John Grayson of Ellen Cliff
alias William Butterworth
1804-1850
Deported to Van Diemen's Land 1829
Main picture: Hobart Town 1856 by Henry Gritten (1818-1873). William Butterworth lived in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) until his death there in 1850
Before Transportation: the life of John Grayson
John Grayson was born at Elder Cliffe (now called Ellen Cliff) to parents Joseph Grayson and Elizabeth nee Oldham. The farm stands on Hunshelf Bank. It is still there today, looking over Deepcar and Stocksbridge, near Sheffield, but when John was born the area was completely rural and there wasn’t even a road across the valley bottom until the turnpike opened in 1805.
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Elizabeth Oldham (1785-1814) was Joseph Grayson’s first wife. Joseph was born in 1784 and died in 1844. They also had a son called George (1806-1852). Elizabeth died young, and Joseph married again to Sarah Helliwell (1798-1871). Five more children were born; Thomas (1818), Mary (1819), Martha (1822), Ann (1824) and Eliza (1827).
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John Grayson married Sarah Crawshaw at Bradfield church on 28 January 1828. Sarah was the daughter of Thomas Crawshaw and Hannah Blackwell of Langley Brook Farm near Midhope (my 5th x great grandparents). A son, James, was born at Langley Brook on 15th of July that year. The Midhope baptism register notes that he was their first son, and that John was a farmer, although his trade was given as “miller” when he was arrested in 1828 and on his convict record, and this was the trade he was put to in Van Diemen’s Land. I found no evidence of John working as a miller before he left these shores but if he did learn the trade, it might have been from a member of his family. There was at least one miller in the family, John’s grandfather’s brother, Thomas Grayson (1750-1816), who was a miller at Deepcar.
We know from John’s convict record what he looked like; he was almost 5’ 8” tall with a fair complexion and light brown eyes. He had brown hair framing his round face, and thin brown whiskers growing on his broad chin. His nose was of medium length, and he had a broad chin and a perpendicular forehead.[1]
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The earliest available Ordnance Survey map of the area is this 6” map, below, published in 1855. Ellen Cliff House is highlighted.[2]
[1] Convict Records, Archives Office of Tasmania: William Butterworth Description List ref. CON18/15
[2] A huge range of old maps are available online at The National Library of Scotland. The NLS indicates that maps of Yorkshire were surveyed between 1846 and 1851 and published between 1853 and 1857. The first Ordnance Survey map of any location was published in 1801
In Trouble: 1828/29
Before the year was out, the lives of this little family were to change forever. Towards the end of 1828 John got into some trouble and left home. He was caught breaking into a banking house in Northampton in the early hours of Saturday 8 December, and was arrested and sent to jail. He was deported to Van Diemen’s Land the following year. He used an alias, William Butterworth.
What happened to make him leave home I don’t know; did he get into trouble and run away, or did he run away and then get into trouble? In a letter home he wrote, “for many a long hour I think of what I have done by running away from home and being such an undutiful son … But I was distracted or I should not have done what I did.” Local historian Joseph Kenworthy described him as “a very respectable young man who was basely made the victim of a very brief acquaintance with bad companions.” [1] I have read somewhere that he injured a man in a fight, but I don’t know the truth of this. Presumably he was still around in October when his son was baptised, or the vicar might have made a note about him absconding in the register (the same vicar mentioned that John had been transported for life when he recorded the baptism of an illegitimate daughter of John’s wife Sarah in 1835).
The following story has been pieced together from a variety of sources including convict records, a booklet written by Ted Spencer in about 1986, and contemporary newspaper reports. As ever, it is important to read the reports which were published in different newspapers, because they generally differed in how they reported the facts, just like they do today! Nowhere in any of the reports does the name John Grayson appear; his name was given as William Butterworth, and he was said to be 23 years old. John was baptised 4 November 1804, so he was probably 24. He told the police that he came from Yorkshire, but that he came from “just outside Leeds.” I could find no report of his crime or court appearances in the Sheffield newspapers, so they were probably unaware that he was a local man. We have to rely on later documents to prove that John and William were the same person. We also don’t know why he gave the name William Butterworth. It was not a local name but there are a scattering of Butterworths in the Bolsterstone and Penistone parish registers around this time. After doing his initial research, Ted Spencer later found two entries in the Hunshelf Rate Book for a Jonathan Butterworth; in 1837 and 1840 Jonathan paid 1s 4½d in rates. I had never found a Butterworth on the 1841 census, but bear in mind that when I originally did this research there was no internet and I was reading very faded microfilm copies of the returns in the Local Studies library. Now, in this Internet Age, a search on Findmypast showed up J. Butterworth at Hunshelf but a search on Ancestry drew a blank because Jonathan had been transcribed as J. Bufford Worth and his wife as Sarah Worth. J. Butterworth was recorded at Hunshelf Bank, in between Edge Cliff and White Houses on the census enumerator’s route. However, Mr. Spencer did not find a connection between this family and the Grayson family. I shall refer to John as William from now on.
