by Graham Seal
Escape is a constant obsession of those constrained in prison camps. A penal colony, even one as relatively subdued as the Swan River, is little different. There are continual mutterings, plots and rumours of plots. Escape attempts were a continuing feature of prison life throughout the Fremantle Prison’s grim history.6 Occasionally, as O’Reilly and the other Fenians proved, someone succeeds, inspiring legend and emulation. While such successes are few and far between, and the failures many, there was, during William Sykes’s life as a convict, another colourful Swan River colonist who personified the dream of escape.
Joseph Bolitho Johns was a 22-year-old Welsh transport when he arrived in 1854. Earning a conditional pardon in 1855 he took up the business of catching stray horses, returning them to their owners for the rewards offered on such valuable assets. Operating in the Toodyay area Johns was arrested on suspicion of causing the horses to leave their rightful owners and ‘catching’ them in his horse traps at a place called Moondyne Springs. He was arrested and imprisoned, but while awaiting trial he escaped. Recaptured, the horse-stealing charges were dropped but he received three years imprisonment for gaol breaking. Released in 1864 he was returned to gaol inside a year, this time with a 10-year sentence. The charge was killing an ox with intent to steal the carcass. But the working party he was sent to labour in could not hold him long and Johns, now developing something of a legend among the convicts and settlers, reflected in the nickname ‘Moondyne Joe’, escaped again.
When they caught him this time, the bushranger was given a further year in chains. Bound fast in irons within a cell, Joe, still in irons, almost escaped again and was placed in another, supposedly escape-proof cell in the prison refectory. It was only another 10 days before he disappeared from here and enjoyed several months of freedom in his old stamping ground around Moondyne Springs. In September 1866 he was captured again and placed in a specially constructed escape-proof cell in Fremantle Prison.
Here, in solitary confinement, on a bread and water diet and in an enclosed space with little light or air, he became so ill that the medical authorities said he would die. So Joe was taken out of his cell every day and left in the corner of the prison yard by himself, watched closely by a guard and kept isolated from all contact. When he recovered, he was put to work breaking stones. Eventually, he smashed a large pile of rubble behind which it was difficult for the guard to see what was going on. On 8 March 1867, all was as usual: the guard watched Joe’s pick rising and falling behind the pile of rubble, occasionally checking verbally that Joe was still there. He was. What the lazy guard could not see was that Joe’s pick was not attacking rocks but a loose stone in the prison wall. As the heat of the day faded the guard could see Joe’s cap over the rubble but could not get an answer from his call – ‘Are you there, Joe?’ Seeing the cap, the guard assumed Joe was having a break and neglected to walk over to check until knock-off time at 5 o’clock.
Of course, when the guard went to get Joe he found the cap, a broad-arrow patterned jacket propped up on a couple of picks and a large hole in the prison wall. Joe had breached the stone barrier, left his prison clothes behind and wriggled into the garden of the prison superintendent’s house. Then, he simply strolled through the superintendent’s front gate which, fortunately for the convict, happened to be open.
Pandemonium erupted as prison authorities and the police scrambled to catch the great escaper once again. Governor Hampton, who had called Joe an ‘immense scoundrel’ and publicly boasted of the escape-proof cell, was especially displeased, a fact that only increased the pleasure of the broad community of settlers and convicts, for whom Joe had now added another triumphant chapter to his legend. In the streets they sang, to the tune of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’:
The Governor’s son has got the pip,
The Governor’s got the measles.
Moondyne Joe has give ’em the slip
Pop, goes the weasel.
Moondyne Joe had become a colonial Robin Hood.7 His song and story were still much in the air by the time William Sykes arrived at the Swan River. He would have heard various, increasingly embellished, versions of the story, many of which are still told today.
After absconding from his ‘escape-proof cell’, Joe remained at large for another two years; he was eventually recaptured at a local vineyard on 25 February 1869, drunk according to some accounts. He served another lengthy sentence – without escaping – and, in time, followed William Sykes down to the Vasse River region on a ticket of leave. But by then William had long departed.
As far as anyone knows, William Sykes, John Boyle O’Reilly and Moondyne Joe never met. But the facts and folklore of the bushranger and the Fenians were living legends. They seemed to leave open a small chink in the prison walls that held at least a promise of something that just might be, one day. But not now. For the moment William Sykes the poacher and convicted manslaughterer must serve out his time and wonder, as did his fellow transport John Boyle O’Reilly, if this was the end of his life.
While the ill-educated William was not skilled in the written word, the literary O’Reilly cried out his own fears and those of all transported convicts in verse written at this time:
Have I no future left me?
Is there no struggling ray
From the sun of my life outshining
Down on my darksome way?
Will there no gleam of sunshine
Cast o’er my path its light?
