Category: History

Emigration from Stroudwater in the 1830s and 40s
(‘Documentary Fiction’)
Foreword
My emigrant’s passage started in Bisley
Along a snowdropped Sunday footpath to the church;
The service had just ended –
I sauntered in through the open door,
And there to my surprise, in a glass case,
Lay a nineteenth century list of parish accounts,
With an italicised card:
‘cost to the Parish of Bisley of ‘emigrating’ 68 persons from the parish’,
Together with a bible open to the fronts-piece:
‘The Bible which was presented by the Reverend Thomas Keble who was the Vicar of Bisley when they and 66 others emigrated to Sydney, Australia in August 1837 [The Bible has been rebound].
Two other information cards lay partially hidden beneath the bible, I could pick out a few words, however:
‘hoped they might have a more prosperous life. They were equipped with clothes, transport and food to Bristol and Thomas Keble also presented each family with a Bible and a Prayer Book.’

Prologue the First: Mr Ricardo

EMIGRATION
CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF RELIEF
IN THE PRESENT DISTRESSED
CONDITION OF THE POOR
IN THIS
NEIGHBOURHOOD

BY DAVID RICARDO, ESQ.

STROUD:
PRINTED BY J.P. BRISLEY
1838.
Price One Penny each, or Five Shillings per Hundred.
EMIGRATION

The distress of the Poor at all times forms a strong claim upon our sympathy and compassion – and though in some cases it may be brought on by their own idleness and improvidence, and therefore require the application of strong measures to check its growth … like a parent who chastises his child … But in the present condition of the Poor in this Neighbourhood … we have to encounter all the difficulties of a failing trade, and our inability to substitute any other means of independent labour … their patience and resignation is urging on their more influential neighbours to make efforts to assist them.

The question is, – what is the best means of affording them effectual relief? …In the first instance, a Subscription was proposed, and the Rev. Thos. Keble, with that spirit of kindness and benevolence which characterize all his proceedings … raised a considerable sum among his own immediate friends; but it is quite clear that a sum of money thus raised could never be sufficiently large to meet the emergency of the case – and besides, it would only meet half the evil, for the question is, not to provide the poor with bread by the hand of Private Charity, but to devise some means by which they may earn it for themselves.

This proved to be the case – the Funds raised were found to be inadequate … shortly after, the first attempt was made to introduce a more sound and effectual system of Relief. A ship was sent to Bristol, and a portion of the unemployed Labourers were invited to go to another country … but from an indisposition to engage in anything new, and from a general misapprehension … this attempt did not meet with all the success it deserved; still, some families availed themselves of the offer, and the accounts they have sent home of their prosperous condition in New South Wales have tended to dispel the natural prejudices which all must feel against a country of which they know nothing. All parties agree to the relief occasioned by the departure of the few that went – and if at any future time Emigration should be conducted on a larger scale, we must still look back to this first Attempt, as the step from which all our further efforts have sprung.

About this time, Her Majesty at the suggestion of the House of Commons sent down a Commissioner to enquire into the distressed state of the Neighbourhood, and to see if any means could be devised to alleviate it. The Commissioner came down, and gave the fullest and most patient attention to the subject: he enquired of all classes … and the result was … with our failing Trade … the only means likely to give us real relief, was Emigration …

application was again made to Government to facilitate Emigration … but the engagements already formed prevented them from giving us a ship this year – however,–they showed their good will by requesting Mr. Marshall, the private Agent of the Colonial Government to come down, who has offered a passage to 205 persons; they hold out to us the hope of further and more effectual assistance next year, and there is every reason to hope, that Emigration may be carried on to a larger extent.

The following is a brief account of the nature of the assistance offered by Government …The expense of the Passage of a man and his wife to Sydney … is £35, but this sum is not raised by a Tax on us, but is supplied by the Funds, which the Colonial Government has raised by the Sale of Lands in Australia. It is of importance to bear this in mind … the Colonial Government very reasonably claims the right to itself of refusing to convey persons who would not be serviceable to them – the Government tells us, “all that you have to do for your Emigrants is to provide them with proper clothes and to put them on board the Ship …”

The quantity of Clothing required for each Passenger is, besides a Bible and if possible a Prayer Book, 12 shirts or shifts, 2 flannel petticoats (for females,) 12 pair of dark stockings, 3 towels, and such other articles of dress as are essential to cleanliness, health, and comfort; also a knife and fork, table and tea-spoons, peter or tin plate, tin pots, comb, soap, &c.

These articles are very expensive … it will often happen that a man may sell all his household goods, and yet not be able to raise a fund sufficient to provide them: if no fund were raised to assist … the poor man must linger on here … while the outlay of 30s. would convey him to a land of plenty …

The means of providing the Funds … are by a Rate upon the Parish. By a recent law, Parishes are allowed to borrow any Sum not exceeding half the Rates of the Parish for the purpose of Emigration, and to repay it in five years … this Neighbourhood is but one vast Family, and if we were to take away a portion of the more active and put them in a situation to fend for themselves, the bread that supported them is still left behind, and will be divided among those who remain … in the shape of an increase of Wages …

No! These are not the evils of Emigration … Expense … Clothing …Landlord … Tenant. A thousand other little interested considerations cross our thoughts and influence our minds, while we overlook the real and great objection to sending our Emigrants abroad – the sending them to a place where there is no Church Establishment regularly formed, and where they will often be placed in situations such, that they will not have the opportunity of having the blessed truths of the Gospel brought home to them. – But the eye of the Lord is in every place … if in the conscientious discharge of the duties committed to us, we should provide some of our neighbours with the means of going to New South Wales, I feel convinced that He will follow them there; – we shall in the mean time be looking upon that Country as the Land of our relations and friends … it must be our unceasing endeavour to send to them all the advantages of Religious Worship we enjoy at home.

Gatcombe, 15th Nov. 1838.
HINTS

For the consideration of Persons desirous to Emigrate

1. Large Families of young Children will in no case be taken at the expense of the Colonies. Young married people with families just coming on are the most eligible.
2. Each Applicant should be provided with Testimonials of his Character signed by the Clergyman of his Parish, or the Minister of that religious persuasion to which he belongs, and the respectable persons who may know him. Character is of great use.
3. Each Applicant should be provided with proper Certificates of his Health and the Health of his Family.
4. No woman would be received on board, who is so far advanced in a state of pregnancy, as to render it probable that she might be confined before the termination of the voyage.
5. None would be received on board, unless they have been previously vaccinated or had the Small Pox. Persons having families would do well to look to this, and get their Children vaccinated at once.
6. Linen made up of Calico of inferior quality may be had at the Market House School, Minchinhampton. Shirts, price 1s 3d. Shifts, 11d. and other Articles in the same proportion.

There is still room for a few young married persons of good character and not having large families of young children, by the ship Roxburgh Castle, on 28th December next. The fullest information on all subjects connected with Emigration may be obtained by applying at Gatcombe, on Monday and Tuesday in any week, between the hours of nine and ten.

J. P. Brisley Stroudwater Printing Office.

Prologue the Second
Royal Commission into the Condition of the Handloom Weavers

‘In Gloucestershire I found an acrid feeling existing among the workmen to their masters.’ (William Augustus Miles)

“Beggarly Bisley has long been a proverb, and the improvidence of the people has been as conspicuous in the way they have married young in spite of this, and also the way in which they have kept their children at home hanging on to a miserable and uncertain pittance, in preference to sending them out to work for their bread elsewhere. The way in which parents keep their grown-up children at home to this day is quite vexatious…”

“ In the winter, you must remember the frost hinders their work very much, for they cannot afford fires in their shops and working by candle-light, which they are forced to do for a full six of their sixteen hours…takes a good deal from their earnings.”