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Robbing a Banking House
It was thought that John/ William was working with a gang to rob a bank in Northampton, but he denied ever having accomplices. The plan was, it seems, for William to clamber over the rooftops surrounding Mr. John Percival’s Banking House in Northampton and to gain entry by going down the chimney, which was about four storeys high. He would then let the other gang members into the building. However, he made such a noise that others were alerted to his presence in the chimney. Most reports say that Mr. Percival, who was in bed at the time, heard the noise and went to investigate, but other reports say it was his neighbour, a Mr. Emery who lived above his confectionery shop next door, who heard the noise and went to warn his neighbour. Mr. Percival and his man-servant investigated, and also fetched one of the night watchmen. They heard some mortar and soot fall down into the fire grate and when they went to look up the chimney, they saw a man almost at the bottom. Whether had had got stuck or whether he knew they were looking for him and was trying to stay hidden, isn’t clear. One report said he was “stuck fast,” in which case he would have needed help to get down. His feet could be seen a few feet from the bottom of the flue. Mr. Percival said that if he didn’t come down, he would shoot him. William begged for mercy, and came down after a few minutes.
William was wearing a smock frock, and when it was removed he was said to be “respectably dressed.” He refused to give an account of himself, and was locked up. It was said that “three suspicious persons were seen about several days previous, supposed to be a London Gang,” but he never implicated anyone else. Upon being asked what brought him there he said he did not know. He was then asked if he had got up the chimney. “No,” he replied very coolly, “I came down the chimney.” He said that he had clambered over the roofs of three or four houses before he got to the banking house.
When he appeared before the magistrates William apparently told several “improbable stories” about his time in the town, and how he had hidden himself in a stable loft in Sawn Yard. “He says he is a native of Yorkshire, comes a few miles from Leeds, and has generally been employed as a miller. He is about 23 years of age, five feet six or seven inches high, well made, rather good-looking, and states his name to be William Butterworth.” He was committed to the county gaol on Wednesday 12th December and appeared at the Northampton Assizes, where the most serious cases were heard, on 9th March 1829.
William was found guilty, and the Judge ordered the sentence of death to be recorded, but said that in this case he would recommend that his life be spared. He added that he wished it to be understood that if such offences were repeated after this warning the law would be allowed to take its course. The robbery of a bank, he said, was calculated to produce disastrous consequences because of the number of persons it might ruin. A letter was printed in the Bankers’ Circular, 12 December 1828, warning other banking houses to be on their guard against similar attempts to rob them.
Some newspapers reported that Mr. Percival had received an anonymous letter stating that the writer had overheard some men who were onboard prison hulks discussing a plan to rob nine country banks, the Northampton bank being the first one. The writer demanded £100 and would then tell him all the information which he would need to defeat the attempt. Mr. Percival had ignored the letter. He later received a verbal message from a man who had just returned to Northampton from the [prison] hulks, stating that it was he who had forwarded the anonymous letter from London, and he told Mr. Percival that the attack upon his house would take place the following Friday night (the attempt took place at 3am on the Saturday). The local Mayor also received an anonymous letter informing him that several robberies were being planned in the town.
The Criminal Entry books[2] record that William Butterworth was tried at Northampton on Monday 9th March 1829 and had a judgement of “death” recorded against him for burglary, and that he was one of those recommended to His Majesty “as fit objects for the Royal Mercy on condition of their being Transported beyond seas,” in William’s case, for and during the term of his natural life.
Transportation overseas as the punishment for many criminal offences was first introduced into English law by an Elizabethan Act of 1597. Many convicts were shipped across the Atlantic. The First Fleet of convict ships arrived in Australia at Botany Bay in January 1788, and by 1868 over 160,000 prisoners had arrived in Australia, mostly convicted of theft, and about half of them being first offenders. Many historians think that magistrates passed a sentence of transportation believing that petty thieves would have more chance of leading honest lives if they were removed from their immediate criminal companions and the squalor of the towns.
William was sent to Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania. The first convict ships were sent there in 1812, and by 1853 about 67,000 convicts had disembarked. The first settlement was at Risdon, but this was soon abandoned for Hobart. An interesting account of life in the colony can be found in the diaries of William Thornley, a free settler in the land; he describes his life there, and how there were problems with the natives. He also makes some references to the prisoners.[3]
[1] Cited by Ted Spencer in his booklet about John Grayson; he obtained this information from the unpublished material of Joseph Kenworthy which he saw whilst researching at the Sheffield City Library. I have been unable to find this in Kenworthy’s published books and Ted noted that Kenworthy did not cite a reference or a source.
