its corrugated surface the future of the fledgling colony and the inns were encouraged by the Governors to assist the adventurous travelers. There were ?good inns? and then there were ?just barley inns?. The glow of the light in the distance was welcoming to the weary traveler and the warm fire in the parlor was eagerly looked forward to at each stop. Once inside, the cozy glow of the fire was a good setting for cheerful discussions with fellow travelers. Conversation was as varied as was on the state of intoxication were the travellers. It was a chance to catch up with the news from the regions and swap stories and titillate over tales of scandal.

A law was passed in 1825 that stated that every inn must provide accommodation for at least 2 persons and in 1830 another law came into being which required all innkeepers to burn a whale oil lamp outside the inn at night

In 1830 the first year that license fees were introduced and a fee of 25 pounds had to be paid to keep a ?Common Inn, Alehouse or victualling House, and to sell fermented and spirituous liquors in any quantity, The 25 pound license fee commenced on the first July and continued in force until the 30th June of the following year. In 1833 the fee went up to 30 pounds which was quite a large expense.

Convict Assignment was like a great big rehabilitation program. It was a sort of nineteenth century 'Outward Bound'. With abrupt change, new surroundings and personal challenge, but without the floggings

John Dunmore LANG told us in 1837,that:- "when a convict-ship arrives it is the practice of the colonial government to reserve as many of the convicts, whether labourers or mechanics, as are required for the public service; the rest are assigned to persons who have previously transmitted duly attested applications for convict-servants, agreeably to a code of regulations recently established by the present Governor, and denominated the Assignment Regulation. One pound sterling is paid to Government for each convict so assigned, as the price of his bedding and slop-clothing, which he carries along with him to his future master's. If the master resides in Sydney, he is employed in the various menial capacities in which house-servants are employed in Europe; if he resides in the country, as is much more frequently the case, he is employed in tending sheep or cattle, or as a farm-servant.

The convict-servants on the different farms of the colony are usually lodged in huts formed of a split-timber, and thatched with long grass or straw, at a little distance from the proprietor's house. Two of these huts, with a partition between them, form one erection; and each of them is inhabited by four men. A large fireplace is constructed at one end of the hut, where the men cook their provisions, and around which they assemble in the winter evenings, with a much greater appearance of comfort than the sentimentalist would imagine. Rations, consisting of ten and a half pounds of flour, seven pounds of beef or four and a half pounds of pork, with a certain proportion of tea, sugar, and tobacco, are distributed to each of them weekly; and they receive shoes and slop-clothing either twice a year, or whenever they require them. Pumpkins, potatoes, and other vegetables, they are allowed to cultivate for themselves.

On my brother's farm at Hunter's River - and I believe a similar system is pursued on most of the large agricultural farms thoughout the colony - the overseer rises at day-break, and rings a bell, which is affixed to a tree, as a signal for the men to proceed to their labour. The greater number follow the overseer to the particular agricultural operation which the season requires; the rest separate to their several employments, one to the plough, another to the garden, and a third to the dairy, while a fourth conducts the cattle to their pasture. The bell is again rung at eight o'clock, when the men assemble for breakfast, for which they are allowed one hour; they again return too their labour till one o'clock, when they have an hour for dinner, and they afterwards labour from two till sunset".


* Lang makes it sound so 'Cosy' and it was for some who were fortunate to have honest and fair masters. But for a great many others it was no more than slavery where they were bullied, flogged and had their rations taken away by their cruel masters. For the ones who ran away, the outcome was often 30 to 50 lashes, 12 months in irons or the rope.

Rev. John Dunmore Lang described the conditions convicts worked under on his brother Andrew Lang's farm.
Source jenwillets.com Free Settler or Felon