”The last few years of extreme distress seemed to have caused an alteration…and many of the young people now go out to service, though not before they were clean starved out.” (The Reverend Jeffreys, to Miles)

“I am brought so weak … I and my children are very destitute of clothes. The Word of God tells me to provide things honest in the sight of all men, but I cannot do it; it also tells me I shall get my bread by the sweat of my brow, but I have the sweat of the brow and not the bread and all through oppression…I have four miles a-day to walk to my work.” (George Risby, a Nailsworth weaver, in a letter to Miles)

“The weavers are much distressed; they are wretchedly off in bedding; has seen many cases where the man and his wife and as many as 7 children have slept on straw, laid on the floor with only a torn quilt to cover them … has witnessed very distressing cases; children crying for food, and the parents having neither food nor money in the house…These men have a constant dread of going into the Poor Houses…witness has frequently told them they would be better in the house, and their answer has been “We would sooner starve.” (Erasmus Charlton, Police Serjeant at Hampton, writing to Miles)

“That when he earned only 4s. a week he contrived, by living upon bread and water, to save 3d. one week, but could save no more for a long time; the ‘coppers’ were cankered before he could put more to them…” (Jonathan Cole, Horsley weaver)

“At one time he considered the weaver to be as well off as any mechanic, but now he is the worst off of any…very great distress prevails…many of them cannot afford tea, and content themselves with a sop of bread and some hot water…The men look spent and wan, and the females thin and exhausted…In his opinion the low rate of wages arises from the men underselling one another in work, and the competition of masters to get their goods as cheap as possible in the market.” (Woodchester grocer)

“The weavers at Uley are in great distress, but relieved in some measure by allotments and emigration. The amount of wages is low; they are paid in truck…some few took the workhouse, some went to other districts, some to Canada, some to Australia. The distress …is extreme (and the most suffering are the most silent)…children are half naked; they have scarcely any bedding and actually sleep under rags…” (Wm. Augustus Miles)

The Wider Context

Janet C. Myers has said that ‘we can read the emigrant as a liminal figure who crosses geographical and textual boundaries’ (on that 3 month, 14,000 mile voyage), ‘allowing us to track the tensions and to address the complex imbrications of domesticity and imperialism’: the transportation and creation of the pleasures of the hearth – the bridge to ‘home’ and a wall against Australian convict and gold rush reputation.

We can read characters from the pages of Dickens, Trollope, Ellen Clay and Clara Morrison in this way: will not debt-ridden Mr Micawber become ‘An important public character in that hemisphere’? We can read the lives of real genteel middle class ladies and would-be governesses in this way: I ‘Can’t quite make up my mind about the Colony’. Or, I ‘fear that I should not fit into English ideas again’, or, ‘as soon as I have paid my debts and saved … for my passage I shall come back to dear old England.’

Leaving England
The last of England! o’er the sea, my dear,
Our homes to seek amid Australian fields.
Us, not the million-acred island yields
The space to dwell in. Thrust out! Forced to hear
Low ribaldry from sots, and share rough cheer
With rudely nurtured men. The hope youth builds
Of fair renown, bartered for that which shields
Only the back, and half-formed lands that rear
The dust-storm blistering up the grasses wild.
There learning skills not, nor the poet’s dream,
Nor aught so loved as children shall we see”.
She grips his listless hand and clasps her child,
Through rainbow-tears she sees a sunnier gleam,
She cannot see a void, where he will be.
Ford Madox Brown, Sonnet (1865)

The Local and National Context

The late 30’s and early 1840s
(‘The Hungry Forties’, as they were known),
With unemployment, short time working, low wages,
High food prices, the Workhouse, Chartism,
And the suppression of trade unions,
All helped contribute to an exodus from Stroudwater:
Empty houses with their crumbling plaster,
Smokeless chimneys, deserted streets and lanes,
A melancholy silence,
(‘This town is getting like a ghost town’),
Ships sailing from Bristol bound for New South Wales,
Like the Orestes in 1839:

I intend to keep something of a diary, or memoir, to record my observations of the strange events that have befallen me in recent months, but particularly to record my observations derived from my forthcoming voyage to Sydney on the Orestes. Jack Reece (formerly of Bisley)
N.B. There is no record of a Jack Reece on the Orestes. We think the diarist used a pseudonym for reasons both obvious and more obscure. We speculate on his real identity at the end of his journal – the passenger lists give a clue. We think he was actually from Horsley.
Preamble to the Voyage:

Well, I am more than relieved to be at last on board down here in the dock at Bristol. Not because the Orestes is such a fine looking vessel, but rather more that I am so pleased to have put recent events behind me. These have been the strangest of days and the decision to emigrate has not been an easy one. It has been a long-drawn-out and clamorous affair. Our village has been like a parliament – but of warring rooks rather than of decorous parties of politics.

Some spoke of the virtues of industry, temperance, frugality, opportunity and hope. Why stay in poverty when you could build a new life for yourself and a new colony for the Queen? Letters will keep us connected whilst we remain on God’s earth. And ye shall spread the word of the one true God to heathen lands.

Others, more cantankerous perhaps – those whom Mr Augustus Miles chose not to report – asked why should we have to uproot hearth and home. It was all very well for the Reverend Keble and his ilk to bestow books, flannels, shirts and petticoats upon us, they said, but his church and class should SHARE their wealth with us, not condescend with charity and Bibles. These Chartists added that we had no right to take aboriginal lands either.

Older rooks were rather more lachrymatory, anticipating a lonely future devoid of family and friends – the workhouse loomed for them. ‘17,000 miles across tempest-tossed ocean! Four months in the company of God knows who and what! Why put yourselves at the mercy of wind, tide and current? Take a chair by the family fireside. Times could be better next year! We could all be in work again!’

That was the litany of my grand-father. I have it word perfect. I can see him now, at the table, head in hands: his frail voice betraying the truth. We all knew times would not get better.

The anguish of parting; the sorrow; and the tears rent the air all over Stroudwater. The day we departed was the worst. It wasn’t a retinue, more of a spread-eagle: the crying lasted all day. Some, through the benevolence of the clergy, had assistance to travel the turnpikes. Some took their goods and chattels down to the canal, thence to Gloucester, Sharpness and Bristol. We all arrived at staggered times at the docks.

August 13th 1839

All has been a hustle and bustle and a division into messes and berths. We have a ‘captain’ for the mess who ensures the table is laid and thoroughly cleansed after meals. Our berths are but 6 feet long, 3 feet wide and 1 foot 8 inches below the roof. We sank down with a mixture of heavy heart and elation tonight after waving goodbye to old England’s shore. We watched the spires of Bristol disappear slowly but ineluctably into the vapours of the day. Some cried; all waved; some waivered and wore regret on their faces. All accepted that there is unlikely to be any return.

August 13th 1839

Something of a storm today and some fellow passengers screamed in alarm as tables, chairs, barrels and emigrant accoutrements began to roll with the motion of the vessel. Many sick; many praying. Some loss of faith and hope on the part of a few. But no loss of charity on the part of the many.

August 18th 1839 Latitude 47.58

A fine day; beds aired; books read; some smoking and just a little toping and gambling. Apart from the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and Wesley’s Sermons, the favoured reading would seem to be Mr. Dickens. I am not alone in keeping a journal.

August 23rd 1839 Latitude 39.45 Longitude 16.37

Our Sunday service needs description. The Godly needed no arousal, but the grog-men needed the bell to summon them to the Quarter Deck. The beauty of the occasion: the Captain reading the service as the ship’s sails caught the wind: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ Other denominations gathered below decks later in the day for their discourse and prayers, less disturbed by the bleating of sheep and the cackle of hens, perhaps. The Irish had their own devotion.

August 26th 1839 Latitude 32.28 Longitude 16.45

The silhouettes and shadows of life on board can enchant .A cascade of water from a bucket as fellow emigrants cleanse; the Captain taking the noon-time with quadrant or sextant. There was a concert today, followed by theatricals and a dance.

September 2nd 1839 Latitude 24.48 Longitude 18.42

Still an unwelcome degree of sickness, ague and complaints of the bowel. The water is foetid, the beef objectionable and the potatoes deceiving. Tea and coffee disappoint in equal measure, although the coffee is just slightly less vile to the taste. Peas and rice and soup are best. Otherwise the amount of salt in the meat causes such a thirst and the water is, of course, unreliable.

September 4th 1839 Latitude 23.21 Longitude 16.45

Nearing the Tropic of Cancer – calm sea – extremely hot – porpoises in abundance -. I could not say with any veracity, as an exemplar, that Horsley folk are cleaner in their habits than Bisley, or Wesleyans cleaner than other Dissenters. There is great variability in attention to washing, scrubbing and scraping both of selves and berths. The same variation applies to both males and females, adults and children, married and singleton. The Irish have been of the finest company, fastidious in their cleanliness and circumspect in their worship. Fellow emigrants from the North and other parts of the kingdom have been mostly polite and gregarious. We number some 239 passengers, I think. About the half comprise emigrants from Stroudwater. The demise of the cloth trade being the cause.

