by Graham Seal
4 Munsche, P. B., ‘The Game Laws in Wiltshire, 1750–1800’ in J. S. Cockburn (ed), Crime in England, 1550–1800, London, 1977, p. 210. On this point see also Heath, R., The English Peasant, London, 1893, p. 33 and Zouch, H., An Account of the Present Daring practices of Night-Hunters, and Poachers …, etc., London, 1783, pp. 9ff for the same fears expressed in the 1780s, and p. 6 for an account of poachers vandalising the home of the Marquis of Rockingham.
5 Munsche, p. 210; see also Simon Schama’s brief but evocative discussion of mediaeval forest poaching and outlawry in his Landscape and Memory, HarperCollins, London, 1995, pp. 142ff.
6 Munsche, p. 211.
7 Bovill, E. W., English Country Life, 1780–1830, London, 1962, pp. 177–8.
8 Bovill, p. 179.
9 Bovill, pp. 178–82.
10 The relationship between beliefs about common rights, enclosure, violent protest – a good deal of which had connections to poaching – and customary behaviour is a complex topic in itself. See, for example, Gifford, R., ‘Guy Fawkes: Who Celebrated What? A Closer Look at 5th November in the Light of Captain Swing’, in T. Buckland, & J. Wood (eds), Aspects of British Calendar Customs, Sheffield, 1993, who cites a Guy Fawkes night riot at the home of the Duke of Manchester in 1830. The Duke was a prime mover in the local anti-poaching organisation.
11 From Chitty, J., ‘Observations on the Game Laws’ (1816), quoted in D. Hay, ‘Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase’ in D. Hay et. al. (eds), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England, London, 1975, pp. 191, 194; see also Bovill, p. 179 for a similar statement from Sydney Smith.
12 Peacock, A. J., Bread or Blood, London, 1965, p. 38.
13 Bovill, pp. 179–80; also Heath, p. 134 and Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, London, 1963, p. 142 for further evidence of the same attitudes among rural workers.
14 Rider Haggard, L. (ed.), I Walked By Night (1935), London, 1947, p. 186.
15 ‘Rufford Park Poacher’, sung by Mr Joseph Taylor, Brigg, Lincs., 4 August 1906. Phonographed and noted by Percy Grainger; see Journal of the Folk-Song Society, London, vol. III, No. 12, May 1908, p. 187.
16 Sung by John Day, Hillingdon Union, Middlesex, 20 September 1913, noted by Cecil Sharp in Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol. VIII, No. 31, 1931, p. 7; also a version collected from George ‘Pop’ Maynard, Copthorne, Sussex, by Ken Stubbs in 1954 and quoted in Lloyd, A. L., Folksong in England, London, 1969, p. 246.
17 Noted by Reverend John Broadwood before 1840 in L. E. Broadwood & J. A. Maitland, English County Songs, London, (1893) n.d., pp. 50–51; see also Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol. 5, no. 19, 1915, p. 198 for a version collected in Herts., 1898 (1 verse only) and p. 199 for a Sussex version of 1907.
18 Sheffield and Rotherham Advertiser, 2 December 1865, p. 5.
19 In his study of social protesters transported to Australia, Protest and Punishment: The Story of the Social and Political Protesters Transported to Australia, 1788–1868, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1978, George Rudé notes, not quite accurately, that William Sykes was ‘The last poacher of all to land in Australia’ (p. 154). In fact, Sykes was but one of a number of poachers transported aboard the Norwood, including his companions from the Silver Wood affray. However, as Rudé also points out, Sykes was not a social or political protester.
20 Poaching was also carried out in an organised manner as an illegal supply to metropolitan restaurants; it is possible that William Sykes and his friends took a small part in this lucrative black economy. See the letter of William Sykes to his brother Joshua, which suggests Sykes may have had some tentative connections with the world of serious crime. He had certainly known the shady Woodhouse for five years before the Silver Wood affray; see Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 22 December 1865.
CHAPTER 2
1 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 12 October 1865.
2 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1865.
3 Sheffield and Rotherham Advertiser, 14 October 1865.
4 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1865.
5 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 2 November 1865.
6 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 22 December 1865.
7 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1865.
8 Rotherham and Masbrough Advertiser, 28 October 1865.
9 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1865.