[2] Ref. HO13/53, at Ancestry
[3] Mills, J. S: The Adventures of an Emigrant in Van Diemen’s Land, William Thornley, diaries: London: Hale, 1974
Afloat on a Prison Hulk
Prisoners were kept on board ships known as “Prison Hulks” prior to being transported, where they remained until there were sufficient convicts gathered together to fill a ship. These were decommissioned ships which, although afloat, were no longer seaworthy. William was held on a prison hulk moored at Portsmouth, called the Leviathan. She had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, and was used as a prison hulk from 1816. Some prisoners tried to avoid transportation by feigning illness, but many wanted to get away and tried to prove healthier than they actually were when they were inspected by Surgeons-Superintendents. William’s name appears among the Quarterly Returns of Prisoners in Hulks, and his behaviour was recorded as being “orderly.” His convict record[1] states that his gaol report stated his character to be “very indifferent,” and that he “behaved well on board.”[2]
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[1] Convict Records: Archives Office of Tasmania. Conduct record CON31/4 for William Butterworth, obtained from the Archives Office by my long-time correspondent Mary Scoberg of Australia, a Crawshaw relation. She also sent me the details of the Mary III.
[2] Whether this referred to his behaviour on the prison hulk or the convict ship isn’t clear
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Below: an extract from the records of the Prison Hulk “Leviathan,” which recorded that William was amongst other prisoners who had been convicted at Northampton on the 9th March 1829 and sent down to the Hulks on the 26th May. He was aged 23, and was sentenced to transportation for life for the crime of felony. Note: in the final column “how disposed of” the place he was being sent to was wrongly recorded as NSW (New South Wales) when it should have said VDL (Van Diemen’s Land). He set sail on the 8th December 1829 aboard the convict ship “Mary.”
Below: men on board a prison hulk awaiting transportation to a penal colony. Convicts often contracted ‘gaol fever’ and died before sailing [1]; and a photo of a prison hulk [2]
[1] Published in Family Tree Magazine September 2005, p60
[2] Published in Family Tree Magazine March 2008, p65
To Van Diemen's Land 1829
William was transported to Van Diemen’s Land on a ship called the Mary III. The Mary III was of the class E1, meaning it was a second-class ship. This class of ship had shown no defects upon survey, and was thus deemed capable of carrying a dry cargo safely. The number 1 signified that the ship was well supplied with equipment (no vessel found to be a 2 would have been chartered). She had been built at Ipswich in 1811 and weighed 361 tons. The ships which took the convicts were ordinary British merchantmen; none were specially designed and built as convict ships, and although many made numerous voyages with prisoners, they did not remain exclusively in the convict service.
On embarkation William would have been allotted a number and put into a mess of about six men. He would have got his bedding (pillow, bed and blanket) and his cooking/eating utensils (two wooden bowls and a wooden spoon). Each mess had a keg and a horn tumbler. Every morning John would have had to roll up his bedding, securing it with two pieces of sennit, a braided cord or fabric used on ships. On many ships there wasn’t enough storage for the bedding, and it got wet. The prison was situated in the ‘tween decks, which were dark and gloomy and often had poor ventilation. In bad weather, the air scuttles were closed and the air hung heavy and lifeless, stifling and oppressive, with the temperature in the 90s. The prison, crowded with convicts, was indescribable. Damp, humid and crowded, with the smell of stale bilge-water and mouldy, rotting timber – and all this for months on end. To many a first offender who had never been beyond his village, it must have been a very frightening experience.
The prisoners were required to wash and were usually (but not always) issued with new clothing before embarking. Men’s regulation dress was jackets and waistcoats of blue cloth (kersey), duck trousers, check or coarse linen shirts, yarn stockings and woollen caps. These were not really suitable for winter crossings, but the naval authorities averred that wool and flannel harboured disease. Complaints were still being made about the inadequacy of the clothing as late as 1840. Not only did convicts suffer from the cold, there was also the danger of death by drowning or other accidents, and from disease, which spread easily in the overcrowded, insanitary, poorly-ventilated conditions on board. The largest killers were scurvy and dysentery, but smallpox, typhoid and cholera were also known. The death rate did drop, however, after the appointment of the Surgeon-Superintendents in 1815.
The rations were adequate and of fair quality, but sometimes the convicts were cheated out of their share; more than one ship’s captain was accused of having set up store on arrival and sold, at a large profit, the rations. Before sailing, and at all ports of call, fresh meat and vegetables were served, as a precaution against scurvy.
