I came across this reference to a local transportation when re-reading The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes:
‘Mrs. Lycot, wife of “a gentleman of considerable landed property,” wrote in May 1819 to the local magistrate in Minchin Hampton, Sir George Paul, begging clemency for Thomas Barker, an itinerant vendor of rabbit skins who had been sentenced to transportation for buying some silverware that a servant had stolen from her house. She had asked for the sentence to be withdrawn, “in consequence of [Barker’s] age which is 57, and the improbability that he and his wife would ever meet again which being in poor circumstances would render her situation one of great distress.” In forwarding her letter to Lord Sidmouth, the magistrate noted that “the man is already in the Hulk, it will not do to send him back to our Penitentiary, in which there are already three prisoners confined where there should be one.” Revealingly, he added: “These are times when the current of public opinion seems to disarm the law of all its terrors!” And so Barker left for the Fatal Shore, leaving his wife to fend for herself.’
And this led to this re-creation:
I pen these words from distant Southern Lands ‘as a WARNING to all miscreants back on England’s fair shores, and those of Wales and Scotland and Ireland too.’ These are not my words; I merely pen them, as I listen to the melancholy voice of Thomas Barker. The use of italics is from my own habit. The choice of punctuation and paragraph is mine. The capitalisation is at the request of Thomas Barker.
‘I was born in the county of Gloucester early in the reign of King George the Third. My parents lived FRUGAL and INDUSTRIOUS lives, spinning and weaving, and I thrived with my brothers and sisters. All was well with us until hard times near the end of the American war. The hearth was cold and smokeless. I STOLE an axe to help.
I learned my lesson: THIEVES don’t prosper and CRIME don’t pay. I sought employment on the farm; then found work brick laying on the new canal, and walling in the new fields.
But the money went to my head. DRINK got the better of me and I had a base born child. THRIFTLESS young man that I was. This caused much ill feeling in the parish.
Take HEED.
Young men grow up:
My MARRIAGE gave me much JOY, and now my present WOE. My WIFE and I soon had other mouths to feed – but the French wars meant more uniforms. So I went back to the weaving. Money was plentiful and we had no need for stolen axes. Or anything purloined back then.
But the war’s end brought no end of hardship. So I turned my hand to catching moles for farmers. And for the canal company along the towpath, too. But a moleskin won’t buy a quarter loaf.
I then turned to walking from village to village and farm to farm, catching rabbits. It was all LAWFUL, the GAMEKEEPERS all knew me; but I did fall in with POACHERS on occasions. If I’m honest with myself, I could have been caught and HANGED or transported before I was up in court in 1819.
Listen to my ADVICE, young poachers: ye will be caught. Put away thy guns and snares.
TIME does not heal. It BETRAYS.
It was the year of 1819, the last full year of the reign of the old King George that BETRAYED me, when TEMPTATION again proved too much. Oh, AVARICE and temptation! How I loathe thee!
Follow not my path, young men and women, no matter how poor thee be. Ye might have a dearth of coin, but the love of thy FAMILY is worth its weight in golden sovereigns. Poverty of the HEART far outweighs poverty of the purse.
Take notice.
I happened to be in Minchinhampton, near Stroud, selling my coney skins – there’s a good deal to be had up around there on the hills – or rather, there was. I called at the grand house of Mr. Lycot. I knew a servant there and thought the kitchen might have need. The girl knew of my past poaching, and asked if I would like to make some extra coin. It would be as easy as baking a pie.
Would I care to buy some silverware from her if she happened to pick some up from the house? The House had so much, they wouldn’t miss a few candlesticks and such-forth.
I was betwixt and between – I’d sold a good few skins and had coin enough, but there’s only so many skins you can sell. It was the merry month of May, but the spring of my youth was long past. Winters get harder with the passing of the years. Why steal an axe again?
So, I fell for the new game and met her the next night to exchange silver for coppers.
But when I went to sell, the game was up. How could a ragged seller of coney skins acquire such a hoard, if not by DISHONESTY? I was apprehended and sentenced before the may blossom was even in full bloom.
The wife of the House was a woman of CHRISTIAN virtue. Mrs. Lycot requested that my sentence be rescinded on account of my advanced age, my union with my wife, and her worsening privation.
Alas! It was all too late. I was already incarcerated in the prison HULK at Portsmouth. In CHAINS in the day in the docks; fettered in IRONS at night.
I have no more to say. Narratives of convict voyages are known to all. You do not require my own EXAMPLE any longer. I talk only of avoiding mishap before it is too late.
Oh homely village, bathed in light,
My wife and children gone from sight,
A convict now in southern lands,
Surrounded by the quarrelling bands,
Young hands please heed my warning,
Spend not your lives in endless mourning!’
William Barker
And this research:
Now, onto William Barker. I did a bit of rooting around Ancestry and found a few things and I’ve attached images of them for you.
Firstly I couldn’t find any reference to a William Barker being transported from Gloucestershire (he does not appear in ‘Transportees from Gloucestershire to Australia 1783-1842’ by I Wyatt, which is the main source for the names of people being transported in Gloucestershire).
I did find two other persons by the name of ‘William Barker’ of roughly the right age being transported in 1819, but one was sentenced in Hampshire and the other in Staffordshire – it’s impossible to tell whether this is the right man or just another man with the same name as the gaol calendars do not record his age or place of birth. However if he was an ‘itinerant hawker’ then it is possible he was meandering around the county. Does ‘The Fatal Shore’ give any references that may help track William Barker down?
Secondly, he does appear in the Gaol calendars in Gloucestershire; once in 1774 for stealing an axe and twice in 1782, as the defendant in a case brought against him by the Churchwardens and Overseers of Minchinhampton for ‘begetting one Hester Higgins with child’. With the latter case, it looks like he was granted bail both times and released to await trial. The reason he was taken into custody in the first place was that he’d failed to provide sureties for the case. Unfortunately the Minchinhampton parish overseers of the poor records regarding bastardy do not commence until 1822, so there’s not much information to be had. The case may be mentioned in the Vestry accounts and the overseers accounts for the period, but if so, it’s highly unlikely there’d be much information in them about the man himself (I can check for you though).
I did find his baptism at Minchinhampton in 1760 and but nothing other than that. I wasn’t able to find the baptism of his alleged child in the period 1780-1783 either.
Hope that helps – look forward to the leaflet!!
Regards
John
John Putley
Hub Facilities Manager
* : Gloucestershire Archives, Alvin Street, Gloucester, GL1 3DW
(: 01452 427591 or 425295
8: john.putley@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Web: http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives