Australian convict records

This week it was announced that details of Australian convict records for the period 1788 to 1868 have been released online through subscription site Ancestry.

The BBC web site reported:

The records of tens of thousands of British convicts sent to Australia from the end of the 18th Century have been put online for the first time. Subscribers can browse names, date of conviction, the length of sentence and which penal colony they went to.

It is estimated two million Britons and 22% of Australians will have a convict ancestor listed in the records.

Transportation of convicts to Australia began as British prisons were becoming overcrowded in the late 18th Century and crime in cities increased following the industrial revolution. The journey to Australia by boat took eight months, six of which were spent at sea and two in ports where supplies were picked up.

The majority of the convicts were men and although a small number had been found guilty of serious crimes such as murder and assault, most had committed minor offences. Some of the crimes they were punished for included stealing from a pond or river and setting fire to undergrowth.

After serving out their sentence many convicts remained in Australia and the BBC site comments:

Many Australians are said to consider a convict in their family tree is a badge of honour and 22% are direct descendents of these convicts.

The documents are from the National Archives in the UK, and include two Daglishes.

James Daglish in December 1832 on board the ship "Jupiter" to Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania). He had been convicted on 28 July 1832.

The New South Wales and Tasmania Convict Musters 1806-1849 show that James had been assigned to Public Works but died on 31 October 1836.

William Daglish in May 1865 on board the ship "Racehorse" to Western Australia. He had been convicted on 22 July 1863.

More details of the voyage can be found on the Convicts to Australia site which shows that the Racehorse left Portland, England on May 26, 1865 bound for the Swan River Colony. The voyage took 76 days and the Racehorse arrived in Fremantle on August 10, 1865 with 172 passengers and 278 convicts.

The list of convicts shows that William Daglish, aged 31, had been convicted of house breaking on 22 July 1863 and sentenced to 12 years.

Could this be the same William Daglish who was reported in The Times in May 1858 under the heading "A Notorious Burglar"?

"William Daglish, a powerful, thick set young man, 25 years of age, is in the custody of South Shields police, and has been identified with two desparate burglaries ... there seems no doubt but that, though he is only 25 years of age, he is the leader of the gang of burglars who have caused so much alarm in the north country towns during the past two or three months ... He has suffered four years penal servitude for shoplifting at Sunderland; 18 months imprisonment for a burlary in the parsonage of Holy Trinity Church, South Shields and has been imprisoned for three other offences. It is suspected that his companions are either returned convicts, or ticket-of-leave men"

The Australian Gold Rush - a Daglish story

The Australian gold rush of the 1850s had a big impact on Australia, and in particular the newly formed state of Victoria.

In 1851 the Australian population was 437,655, of which 77,345, or just under 18%, were Victorians. A decade later the Australian population had grown to 1,151,947 and the Victorian population had increased to 538,628; just under 47% of the Australian total and a seven-fold increase from ten years earlier.

Many of those arriving in Australia at that time were from England, particulary from the mining communities - and the following account of the life of Matthew Storey Daglish has been kindly sent by Jenny Clark, who is his great, great granddaughter.

Matthew Storey Daglish, the son of James and Mary Daglish, was born on 30 December 1828 in North Shields, and christened at Christ Church, Tynemouth (pictured above).

He married Mary Chambers in 1851 in Easington, County Durham, and their two eldest children, James and Margaret, were born there. Some time between 1854 and 1857, the family emigrated to Australia. They went to Ballarat in Victoria where Matthew mined in the new Victorian goldfields.

Gold had been discovered in Ballarat in 1851. At first this was alluvial gold, found on the surface or in creeks and rivers; gold pans, puddling boxes and cradles were used to separate the gold from the dirt and water. When this ran out underground mining began; this was much more difficult and dangerous.

Six more children were born in Ballarat – but in 1867 Matthew was killed in a mining accident, leaving Mary with 7 children aged under 13 (the eldest son James had died in 1864, aged 12), and another on the way. The family moved to Chiltern where the last child, another James, was born. This last little James Storey died the following year aged 8 months.

Many Ballarat families moved to Chiltern in the late 1860s as a new goldfield opened up there. It may be that Mary had other family or close friends who were moving – otherwise why would she relocate 250 miles?

These are Matthew and Mary Daglish’s children -
James (1852), Margaret (1854), Mary (1857), Elizabeth (1859), Thomas Brown (1861), Matthew Clark (1863), Robert (1864), Ann (1866) and James Storey (1868).