September 11th 1839 Latitude 14.48 Longitude 22.30

Calm seas – flying fish – becalmed: ‘As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean’ – wind then up – seven or eight knots and good progress – but then a thunderous storm – consternation – but with the lightning came torrents of rain – all on deck with every receptacle that could be found – truly the case that empty vessels make most noise – but what a welcome and laudable noise – fresh water!

September 14th 1839 Latitude 6.5 Longitude 22.30

I am pleased to say that the schooling of the children has improved. There has also been less drinking and gambling. The advance towards the equator appears to have freshened rather than dulled the appetite for self-improvement amongst my fellow emigrants. Attendance and participation in service on the Sabbath is for the better for too: a marked improvement in the singing of the hymns. As our foods and preservatives deteriorate, so our capacity for moral and spiritual advancement strengthens.

September 19th 1839 Latitude 0.38 Longitude 26.45

And so we cross ‘The Line’, that tribute to the mathematical knowledge and imagination of humanity, a girdle etched across God’s creation. The equator was toasted with water by some, porter by others and grog by fewer. The sea is radiant silver in the day. The water closets are disgusting. You are about one hour and a half of the clock ahead of us back in Horsley. I wonder what you are doing now, dear mother, father and grandfather? I have taken to walking the deck at night to find some solitude to think of you. I like to gaze at the moon and wonder if you too, stare at the moon, thinking of me.

October 7th 1839 Latitude 29.2 Longitude 24.0

It is a remarkable sight: the beasts of a Cotswold farm on board the deck of a heaving vessel, and beyond, the occasional glimpse of shark, sperm whales and dolphin. It is a scene of unsurpassable incongruity.

We have had a death, and burial at sea. The sonorous tolling of the bell, the emigrants and crew all clad in their best apparel, the complete attendance at the service … the tiny corpse was placed in a canvas shroud, the Captain read the burial service … and the body slid into the depths and vastness of the deep. The sombre and majestic setting affected all greatly for some days.

October 21st 1839 Latitude 38.5 Longitude 0.0

The weather balmy, the sea calm, the winds light but favourable, as we heave to the East and away from dear old England’s chronometry – God speed! I have become good friends with two brothers from Stroudwater, Thomas and George Luker. They saw me writing my journal and have asked if I might help them improve their writing, orthography and reading. They are willing pupils: keen and down to earth, although lacking a little poetry in their souls perhaps. But that is more than compensated for by their utter and complete faith in the Lord – their devotion takes them far away from the mundane affairs of this world.

October 30th 1839 Latitude 41.37 Longitude 26.10

There has been another burial but a birth, too. Just as the winds arose to fill our sails, so an infant cry announced a new birth: The word of God, the breath of God, Divine Inspiration.

November 3rd 1839 Latitude 44.12 Longitude 40.35

High seas last night: cries of lamentation and consternation and profuse biliousness in consequence. The smell in the berths is far beyond that of the most noisome of pits or privies in the village of my youth. But it is a tribute to the honesty of my fellow emigrants that even though domestic utensils flew hither and thither last night with the pitching and rolling, not one soul felt anything lacking this morning when calmness returned to sea and sky.

November 10th 1839 Latitude 39.46 Longitude 74.56

George and Thomas continue to improve. Favourable winds have meant a rapid transit across the ocean over the past week. The decks have been busy with emigrants gathering to witness the birds of the air, the likes of which have never been witnessed in a Cotswold valley. Some Horsley poachers talked of downing an albatross, but a few words from me from Mr Coleridge dampened their ardour.

November 15th 1839 Latitude 39.10 Longitude 105.1/2

The Captain calculates that we may have a fortnight only before we reach harbour. Two weeks only before fresh water! And a change from the tedious uniformity of our repasts: Beef pudding; Pork and Pea Soup; Beef and Rice. Could the workhouse be worse? But just as the mercury rises in the barometer so do our spirits too. A second shark caught today.

November 20th 1839 Latitude 39.18 Longitude121.1/2

An excellent breeze and our larboard bow flies through the briny! Discussed a position of employment with George and Thomas last night. It is a paradox, I said, that I want the voyage to end, but yet, somehow, it has been like a Jubilee, or a suspension of time and from care. But shortly, the vicissitudes of Life will once more be our burden.

November 22nd 1839 Latitude 39.13 Longitude 126.00

Perhaps only four days before we taste fresh cheese again; drink tea and coffee without immediate regret; take unsullied sugar; eat bacon and ham un-tinged with green. A stalwart eight knots at times, today.

November 25th 1839 Latitude 39.1 Longitude 135

The anchor chains are being made ready. And like an anchor, my journal must shortly come to rest. Tis time to provide a register of births and deaths on this voyage: Anne Gazard of Horsley died at sea, 14 months. Edwin Griffiths, died at sea, 7 months. Tristran Carpenter, died at sea, 2 months. Sarah Derrett, wife of John, died at sea. Isabella Derrett, child, died at sea. Three gleams of light only: Orestes Trantor of the Nailsworth Trantor family, born at sea and two other infants, but I do not know their names.

November 27th 1839

I was staring at shoals of fish sparkling like rainbows when I heard that dramatic cry” ‘Land Ahead!’ I turned to see William and Anne Gazard, gazing out behind, no doubt thinking of infant Anne. I wished them well in their new endeavours. We shed both tears of joy and despair.

November 28th 1839

We have dropped anchor. I have husbanded my clothing well – and I must now attend to how I present myself on shore in my new surrounds. No need for canvas trousers and jacket again, I hope! I shall shortly bid my farewells to Stroudwater friends, old and new: Horsley families as well as new friends from Avening, Nailsworth, Randwick and Stroud. And, of course, dear Ann … I hope the brothers Luker can assist me – they have a position at a Sydney mill; the master is a Pitchcombe man.

We shall see.

I hope to recommence my journal when on shore, but tis time to pack now and secure it well.
Jack Reece once of Bisley, Gloucestershire, England, November 28th 1839.

The following extracts from the following letters are included thanks to the generosity of John Loosley
Letters written by THOMAS and GEORGE LUKER who emigrated in 1839 to Sydney, Australia.
The original spelling and capitation being maintained throughout.

Sydney, December 29, 1839

Dear friends we take the first opertunaty of writing to you hoping to find you all in good health and prosperity as it Leaves us at present we should have wrote before but there was no ship to sail we are happy to inform you of our safe arrival at our jurneys end after a very pleasant voyage we came to arbour Nov.28 we came ashore December 2 where there was plenty of masters waiting for us to go up the Cuntry but we are both at work at the Albion Steem Mill Sydney Hudges and Hoskings are propriators but our masters name is fowles he is a very good master he lived at pitcho comb 3 years ago … there was nothing particklar to write about the Voyage there was 2 Sharks Cought and 4 Porpercoes and several flying fish and a good many sea fowles … we crost the line 19 of September … there was 7 men hanged the day we came ashore and ever so many since for bush rangin but they are come down … meet is very cheap here you can go to a shop and have a pound cut of any part for 31/2d.pr. pound … wed desired to be remembered to all relations and friends … tell them we don’t repent coming … You may expect a few news papers in a few weeks but we could not get any not yet if you write to us direct to F. & G. Luker – Albion Mills Sussex Street Sydney to be left with Mr. fowles for us but we should rather you did not until you hear from us again we are not certain of stoping you may expect to hear from us in 2 monthes are less … do not persuade any Person to come because we are come but Any body might do better hear than in England if they would keep from the grog shop, woman earn 5s. a day and the very commonist of Labourers 26s. pr. Week some part of the people hear was transported to this part do now live independent and they might all save mony … so adue we have no more to say Though we are seprated now and far from one another yet we shall allways think on you our Dear and tender Mother your most afectshinate son

