Absconding from servant’s duties landed one North Shore convict on the iron gang
Two hundred years ago, in 1826, the newly arrived Governor Ralph Darling introduced the first formal guidelines for convict ‘assignment’. The bureaucracy of convict management was tightened and, consequently, we have documentation that is helpful for researching individual convicts. Fortunately, those changes coincided with the presence of convicts on the North Shore and therefore help us tease out local stories of masters and servants.
Felons had been allocated to free colonists as ‘servants’ for decades, but the process was haphazard and open to abuse. From 1826, magistrates determined who received convicts. Prisoners were given numbers and details of their arrival and appearance better recorded.
In 1832, William Shairp, who lived above Careening Cove in present-day North Sydney, secured at least three servants. William Saunderson was a ploughman and reaper. John Collier was a housepainter. Peter Davis had the very particular trade of ‘boot closer,’ meaning he specialised in stitching a boot’s leather upper. It was likely a useful skill given Shairp’s responsibility for providing clothing for his servants and the need to upkeep horse tack.
The lottery of assignment held dangers for master and servant. The former had to manage a person who may be violent, unwell or simply uninterested in hard work. Servants might be treated well or harshly.
In 1833 Davis absconded. Running away was not unusual. It might have been the result of sudden upset or a tactic to leave a particular master in the hope of reassignment after capture. Davis was one of at least five servants who absconded from Shairp’s estate, and that of his father-in-law and neighbour James Milson, between 1833 and 1838. Were the families unlucky with their allocated servants or were they harsh taskmasters? The Sydney Gazette described escapee Davis as follows: No. 31-1769, Surrey (5), 18, Boot Closer, 4 feet 113/4, light hazel eyes, light brown hair, freckled, and pockpitted comp, ID indistinctly marked (tattooed) inside right arm and scar outside, from Mr W Shairp, North Shore.
In translating this it’s likely that convict number 31-1769 was a young man from Surrey, short of stature with a complexion that indicated acne or small-pox infection. As a ‘boot closer’ it is likely that Davis was a townsman. Up to the 1830s, most felons sent to NSW were from towns or cities.
It was not Davis’s first offence. In 1832 he had been found guilty of diluting James Milson’s milk with chalk and water and selling the pure fluid ‘on his own account.’ He ran away again in 1834, this time in the company of another servant. The two went on a stealing spree before being apprehended.
If Davis’s intention had been reassignment away from the North Shore he was likely disappointed for, by 1836, he was in Milson’s employ on the neighbouring estate. He absconded again in 1836. This time his punishment was 12 months in an ‘iron gang’ with legs shackled, likely building roads. Some of them may have been on the North Shore.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council
