Convict Ancestors Story for UTAS Diploma in Family History

I'm loving the Diploma offered by the University of Tasmania. Another subject completed, and lots of information learned along the way. This article below was a submission for the final assessment in the Convict Ancestors subject. There were also two breakout articles, which I have left off the story. I might add them later as separate posts.

My 5x great-grandmother, Esther Salamon, was a formidable convict woman, who showed great strength and fortitude throughout her long life. After 482 days in London’s Newgate prison, a voyage of 5 months and 19 days, through at least four marriages and de facto partnerships, she established and ran successful businesses as a dealer, boarding house mistress, and bathing house proprietor in the colony of Sydney, as well as providing for her 16 children [1].

Based on Esther’s age at her trial, later marriage, and date of death it seems that Esther was born sometime before 19 July 1775, presumably in England. The readily available UK census starts in 1841, by which time she is well established in Australia, and it’s not possible to find a missing person gap in a census. Esther was Jewish and the first of several records to confirm this fact is the list of prisoners in Newgate prison. It is unlikely that she was baptised, and I have not been able to locate any sacrament for her in the Church of England or non-Conformist registers, and the birth of Jewish girls was not recorded in their own registers [2]. As a result, I have had more than 20 years of fruitless searching for her parents or English family of origin.

The Old Bailey Sessions House 1790, John Ellis, Corporation of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Library  

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/The-old-bailey.jsp

Copy of Old Bailey transcription of Esther Spencer’s trial 19 July 1794 http://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?id=t17940716-64-defend646&div=t17940716-64#highlight

Sometime before her conviction Esther married a Mr Spencer, as her surname was recorded as Spencer on her Old Bailey trial records [3] and she was described as a married woman in the Newgate prison registers.

No marriage record between Esther and Mr Spencer has been found to date.  Subsequently Esther was convicted of theft on 16 July 1794 at age 19, and tried at The Old Bailey. She was “indicted for stealing, on the 17th of July, two silver salt holders, value 18s. two silver salt spoons, value 2s. two silver pepper castors, value 1£. a silver table spoon, value 14s. the goods of Jacob Ruffy.” The Newgate Prison entry book describes her as being “19, 5’4”, dark hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, London, married woman Jewess” [4].

A variety of records exist detailing Esther’s ordeal in London as a prisoner in Newgate, during the 16 months she waited for decisions to be made about her pardon, and her many months of incarceration before boarding the Indispensable.  These can be found on the London Lives website www.london.lives.org , which also links in with the Old Bailey trials. 

This example is A Continuation of the names of the several Prisoners Confined in Newgate on the 28th Septr  1794. Here she is described as “19. 5/4 dark hair dark Eyes dark Complexion London Jewess Marr'd”.  These descriptors are almost verbatim from the Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales [5] which was compiled at the end of July 1794 and can be found on www.Ancestry.com. One can assume that the list in this image was drawn up from the Home Office’s July Sessions for Middlesex document. If any of these details were incorrect in the original document, they are likely to remain incorrect on all subsequent documents, as Esther was illiterate. It is unknown whether she would have been a party to the writing of the entries other than verbally responding to questions about her age and marital status, etc. This can make searching for other records more difficult, as we may be looking for a red herring. For example, if Esther wasn’t indeed aged 19 at this time we are unlikely to find a baptism record for her around 1775.

Various sources, such as the New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-18346 shows us that Esther arrived in Sydney on 30 April 1796 where she had quickly took up with convict John Fitz, with whom she had her first two children, Joseph [7] and Susannah [8]. Joseph, died as an infant [9] and was buried in the Old Sydney Burial Ground where Sydney Town Hall now stands [10]. Fitz then disappears from the records and in 1800 Esther takes up with fellow convict and builder, Englishman Thomas Stubbs. Esther’s son, Joseph, was buried under the name of Stubbs, so the relationship between Esther and Thomas must have begun between Joseph’s baptism on 2 Feb 1800 and his burial in October 1800. They have nine children together, the first being my 4x great-grandmother, Mary Anne (Marian) Spencer Stubbs [11].

The Biographical Database of Australia at www.bda-online.org.au holds a wealth of records pertaining to the convict indents, musters and early church records. From these I have created a timeline of Esther’s particulars in relation to her convict status.

From these records it seems that Esther appears to have been classed as “Free By Servitude” by August 1806, as indicated in the NSW General Muster. This ties in with information from the State Records of New South Wales website on Pardons: “Convicts with life sentences generally received pardons. In the formative years of the colony the Governor possessed the discretion to grant free pardons and conditional pardons as rewards for good behaviour, for special skills or for undertaking special responsibilities. Governor Macquarie introduced new regulations setting minimum periods to be served for both pardons and tickets of leave.” [12] No record of a Ticket of Leave or Conditional Pardon have ever been found for Esther, so it is assumed that her pardon was one of these indulgences by Governor Macquarie.

These records only touch on the great amount of information that exists regarding Esther’s life before and after her conviction. She died at age 80, after many years of child-bearing and business owning. In 1855 she was buried in the Jewish section of the Devonshire Street Cemetery, which was disturbed in 1901 for the construction of Central Railway Station. Exhumations were relocated to Bunnerong Cemetery in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, although none of Esther’s remains were found at the time.

References:

[1] "Browse - Central Criminal Court". 2016.Oldbaileyonline.Org. Accessed June 10 2016. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17940716-64-defend646&div=t17940716-64#highlight

[2] "Birth | Jewish Virtual Library". 2016.Jewishvirtuallibrary.Org. Accessed June 10 2016. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_03015.html

[3] "Browse - London Lives". 1794.Londonlives.Org. Accessed June 11 2016. http://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?id=t17940716-64-defend646&div=t17940716-64#highlight . 

[4] Source Citation Class: HO 26; Piece: 4; Page: 15 Source Information Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors. Original data: Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales; Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies, Series HO 26 and HO 27; The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England.

 [5] Source Citation Class: HO 26; Piece: 3; Page: 86 Source Information Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors. Original data: Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales; Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies, Series HO 26 and HO 27; The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England. 

[6] Source Citation Class: HO 10; Piece: 2 Source Information Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: Home Office: Settlers and Convicts, New South Wales and Tasmania; (The National Archives Microfilm Publication HO10, Pieces 1-4, 6-18, 28-30); The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England.

[7] NSW Birth Certificate, 1797/468, Fitz, Joseph C

[8] NSW Birth Certificate, 1799/615, Fitz, Susannah S

[9] NSW Death Certificate, 1800/1008, Stubbs, Joseph

[10] "Old Sydney Burial Ground - City Of Sydney". 2016. www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au . Accessed June 11 2016. http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/sydneys-history/people-and-places/old-sydney-burial-ground . 

[11] “"Convict Records — State Records NSW". 2016. www.records.nsw.gov.au . Accessed June 11 2016. http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/research-topics/convicts/convicts#pardons-conditional-and-absolute.