During early voyages, there was no activity to be had except the scrubbing, scraping and swabbing of decks. Later on, the men picked oakum (untwisting old rope and pulling it into long fibres), sewed trousers and jackets, knitted socks and were sometimes allowed to assist in the navigation of the ship. Some convicts were set on as cooks. They rose about 4.30 am. At sunrise the prison doors were opened, and the bathing tub put on deck. Water was then thrown over the prisoners from buckets. At 6am rations were served to the mess men, and whilst the rest were below, volunteers swabbed the deck, and the beds were brought up and stowed. Breakfast was at 8am. Lime or lemon juice, mixed with sugar and water to make half a pint of “sherbet” was served up just before dinner in some ships, but in others the wine allowance was served before the meal and the juice afterwards. The men were shaved twice a week, and had their hair cut fortnightly. Laundry was done twice a week. Come sunset, everyone went below, and the prison was locked. This routine was varied only by wet or stormy weather.
The Mary III set sail from London on the 8th December 1829, and 113 days later she arrived at Hobart Town, on the 10th April 1830. The voyage had taken four months, at a time when a journey of seven months was not unknown, and in one of his letters home William described the voyage as “very good.” 168 men embarked and there had been one death. The Master of the ship was Alex Jamieson, and the surgeon was Robert Espie.
William was the second person to be treated by the surgeon whilst the ship was at sea; there is an entry in the ship’s surgeon’s journal that on the 10th January 1830 William had been slightly burnt on one finger of his left hand, which after a day or two “produced a remarkable degree of inflammation.” Poultices were applied and after three or four days the surgeon opened the finger with his scalpel and found “a large quantity of matter confirmed under the fascia of the flexor tendon.” The finger healed well, and William was discharged as cured on 28th January.
Once the ship reached Hobart, the prisoners were landed within two to three days. They were inspected by a colonial surgeon and by a Port Health Officer. As soon as he had issued a clean bill of health, the Principal Superintendent of Convicts and other officials went aboard. They inspected the ship and its human cargo, and mustered the prisoners and crew. Commissariat officials arranged for a fresh supply of meat and vegetables to be sent aboard daily, and as soon as the prisoners had disembarked, took steps to land the unused government stores. Prisoners had the right to complain about their treatment.
By the time William Butterworth sailed in 1829, the worst horrors of the convict system had ended. There were still some disastrous voyages after 1800, but on the whole conditions steadily improved, and from the 1820s there were few serious complaints. In fact, conditions in the later convict ships were actually better than those the early free emigrants had to endure.
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Below: Hobart Town by Alan Carswell, 1821, public domain
Hobart Town at this Time:
Note: I have reproduced the exact words which were used at the time to describe the indigenous inhabitants; words like Aborigine are now considered outdated and insensitive.
William arrived in Hobart in 1830. William Thornley described how the town was in 1817, thirteen years previously:
The town had a straggling, irregular appearance; a good house here and there, and the intervening spaces either were inbuilt on or occupied by mean little dwellings, little better than huts…and one thing I can’t help advertising to, and that is the surprising number of dogs that kept us awake for some nights after we arrived in the town with their incessant barking. At that time everyone had a kangaroo-dog who could contrive to keep one, and first one dog set up a growl, then another caught it up, and he was, of course, answered from another part of the town, so that presently hundreds of dogs, watch-dogs, kangaroo-dogs, and mongrels of all sorts and sizes, all would set up such a barking and tearing that we thought to be sure something dreadful must be the matter, that the convicts had risen, or that natives had fired the town. Thornley had arrived to find “a colony of criminals ruled by brutal military discipline, with free settlers vastly outnumbered.”
Outside the tiny townships, the bushland was still largely unexplored, and contained the tribal territories, with the indigenous inhabitants facing their final battles with the invaders. Thornley described the convicts as “some with yellow jackets on, and some without, but all with a peculiar look, as it seemed to me, with here and there gangs of a dozen or more working on the roads with chains on their legs and making the place look, as I must confess, not very respectable.”
But by 1825, five years before William’s arrival, the Colony had assumed a different appearance. Many more emigrants (free settlers) had arrived, and the country became more settled and prosperous. Thornley remarked that, “on making a business trip to Hobart Town, I found the town had improved vastly, and there was talk of the establishment of a bank.” The wealthier inhabitants were enjoying an era of gracious living based on cheap convict labour, and Macquarie Street in Hobart Town boasted fine residences and churches. Splendid country homes were replacing the settlers’ bark huts.
Nevertheless, problems still arose with some violence. Lawless men, often escaped prisoners who had taken to the bush (“bushrangers”), terrorised the settlers. In 1824 they attacked the residence of William Stark of Kangaroo Valley, Pitt-Water and stole clothes, blankets, tea, sugar, 18lbs of tobacco and two guns. Also in this year, a large body of convicts from Macquarie Harbour escaped, and were plundering and ill-using settlers all over the district of Pitt-Water. Thornley described how the bushrangers struck terror into the hearts of settlers and how they looted a neighbour’s property, tying up the occupants and taking the man of the house prisoner. Thornley and his neighbours went after the bushrangers, finding en route two stock-keepers who had been brutally killed by natives. These outlaws often teamed up with natives to terrorise settlers. Thornley’s own home was burnt down by bushrangers, but he eventually overcame all these set-backs and hardships to become a successful farmer. John Grayson lived in both Macquarie Street and Pitt-Water.
