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William Walsh's Misdemeanor

William Walsh came to Australia as a four year old child with his parents on the 'Canada 2', arriving at Sydney on 8 September 1810. The seas were stormy that day, and they had to wait out beyond the heads until it was safe to enter. The ship had left from Sheerness, England, 6 months before, carrying 121 female prisoners and 2 male, touching at Rio on the way. Among the passengers were '11 Ladies and Gentlemen of the Missionary Society' and many free settlers.1 Also on board were John Newton (crew) & Mary Thomas (convict).

William's mother Eleanor had been transported for 7 years for stealing 20 yards of dimity, valued at ten pence, from her employer.2 Her husband (also William) and son were allowed to accompany her to Australia, where William Snr. was three months later appointed a constable by Governor Macquarie, serving under the new Police Superintendent D'Arcy Wentworth.

As a remuneration for their services, constables were not paid as such, but were 'victualled' (fed) from His Majesty's Stores, and received one watch-coat and the 'usual quantity of slop cloathing' annually; and such of them as had families were 'further indulged' with having their wives and up to two of their children victualled also.3 This seems to have been the family's means of survival for several years, until their father retired to take up as a publican.

Young William was baptised on 6 Apr 1806 at St. Patricks Roman Catholic Church, York Road, Leeds in Yorkshire. His mother Eleanor must have been the Catholic, as his father was christened at All Saints Church of England at Wakefield (now Wakefield Cathedral).

In 1824, aged 19, William was hankering to be independent, and claiming to have 'attained the age of manhood, is now desirous of settling himself apart from his parents'4 and wanted his own allotment on which to build a house.5 This was obviously when he began to set up house with Harriett (nee Cheers, daughter of convicts Richard Cheers and Margaret Foggarty), although her first husband didn't die until 1826.

When his father died in 1825, William Jnr became heir to the considerable fortune of at least £4000, some of which was used to buy shares in the Bank of NSW6. He applied for a land grant but there is no evidence of him having been successful.

On the evening of 2 April 1827, when William & Harriet's first son was just six weeks old, William decided to play up. With his mates, George Marshall and George Allen, he swaggered drunkenly through the Rocks. Despite removing all his clothes and threatening a policeman that he would 'knock your brains out' and 'cut your bloody guts out', he managed to get away with a mere misdemeanor, rather than a criminal sentence.

Read the statements by witnesses Francis Jutland (conductor) and James Cummerford (constable) for William Walsh's hearing to find out all the rampant details.

Bear in mind that at the time of his misdemeanour, William was just 22; his father had died a year before; his mother had re-married to James Flinn (a fellow freed convict who had a habit of marrying the widows of publicans) - and James and Eleanor were about to leave Sydney for parts unknown. It is not clear just where they went, but they don't appear in the 1828 census.

In the January 1828 census William was aged 23. He was working as publican of the 'Plume and Feathers' hotel in Phillip Street, Sydney. The licensee of this hotel was Harriett's brother, John Cheers. The other occupants of the house were:

The Cheers children were orphans - the offspring of Harriett's father Richard, and his last wife, Jane Ann Smith. Jane Neale was Harriett's daughter from her first marriage to John Neale when Harriett was only 15. Ellen Newton was a Ward of William's - her parents were also dead, her mother having been a close friend of Eleanor's.

The census lists their religion as Catholic, but the baptisms of their children (except for Harriett Ellen at St Mary's Cathedral), and William's funeral, were performed at St. Phillip's Church of England. There is no record of a formal marriage between William and Harriet, although Harriett refers to him as her husband in documents.

William's and Harriett's four children were:

  1. William Richard, born 1827 - headed north from Sydney to grow sugar cane on the Bellinger River, but went bankrupt in the process. He married Cecilia Brown at Frederickton in 1860, and they had eight children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. William died of consumption on the Lower Bellinger River in 1880 at age 53.
  2. Harriett Ellen, born 1829 - married William Henry Oakes in 1858. All their four children died in infancy - three of them in 1865 from typhoid, aged 6, 5 and 3. Harriet survived until 1891 at age 62.
  3. Margaret Ann, born 1831- died of scarlet fever in 1849 at age 18.
  4. Richard John, born 1833 - died in 1838 at age 5.

William's burial certificate, dated 28 May 1834 at the age of 28, gives no indication of the cause of death, though the death was reported in the Sydney Gazette: 'DIED. Yesterday morning (Wednesday), at his residence in Gloucester Street, North, Mr. William Walsh, aged 27 years, leaving a wife and 5 children, and an extensive circle of friends to deplore his loss.' On the burial record he was described as a householder, however 45 years later he was described as a 'gentleman' on his son's death certificate.

Harriett married twice more after William's death - to Richard Wyatt and Robert Murray. She died in 1841at the age of only 34 years whilst living with Robert in Hinton and is buried in Morpeth Cemetery.

The following extracts are from: Fitzpatrick, Brian "The Australian People 1788 - 1945", Melbourne University Press, Melb. 1946; 2nd ed, 1951. They serve to paint a broader picture of what life was like in Sydney in William's time:

'In 1828 much of NSW was still, as to numbers at least, the prisoners' land. There were then 8000 inhabitants of the outlying districts. One in ten of them was a Currency lad and one in six, a 'free object'. But assigned convict servants were 6000 strong.

'Sydney then was a place of a 1000 odd buildings, of which the most substantial were brick and dressed timber, but many were of slabs. The town as huddled about George Street from the rocks by Dawes Point flanking Sydney Cove, to the brickfields on the old road to Parramatta .... After nightfall there would not be many in the rude streets, save patrols of convict constables, and piquet's of lobsters of the Regiment. But there would be company in the grog shanties, every man puffing at this dudeen, the dungaree settlers in their blue Indian cloth jackets and trousers. None wore stockings or socks. Neckerchiefs were usual; Headgear was beaver, straw hat or skin cap. At the rocks above the Commissariat store you could buy adulterated rum at one shilling and three pence the half-pint, served in a tumbler and, according to the damaging habit of the country, drunk neat from a wine glass.

'The Macquarie period of encouragement of land settlement by ex-convicts was followed by a complete reversal of the original theory in the 1820's when small land grants were discontinued and a policy substituted of large grants to 'respectable capitalists and men of family', in proportion to their available capital. Immigrants, absentees, and the small local aristocracy of 'pure merinos' benefited, as against emancipated convicts and the rising multitude of native-born. Feeling against 'new chums' ran high then, and new resentments were aroused and old ones intensified.'

  1. Sydney Gazette Sep 8 1810 - Vol. VIII
  2. Convict records ....
  3. Sydney Gazette Dec 29 1810 - Vol. VIII
  4. Colonial Secretary's Papers - Fiche 3115, 4/1840A No. 1021 p.93, 1 April 1824
  5. From 'The Rocks - Life in Early Sydney', Grace Karskens, 1997
  6. Historical Records of Australia March 1828 - May 1829 Vol XIV


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Last updated Friday, 11 May 2007