10 None of which harmed Jubb’s professional standing. The following year he was appointed a tax and rates commissioner for the West Riding of Yorkshire, Statutes Public General 29° and 30° Victoriae, c. 58, 59 CAP. LIX.
11 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 2 November 1865.
12 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 4 November 1865.
13 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6 November 1865.
14 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 November 1865.
15 Rotherham and Masbrough Advertiser, Nov 11, 1865, p. 3.
16 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Nov 8, 1865.
17 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Nov 16, 1865.
18 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1865; see also The Sheffield and Masbrough Advertiser, 18 November 1865.
CHAPTER 3
1 Myra is a name invented by the seventeenth-century poet Fulke Greville. It may be an anagram of ‘Mary’ or come from the simplified Latin ‘myrrh’, familiar to Christians as one of the gifts brought by the Three Wise Men to the Christ-child. Myra was not unknown, but was far from a common female name at this time and in this place.
2 William’s brother, Joshua, seems to have had a connection with the progressive side of politics.
3 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, vol. XVl, pp. 252–3.
4 Baines’s Yorkshire: History, Directory and Gazetteer of the County of York, 2 vols, 1822 and 1823, reprinted David & Charles, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1969, pp. 630–1; see also Langdale’s Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire, 1822.
5 Langdale’s Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire, 1822.
6 Langdale’s Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire, 1822.
7 Baines’s, p. 257; see also Guest, J., Relics and Records of Men and Manufacturers at or in the Neighbourhood of Rotherham …, paper read on 27 March 1865 before the Members of the Rotherham Literary and Scientific Society, reprinted by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, 1980, pp. 43, 72, 83, 84, 88, 89, 93, 100.
8 Symons, J. C., in Parliamentary Papers, 1843, vol. XIV, E11, 93.
9 These are the dates in the census returns for 1871, 1881 and 1891. They do not tally with those given by Alexandra Hasluck in Unwilling Emigrants, p. 2.
10 Murray’s Hand-Book of Yorkshire, p. 482.
11 Young, A., General Report on Enclosures (1808), London, 1971, 56–7.
12 Holt, J., General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lancaster, London, 1795, p. (i), and printed in all subsequent editions.
13 Quoted in Peacock, A. J, Bread or Blood, London, 1965, p. 20.
14 Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991, p. 111.
15 Thompson, E. P., Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1975; see also Zouch, H., An Account of the Present Daring Practices of Night-Hunters and Poachers … etc., London, 1783.
16 Reaney, B., The Class Struggle in Nineteenth Century Oxfordshire: The Social and Communal Background to the Otmoor Disturbances of 1830 to 1835, Oxford, 1970, pp. 33–5.
17 Bean, J., Crime in Sheffield from Deer Poaching to Gangsters, 1300 to the 1980s, Sheffield City Libraries, 1987, pp. 29–37.
18 Gummer, G., Reminiscences of Rotherham, Rotherham, 1927, p. 116.
19 ‘Carolus Paulus’, Some Forgotten Facts in the History of Sheffield and Districts, Sheffield, 1907.
20 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 November 1865.
CHAPTER 4
1 They had also poached there at least once before, according to evidence at the trial; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1865.
2 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 22 December 1865.
3 Sheffield Daily Telegraph.
4 Sheffield Daily Telegraph.
5 Mayhall, J., The Annals and History of Leeds and Other Places in the County of York, Leeds, 1860, p. 682.
6 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 26 December 1865 and Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 26 December 1865.
CHAPTER 5
1 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 January 1866.
2 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 11 January 1866.
3 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1866.
4 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 January 1866.
5 Sheffield Local Register, 1865, 1866.
6 The Sheffield Outrages: Report Presented to the Trade Unions Commissioners in 1867.
7 Bean, J., op. cit., pp. 12ff.
8 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1867.
9 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 23 October 1865, July 1865, 7 July 1865 (3 incidents), 21 December 1865.
10 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 18 December 1868, then 18 January (2 incidents), 29 January 29 (3 incidents), 3 March (3 cases), 19 March, 7 April, 9 April, 28 April, 31 May (2 cases), 30 June, 10 July, 14 July, 25 July, 31 July, 18 August, 8 September, 22 September (2 incidents) and 6 October, 1868; see also Bean, pp. 40–2 and Hopkins, H., The Long Affray, passim.
