by Tom Keneally
While we’re on the subject, Henrietta Duchamp is a complete fabrication; however, the Female School of Industry existed and was founded by Governor Ralph Darling’s wife, Eliza. It was on Macquarie Street, close to where the Mitchell Library now stands.
Brendan Donnelly is loosely based on Daniel Deniehy, whose remarks about the bunyip aristocracy have been put in Donnelly’s mouth.
The Sudds and Thompson affair
The epicentre of the acrimony between the governor and the press was the treatment of two soldiers, Patrick Thompson and Joseph Sudds of the 57th Regiment.
Sudds and Thompson were among those who believed that convicts, once their sentence was served, had more opportunities in the colony than soldiers who had never committed a crime. They, and others, watched former convicts grow into prosperous merchants and traders. They were not the only ones to believe that those who arrived free were often at a disadvantage, particularly if they wore a uniform.
Thinking to serve the sentence of the court and then better themselves once in possession of a ticket of leave, the pair committed a very visible theft of a bolt of fabric from a store in Sydney’s York Street, dressed in their uniforms. They were sentenced to seven years.
Their timing, however, could not have been worse. Governor Darling decided to make an example of the two men. He commuted their sentence from transportation to seven years on a road gang in leg irons (despite lacking the legal authority to do so). He ordered special chains made, which ran from the leg irons to a custom-made collar, festooned with spikes so that the men could not lie down. At a ceremony ordered by Darling, the pair were stripped of their soldiers’ uniforms, put into yellow convict clothes, and had their irons riveted on under the gaze of their former comrades.
Sudds, already in poor health, died shortly afterwards. Thompson was then forced to wear Sudds’ chains as well as his own.
Darling was excoriated by both Hall at the Monitor and Wardell and Wentworth at the Australian.
Darling strikes back
In response to continued press attacks, Governor Darling proposed a licensing regime for the colony’s newspapers. In effect, this would have required newspapers to seek annual permission to continue publishing. He also tried to institute a 4d stamp duty, which would have put newspapers out of reach of all but the wealthiest.
In essence, this would have resulted in a state-run media, had it not been for the intervention of Sir Francis Forbes, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Chief Justice Forbes ultimately overturned both measures, saying in relation to the licensing scheme: ‘So far as (publishing) becomes an instrument of communicating intelligence and expressing opinion, it is considered a constitutional right, and is now too well established to admit of question that it is one of the privileges of a British subject.’
Darling, of course, was a more nuanced man than can be conveyed in this brief note. There is no doubt, however, that he was far stricter than his predecessors Lachlan Macquarie and Thomas Brisbane. He seems to have had a rigid, militaristic approach to the punishment of convicts which bordered on the inhumane and in some cases, such as that of Sudds and Thompson, overstepped that line. He was of the view that educated convicts were particularly culpable, as their intelligence and learning gave them advantages which ‘common’ criminals lacked. Our friend Monsarrat will collide with this attitude when he and Mrs Mulrooney return in The Valley of the Swells.
One last note: the gaol in this book is called Sydney Gaol, but is fictional and only very loosely based on the real gaol of the same name.
For those interested in further reading, the books and papers we relied on in writing this novel include:
A History of the Criminal Law in NSW 1788–1900, G. D. Woods, Federation Press, 2002
Early Struggles of the Australian Press, James Bonwick, Ulan Press, 1890
Ralph Darling – A Governor Maligned, Brian H. Fletcher, Oxford University Press, 1984
Edward Smith Hall and the Sydney Monitor, Erin Ihde, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004
The Wentworths, Father and Son, John Ritchie, Melbourne University Press, 1997
Settlers and Convicts, or, Recollections of Sixteen Years’ Labour in the Australian Backwoods, Alexander Harris, C. Cox, London, 1847
‘Defamation Law and the Emergence of a Free Press in Colonial NSW’, Brendan Edgeworth, Australian Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 6, 1990
‘The Origins of a Free Press’, Jack Herman, Press Council News, Vol. 15, No. 1, February 2003
‘Believers in Court: Sydney Anglicans Going to Law’, Cable Lecture, Justice Keith Mason, 9 September 2005
‘The Politics of the Pew: Faith, Liberty, and Authority in a Sydney Church in 1828’, Matthew Allen, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2018
‘Newspaper Acts Opinion’, C. J. Forbes, April 1827, Supreme Court of New South Wales
Acknowledgements
As this book was being edited, Tom underwent a traumatic but necessary surgical procedure. He’s recovering well and wants to send his thanks – to which I wholeheartedly add my own – to everyone who has sent kind wishes, and embraced Monsarrat and Mrs M.
As always, my thanks and gratitude go to my family. Craig, Rory and Alex, thank you for putting up with the stress and deadlines, the half-drunk cups of coffee and demands for hugs and chocolate. I love you.
Tom and I both wish to thank my remarkable mother, Judy, who does so much for everyone and makes it look easy. She is one of the strongest women I have ever met and was integral to getting this book onto the page.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to my aunt, Jane Hall Keneally, to whom this book is dedicated. She was an incredible support to Tom, Judy and the rest of our family in the aftermath of Tom’s surgery, and we can’t thank her enough.
Editors are the unsung heroes of the publishing industry, and I’d like to thank two of the best, Catherine Hill and Kate Goldsworthy, who put so much work into this manuscript and left it a lot better than they found it.
And finally, I owe more than I can repay to my father, without whom Monsarrat and Mrs M would not exist. Tommy, thank you for taking me along for the ride.
Meg Keneally
December 2018
Also by Meg and Tom Keneally
The Soldier’s Curse
The Unmourned
The Power Game
A Vintage Australia book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
penguin.com.au
First published by Vintage Australia in 2019
Copyright © Margaret Keneally and The Serpentine Publishing Company 2019
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, published, performed in public or communicated to the public in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd or its authorised licensees.
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ISBN 9780143790310
Cover image courtesy of Shutterstock
Cover design by Christabella Designs
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