Sentenced to Debt - What's in a Name?

When I read a book, I always pay attention to its title because it often encapsulates the author's decision to write that particular book. What was it that resonated with the author, that they would devote the long, arduous hours to writing all those pages? 

Some titles, especially for family histories, make the book's content obvious from the start. Usually the family name forms part of the title, to make it easier for extended family members to find the book on various search engines. Some authors of family histories are more creative, such as my cousin (by marriage) John Jennings when he wrote 'A Lot about a Little'.

When I read Behrouz Boochani's powerful book 'No Friend but the Mountains', the author's choice of title did not mean anything to me until I'd read three-quarters of the book, when the author wrote about his home country. Similarly, readers of my book 'Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory' had to reach her retirement years to discover the reason for my subtitle. 

For my most recent book Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, published in 2020, the title was carefully chosen for three reasons. In 1783 in London Robert Forrester escaped his sentence to death and I liked the play on words. In 1794 in Australia he received a small free land grant beside a flood-prone river and my research proved that this sentenced him to a lifetime of actual debt. Today, his descendants everywhere are beginning to acknowledge that they remain in virtual debt to the original owners of the land taken from them by the colonial government without their permission. 

More miseries: Being nervous and cross examined by Mr Garrow,
Thomas Rowlandson, 1 April 1807

It has taken me many years to learn about, understand and come to terms with these three themes, especially the last one. My journey towards understanding began in my childhood.

In Sydney from 1958 I attended a school located 'out amid the flannel flowers' on 'bare plains swept by sea winds clean'. These were the opening words of the school song for Narrabeen Girls High School, no longer in existence by that name.  There the broad sweep of history always attracted me and I achieved First Class Honours in Modern History in the old NSW Leaving Certificate. Sensitive about my inability to reel off names and dates 'to order'- that's what historians are meant to do, isn't it? - I took another tack at university, a problem-solving tack based on economics and mathematics.

Flannel Flowers,
Image courtesy Patsy Templeton, 2020

Growing up in the old Manly-Warringah Shire of Sydney (now called the Northern Beaches), abounding in beautiful bushland, sandstone caves and lagoons, I never gave much thought to Aboriginal matters although we sang the following words as the second verse of our high school song: ‘Where our native people gathered, where they danced corroborees, young Australians climb Parnassus, on the plains of Narrabeen’. These words turned out to be true because in 2005 the skeleton of 4,000-year-old ‘Narrabeen Man’ was unearthed near a bus shelter at Narrabeen. 

In May 1966, at my graduation ceremony at the University of Sydney, the Great Hall resounded with applause for Charlie Perkins, who’d led the famous 'Freedom Rides' around New South Wales the year before. That day he became the first Aboriginal graduate of an Australian university. 

When I voted for the first time in 1967, I happily joined the overwhelming majority vote at the Referendum for permitting the Federal government to make laws for Aboriginal people and count them within the census. We naively thought it would lead to an instant improvement in the lives of our country's original inhabitants.

In 1967 and 1968, just into my twenties, I taught mathematics to some Aboriginal children at South Dubbo High School but remained ignorant about the disadvantaged neighbourhood where they lived.  

Re-visiting Dubbo, 1987

In the 1970s I was co-founder of the Cameragal Montessori School at Lavender Bay, North Sydney – the name honoring the Aboriginal clan of the area. My parents lived in a street named Wallumatta Road. I liked Aboriginal-sounding names so I made up the name "Billalooa Farm" for our farm.

Cameragal Montessori School, 2012

For almost thirty years life then took me in other directions and I gave little thought to Australian history. I remained unaware that a man named Robert Forrester had once lived on a Crown grant at the Hawkesbury, that he played a prominent part in early interactions there with Australia’s First Peoples and that, through a grandson, he has Aboriginal descendants who have lodged a Native Title Claim in Queensland. 

Anchor Memorial, Thompson Square, Windsor, 1999

In 1999 my mother Julia Woodhouse and I stopped for a coffee in Windsor, on our way towards Wilberforce, the birthplace of my mother’s grandmother Varah Jane Bushell. We stood in front of the Pioneer Memorial in Thompson Square, looking for the name Robert Forrester. He was named as the father on the death certificate for Varah’s grandmother. The digital age had not arrived and I was tracking the family tree the old-fashioned way by working back through the official birth, death and marriage certificates for each generation. There he was, listed as an arrival in 1788. 

It was only then that we realised that we were descended from a First Fleeter. Australian history has absorbed me ever since. And naturally I'll be voting in favour of The Voice at the forthcoming referendum.

Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter is a complete rethink and rewrite of the first book I wrote about Robert Forrester back in 2009. Get your copy of this book here.

What Happened to Jane Metcalf?

Most family histories are set in the third person, past tense.  Somehow the third person, present tense energises a story but it's very hard to sustain a book-length story of the past using this writing style. Some writers have managed it, such as Hilary Mantel in 'Wolf Hall'.

A recent writing exercise set by the GSV Writers Circle in Melbourne challenged us to tell a short story in the third person, present tense. I chose an example from my latest book Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter to explain what happened to Robert Forrester's long-term de facto wife after his death in 1827. 

Italics in the following short story show the use of the present tense.

In 1828 Jane Metcalf is still alive, working at Wilberforce as a seamstress and living with her Forrester stepsons Robert (Jnr) and William. In 1833 she comes before the Supreme Court, indicted as the receiver of meat from a calf stolen from a neighbour by her stepson Robert and his friend John Norris. Some sort of neighbourhood dispute is in play.

When the men are sentenced to death even their horrified accuser rallies to their defence. So does their neighbour and local magistrate, William Cox: “I never heard one of the family charged with doing wrong until now. Among the young men of these districts they are considered as standing high.”