A series of letters survive, written by John Grayson to his father, uncle and friends, and these are reproduced in Ted Spencer’s booklet. He signs them John Grayson, but in his new life he was of course William Butterworth. They are very informative in their description of his life, and we are lucky that they exist because there are very few written records of convicts’ correspondence and opinions of this time. He asked about his wife, but none of the letters mentioned his son. In an early letter to his father, dated c1832 or 1833, he wrote that he was “no more worthy to be called your son” and that he had been “transported out of my native land for my natural life unto a parent land where there is no happiness on this side of the grave for me.” He mentioned in this letter that he had written to Lord Wharncliffe (a local landowner who owned Elder Cliff, William’s family’s farm) to plead for a mitigation of his sentence. He thought that the man he “injured” would sign for a mitigation of sentence. Did this mean someone he physically injured before leaving home, or was he speaking of the owner of the bank that he tried to rob? He also asked that a parcel be sent to him containing letters from friends and family, and old newspapers. The parcel could be sent to London Docks by Pickfords, because there were ships loading there every week bound for Van Diemen’s Land.
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In about 1839 Thornley wrote about how the colony had changed since his arrival in 1817. Then, very few emigrants had arrived, and convicts outnumbered free men. “Now the farms of the emigrants spread over a large part of the Island. In 1817… the population was not much more that 2,000 of whom very few were free inhabitants. The population is now not less than 45,000 of whom more than 23,000 are free settlers. In 1817 there was not a single pound of wool exported from the Colony, but in 1838 1,942,000 pounds were exported, selling at two shillings per pound.” In 1830, the year William Butterworth arrived, he wrote that the “natives” were removed to an island in Bass Straight, and Thornley commented that, “they are now known in the Colony only by tradition.” He added that, with the spread of the free inhabitants, bushranging had also become a thing of the past.
In fact, there were still original inhabitants around, and William Butterworth mentions them in a letter home dated 1832/3. He wrote that “there are plenty of black natives, savages who run wild in the interior part of the land and when they come across a white person they kill him. There has been upwards of 100 white people killed since I have been in this colony.” During the years 1830-1837 men acted as “wild aborigine catchers,” persuading the remaining natives, through lies and trickery, to give themselves up for transportation to Swan Island (and later to Flinders Island).
There was still of course a danger from the convicts. In 1830 one Charles Routley, “one of the most horrid and blood thirsty monsters that had yet disgraced the annals of humanity, escaped from Macquarie Harbour, murdered six men, sewed up the body of one of them in a bullock’s skin, roasted it over the fire and ate it. After being captured he was brought up for trial in the Supreme Court in Hobart Town. He stood there in the dock, a monster in human flesh, waving his iron hook, the substitute for the hand that he had lost, at his judge, and cursed God and man”. He was sentenced to death and hanged.
There was a curfew in place in the 1830s, and John would not have been allowed out after 8 pm. Even free settlers could be arrested if they were out after that hour without a lighted lantern. William wrote that a prisoner “lives bad, lays bad, and is always thought bad upon,” and added that they could be given at least fifty lashes or three months in irons, and that “for the least you ever do there is 25 lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails but I have been here for going on of 3 years with my master and have escaped so far.” He spoke too soon, however, for on the 14th January 1834 he was charged with neglect of duty and reprimanded. Two months later, on the 4th March, he was in trouble again and was sentenced to 25 lashes for “insolence to his master and wilfully destroying his property.” One wonders what provoked him to do this. He never mentioned this in any of his letters, and he wrote that he had never been in any trouble.
Life as a Convict and Beyond
William was assigned to the service of a Mr. Richard Downward of Sorrel Mills, Pittwater, near Hobart Town. He owned two mills, a water-wheel and a wind-mill, to which William had to attend, as well as helping with the cultivation of 40 acres of land. William stayed with him for about eight years. “He is no farmer himself,” wrote William, “he knows nothing but soldiering.” His opinion was that most of the farmers were “bad” because none of them had been accustomed to it.
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In 1838 he obtained a Ticket of leave. This meant that he could now leave the Government Establishment for his “own private advantage,” though he was forbidden to leave the colony. William left Mr. Downward and went to live in Hobart Town with John Walker Esq., a miller and merchant, and who owned the first steam-mill in Hobart. William stayed with him for about three years and managed to save £150.
In 1841 William went into partnership with another man, a Mr. Davison, taking a new steam corn mill on the wharf. He wrote home that he had “a good name among all classes of the community,” and in 1842 reckoned he was worth between four and five hundred pounds. He perhaps did better than he would have ever done had he lived out his life in Yorkshire. The business was called the Derwent Foundry, and was on Macquarie Street, Hobart. Mr. Davison owned the foundry and the mill; he looked after the foundry himself and left the running of the mill to William.