Will there no star of hope rise
Out of this gloom of night?… 8
There is a record of one other letter written by William during this year, 1868. Where or to whom he sent it is unknown. Perhaps it was another message to one or more members of his own family – Elizabeth, her husband Charles or perhaps to his successful and prosperous older brother, John. But it was not to Myra. Nor had she written to him. Far away in Masborough, Myra had problems of her own.
11 The Long Years
it harte breaks me to write like this if the prodigal son cud come Buck to his home wons more tahre woold be a rejoicing …
Myra Sykes to William Sykes, March 1872
While William was being broken into a life of penal servitude in the Western Australian bush, back home in England Myra was struggling to make ends meet and bring up the children. Without a husband to work, and to supplement their basic diet with an occasional rabbit, Myra had a difficult task ahead of her. She could certainly not expect any money to be coming from William. So she needed employment to put food on the table and clothe the children. She had to see to the children’s other physical needs, too: their clothes, their health and also to such education as was available. Fortunately, the older children, Ann and Alfred, were of working age and Myra no doubt depended heavily upon them, though, as her letters reveal, neither was totally reliable as a source of income.
William probably wrote to Myra again late in 1871, possibly even as early as 1870. Myra’s reply is dated 9 March, presumably in 1874.1 She had been working hard and long as a laundress and her letter is weary and care-worn. By now the ties of affection and loyalty are being strained by time, distance and the demands of getting on with life. She has not much word from William:
dear Husband I been long In writing to you I hope you will forgive I receved you letter and was plesed with it I think you mite send me more word wot your doing …
Despite the next sentences, in which she says that all at home are well, she later tells him that she is not well herself and that some of the children have also been ill. She asks William to exercise some fatherly guidance to young Alfred, who is rapidly growing up, obviously a little too quickly for Myra to handle. She is especially concerned about his liking for public houses, especially at the relatively tender age of 13 or 14 years:
I want you to send a line to Alfred he is geting up likes to go to the public But is not a Bad lad to me …
There are also more additions to the family:
I expect you will be a grandfather of to Wenn this Lett
er arrive at you …
which seems to be a reference to Ann’s twins, after the birth of which she returned to work, though, according to the census for that year, she was still living at home, had lost her place as a housemaid and was unmarried:
Ann on Again she not very good Luck lost a dule of time from binn poly …
Young William, now five, had also been poorly, but was looking better, Myra said. Then she asked if William ever writes to his brother, Joshua. It seems that Joshua has raised the possibility of some political intervention in William Sykes’s case should Mr Anthony Mundella be elected for Sheffield. He is elected, but we hear no more of politics until the very end of William’s story.
Now Myra seems to loose control of her emotions:
it harte breaks me to write like this if the prodigal son cud come Buck to his home wons more tahre woold be a rejoicing …
A few lines further on Myra recalls her last sight of William at the Leeds assizes:
and you mencend about Lucking young I thort you did when I saw you at leeds my hart broke neley wenn I felt your hand bing so soft..
There is a line about the fine-looking girl that the 11 or 12-year-old Thirza, also still at home, has grown into, followed by a wistful recollection of Myra’s own birthday, 17 March:
as for my self I not lucking very well at present
This is followed by some news of relations, including work in the Wombwell main coalmine at Barnsley, where around 1200 workers were employed above and below ground:
Alfred is in the Woinbel main pit and Ann Husband and my Brother Ellis Alfred full week 19 6 pence he minden ganger …
It seems from this that those back home were in work and managing as well as could be expected. The wayward Alfred was apparently working as a ganger, or foreman, in the pits, according to the census in the capacity of a horse driver. Employment in and around the pits was important in the continuing family connections between Myra and William’s children, Ann’s ‘husband’ and Myra’s family. Another relation was 18-year-old Frank Sykes, a miner. He was lodging with the family in April 1871, as was another young miner, 23-year-old William Waterham, apparently Ann’s ‘husband’. It was this barely glimpsed network of relations, friends and work associations that helped sustain Myra through the long years of desolation.
Myra concludes this letter by raising a hope that would sustain her and the children – and perhaps William – for many years, the possibility of him one day returning to England. This hope would eventually become one of the many ironies of William and Myra’s story. For now, though, such a hope was, as Myra said herself, only a wish:
Ann Husband says He Wood Work hard for you to come hom if it cud be Done and my and my [sic] Dear Husban I sends my nearest and Dearest Love to you and all the children with A 1000 Loves and kiss wish we may meet again ho that we cold in this World
It was now seven years or more since Myra and William had last seen each other. Back home, tales of the events in Silver Wood and their aftermath were being handed on to a growing generation and becoming legend. But William Sykes was no hero. He was not the stuff that heroes are made of, but nor was he considered a villain by those who loved him or by those who belonged to the same social class. To these people his fate was more like that of the martyr. In their eyes, William and his poaching companions had done no wrong. To the contrary, poaching was a widely admired pastime, economic supplement and submerged social protest in this part of the world. Nor did many think of William as a murderer. In the moral order of this time and place those who defended the rights and resources usurped by the rich and powerful were fair game themselves. The death of a keeper was regrettable, but the stupid bugger should not have been doing the job in the first place. These, at least, were the lines along which would run the popular wisdom muttered in forges, pits and pubs by men who, despite their lowly station, were well aware of the vested interests and power politics of industrial England. The suggestion of political intervention in William’s case, raised hopefully in Myra’s letter as having been mooted by Ann’s husband, strongly echoes the family’s concern for the possibility of repatriation, bolstered by the continuing unhappiness within the community about the severity of the sentence.