The death sentence is waived and the two men with their wives and children are sent to Tasmania for seven years, where Robert (Jnr) works for a son of William Cox. Jane is sentenced to 12 months gaol at the Parramatta Female Factory. She is now in her late seventies.

Second Parramatta Female Factory, 1818-1848
By Augustus Earle (1793-1838) - National Library of Australia., Wikimedia

After gaol, Jane needs economic support. She issues a summons seeking maintenance from James Metcalf, her much younger legal husband, although they’ve lived apart for twenty five years. He agrees to resume co-habitation, with Jane keeping house for him.

Described as a 71-year-old pauper, James Metcalf dies in hospital in Windsor in 1843.

Jane Metcroft, a 98-year-old widow, is buried in Windsor in 1854. Four Forrester siblings now live in this town but none of them are entirely sure of her correct surname. She’s simply Jane, their stepmother since 1810.

******

The full version of Jane's end-of-life story, written in the past tense, is on pp 365-366 of Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, available online through BookPOD. 

Bella Ramsay Makes a Stand

In my last post I mentioned that the Third Fleet convict Bella Ramsay is being considered as an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography's 'Colonial Women' project. Why might that be? 

In 1791 Bella had a tough start to her life in Australia. But she did not let that cow her. Using some of Bella's own words, selected from court documents of 1799, we begin to see a feisty young woman prepared to make a stand against a large group of vengeful men running a kangaroo court inside her home. Here is a taste of that story.

Original Sketch by Julia Woodhouse, 2008

My husband was away. I was preparing the evening meal, alone with my five small children, when our farm worker James Metcalf arrived along with three young natives, each armed with a spear, a warmaraa and a waddy. 

Original Sketch by Julia Woodhouse, 2008

Metcalf said ‘These natives were in the woods with Hodgkinson the night before he was massacred. Give them a piece of bread as they might be the means of finding out the natives that killed Hodgkinson.’

Metcalf left us to find the widow Hodgkinson, who is my friend, and alert seven other neighbours. 

Left alone with the natives, I was glad to see Constable Powell come in, for I was in fear for myself and the children. We have been robbed by the natives, but from their general inhuman behaviour I am the more afraid of them.

Powell said they should be killed for they had killed a worthy good fellow, and it would be a pity to see them go away alive.

'On Trek', from front doorway of Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Photo by Louise Wilson, 2018

Gradually all our neighbours arrived at my house. Butler came with a bright cutlass, saying ‘What sentence shall we pass upon these black fellows – I will pass sentence myself – they shall be hanged.’

Powell wanted to hang them on the beam in my house. I did not consent, knowing he had a place of his own. Powell asked me for a rope and I said I had none. I tried to save the lives of the natives.

Two neighbours went home to collect ropes and the hands of the natives were then tied behind them by a rope put about their necks. They were taken out of my house. 

About a quarter of an hour afterwards I heard the report of two muskets. Two natives lay dead. The other ran away and he later identified the real murderers.

*****

The above dramatic excerpt condenses the main event but not the aftermath. The full version is outlined in 25 pages of meticulously researched historic detail in "More Killings, 1799", Chapter 11 of the book Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, available online through BookPOD.

Bella's Journey into History

In Melbourne I belong to the GSV Writers Circle and occasionally we practise the writing of a meaningful excerpt of our family history in a word-limited story. It certainly helps focus the mind on content and pace. We try to avoid wandering off the highway and down narrative byways. Here's an example of such an exercise - a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, told in approximately 350 words. It's a concentrated taste, a short-form version, of the adventures of Isabella Ramsay, a key character in my latest book Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter.

In May 1790 16-year-old Bella stole a man’s coat, a checked apron and red duffle cloth from a farmer’s wife, her former employer. Found guilty at the Carlisle Assizes and incarcerated in the Carlisle Citadel, she soon heard about a new British government policy requiring women prisoners of child-bearing age to be sent to New South Wales.

She was moved to the assembly point at Newgate Prison in London. 

On 14 February about 70 female prisoners were moved onto two lighters lying off Blackfriars Bridge. A vast crowd of curious Londoners gathered on that cold winter’s morning to watch them set off down the Thames towards Woolwich, where the transports bound for Botany Bay were moored.

Bella was loaded aboard the Mary Ann, stripped of her clothing, shaved of her hair and issued with a woollen cap, a jacket and a petticoat of blue baize. 

Next day the Mary Ann set sail. She made a fast voyage, anchoring in Sydney Cove at 2pm on Sunday 9 July 1791, ahead of the main Third Fleet ships.

A grim fate now awaited Bella, not yet eighteen years of age. Marines, soldiers and settlers crowded aboard the Mary Ann, keen to have first pick of prospective servants and ‘wives’. Women not selected were permitted to go with any man they chose, or else become hut-keepers for from two to ten men. For a virtuous woman, the available options were highly disagreeable. Paraded before the ogling men, Bella was selected by James Manning, a former First Fleet marine. They lived first in the barracks in Sydney, then on a farm near Parramatta.

Sydney in 1791, looking westwards towards Parramatta,
from David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales
Aborigines are standing near today's southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Women, being so scarce in the colony, were able to wield some power of their own. Within two years Bella chose a male partner more to her liking. With industrious Robert Forrester, a former First Fleet convict, she had nine children before her death in 1807, thereby becoming a founding mother of modern Australia.

Bella made a mark during her short life in Australia. She's been nominated for inclusion in the Australian Dictionary of Biography's 'Colonial Women' project. Read her full story in Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, available online through BookPOD.