On the 1st September 1842 William wrote to his father again, acknowledging that he had received a letter from him, which he said was the first one he had received from him in the thirteen years since he had left home. Either his father had not written, or he had but the letters had gone astray.
Later that month, on the 27th September 1842, William received a Conditional Pardon, having by now served the required ten years of a life sentence, the minimum before a pardon could be given. He had been in the colony twelve and a half years. A Conditional Pardon gave him complete freedom, but he was not allowed to return to his native land, or he would face the death sentence. Perhaps he hoped one day to return, for the next month he wrote that he hoped to obtain his Free Pardon in about two years’ time. The Free Pardon was approved on the 25th February 1846.
New Wife, New Life
In July 1843 William married Janet Forrest, who had also been transported as a convict. They had (probably) six children. Janet also had a son who had spent much of his childhood in an orphanage in Hobart.
In a letter dated January 1846 William mentions that his father had died; they had not seen each other for about seventeen years. He did not now think that he would ever return to “Old England” again. Trade seemed bad and he had lost a lot of money in the previous two years, as had many people there; he wrote that “more than half this colony has been insolvent in that time.” He had been out of his own business for two years and was managing a large steam mill for a Scotsman, J. S. Turnbull, earning £100 per year, which he thought was good wages in those bad times. This mill was also on Macquarie Street.
The 1847/48 census records William at The Old Mill, Macquarie Street. In a letter of 1848, he perhaps employs a little licence by saying that he had his own mill, for although he was head of household, the proprietor of the mill was John Walker, whom he had worked for c1839-1841 after leaving Mr Downward. Both William and his wife Janet declared that they had arrived free in the colony; perhaps in the passing of the years there were few that knew they had been convicts, and it was a past that was better off buried….
In a letter to his uncle Benjamin in December 1848 he stated that he had been unwell for the past year and had not expected to live. Although he was somewhat better, he did not expect to make a full recovery. He finally made reference to his new family; “I have a small family here. I never told any of you before, but it is no use to keep it from you any longer therefore you may inform all enquiring friends I shall never return.” Perhaps he also knew that he was too ill to make the journey. His lungs were affected, and he was planning to go on a sea voyage to a harbour in the Colony for the benefit of his health. He signs off, “I shall never see you any more in this world but we may hope to meet in the next.”
In August 1849 William took over the tenancy of the Duke of Wellington public house from Benjamin Jackson. The pub stood on the corner of Macquarie Street and Barrack Street. I was told by one of my correspondents many years ago that William Butterworth was “one of the most unusual publicans of Hobart Town,” although what made him unusual I wish I knew and now it’s too late to ask. This pub celebrated its centenary in 1946.[1] There were 89 licenced premises in Hobart in 1835, and a lot of them seemed to be on Macquarie Street.[2] The pub was built by the Dunkley family in 1846 and still stands. It has been licenced since it was built, and has retained its original appearance. It closed in December 2024. Below is a photograph of the pub taken from The Duke’s Facebook page and credited to Justin James Images.
[1] The Hobart Mercury, 19 July 1946 in an article about the old public houses of Hobart.
[2] The Hobart Mercury, op. cit. and information from the Licencing Records published in the Hobart newspapers which listed all applications for licences along with the address of the establishment.
William was in trouble a few months later for failing to close at 10pm on Saturday 15th December. A policeman alleged that there were 16 or 18 customers in the pub at 10.45pm, and that William was very drunk, and that there was music playing. In his defence, he said, “It is the first time, and I will be more careful in future, but I am only a new hand at present.” One of the magistrates said that there was always fiddling and dancing in that particular public house, because he had heard it himself “all down Macquarie Street.” He added that a public house situated in a respectable part of the town is a “fearful nuisance when disorderly.” The fine could range between 10 shillings to over £10, but, because it was his first offence, the fine was 50 shillings.
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Death of William Butterworth
William was the landlord for less than a year, transferring the licence to William Villiers Lawrence on 2 May 1850, five days before his death from consumption on 7 May.[1] His obituary in the Hobart Town Courier of 8th May reads: “On the 7th Instant at the Old Mill, Macquarie Street, Hobart Town, Mr. William Butterworth, aged 47, leaving a widow and five young children to deplore his loss.”
