Lest We Forget: 11/11/12

In memory of the members of our family who gave their lives in the service of their country. This list has been updated from last year, with the addition of five more names to the World War 1 Roll of Honour. The list now contains three sets of brothers.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

(Lawrence Binyon, For the Fallen, 1914) 

 

Died	Place	Rank	Name	Age	Regiment / Service
Afghan Wars
12 Jan 1842	Afghanistan	Captain	Edward Macleod Blair	38	Bengal Light Cavalry
Indian Mutiny
14 May 1858	India	Major	John Waterfield	40	Bengal Native Infantry
Boer War
14 Feb 1902	South Africa	Artificer	George Howard Clark	23	Queensland Imperial Bushmen
World War 1
25 Apr1915	France	Private	Richard Michael Ryan	25	Royal Irish Fusiliers
9 May 1915	France	Corporal	Charles Mulligan	28	Black Watch
9 May 1915	France	Rifleman	Thomas Stanley Groves	31	Royal Irish Rifles
27 Jun 1915	Belgium	Private	John Julius Groves	32	DCLI
24 Aug 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Lawrence Ernest Bennett	22	Queen’s Regiment
15 Sep 1916	France	Gunner	Cyril William Coles	23	Tank Corps
18 Oct 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Christopher Gilbert Durant	20	Worcestershire Regiment
10 Jan 1917	Egypt	Captain	Duncan James Nugent Blair	34	Royal Field Artillery
26 Mar 1917	Palestine	Private	William Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
19 Apr 1917	France	Private	Arthur Tom Munden	31	Hampshire Regiment
23 Apr 1917	France	Lance Corporal	Hubert Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
10 Jul 1917	Belgium	Lieutenant	Sanford William Shippard	21	North Lancashire Regiment
12 Aug 1917	Greece	Private	Ernest John Bentley	41	Durham Light Infantry
16 Oct 1917	France	Private	Frederick Alexander Drackett	21	Hampshire Regiment
9 Apr 1918	Palestine	Lieutenant	Gilbert Seymour Worsley Spencer-Smith	23	Hampshire Regiment
11 May 1918	France	Captain	Arthur Alexander Austen-Leigh	27	Royal Berkshire Regiment
18 Sep 1918	France	Captain	Eric Fairfax Bennett MC	20	Queen’s Regiment
World War 2
21 Jun 1940	at sea	Sub Lieutenant	Ian Reginald Winn Stileman	20	RNVR
21 May 1941	Crete	Driver	Robert George Davis	25	NZ Army Service Corps
28 Oct 1942	Egypt	Private	Ronald Archibald Halkett-Hay	34	Australian Infantry
3 Nov 1942	Egypt	Lieutenant	Nigel Aves Watson	22	Royal Hussars
13 Jul 1943	Italy	Lieutenant	Derek Pease Gregg	26	Glider Pilot Regiment

Waitangi Day - Thomas Bluett, Wellington, 1841

February 6th is Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day, which commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840. To mark the day, the Auckland Research Centre have issued an invitation to blog about New Zealand ancestors.

 

 

My 3x great grandfather, Thomas Bluett, was born around 1819. On 4 December 1836 he married Mary Langley at St Mary, Lambeth, Surrey. Mary had been born in Ireland around 1813, the daughter of Thomas Langley. Thomas and Mary had two known children. Their first child was a son, Thomas, whose birth has not yet been traced. Their second was a daughter, Mary Ann, who was born at 34 Little Pulteney Street, Westminster, on 3 March 1839. It is through her that I am descended. Mary Ann's birth certificate states that Thomas was a printer and we know from other sources that, at this time, he was employed as a lithographic printer by Day and Haghe of London, the country's leading lithographic printing firm.

 

 

On 17 September 1840, Thomas Bluett's name was entered in the New Zealand Company's register of emigrant labourers applying for free passage to New Zealand. He gave his age as 21 and his occupation as smith and bellhanger. Thomas was said to be married, with a wife aged 25, boy aged three and a girl aged eleven months, and the family were living at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand, London.

On 27 September 1840, there was another Bluett application. Adam Bluett was registered as a smith, living at 18 Union Place, Sloane Square, Chelsea. He was aged 30, with a wife aged 29, boy aged 12 and girl aged 10. On 20 October 1840, there were two further applications. Another Adam Bluett, differentiated from the first by the designation senior, was a locksmith and bell hanger, resident at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand. He was married, aged 40, with a wife aged 38. Immediately after him in the register came an application from Peter Langley, an unmarried labourer, aged 21 and also resident at 50 St Clement's Lane.