THOMAS LUKER

GEORGE LUKER

We Paid the Post to London

Sidney, April 9, 1841, in Answer to your kind letter Dear sister Mary

Dear friends one & all wee write to you & sincerely hope & pray that life & health & piece is now with you all for wee are far away although wee are seperated now & far from one another yet wee do offtimes think of you our dear & tender friends and Mother. Dear Sister it gave us much pleasure in reading your kind letter wee humbly pray that the Lord will grant that your advice may be a token of love & respect as long as wee live & and a happy releace for us in death it is our humble prayers that the Lord will reward you & prosper you in this world that when you are called upon to depart this vain World you may be ready to answer wee hope that you will all make sure your way that you will steatfastly follow the strait & narrow path never to bear or follow the vain pleasure of this World do never slight the Glory of God for the sake of all the treasures this World can produce that to day is & tomorrow is cut down & fadeth away … there have been thousands of Emegrates arrived here within a few weeks so that all the places is filled very fast but there is plenty of room for thousands more wee are both doing very well wee are more got to the ways of the place then wee was the first year wee have got several good friends because of our being steady genteelmen & tradesmen …

please to send back how you are all doing how you are getting on in this world … all though wee are far from you wee will gladly help you at anytime … please to send word if ever you think of coming here send word if you should be willing for us to be married here as there is every prospect of a fine flourishing trade here if no one else think of coming let William & John come it would be the making of their fortune … if wee was to get married here wee should never think to leave the coloney of New Southwales but if not wee might come home again in a few years let us know if you think that wee should be able to get a living in a honest way at home as we should rather be with you because if not most likely we shall get married & settled here we are like Mariners now we dot know one year what part of the world wee shall be the next we want to get settled either here or to see a prospect of coming home again we shall soon save money enough to bring us back if we here that wee should be able to get a good living at home if you have not any thought of coming & you think that wee should be able to get in to work so as to live respectable …

Sydney, January 1, 1842

My dear friends I write these few lines hoping it will find you in good health as it leaves us both at present but farther hope that you are living under the banner of faith wrestling with God preparing to follow dear Mary I could not say poor Mary she is not poor but rich in deed I receaved your letter that brought the tidings of her death on Monday the 19th of december just as I came back from dinner I was not able to work any more that day so I went to inform George about it of the news that was come it took a great affect of me I did not sleep but little that night after all the people was gone to bed in the house I got up to praise the Lord for his loving kindness toward dear sister for me to say that I was sorry of her death I could not although I shed many a tear but when I come to consider the wisdom of the Lord in taking her it brought joy and gladness to my Soul … i hope you will not moun for her dear mother but rather praise the Lord that you should train up a daughter that shall to open the door of heaven for you to enter in … the trade is very dull all through the country in every part there is people out og imploy in Sydney there is hundreds out of work of every trade the wages is comeing very fast men that 15 mionths ago would hardly like to work for 2 pound per Week are glad to get 25 shilings now .. this place will be almost as bad as England soon some time ago the Peoples talk was the times will get better but they get worse every month … I was talking to Mr. Capell that came from the grove near Stroud a few days ago …

Sydney, February 1842

‘Dear Father & Mother Brothers and Sisters i now write these few lines to you in answer to two letters one that Mary wrote June 26 wee rceaved January 10 one wrote Agust 15 reced. January 25 please to let us know who wrote this Samuels name was put to it but it was not his writing it was the worst that I ever saw both for writing and mistakes … I am living with David Beard that married Elizabeth Blanch they are both very well i pay 16s. per week and find my own bed and everything else except what i eat i am in a very good place at the tin plate work i earn nearly 2 pound a week but i work till 9o’clock nights except Saturday George is in a good place at a thrd. mill living with his Master he is earning 1 pound and Board and Lodging. We ask you if you was willing for us to be married your answer was that you should have no objection but you ask for a wedding ribond it was not that we had any idea of being married whatever we shall stay a good while longer yat so you may expect a batchlors ribond I cannot tell what may come to pass but i do not think in the least thought that either of us should be married in the country if so our wives are not here yet if all be well i live in hopes to see you again someday …

Sydney, August 12/ 1842

Dear Father & Mother Sisters & Brothers with our kindest of love and well wishes far more than my pen can express we write these few lines to you hoping it will find you all in good health and prosperity as it leaves us both at Presant we should have wrote before but we have not heard from you for six months Past so wee have been stoping week after week expecting to hear from you … we was never so long without hearing from you befor since wee received the first letter and wee was anchious to know something … I have got a very good master But I cannot say how long I might stop there as there have been several men offering to work for less wages than I am getting some of them ten shillings a week less … George & a youngman that came out with us from Randwick his name Ruben Beard they too are doing business for their selves they have got a windmill about two miles out the town they have been there about three months … I let them have all the money I had to help them to begin …

Samuel dear brother as I know you was always a person for a sprack & lively life wanting to see the world let me tell you if you was in Sydney you would soon see more than ever you saw in all your life in the first place is one of the finest Arbours in the World Vessels from all parts … ports with very large cannons plenty always ready for an enemy with about from five to seven hundred soldiers always ready the next here is about one hundred and fifty constables always walking the streets day & night then there is the government men by troops some cleaning the streets some diging stones some with the irons on their legs …

Sydney, March 25, 1843

… I could not tell what I would give to see you once more but the Lord’s will be done if the times get much worse I shall come home will I can if I was to stop here to long praps I might not be able to come to think of making a fortune is all out of my thoughts wee have both a few pounds enough to bring as home respectable by the time wee got there we should have but little I have not saved any thing lately … George & is partner is doing very well considering the times are so bad David Beard is at work for them they are living in the house with George they are well desire to be remembered to henry Blanch and all relations …

Valparaiso, December 29, 1843

Dear Mother Sisters & Brothers I received Yor Letter dated October 30 yesterday and was happy to hear that you was all well and that you received the twenty Pounds I sent you – but I have to tell you some bad news my Wife is dead … I had the best doctors advice that is in Chille but it was no good … there is John 41/2 years old Nimrod two years and two months George 7 Weeks …. My Wife was very respectable … she is buried in a Vault that will hold all my family it lost all together about 2 hundred dollars but thank god I am doing a Good business I Got 5 men and two Boys with plenty to do …

Valparaiso, September 30, 1861

Callebachrane 105 My Dear Grand Mother, Uncles, Aunts & Cousins, We received your kind letter, dated June 6, a few days ago and was glad to hear that you was pretty well … I am quite well, 7 my father but he sometimes feels Poorly about that Crack on his head he was mad for sometime, but he is much better now, we lost nothing by the earthquake …

From your grandson Father will fill it up

JOHN T. LUKER

and tell you more about things.

Dear Mother.

… i whould be very glad at any time to see any of the news dear John Land although I never saw you my prayers is that Almighty God may bless you for your kindness to my poor old Mother and Sister Ester tell them that my best respects to all of them but i do not think it possible for me to run away from church to go down to Framlords passage to see the tide come up are to lose my way on the Westeguth to see the ships when mother took us to Gloster to see uncle Sam …

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Bartolome De Las Casas

I came across this book again after a gap of a fifty years after reading The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. She recommended three books in The Guardian, one of which was A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome De Las Casas. She described the book thus:

The book that changed my mind
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Bartolomé de las Casas. ‘If you want to know anything about the Caribbean, start here. It’s written by a Spanish priest who sought to spread Christianity to the natives. This is an account of the hideous crimes and barbarism he witnessed perpetrated by the Spanish on the indigenous Taino people. A horrifying account and yes, a game changer; witness testimony of how a region was Christianised. Should be compulsory reading.’

Here are a few horrifying selections chosen by me.
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolome De Las Casas
(Priestly Eye Witness Accounts)
PROLOGUE

‘ … atrocities which go under the name of “conquests”: excesses which, if no move is made to stop them, will be committed time and again, and which (given that the indigenous peoples of the region are naturally so docile) are of themselves iniquitous, tyrannical, contrary to natural, canon, and civil law, and are deemed wicked and are condemned and proscribed by all such legal codes. I therefore concluded that it would be a criminal neglect of my duty to remain silent about the enormous loss of life as well as the infinite number of human souls despatched to Hell in the course of such “conquests”, and so resolved to publish an account of a few such outrages (and they can only be a few out of the countless number of such incidents that I could relate) …’

PREFACE

‘It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold, or like tigers and savage lions who have not eaten meat for days. The pattern established at the outset has remained unchanged to this day, and the Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress, tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly. We shall in due course describe some of the many ingenious methods of torture they have invented and refined for this purpose … ‘

‘There are two ways in which those who have travelled to this part of the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth. First, they have waged war on them: unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. Second, they have murdered anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance, or even of wishing to escape the torment to which they have subjected him. This latter policy has been instrumental in suppressing the native leaders, and, indeed, given that the Spaniards normally spare only women and children, it has led to the annihilation of all adult males, whom they habitually subject to the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals. All the many and infinitely varied ways that have been devised for oppressing these peoples can be seen to flow from one or other of these two diabolical and tyrannical policies.’