His letters home convey an overwhelming feeling of sadness, homesickness and loneliness that never quite leaves him, despite his success in the colony and his new family. His letters beg desperately for news of his family, and he also asks for news of Thomas Crawshaw (his wife’s father) and is sad that he has not heard from many people that he cared about in all the time since he’d left. “I expect they never think of me unless it is to degrade me,” he wrote. Replying to his father in 1842 he mentions his wife Sarah and her sister Mary: “Mary Crawshaw is dead you say and Sarah is living with some gentleman. I should very much like to hear from her but I suppose she has not wanted to hear from me – 16,000 miles is a great way apart. I have thousands of times thought of you all.” In a letter dated 1846 he is still desperate for news of those he left behind, and bemoans the fact that he has been “dead to you all for nearly twenty years.” Perhaps he died dreaming of the beautiful countryside back home and the family he left behind him there, never to be seen again…
Joseph Kenworthy wrote that when William died a free man of property, his son James Grayson declined to enter any claim to the “considerable estate,” thinking that his father’s second family had more right to it.
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William and Janet had five or six children but details are sketchy. Many of the people I corresponded with over the years, who lived in Australia or New Zealand, were unable to be totally sure who the children were and when they were born. Birth records existed but sometimes did not actually name the child, only the parents. The conclusion was that their names were Kate, William, Joseph, Samuel, George and John, one or two of them born just before their parents married. John, the youngest, seems to have been known as Pye Butterworth. Janet also had a son, James Forrest, born in about 1839, who was an inmate of the local orphanage. The children of female convicts were often placed in an orphanage so that their mothers could carry on working. He was discharged into the care of his mother in 1850, three months after the death of William Butterworth, and thereafter he went under the name James Butterworth.
William’s widow became the licensee of the Royal Oak on Maquarie Street, taking over the licence from Catherine Fox in February 1851. The magistrates referred to a brutal assault which had recently occurred at the rear of the premises and thought that Mrs. Fox had conducted the house in a bad manner. They were happy to allow the transfer of the licence, but said the pub would be “particularly watched” because of its previous bad reputation. On the 16th May 1851 Janet married again to Walter Baxter Crooks and she transferred the pub licence to him in August that year. The police magistrate reported that the pub had recently been much better conducted although the chairman said it had only been “indifferently conducted,” and the bench hoped that Walter would try his best to make it decent and not encourage too much dancing and fiddling. Walter transferred the licence to one Samuel Parsons in November the same year, and it seems that he then left the Colony for Australia in December. Mr. Parsons applied to transfer the licence to Janet in August 1852, but this was refused because her husband was still absent from the Colony, being “away at the diggings” in Victoria, Australia. He was not expected to return. Janet contested this refusal, and the case was heard later that month.
It was argued that Mrs. Crooks was a highly respectable person, formerly Mrs. Butterworth, and was recommended by several (presumably respectable) gentlemen including the brewer with whom she had done business for several years. She had a large family to maintain in her husband’s absence and mention was made of “five helpless children;” getting the licence back was “a matter of life and death.” It was argued that if her husband was absent from the colony then Janet would be trading as a femme sole [a legal term that refers to an unmarried woman or a married woman who is acting independently of her husband] and that it would set a bad precedent, and that it was an “act of cruelty” to permit licenses to get into the hands of wives. The Chairman again stated that he disliked any female keeping a public house and that he thought the pub had been “resorted to by very curious persons,” whatever that meant! Despite several of the men voting against Janet being granted the licence, on the principal that they were against women taking public houses, the majority voted for her, and the licence was back in her hands. The license was renewed without much difficulty each year until 1857. In 1854 Mr Henslowe opposed the renewal because he had seen an intoxicated man in the house when the magistrates visited. However the Police Magistrate spoke in her favour, and the renewal was granted.
Janet gave birth to a daughter on 8 June 1855. She remained at the pub until her death at the age of 40 on 27th February 1857 from jaundice. I am told she had reverted to the name Butterworth. Walter Baxter Crooks never returned and died in Victoria, Australia in 1868
[1] Information sent to me from Neryl Tenace, obtained from The Hobart Town Britannia 9 May 1850, p2
Memorial for John William Butterworth, Saint Andrews Presbyterian Cemetery, Hobart. Sacred to the memory of John Wm. Butterworth who died May 7th, 1850 aged 47. The cemetery has been cleared and the headstone relocated to the boundary of the park. Source: www.findagrave.com
A brief bio of Janet Forrest
Janet Forrest had been tried in Edinburgh for “theft by housebreaking” after she stole haberdashery from her master Alexander Duff. She arrived in the colony on 3rd December 1836 aboard the ship Westmoreland, which had sailed from Woolwich on 12 August. Her convict record gives her occupation as “plain cook & housemaid.” She was 20 years old, 5’ 4”, with a fair, freckled complexion, dark hair and dark grey eyes. She had been in trouble in the years before she married William. In 1837 she was reprimanded for being absent without leave from her place of work, and the following month received a month’s punishment known as “wash tub” for insolence. Wash Tub was a punishment, usually given to women and taking place in the House of Correction, involving being forced to perform heavy manual labour washing clothes in large tubs. It was seen to be a harsh and degrading punishment due to the physically demanding nature of the work, often in cold and wet conditions It meant having one’s hands in hot water all day and often there was something in the water that damaged the hands. She went missing again in 1840 and was found and returned to her service. She had her Ticket of Leave delayed in 1842 because she had yet again been absent without leave and insolent. A Ticket of Leave could be applied for by a convict who had served a portion of their sentence and had been of good behaviour. This then allowed them to work for whom they chose, but it often restricted them to a particular police district. It was the first step towards freedom. Janet was issued with a Certificate of Freedom on 8 January 1843 and she married William Butterworth in July that year. Janet’s son James was discharged to her from the orphanage on 28 August 1850; she was “now free.” This was not long after William’s death in May 1850. Did she not apply for his release until after her husband had died, or was this just a coincidence? After he left the orphanage, James adopted the name Butterworth.