 

 

After seven years' research, the relationship between these various groups of people is still unclear but, from the coincidence of names, occupations and addresses, it can hardly be doubted that there is one. Some of the information given in the applications is false - Thomas' occupation and Mary Ann's age were probably altered in order to qualify for free passage - but much has been proved accurate from other sources.

Thomas Bluett and his family were originally booked to sail on the Lady Nugent, which left England on 21 October 1840, but they delayed their departure, presumably in order to travel on the same ship as the others. At some point Adam Bluett junior and his family decided not to travel. He and his wife, Catherine (nee Sweeney), plus Adam's two children from a previous marriage, William and Betsy, can be found in the 1841 census living in Henrietta Street, Marylebone. So it was a party of seven which finally set sail on the barque Olympus from Gravesend on 9 December 1840, as steerage passengers bound for New Zealand. The passenger list notes that Thomas Bluett acted as cook for the voyage.

The Olympus arrived at Port Nicholson (the harbour of Wellington) on 20 April 1841. Thomas Bluett lost no time in getting to work but not as a smith and bellhanger. For he had brought with him in the hold of the Olympus the first lithographic printing press to reach New Zealand. Moreover, one of the cabin passengers on the Olympus was a lithographic artist, Jacob William Jones. It seems highly improbable that this was a coincidence. On 1 May 1841, the New Zealand Gazette announced:

 

 

On 29 May, Jones and Bluett produced a chart of Port Nicholson, the first printed map in New Zealand:

 

 

By 12 June they had added a plan of Wadestown and a view of Lambton Harbour & Mount Victoria from Tinakore:

 

 

By 17 July the Gazette was selling their plans of the town:

 

 

But then it all began to go wrong. 16 September 1841 saw the publication in Wellington of the first, and only surviving, edition of an extraordinary newspaper, the Victoria Times. It was a lithographic print of a handwritten original and the publisher was Thomas Bluett, whose address was given as the Lithographic Printing Office, Wellington Terrace.

 

 

As was the custom, the first page consisted of advertisements, including one promoting Thomas Bluett's lithographic services on "very moderate" terms and another seeking "a steady and respectable lad as an apprentice to the lithographic business". The second and third pages were devoted to an editorial in the form of an extended diatribe against the Gazette. The fourth page reprinted the Jones and Bluett plan of Wellington:

 

 

From the plan, it can be seen that the Lithographic Printing Office was situated on land owned by Jacob William Jones. But, having alienated the Gazette, which had previously sold - and praised - his lithographic prints, Thomas now went on to alienate his collaborator and patron. The last mention of Thomas in New Zealand is an advertisement which appeared in the Gazette on 10 and 13 November 1841:

 

 

By the end of the year, Thomas Bluett and his family had left New Zealand for Australia. Their many adventures thereafter, culminating in Thomas' headline-making death back in London in 1846, must be the subject of future blog posts.

As for their travelling companions on the Olympus, I can find no reference at all to them in New Zealand following their arrival. Peter Langley simply vanishes without trace but Adam Bluett senior and his wife, another Catherine, reappear in England. On 16 August 1849 they were convicted at the Wiltshire County Assizes of uttering counterfeit coin and each sentenced to one year's imprisonment. Adam died in the Workhouse in the parish of St Giles, London, and was buried in Victoria Park Cemetery, Hackney, on 27 December 1858, aged 59.

Australia Day: Gateway to a new and better life

It was the evening of Friday, 30 June 1837 and William Tomlin was outside his house at Newcastle Coal Wharf, Limehouse, London.  William was a prosperous, self-made man, the owner of a fleet of lighters and barges which transported coal and timber from ships in the Thames at Limehouse up the Regent's Canal.

 

 

Being high summer, it was still very light when, around 8pm, William saw four youths sitting on a grassy bank about 100 yards away. They were pointing at William's house excitedly, in a way which aroused his suspicions. He watched them for nearly an hour and called his wife and son to take a look at them, saying that, if his house was broken into, these young men would be the people to do it. They did not realise they were under observation, because William and his family were hidden by some trees.

When William went to bed at 11pm, he made sure that he locked up well. Nevertheless, sometime after midnight the youths managed to break into the house through the kitchen window, using a knife to dig out the putty so that they could partially remove the glass and undo the catch. They then reached their hands over the top of the shutters to unfasten them. Once in the house they stole:

• a £20 banknote;
• two silver table-spoons, five tea-spoons and a mustard-spoon, valued at £2 12s;
• two pairs of spectacles, valued at £2;
• a coat, valued at £1 10s;
• three silk handkerchiefs, valued at 9s;
• a pair of shoes, valued at 5s;
• a silver thimble, valued at 1s; and
• two fourpenny pieces.