‘The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed. They have set out to line their pockets with gold and to amass private fortunes as quickly as possible …’

HISPANIOLA

‘They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet, and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: “Wriggle, you little perisher.” They slaughtered anyone and everyone in their path, on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords. They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it. Some they chose to keep alive and simply cut their wrists, leaving their hands dangling, saying to them: “Take this letter” – meaning that their sorry condition would act as a warning to those hiding in the hills. The way they normally dealt with native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.

It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures’ howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep. He gave orders that the prisoners were to be throttled, but the man in charge of the execution detail, who was more bloodthirsty than the average hangman … was loath to cut short his private entertainment by throttling them and so he personally went round ramming wooden bungs into their mouths to stop them making such a racket and deliberately stoked the fire so that they would take just as long to die as he himself chose. And, since all those who could do so took to the hills and mountains in order to escape the clutches of these merciless and inhuman butchers, these mortal enemies of human kind trained hunting dogs to track them down – wild dogs, who would savage a native to death as soon as look at him, tearing him to shreds and devouring his flesh as though he were a pig.’

THE KINGDOMS OF HISPANIOLA

‘All I can say is that I know it to be an incontrovertible fact and do here so swear before Almighty God, that the local peoples never gave the Spanish any cause whatsoever for the injury and injustice that was done to them in these campaigns. On the contrary, they behaved as honourably as might the inmates of a well-run monastery, and for this they were robbed and massacred, and even those who escaped death on this occasion found themselves condemned to a lifetime of captivity and slavery.’

CUBA

‘In 1511 the Spanish set foot on Cuba …home to a great many people. The Spanish set about treating them all in the manner we have already described, only more cruelly … One of the leading lords … had fled to the island from Hispaniola … he gathered most if not all his people about him, and addressed them, saying: ”You know that rumour has it that the Christians are coming to this island, and you already know what they have done … Does any of you know why they behave in this way?” And when they answered him: “No, unless it be that they are innately cruel and evil”, he replied: “It is not simply that. They have a God whom they worship and adore, and it is in order to get that God from us so that they can worship Him that they conquer and kill us.” He had beside him, as he spoke, a basket filled with gold jewellery and he said: “Here is the God of the Christians …”

It was later decided to hunt down the natives who had fled into the mountains, and the subsequent hunting parties were responsible for carnage beyond belief. Thus it was that the whole of the island was devastated and depopulated, and it now affords, as we discovered on a recent visit, a moving and heart-rending spectacle, transformed, as it has been, into one vast, barren wasteland.’

THE MAINLAND

‘ … in the early hours of the morning, when the poor people were still innocently abed with their wives and children, they would irrupt into the town, setting fire to their houses, which were commonly of straw, burning women and children alive and often the men, too, before the poor wretches realised what was happening. They would slaughter the people with impunity and those they took alive they either tortured to death in an attempt to get them to tell of other towns where there might be gold or the whereabouts of more gold in their own town, or else they branded them as slaves. Once the fires had died down or gone out, they conducted a house-to-house search for gold.’

At first glance, any connection between Kings Stanley,
Near the Cotswold mill town of Stroud,
And Jesse James of Wild West infamy,
Would seem improbable, to say the least;
But I was told by Ade Blair
(with comments from Otto Didakt),
That Jesse James’ great-grandfather,
William James, was born in Kings Stanley in 1754,
‘And is buried in St George’s churchyard’,
Dying in 1805, the year of Trafalgar.

Seems improbable, it’s true,
For here we are in landlocked locked down Stroud,
A long way from the Atlantic Ocean,
And the ‘Wild Missouri’,
And yet …
Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line,
Was born just down the River Frome in Sapperton;
An American historian believes that Edward Thache,
Aka ‘Blackbeard’, the notorious pirate,
Was born in Stonehouse;
The eighteenth century was an age
Of martial and maritime and slaving expansion,
Press gangs and ships’ crews,
And a busy River Severn just down the River Frome …
Stroud Scarlet cloth went all over the world,
The East India Company,
Traded with the Iroquois,
‘Strouds’ were traded deep within First Nation lands,
Way out west beyond the Missouri river;
Redcoats were out there, of course,
before and during the American Revolution
(Or American War of Independence as we were taught);
Bristol, the eighteenth century foremost slaving port,
Was just down the road and river;
The Atlantic Archipelago
Saw many migrants go west and saw some return –
So, it seemed quite conceivable, initially,
That William James went to America,
Only to return to die in Kings Stanley in 1805,
Having left a family way out west …

And it seemed quite conceivable that he would want to emigrate:
America: beacon of freedom;
America: land of opportunity;
The West Country:
Economic hardship …
Food riots;
Anonymous threatening letters;
Luddism before the Luddites;
Emigration;
Transportation …

But before we speculate further,
On motives and consequences,
A bit more on the dialogue between Adie and Otto:
William James ‘lived in, and is buried in Kings Stanley’;
‘Is there a headstone?’
‘As far as I know there is but I haven’t been to see it myself.
He’s buried in St George’s churchyard.’
‘I heard the story from a couple of friends, on the same day this week.
It’s mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on Kings Stanley.
Also, on Wikipedia it says that William James moved to
Goochland County, Virginia, in the late eighteenth century.
He had a son called John M James (1775-1827)
Whose son, Robert Sallee James, was born in Logan County,
Kentucky, on July 17th 1818,
And was Jesse and Frank’s father.
It also says that William moved to the USA from Pembrokeshire
So how he ended up in Kings Stanley remains a mystery.’

I was captivated and joined the discussion:
Did he emigrate from Pembroke via Ireland?
Did he have connections with Bristol and the triangular trade?
Slaves, cotton, rum, sugar, tobacco, textiles?
What was his social status?
Merchant or artisan or labourer?

Ade’s thoughts were as follows, in May 2020:
‘Or the Pembrokeshire information was a mistake.
A little voice tells me that he was somehow involved
With the whole slaves, tobacco thing …’

I decided to walk to Kings Stanley along the canal,
To have a recce of the churchyard,
What would the headstone signify?
Merchant or artisan or labourer?
There was spring in my step:
I pictured William having a last tankard in the King’s Head,
Before sailing the next morning, sometime in 1774;

But before I talk of that,
Here’s a bit of context about Stroud and the Five Valleys,
Back in the late eighteenth century –
What was William leaving behind?
Here’s Adrian Randall in his seminal study of our area:
‘Resistance to machinery was multiform …
Peaceful petitioning, appeals to the courts …
Negotiations … strike action, intimidation and riot’;
‘Just as food riots reveal order, discrimination and a clear moral economy,
So do community-based riots against the jenny and the scribbling machine’;

A few miles up the road from Kings Stanley,
In the village of Uley, this letter was penned in 1795:
‘No King but a constitution down down down
A fatall dow high caps and proud hats
For ever dow down we all’;
Sir George Paul observed:
‘The cry of want of bread … forms a body of insurgents,
Amongst them are mixed a number of seditious persons’;

The Earl of Berkeley observed:
‘A vein of bad materials runs through the lower orders
In the clothing part of the county which still continues
To study Tom Paine with a few political clubs
and of the very dregs of Tom Paine’s cash’;

I arrived at St George’s in early June;
A welcoming information board proclaimed:
‘What are You Looking For?
Come and See!
John 1 38-9’;
But it was impossible to find William James’ headstone:
A needle in a haystack in a churchyard:
Too many grand monuments and headstones had mouldered away,
The soft ooilitc limestone no match for rainswept cumulus;
Inscriptions now indecipherable,
Lichen glowing in the hot June sun,
And no William James headstone in the 1805 area.

Not despondent,
This might just mean he was not of merchant stock, I thought;
Times were hard round here with food riots:
‘On Friday last a Mobb was rais’d in these parts by the blowing of Horns
& consisting entirely of the lowest of the people such as weavers, mechanicks,
Labourers, prentices and boys &c’;
That’s what led him to leave, I thought.

I sat down on a bench and googled John 1 38-9:
‘Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked,
“What do you want? …
Come … and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him.
It was about four in the afternoon.’
Well, in fact, it was mid-day,
And friends joined me for a physically distanced chat:
Becky Thomas told me that some of the Wikipedia entry
Had been deleted:
William James was no longer buried in St George’s churchyard.