James Forrest Butterworth
James was born in 1839 whilst his mother was under sentence at the Cascades Female House of Correction. He spent much of his childhood at the Queen’s Orphan School at New Town. James Forrest, later Butterworth, married three times and is said to have had 20 children. He moved to Australia where he worked as a gold miner before moving to New Zealand. He had also worked in the whaling industry. He became known as an entrepreneur and collector of curios. In 1867 he opened a shop as a green grocer and general dealer and by 1890 he was advertising his business as “The Old Curiosity Shop.” In 1901 he had to move to larger premises to accommodate his growing collection of Maori artefacts. The Taranaki Herald reported that “His general stock … includes a great variety of odds and ends, everything, as he himself puts it, ‘from a needle to an anchor’, being obtained at his shops.” A further relocation in 1892 prompted the Taranaki Herald to comment, “Everything, we believe, is to be found in Mr Butterworth’s shop, but his Maori collection is a most unique and valuable one … Mr Butterworth is well known all over New Zealand as a dealer of Maori curiosities, and he is often called upon to execute very large orders for foreign tourists coming to New Zealand. Visitors, therefore, could not go to a better person, for what he cannot supply they may reckon upon as being unobtainable.”
James Butterworth died in 1903 at the age of 63 after suffering with pleurisy and pneumonia. His obituary in the newspaper said that he was “a great dealer with the Maoris, and during his life he must have purchased thousands of pounds worth of curios and manufactured articles from them.”
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Below: a photograph of James printed in the newsletter Tasmanian Ancestry Vol. 39 no. 4, March 2019 p205 and said to date to around 1903
Below: the youngest son of William Butterworth and Janet Forrest, John "Pye" Butterworth 1848-1919
Hobart Town 1856 by Henry Gritten (1818-1873). William Butterworth lived in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) until his death there in 1850
Hobart Town from the New Wharf c1857 by Henry Grant Lloyd
Hobart Township and Harbour
Author/Creator: Frederick Grosse (1828-1894), engraver from a photograph by Frith, 24 March 1866. Credit: State Library of Victoria, Australia. No known copyright restrictions.
Sources:
Parish registers & census returns at Findmypast and Ancestry (originally accessed at Sheffield Local Studies Library and re-checked online 2025)
Convict records at Ancestry and Findmypast and from Tasmanian/Australian archives
English newspapers at Findmypast (also available at the British Newspaper Archive)
Australian newspapers at Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
Edges of Empire Biographical Dictionary of Convict Women from beyond the British Isles, edited by Lucy Frost & Colette McAlpine: https://eoe.convictwomenspress.com.au/index.php
Journals of the Tasmanian Family History Society, Tasmanian Ancestry, at https://www.tasfhs.org/past_journals.php
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Spencer, W. E. [Ted Spencer]: John Grayson alias William Butterworth, a booklet produced by the author in about 1986 which includes photos of Ellen Cliff, Ted’s research, correspondence with researchers and the Tasmanian Archives and copies of the letters written home by John Grayson. Many years ago Ted kindly provided me with a photocopy of this booklet, and I believe there is a copy in Stocksbridge Library.
My fellow researchers in Australia and New Zealand, some of whom were descendants of John Grayson / William Butterworth. They did a great deal of the research at their end, and we corresponded by air mail! There was no internet, and we didn’t own computers. To name a few: Mary Scoberg, Neryl Tenance, Mona Woods and John Burrows.
Further reading:
Branch-Johnson, W: The English Prison Hulks, London: Christopher Johnson 1957
Davis, Mick: The English Convict Hulks 1600s-1868, Pen & Sword, 2024
Mills, J. S: The Adventures of an Emigrant in Van Diemen’s Land, William Thornley, diaries: London: Hale, 1974
Purtscher, Joyce: Children in Queen’s Orphanage, Hobart Town, 1828-1863, 1993, ISBN 0646137867
There are a great many books available about the transportation of convicts
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© Claire Pearson 2025
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