The total value of £26 17s 8d would be the equivalent of over £2,000 today.

 

 

William Tomlin was woken around 3am on Saturday, 1 July, and found the desk from his sitting room lying outside on the Wharf. It had been broken open with two chisels which lay nearby. Several papers, the £20 bank-note and the two fourpenny pieces were missing from it. One of the fourpenny pieces was very distinctive because William had bored a hole through it with a drill, in an attempt to place it on a ring.

Meanwhile, the burglars had not gone far with their haul. At about 4.30 am a brick maker found the four of them asleep in the straw in his brickfield, a short distance from William Tomlin's house. He threw them out and, in leaving, two of them made the mistake of passing close to the scene of the crime. They were recognised by William, who gave chase and caught up with them about 400 yards away, in Salmon Lane, Limehouse. He pointed them out to a policeman and they were arrested.

The two were John Burton, aged 17, and George Williamson, aged 18. Samuel Weatherstone, aged 16, a known associate of Burton and Williamson, was arrested on Monday, 3 July, having been spotted loitering outside the police station. The police found these three in possession of most of the stolen property. Burton had a table spoon up each sleeve, the handkerchiefs under his shirt and the shoes on his feet. Williamson had the two pairs of spectacles and the silver thimble and he was wearing the coat under his own clothes. Weatherstone had 14s in his pocket and the fourpenny piece with the hole in it on a scarlet ribbon round his neck. The fourth accomplice was never traced.

Weatherstone, Burton and Williamson were brought up before the magistrates for examination on Tuesday, 4 July. According to a reporter from the Times:

 

 

The three were tried for burglary at the Old Bailey the next day, Wednesday 5 July 1837. The evidence against them was overwhelming but, in order to avoid the death penalty for burglary, the jury found them guilty of the lesser charge of breaking and entering. All three were sentenced to be transported for life.

Samuel George Weatherstone sailed on the convict ship Earl Grey from Portsmouth on 27 July 1838, arriving in New South Wales in November. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1846 and pardoned in 1849. He remained in Australia, where he married Letitia Doherty and had six children. He died in Grafton, New South Wales, in 1888, aged 70. By the time of his death he and his family owned considerable amounts of land and cattle.

George Williamson was transported on the ship Lord William Bentinck, departing from Portsmouth on 14 April 1838. He arrived in Tasmania on 26 August. His transportation documents record that he was tattooed with a mermaid and anchor, which suggests he was a sailor. In 1841 he was working for Mr J McArthur in Launceston, Tasmania. By 1846 he had a ticket of leave and by 1849 he had been granted a conditional pardon. He married a fellow convict, Hannah Tillotson, in Launceston in October 1846. According to a descendant, George and Hannah "settled down, raised a family and became good, solid citizens".

John Burton, who was lame, had his life sentence commuted to seven years. He was transported on the convict ship Asia, departing from London on 25 April 1840 and arriving in Tasmania on 6 August. In 1841 he was working in a party of convicts at Southport in the extreme south of Tasmania. By 1846 he was free on a certificate.

 

 

From the mistakes they made before and after their crime, it is hard to believe these three were the professional thieves that Weatherstone, at least, was made out to be. Almost certainly they were driven to steal by extreme poverty. Today they would not even be sent to prison for a first offence of this nature, yet in 1837 these three young men only escaped the gallows because of the clemency of the jury.

Life in the hulks during the long months waiting for transportation must have been utterly ghastly. Penal servitude probably only slightly less so. Yet, following their release, two at least were successful in the new, young country of Australia. Their punishment was unbelievably harsh but it removed them from the squalor and misery of poverty in London's East End and, in the end, turned  out to be the gateway to a new and better life.

Postscript

My connection to these three young men is that William Tomlin was my husband's 4x great grandfather. William died in London on 15 June 1850, survived by 10 of his 11 children. He left nearly £45,000 in his will - at a conservative estimate, the equivalent of over £4 million today.

I initially learned about this case from a report in the Times dated 5 July 1837, which I found online in the Times Digital Archive. I then found the report of the Old Bailey trial at the Old Bailey Online website. I found information about the transportation and subsequent lives of the three young men on Ancestry, in both the historical records and the member trees.

I wish all my Australian cousins a very happy Australia Day. Here in the UK our thoughts and prayers are very much with you in the aftermath of the recent terrible floods.