Becky wondered if he had been a Baptist …
I had read that Jesse James’ father had been a Baptist minister …
There had been a thriving Baptist church in the village …
Zak led us up past the King’s Head –
If William James was a Baptist
would he have had that tankard before emigrating?
We wandered footpaths over streams to the church;
The churchyard was overgrown.
An enjoyable meander but mission impossible.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
Asked the man who lived next door to the church;
I explained my quest,
Talked about his grandfather’s World War One diaries,
And then made for home,
Reflecting that I was on the track of a bushwhacker,
A Confederate White Supremacist,
In the wake of the death of George Floyd,
Here in the south-west of England,
Home to so many slave-owners and beneficiaries from compensation;
Kings Stanley and the USA were now seeming more conjoined …

Particularly when I discovered that William James
Emigrated in 1774 – one year before the start of war.

Was he a democrat and a free thinker?
Did he know that war was brewing?
Within a year, Stroud Scarlet redcoats
would be fighting in his new homeland,
Against his new countrymen and women;
How did he deal with that dissonance?

I had to pop up to the Crown & Sceptre,
When I got back to Stroud for some groceries,
And mentioned my Jesse James quest to Rodda:
‘I’ve been to his home,’ he said …
In the evening I went on Ancestry.com,
Carried out a bit of triangulation,
To feel contented with this assertion:

William James b 1754 Kings Stanley m Mary Hines 1774
Hanover, Goochland, Virginia
(Mary Hines b 1755 Hanover)
Willam d 1805 Lickinghole Creek, Goochland Co, Virginia
Mary d 1805 Lickinghole Creek, Goochland Co, Virginia

The son to watch of their progeny:
Rev John Martin James b 1774 Hanover
d 1827 Clay County, Missouri

The son to watch of his progeny:
Robert Sallee James b 1818 Whipporwill Creek, Logan, Kentucky
d 1850 California

Father of Jesse Woodson James b 1847
d Kearney, Clay County, Missouri 1882

So, now we know why I couldn’t find
William James’ headstone in Kings Stanley.
He never came back.

It seemed as though William and Mary died on the same day,
I wondered what Lickinghole Creek was like;
An artisanal brewery over there replied:
Hello Stuart,

I am sorry that we cannot be of much help. We are named after the creek that runs through our property. You can learn more about our where we developed our name on our website: https://www.lickingholecreek.com/about and https://www.lickingholecreek.com/brand.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks,

I wrote to Hanover Local History Society,
But no reply, and life is so busy …
So, Wikipedia it had to be:

Goochland originally included all of the land from Tuckahoe Creek, on both sides of the James River, west as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains.[1]

The county was named for Sir William Gooch, 1st Baronet,[7] the royal lieutenant governor from 1727 to 1749. The nominal governor, the Earl of Albemarle, had remained in England. As acting royal governor, Gooch promoted settlement of the Virginia backcountry as a means to insulate the Virginia colony from Native American and New France settlements in the Ohio Country.[8]

As the colonists moved into the Piedmont west of Richmond, they first developed tobacco plantations like those of the Tidewater. After the Revolution, tobacco did not yield as high profits as markets changed. In Goochland, as in other areas of Virginia, many planters switched to growing wheat and mixed crops. This reduced their need for labor. In the early nineteenth century, some planters sold slaves in the domestic slave trade, as demand was high in the developing Deep South where cotton plantations were developed.
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.[9]

Revolutionary War[edit]

During the early part of 1781, Lord Cornwallis marched his sizable army through the boundaries of Goochland. They occupied and thoroughly destroyed Elkhill, a small estate of Thomas Jefferson, slaughtering the livestock for food, burning barns and fences, and finally burning down the house. They took 27 slaves as prisoners of war, and 24 died of disease in the camp.[10]

HANOVER

In 1774 Hanover citizens assembled at the Courthouse and adopted the “Hanover Resolutions”, stating that “we will never be taxed but by our representatives.” These resolutions became an early flashpoint in the American Revolution.

Well, that seemed to suggest that land attracted William James,
And it also seemed to suggest that the area was for Independence,
And also, that William would have seen Stroud Scarlet redcoats
In action in the area of his new homestead;
I talked this over with Jon Seagrave
In Kings Stanley churchyard,
The links between this village and Jesse James,
A Confederate bushwhacker,
Days after the killing of George Floyd,
Days before a BLM artwork,
At Sainsburys roundabout
Would be scrawled over with KKK;
I read this piece from Afua Hirsch to Jon:
‘The British government could have had the humility to use this moment to acknowledge Britain’s experiences. It could have discussed how Britain helped invent anti-black racism, how today’s US traces its racist heritage to British colonies in America.’

It was sort of serendipitously appropriate, wasn’t it?
The next day, I started on a biography:
Jesse James Last Rebel of the Civil War
Written by T.J. Stiles,
And according to my interpretation of my notes:
A self-styled Robin Hood,
With a penchant for performative robbery and violence,
A murderous, robbing thug,
A racist Confederate bushwhacker and nightrider,
Who sported KKK vestments on occasions;

His father, a Baptist preacher,
His mother, Zerelda, independent and resolute,
Both hailing from Kentucky,
Before moving to Clay County, Missouri,
Where Robert Sallee James was a preacher:
‘His manner of speaking was sublime’,
While his ‘exhortations were inimitable’,
Was the view of a Clay County resident;
But he kept slaves, despite his Christianity,
And rejected abolition;
Frank was born in 1843,
Jesse in 1847;
Robert Salle James died in California in 1850,
A victim of the California Gold Rush,
Having written to Zerelda, en route:
‘Train up your children in the … admonition of the Lord …
Kiss Jesse for me and tell Frank to be a good boy and learn fast’.

Zerelda would marry again, twice,
But she was more than capable of running any show herself,
She could run the farm, boss the slaves,
Stand tall for the Confederacy,
When Frank went off to war,
Later joined by Jesse as a bushwhacker at the age of 16,
Where his first guerrilla action was reported thus:
‘Men were slain before the eyes of their wives and children’,
These were civilians who supported the Union;
Later they would scalp Union soldiers,
In a ‘carnival of blood’,
With scalps tied to their saddles as trophies.

But that didn’t stop Jesse joining the Southern Baptist Church,
After the Civil War ended –
It was a fiercely secessionist, anti-abolitionist church,
In Clay County, Missouri –
Before turning his hands to bank robberies,
Subverting Reconstruction,
Intimidating northern carpetbaggers;

But as the price on his head grew,
So, he was mythologised by John Newman Edwards:
‘There is always a smile on his lips, and a graceful word
or compliment for all with whom he comes into contact’;
And as editor of the Kansas City Times,
Newman collaborated with James:
‘As soon as I can get a just trial, I will surrender myself’;
‘It is true that during the war I was a Confederate soldier,
And fought under the black flag but since then I have lived a peacable citizen’;

But, sure as night follows day,
So, bank robberies followed this 1870 declaration,
But that didn’t stop Edwards, with an editorial:
‘The Chivalry of Crime’,
With an Arthurian round table allegory;
While James began to see himself as a Robin Hood figure,
With the false claim that ‘we rob the rich to give to the poor’,
Forgetting that he also said:
‘There is no use for a man to try to do anything when an experienced robber gets the go on him, if he gives the alarm, or resists,
or refuses to unlock, he gets killed’;
And on the railroads:
‘If you don’t open the safe or give me the key,
I’ll blow your brains out’.

Once he lost Edwards’ patronage,
The spelling and grammar deteriorated;
But James married; became a father;
And the days of the railroad revolution
Were leaving the days of the Confederate guerrilla behind,
So, by the late 1870s, even erstwhile admirers
Would be inclined to see James as nothing but a robber;
Kansas City Times 1881:
‘They continued the war after the war ended … But as time passed on the war, even to them, was a thing of the past …
they … became the outlaws they now are.’
While as for his enemies …
‘I consider Jesse James the worst man, without exception, in America.
He is utterly devoid of fear, and has no more compunction about cold blooded murder than he has about eating his breakfast.’
(Robert A. Pinkerton Richmond Democrat 1879)

In consequence, the reward on his head,
and brother Frank’s
Climbed to $10,000 each.
It had once been $300.
Old comrade, Charley Ford, decided the time was right:
‘My brother and I made up to kill him …
I would not try it when he had his arms on.’
Bob Ford:
‘We waited a long time to catch Jesse without his revolvers’;

But in early April, 1882, Jesse James found the day so hot,
He took off his coat and vest and gun belt and revolvers …
And that was the end of Jesse James,
Although not the end of the mythology:
Some have claimed, said Ade Blair,
That Jesse James fabricated his death,
And lived to the ripe old age of 101,
A quiet and forgotten Texan centenarian,
Living into the Cold War atomic age.