Elizabeth married Thomas Arthur Robert Skerry in Chiltern in 1883. Thomas Skerry was also the child of an immigrant gold miner who had moved from Carngham near Ballarat to Chiltern in the 1860s. Elizabeth and Thomas had six children; after Elizabeth’s death in 1910, Thomas remarried and had three more children, the last born when Thomas was 62 years old! Mary Maud Skerry married Alfred (Dick) Lappin, the youngest in the large family of immigrant Irish farmers in 1906. Dick was a mining engineer who began his career in gold mining but moved on to earthworks associated with dams in Victoria’s irrigation schemes. They had 14 children between 1907 and 1930, 11 of whom survived to adulthood. The youngest, Norman Richard (Dick) Lappin was my father.

Jenny Clark, Hamilton, Victoria.

For reasons of space, this is an abbreviated account of the article that Jenny sent to me. If you are interested in more details of Matthew Storey Daglish and his family please e-mail me.

Some further research has found that Matthew had a sister Mary Ann and two brothers, James and Abner.

Sadly James also died in a mining accident, this time at Percy Main colliery, near North Shields (see watercolour above painted by Thomas Hair). An article in the Newcastle Journal of 15 September 1849 which reads:

The same coroner (J.G. Stoker) held another inquest on Thursday at Percy Main on the bodies of Thomas Pattison aged 29 and James Daglish aged 23. The deceased were pitmen at Percy Main Colliery and it appeared that after the had got into the corf to descend the pit the chain broke and they were precipitated to the bottom of the shaft and killed. The jury ... are of the opinion that the chain was not of good quality and recommend that in future the chains be properly tested to ascertain their strength before being put into use".

Matthew's other brother Abner married Elizabeth Kears and had 12 children. His eldest daughters married and emigrated to Australia and New Zealand, and there are descendents of Abner's family living today in the UK.

The National Archives of Australia has recently added a section to its web site entitled A Gift To The Nation which makes available WW1 services records online, with free access - an excellent resource. There are only two Daglish entries – Roydon (Roy) Oliver Clark Daglish and Henry William Daglish.
Roy was the grandson of Matthew Storey Daglish, and the son of Matthew Clark Daglish and Malinda Keat. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force to serve in WW1 as soon as he turned 18. There are twenty pages of Roy's service history available on the site, with high quality scans -see extract below. Roy returned from overseas service and married Mary Gertude Kavanagh in Albury, New South Wales. Their son Reginald James Daglish died in 1966.

There is also an interesting site for the Chiltern Athenaeum Museum, which records the births of the family after the move from Ballarat to Chiltern.
As a footnote, gold production ceased in Ballarat in 1918 – but the last few years has seen mining begin again, in deeper mines and using the latest technology.

Henry Daglish - premier of Western Australia

Henry Daglish was the first Labor premier of Western Australia from 10 August 1904 until 25 August 1905.

He was born in Ballarat West, Victoria, on 18 November 1866. His father was William Daglish, who had emigrated to Australia from Newcastle upon Tyne with his first wife Elizabeth Forster. After Elizabeth died in 1860, William married Henry's mother, Mary Ann James.

Henry married Edith Bishop in 1894 and in 1896 they joined many others moving to Western Australia, settling in the fast growing town of Subiaco.

Henry became involved in local politics, serving as mayor before being elected as Labor member for Subiaco. After the fall of his administration, he resigned from the Labor party in August 1905 and was elected as an independent in the October 1905 election; he served as minister for works under Frank Wilson from 1910 to 1911. Losing his seat at the 1911 election, he became an estate agent and from 1912 until his death in August 1920 he was employers' representative on the State Arbitration Court. He had a daughter Edith Rachel (b. 1896) and son Henry William (b. 1898).

Henry is remembered in the Perth suburb of Daglish which was named after him. Daglish railway station was built in 1924, and it is written:

Not every railway station has its name spelt out in greenery, but there is a trimmed hedge beside the Daglish station on the Railway Road frontage that leaves passengers in little doubt that this is indeed DAGLISH. To create a unique and attractive garden feature that also served a useful purpose was probably an English rural tradition, where railway station gardens were the source of much pride and a degree of competition.
Ken Spillman - Identity Prized : A History of Subiaco, UWA Press, 1985