CHAPTER 6
1 Hasluck, op. cit., p. 17.
2 Sheffield Local Register, 1865 and 1866.
3 Cornhill Magazine, vol. XIII, January–June 1866, p. 497 and Hasluck, op. cit., pp. 17–18.
4 Hughes, R., The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787–1868, London, 1987.
5 The colony officially elected to become a penal settlement in 1849.
6 We read no more of Woodhouse in Myra’s subsequent correspondence. Given the depth of local antagonism towards the man, he may well have moved elsewhere.
7 There is a possibility that such a petition was made, though a search of CO 397/28 (part 2), Correspondence 1856–73 and associated papers revealed no evidence.
CHAPTER 7
1 Saunders, Dr, ‘The Surgeon’s Day Log: Convict Ship “Norwood”, 1867’, Battye Library Q910. 45 SAU, transcribed by John Kelly.
2 This was one of the letters missing from the Sykes Papers.
3 ‘Norwoodiana or Sayings and Doings on Route to Western Australia: A Manuscript Journal Made During the 1867 Voyage of the Convict Ship Norwood, April to July 1867 by William Irwin (Religious Instructor)’, (transcribed by B. & T. Dent, 1996, from original ms. in Mitchell Library, Sydney), copy Battye Library.
4 Norwoodiana 8, p. 5. For a more accurate and knowledgeable account of the language of the Aborigines in Perth and surrounding regions, see Lyon, R. M., ‘A Glance at the Manners and Language of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western Australia: With a Short Vocabulary’, Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, March–April 1833, quoted in N. Green (ed.), Nyungar – The People: Aboriginal Customs in the Southwest of Australia, Perth, 1979, pp. 148–180, and passim.
CHAPTER 8
1 There were 30 pensioner guards with 17 wives, 14 sons, 16 daughters and another four cabin passengers or, possibly, soldiers.
2 Haswell, G., Ten Shanties Sung on the Australian Run, 1879, Antipodes Press, 1992.
3 Thought to be another name for the Cape Pigeon.
4 Arriving at Adelaide (SA) in 1840, Ellen Moger wrote home to her parents: ‘Poor little Alfred was the first that died on the 30th of Oct, and on the 8th of Nov, dear Fanny went and three days after, on the 11th, the dead babe was taken from me.’ Things had improved a little in the quarter century following, though illness and childbirth were still very dangerous aboard ship; see Haynes, R., Life and Death in the Age of Sail: The Passage to Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2003.
5 Cornhill Magazine, April 1866.
6 Bateson, C., The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, Reed, Sydney, 1974, p. 377.
7 Cornhill Magazine, op. cit.
8 Rudé, G., op. cit., p. 154, n. 39.
9 Convict Department of Western Australia Convict Shipping and Description List No. 30 ‘Norwood’, Battye Library.
CHAPTER 9
1 It has also been asserted that the Chinese were in contact with mainland Australia in the 1430s and even, if more difficult to ascertain, some centuries earlier. Certainly there was contact through Macassan fishermen, probably with Portuguese traders in the fifteenth century; see Appleyard, R. & Manford, T., The Beginning: European Discovery and Early Settlement of Swan River Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 1979, ch. 1.
2 Dampier wrote this in a popular account of his voyage. His official report is much more accurate and contains no such prejudiced statements calculated to appeal to the baser Eurocentric stereotypes.
3 Fitch, V., Eager for Labour: The Swan River Indenture, Hesperian Press, Perth, 2003.
4 Quoted in Green, ‘Aborigines and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century’, in Stannage, C. T. (ed), A New History of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981, p. 89.
5 Published in The Looking Glass, London, 1830.
6 See, for instance, Appleyard & Manford, pp. 148–63.
7 Though it has also been argued that the colony lacked capital rather than labour and that the convicts would increase the market for local consumption. Fremantle Prison Newsletter, no. 11, June 1999.
8 There had been transportation to Western Australia before this. Boys from the Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight were sent to the colony between 1842 and 1849. Fremantle Prison Newsletter, no. 13, December 1999.