Seems improbable doesn’t it?

No.

Impossible, more like.

Surely.

Post-script:
Jesse and Frank James, The Family History Phillip W. Steele
‘William James, believed to have been born in 1754 in Pembrokeshire, Wales, came to America with his family at an early age, originally settling lands in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He later moved to Virginia where he settled near Lickinghole Creek in Goochland County. Records also indicate that William also owned land in nearby Fluvanna and Louisa counties. It was there he married, on July 15th 1774, to Mary Hines, who was English-born … the ceremony in Hanover County.’
‘The lineage of Jesse and Frank continues with John and Polly Poor James, paternal grandparents of the famous brothers …John and Polly … settled lands in Logan County, Kentucky, alongside Whippoorwill Creek’. John James was a minister and the fifth child, Jesse James’ father, was born on July 17th 1818. Robert Sallee James’ unusual middle name ‘was given him in honour of a Baptist minister from Kentucky, Rev. Sallee, whom his parents admired’.

Two conclusions I draw from this:
1. A genealogical trawl for William James might well bring forth quite a few infants named William James in Pembrokeshire in the mid eighteenth century. Is that what happened with the above family history? Which conclusion do we jump to? Kings Stanley or Pembrokeshire?
2. The strong Baptist that runs through the James generations is interesting. There was a thriving Baptist church in Kings Stanley. So, do we plump for Kings Stanley?

Right. That’s it. I’ve had enough of Jesse James now. I leave the story to more empirically minded historians. Perhaps this piece will stimulate some further research into the presumed Kings Stanley connection. William James: Kings Stanley or Pembroke?

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

I live in Stroud,
Home of the arch commemorating the abolition of slavery,
An arch from 1834,
Standing near a comprehensive school,
By a busy main road to Gloucester;

We are rightly and justly proud of this in Stroud –
But, of course, quite a few owners of enslaved peoples
Lived around this town,
Not to mention Gloucester, Cheltenham,
Bath, Bristol and the rural south-west.

Slave owners received the equivalent in today’s values,
Of £17 billion;
Fully forty per cent of GDP in 1834;
Taxpayers only stopped paying the interest on this
In David Cameron’s premiership in 2015
(His family benefitted btw);

A great deal of this ‘compensation’
Went into railway investment and development
In the 1830s and 1840s:
The Gladstone family in the north, for example …
And, nearer to home,
Bristol merchants in the GWR,
Samuel Baker at Lypiatt, near Stroud,

I could go on and on and on …

But what is chastening to reflect upon, I think,
Is the Keynsian multiplier effect …
The consequential impact in a series of links and chains,
Tendrils and tentacles,
And Victorian Venn diagrams
Upon our ancestors …

How many of our families
ended up working on the revered railways
Or ran the homes and kitchen
Because of that initial injection of capital?
It’s a sobering thought,
As we reflect upon those tentacles
And tendrils of racial capitalism.

Before I move on:
Out of the £695,000 raised by subscription for the construction of the railway from Swindon through Stroud to Cheltenham, £212,000 came from the spa town of Cheltenham, home to so many eneficiaries from the abolition of slavery.

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:
Lines of steel stretch to vanishing point,
Where pale-skinned navvies with pick and shovel,
Work their way through the nineteenth century.

But wait until the steam clouds dissipate,
See how that express train changes shape –
A slave ship on the Middle Passage,
Sharks following in its crimson wake.

The station now a sugar plantation,
Manacles and shackles in the waiting room,
Signal gantries now high gallows –
For the bounty paid to slave owners,
When slavery was abolished in 1834,
Helped fuel the Railway Mania;

Like Samuel Baker up at Lypiatt,
Investing in railways in the Forest of Dean,
Or the Gladstone dynasty up in Liverpool,
Or the gentry of Bath and Bristol in the west;
Or, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire.

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:
Lines of steal stretch to revelation point:
A colonial landscape all along the line,
That is how the railway lies.

Rodborough and Jamaica, 1840:
Reimagining Peter Hawker

There are several strands and a good few facts
In this tale of Peter Hawker and Caroline Stephenson
Of this parish of Rodborough near Stroud.
But how did this tale come about?

Well, I thought I had compiled an accurate list
Of Stroud area residents who gained
So much ‘cankered coin’ from the abolition
Of slavery in the colonies;
I had carefully examined my alma mater
UCL database and thought I had bagged the lot.

But a few years later I came across:
AWARDEE Peter Hawker
Jamaica St Andrew 111 (Liberty Hall Pen) £699 17s 8d [26 enslaved]]
Absentee slave-owner by virtue
of his marriage to Caroline Stephenson
In Rodborough, Gloucestershire, 26/05/1823.
She was heiress of George Stephenson
of Liberty Hall, St Andrew, Jamaica.

I wonder what life was like for George Stephenson?
Well, in the footsteps of W.G. Sebald
And his ‘documentary fiction’,
I let the past speak for itself,
Courtesy of the pages of Jack P. Greene’s erudite tome,
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain …
One 18th century critic asserted that Georges

‘know no Medium in Things; a Man with you must either be either absolutely a Slave, or licentiously free, free from all Restraints of Law.’

Another opponent of enslavement wrote thus:

‘The negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more compleat, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time.’

And another wrote of Georges:

‘Cruel Task-masters … petty tyrants over human freedom … sincere Worshippers of Mammon … civilized violators of humanity …’

And to conclude:

Their days are full ‘of Idleness and Extravagance … habituated by Precept and Example, to Sensuality, Selfishness, and Despotism … at the Expence of the poor Negroes who cultivate their lands.’

But enough of ‘documentary fiction’,
I contacted Stroud Local History Society,
With an email in February 2020:

Hello there,
I’ve just discovered another local recipient of slaver compensation – does anyone know where Peter Hawker might have lived in Rodborough in 1834?

And then, life being what it is,
I forgot all about Mr Peter Hawker,
Until I received an email in May 2021:

‘Hello Stuart

Did you get anywhere with finding out about Peter Hawker?
I have been looking at the Hawker family

Peter Hawker 1797-1840 was a lawyer. He married in 1823 Caroline Stephenson. She died 1830.’

Before I show anymore of the content of the email,
I have to say at a first quick reading
Of these deceptively beguiling lines,
I felt something of a suggestion
Of the Gothic horror genre and novel:
Death, decay, family curse, madness etc.;
Perhaps a curse for ill-gotten gains,
Arising from enslavement compensation;
Perhaps a curse for marrying into such money …
Shades of Jane Eyre after some sort of fashion,
Or Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea,
Or some sort of conjoining of two cultures:
Obeah and the ghost stories of M.R. James …
Or even George Orwell’s Decline of the English Murder:
Domesticity, bourgeois respectability,
Bankruptcy, money … poison …

But I know I shouldn’t think or speak
Or conjure or write ill of the dead;
And so, we banish all these wild flights of fancy,
Engendered by too much midnight reading,
And return to the plain, unvarnished facts
About these eminently respectable people:
Back to the email:
There followed an extract from the

Cheltenham Journal and Gloucestershire Fashionable Weekly Gazette. 22 February 1830:
‘Same day, at Stroud, aged 35, universally esteemed whilst living, and lamented in death, Caroline, the beloved wife of Mr. Peter Hawker, of that place.’

An entry for Trade Directories followed:
Peter Hawker was an attorney
In the High Street in Stroud in 1820/22;

Mr. Hawker had come up in the world by 1830:

‘Hawker & Fryer, Rowcroft, attorneys; clerks to the magistrates and commissioners of taxes for the hundred of Whitstone’;

And even higher nine years later:

‘Hawker & Fryer, King St, attorneys; clerks to the magistrates and commissioners of taxes for the hundred of Whitstone; clerks to Wheetinghurst Union’;

The Gloucestershire Chronicle 26 September 1835
Advertises their services and acumen
In a straightforward manner,
As does the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard
29 September 1838,
About ‘Mr. Friar, of Stroud’;
But then description becomes more tantalising:
‘and his partner, the modern Roscius,
Mr. Peter Hawker’;
Roscius? I had to look that up.
Turns out he was a Roman actor,
And in the early nineteenth century,
It was a popular classical synonym…
But what might the description connote?
Theatricality? Dissimulation? Pretence?
Whatever.