These political resonances had no relevance to William Sykes, Swan River convict. He continued labouring with the Bunbury road gangs at different locations throughout the district. He cut drains in the swampy ground around Harvey and worked on the Capel Bridge at Bunbury. On 18 March 1873 he was charged with drunkenness, an old habit perhaps, that would also plague him in later years. Other than this, no more is heard of him until his road gang is transferred back to Fremantle in September 1874.
The next year, 1875, was a busy one. On 12 January 1875 William wrote to Myra. Although this letter is lost, the gist of it is clear from Myra’s reply of 11 April. She begins in her usual, slightly formal manner:
Dear Husband I writ these few lines to you hoping to find you well as it leaves us at present
Then, as she often did, Myra returns to the theme of the letters from William that she never received. Whether he ever wrote them, Myra believed he did, a suspicion aroused by the fact that William had addressed his letter to a Kit Royal:
I dont douted but you have rote a many letters that I never heard tell of I wonce was th[r]ee years and had not had a leter …
Then Myra tells of the terrible news she had received:
your relations said that you was Dead I went to Rotherham townshall and asked if they knew wheather you was dead or not one of the police sade he heard you was dead …
Poor Myra was now convinced that her dear husband was dead, the family news casually confirmed by the authority figure of the policeman:
I put the chealdren and my self in black for you my little Tirza went to the first place in deap black …
Having dressed herself and the children in mourning clothes, Myra was at once devastated and relieved to discover, through William’s favoured sister, that she had been misinformed. Not only had this letter been directed to William’s sister Elizabeth, but to add insult to injury, Elizabeth had also refused Ann leave to see the letter:
then I heard that your sister Elizabeth had got a letter from you my daughter Ann went to see if they had told her that you was all rite and (and) they told her that ther leter had gone to Sheffild she could not see it …
Myra mentions that the Bible and copy of Robinson Crusoe that Elizabeth had purchased for William during the trial are now in the possession of William’s brother, John. He is living at Barrow-in-Furness, she told William, though she was clearly not in contact with him as she does not know his address or, in the speech of the time, ‘the directions’. William obviously was not concerned with either book in his new colonial life. And, if he had read it, the castaway theme of Robinson Crusoe may have been rather too close to his own predicament for comfort.
Myra then moves on to complain of William’s other sister, Rebecca, whom she lent the considerable sum of five shillings:
I lent Rebacca five shiling to go to Leeds with and never gave that back …
From this point the letter starts to ramble, reflecting Myra’s state of mind:
I had to do the best way I coud for my cheldren and my self …
Then she returns to her thoughts of William, who she again refers to as a prodigal son as well as a castaway husband:
Dear Husband cant express myself to you but I hoap to see you wonse more seeted in corner I will the beest for you if it coms to pass …
Myra may by now be suffering from the effects of what is now identified as depression:
Some days I feel pretty chee[r]ful and others very sad But I think it is owing my age …
Then, of course, news of the children. Ann is pregnant once more, though there are problems here as well:
I must tell you tha Ann geting Again for A nother and am sory to tel you that he is not one of the best of husban
Later in this disconnected letter, Myra goes on
to say of Ann’s partner:
I don’t think he is veary fond of work he is a unculted man
This turn of events must have been an especially sore disappointment to Myra who, in an earlier letter, had been glad to tell William of Ann’s ‘husband’s’ statement that he would do all he could towards having William repatriated.
But there are bright spots. Myra then proudly tells of the other children. Alfred is taller than his father’s 5 feet 61/2 inches. Thirza is very solid, an attribute that in those times and circumstances was considered a healthy sign, and William, Myra’s favourite, is also growing tall:
my Alfred I beleve is toler than you pepel is seprsed with him Thirza I belive she not far off 11 stone william nist [nice?] boy he does not luse a inch of is ight
This letter ends with some news of and best wishes from old friends, especially the constant Edward, or Ned, Uttley and also mentions a relation of one of the convicted poachers, Luke Booth, still living locally. Although they did not expect to see William Sykes ever again, the local people kept him in their living memory.
Six months or so later, William received a surprise in the form of a letter from his son, the younger William Sykes. Dated 20 October 1875, it begins with bad news:
Dear father I write these few lines hopeing to find you better than it leaves us at present my mother as been very ill and me my self and I am a bit better …