9 Smith, E. Langley, Convict Prison Fremantle, E. Langley Smith, Perth, 1997, pp. 27–8.
10 Stannage, C., The People of Perth, Perth, 1979, p. 94. Only male convicts were transported to the Swan River.
11 Erickson, R., Dictionary of West Australians 1829–1914, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 135.
12 Hasluck, A., Unwilling Emigrants, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1959, p. 80.
13 According to Erickson, R. & O’Mara, G. Dictionary Of Western Australians 1829–1914, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1994, Teale received this documentation of completion of sentence in 1898. If accurate, this means he must have been convicted of further crimes as his original 20 year sentence would have expired in 1886, possibly earlier.
14 Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 12, 13, 14, 21, 28 December 1867.
15 Sheffield & Rotherham Advertiser, 21 March 1868, p. 5.
16 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 4 February 1868.
17 As for Sykes and company, Mr Campbell Foster was counsel.
18 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 February 1868.
19 Platts had turned up at the trial so drunk he was, conveniently perhaps, unable to testify, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 February 1868.
20 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 28 December 1867. The correspondent gave the name Henry Moore, of Doncaster.
21 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 30 March 1868.
CHAPTER 10
1 Evans, A., Fanatic Heart: A Life of John Boyle O’Reilly 1844–1890, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1997, p. 98; see also Sullivan, C. W. III, Fenian Diary: Denis B Cashman Aboard the Hougoumont, 1867–1868, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 2001.
2 Hasluck, A., op. cit., p. 75.
3 O’Reilly, J., Moondyne, published in Boston in 1879, in Australia the following year and frequently reprinted since.
4 The case of the transported Irish rebels excited considerable interest at the time. ‘Correspondence Entry Books of Letters from Secretary of State. Despatches 1856–73’, CO 397/28 (part 2); see also Evans, op. cit.
5 ‘Correspondence Entry Books of Letters from Secretary of State. Despatches 1856 – 73’, CO 397/28 (part 2).
6 The last being as late as 1989, just two years before the prison was decommissioned. Bosworth, M., Convict Fremantle, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 2004, p. 80.
7 Elliot, I, Moondyne Joe: The Man and the Myt
h, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1979 and Seal, G., The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996, p. 144.
8 From O’Reilly’s recently discovered Western Australian verse manuscript, quoted in full in Evans, p. 125.
CHAPTER 11
1 Not 1872, as Alexandra Hasluck surmised. From the internal evidence of Myra’s birthday falling on a Tuesday, 17 March, as it did in 1874, and the election of Anthony John Mundella as MP for Sheffield in the 1874 general election, the letter could not have been written in 1872.
2 There is a black-edged letter from Joshua Sykes to the Hargreaves family expressing sorrow at the death of young William. It is dated August 30, 1874 and proffers Joshua’s reasons for not being able to attend the funeral. It suggests that Joshua was doing quite well for himself and his family, with a business, assistants and plans to spend 11 or 12 days at the seaside. Copy in Rotherham Library Local Studies holdings ‘Who’s Who’ file for Sykes.
3 An empty envelope dated 19 January 1876 and postmarked ‘Rotherham’ is part of the Sykes Papers; see Hasluck, A., Unwilling Emigrants, p. 84.
CHAPTER 12
1 Erickson, R., Old Toodyay and Newcastle, Toodyay Shire Council, 1974, pp. 214–5, 283–4, 318, 330, 351.
2 The letter is at 564A in the Battye Library.
3 Hasluck, op. cit., p. 102, citing a now-lost document found with the letters in the kangaroo-skin pouch.
4 See Appendix, These Few Lines.
5 Ward, his wife and his partner established the first homestead in this area. There would have been an ongoing demand for water as the area developed. Erickson, R., op. cit., p. 183.
6 William does not appear in the Western Australian General Railways lists of employees for the period and so was probably not a permanent employee.
7 Stannage, op. cit., p. 193.
8 Holyday, C., Into the West: When Australia’s bush poet Henry Lawson came to Western Australia, Hesperian Press, Perth, 2005.
9 There is some uncertainty about the exact date of death, some documents claiming William Sykes died at Newcastle (Toodyay) Hospital on 5 January, while the Toodyay cemetery register has him being buried on 4 January; see note 10.