Just over a year later, we find this:
Gloucestershire Chronicle 11 January 1840:

‘SUDDEN DEATH of Mr. PETER HAWKER. – On Saturday evening, the 4th instant, an inquest was held at the George Hotel, Stroud, before J. G. Ball Esq., coroner, on view of the body of the above gentleman, who was found dead in his bed early that morning, at the home of his father, George Hawker, Esq., of Wallbridge, in this town. It is well known that the deceased had been in a state of mental and bodily debility for many months past. The evidence of a servant who had constantly attended him was to that effect, and also proved that on Friday evening he retired to bed without any apparent alteration to his health, and was found in the morning quite dead in his bed. Mr. Uthwatt, his medical attendant, corroborated the statement with regard to his health, and added that the event was expected by him, knowing that the nature of his complaint was such as to render it extremely probable that his death would occur in the manner it did. Verdict – “Died of apoplexy.”’

The email gave me more facts:

‘His father’s house’ was the ‘Canal HQ Wallbridge’;
‘His father was George Hawker b 1762’,
‘he was a clothier at Fromehall Mill in 1805’,
‘and at Lodgemore Mill 1808,
As tenant in both but was bankrupt in 1808’;
So, ‘George became Clerk (= manager)
Of the Stroudwater Canal and lived
At the headquarters at Walbridge’.

Stroudwater Canal archives: Minutes Tue 21 Jun 1814

Mr George Hawker elected as new Chief Clerk with a salary of £120 per annum free of taxes
‘He died in 1843.’
‘George’s father was Rev Peter Hawker
of Woodchester died 1730.’

I conclude this piece of ‘documentary fiction’,
In the manner of W. G. Sebald,
With a final reference to Mr. Peter Hawker, aka ‘Roscius’,
As we finish our slip down wormholes of time,
With a bit of the Bard:
‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts …’
So, as I said earlier, on a first quick reading
Of the email’s deceptively beguiling lines,
I felt something of a suggestion
Of the Gothic horror genre and novel:
Death, decay, family curse, madness etc.;
Perhaps a curse for ill-gotten gains,
Arising from enslavement compensation;
Perhaps a curse for marrying into such money …
Shades of Jane Eyre after some sort of fashion,
Or Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea,
Or some sort of conjoining of two cultures:
Obeah and the ghost stories of M.R. James …
Or even George Orwell’s Decline of the English Murder:
Domesticity, bourgeois respectability,
Bankruptcy, money … poison …

But I know I shouldn’t think or speak
Or conjure or write ill of the dead,
And so, we banish all these wild flights of fancy,
Engendered by too much midnight reading,
And return to the plain, unvarnished facts
About these eminently respectable people:

Peter Hawker 1797-1840 was a lawyer. He married in 1823 Caroline Stephenson. She died 1830

Thank you for listening. Goodnight.
And remember,

‘There are more things in heaven and earth,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio’.

We all know of the cloth stretched out on tenterhooks
Around Stroud and the five valleys:
Stroud Scarlet, Uley Blue, Berkeley Yellow,
Out there in the newly enclosed fields;
Gate and fence and hedge and notice board,
Where once the land was walked by custom
And ‘Its only bondage was the circling sky’;
Where the high walls of dark satanic mills
Enclose handloom weavers and spinners
In a new bondage of the ticking clock,
As the scarlet and yellow broadcloth
Crosses the Atlantic archipelago,
To reach the Iroquois in their circling sky,
In the so-called Age of Reason
When rationality was equated with private property,
And racial hierarchy with Enlightenment.

Here are two texts to illustrate this linkage
Between Stroud, its valleys, and the Iroquois:
The first from the Iroquois leader, Joseph Brant,
Where he contrasts his homelands with England:

‘We have no law but that written on the heart of every rational creature by … the great Spirit. We have no prisons – we have no pompous parade of courts – we have no robbery under the colour of law … Our sachems, and our warriors eat their own bread, and not the bread of wickedness … The palaces and prisons among you form a most dreadful contrast. Go to the former places, and you will see, perhaps, a most deformed piece of earth swelled with pride … your prisons – here description utterly fails! Liberty to a rational creature, as much exceeds property, as the light of the sun does that of the most twinkling star, but you put them on a level, to the everlasting disgrace of civilization.’

The second is from Uley in Gloucestershire from 1795,
Just eight years before Joseph Brant’s letter above:

‘O remember ye poor in distress by ye high prs of provision if not the consiquens will be fatall to a great many in all parishis round a bout here how do ye think a man can support a famly by a quarter flour for a shillin and here is a man in this parish do say the poore was never beter of as they be now a fatel blow for him and his hous and all his property we have redy 5000 sworn to be true to the last & we have 510000 of ball redy and can have pouder at a word & every think fitin for ye purpose no King but a constitution down down down o fatall dow high caps & proud hats for ever dow down we all.’

The third text to illustrate this linkage
Does not yet exist – it will be the result
Of your thoughts, dear reader,
On the nature of these connections
Between Gloucestershire and the Iroquois;
And your thoughts or writing
On the definition of civilisation;
And on the definition of progress;
And on the definition of freedom;
And on the definition of humanity;
And on the definition of the Anthropocene.
We leave that to you, dear reader;
But why not take a walk down to Walbridge;
Study the information board by the canal bridge;
Picture the Stroud scarlet out there in the fields behind you,
Picture the wars of conquest and of empire,
Picture Stroud scarlet cloth crossing the world,
See it circumscribing the circling sky;
Then gather your thoughts and words in bondage.

Personal Writings Inspired by a Reading of
Red Round Globe Hot Burning
Peter Linebaugh

William Ewart Gladstone,
Late nineteenth century Liberal,
Principled opponent of imperialism,
According to some history books;
Serial chancellor of the exchequer,
Serial prime minister,
Son of John Gladstone
(MP for New Woodstock, Oxfordshire,
Courtesy of the Duke of Marlborough),
Found his father looking well, but tired,
When he visited his father in Gloucester.

John Gladstone’s pseudonym was ‘Mercator’.

William Ewart Gladstone’s maiden speech in parliament,
Would be a defence of the owners of enslaved peoples.

John Gladstone arrived in Gloucester in 1825,
Gradgrind wealthy,
Counting his profits:
Shipping interests in Liverpool,
Sugar plantations in the West Indies;
Counting his enslaved people:
2,508 men, women and children
in Jamaica and Demerara;
Rejoicing that revolt against enslavement
(On his plantations)
Had been viciously suppressed by the Stroud Scarlet army.

Slave owners liked to take the waters at spas,
Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham …
Oblivious to the Middle Passage across the Atlantic,
And the crimson wake of the slave ships,
As they enjoyed the balm of saline warmth,
And, so it was with John Gladstone.

A dutiful husband and father,
Christian too,
And shrewd with money,
He moved to the Gloucester spa area in 1825,
His wife and daughter (both by name of Anne)
Were in need of healthful waters,
And where better than the chalybeate waters,
There at the Pump Rooms,
‘at the foot of what is now Brunswick Road’;

The teenage William Ewart Gladstone,
Spent his time carving his initials
into the bark of Gloucester trees;
His father invested in a local bank,
The Gloucester & Cheltenham.
He also spent £80,000 on further plantations,
And property in the West Indies and South America.

He was an implacable opponent of abolition.
And kept an eye on Gloucester,
As it ‘might be of use to himself or one of his sons’.

No one received more in compensation,
When slavery was abolished.

The railways of Britain are witness to that.

Remember that when you visit Gloucester.
Walk to the foot of Brunswick Road.
There’s a hidden heritage there.
Not just chalybeate waters.
But a crimson Atlantic archipelago too.

John Gladstone’s pseudonym was ‘Mercator’.
He received more in compensation than anyone else.
Partly because of his son.
That compensation figure came to 40% of GDP.
British taxpayers only ceased paying interest
On the loan required in 2015.
When John Gladstone died,
His estate would be valued at over £70 million,
In today’s values.

Letter in The Guardian Wednesday 24 June 2020
‘Are readers aware of the slave rebellion that took place in 1823 on the Gladstone sugar estate in Demerara county, British Guiana? It was led by African slaves who had to bear the names of their slave owner. They were father and son, Quamina and Jackie Gladstone, and there is a monument to them in present-day Guyana. A British prime minister four times, William Gladstone’s wealth was built on slavery. It is beneath contempt that he gained a reputation for kindness by bringing into his home the child prostitutes of London to have a meal and a rest for one night, while his plantations were run with brutality and the rebellion was put down with the utmost savagery.’

This was written by a descendant of slavery survivors of Guiana.