People Australia

Marshall Waller Clifton (1787-1861) was born on 1 November 1787 in Alverstoke, Hampshire, to Reverend Francis Clifton (1755-1811) and his wife Rebekah Catherine Bingham (1763-1830).[1] His father was one of thirteen children of James Clifton (?-1775), a resident slave owner who had a sugar plantation at Palmetto Point on the island of St Christopher (St Kitts).[2] Francis was educated in England but returned to St Kitts for a short time following the death of his father. He was left a one-eighth share of his father’s personal estate, as well as two enslaved people who were to be given to him after his mother’s death.[3] According to a descendant, Waller Clifton (1813-1894), Francis liberated these enslaved people on his return to St Kitts.[4] He married Rebekah Katherine Bingham, the daughter of the Reverend Isaac Moody Bingham and his wife Catherine Tonge on 4 November 1783 at Gosport Holy Trinity Church in Alverstoke.[5] His brother, Charles Clifton, who remained in the West Indies, was also a slave owner who owned Concordia, a coffee plantation in Demerara.[6]

Francis Clifton and his wife Rebekah had at least eleven children, including Louisa (1786–1880), Marshall Waller (1787–1861), Isabella (1790–1796), Katharine (1792–1881), Renee Mary (1795–1796), Joseph Bingham (1797–1836), Maria Magdalene Pasley (1798–1885), and Frances (1800–1889).[7] On his death, Francis provided for his wife from the interest and dividends of land to be sold in Alverstoke and St Kitts.[8]

The couple’s eldest son, Marshall Waller, was educated at home.[9] In 1803 he had joined the Admiralty—the government department that administered the Royal Navy—as a clerk on the recommendation of the Earl of Galloway, and in 1821 he was appointed Secretary of the Victualling Board, on a salary of £1000 per annum.[10] In 1811 he married Elinor Bell (1792-1866), daughter of Daniel Bell and his wife Elinor Turner and part of a wealthy Quaker family.[11] Daniel Bell was also great-uncle to Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862).[12] Clifton and his wife had fifteen children, including: Francis Barnett (1812-1892), Waller (1813-1894), Louisa (1814-1880), William Pearce (1816-1885), Robert Williams (1817-1897), Joseph Bingham (1819-1819), Elinor Katherine (1820-1904), Mary (1822-1893), George (1823-1913), Gervase (1825-1913), Charles Hipuff (1827-1890), Lucy (1829-1906), Leonard Worsley (1830-1895), Rachel Catherine (1833-1852), and Caroline (1835-1883).[13]

Clifton was forced to retire in 1832, when the Victualling Board was reorganised, and moved his family to France, where living was cheaper.[14] In 1840 he travelled to London to meet with directors of the Western Australian Company. This company was formed in 1840 to promote emigration to Western Australia along the principles propounded by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and previously used in the colonisation of South Australia. Its chairman was William Hutt, brother of the Governor of Western Australia, John Hutt. The company proposed to purchase 64,000 acres of land in Western Australia from Sir James Stirling, previous governor of the colony, and to also purchase 103,00 acres from Colonel Peter Latour. Like Clifton, both Stirling and Latour came from wealthy families with connections to slavery.[15] The land was situated 153 kilometres south of Perth, on the Country of the Pindjarup Noongar people, and the settlement was to be named ’Australind,’ signifying a hoped-for trade which was to take place between the settlement and India. The scheme was funded by shares sold to wealthy investors at £500 each. The land at Leschenault was divided into 100 acre blocks and sold to those wealthy enough to afford the £1 per acre (or £10 for a town lot). Settlers were required to bring labourers with them, whose passages were to be paid from their labour.[16]

Clifton was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Western Australian Company and, on 3 December 1840, set sail with his wife and eleven of their children on the Parkfield for their new home in Western Australia.[17] Two more shiploads of emigrants followed them, but confusion over the legitimacy of Latour’s claim to his land and the suitability of the site had lessened enthusiasm for the scheme in Britain and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. As the company’s commissioner, Clifton employed some of the emigrants as labourers and tradesmen and remarked with evident pride that he had ‘been most fortunate in keeping together so many of my people at wages so very much below the general rate existing in the colony.’[18] In fact, he employed some labourers for no wages at all, paying only with rations, and avoided paying officer’s salaries for as long as possible.[19] The local clan of the Noongar people, whom Clifton called the Elaap, were also pressed into service as labourers, running errands and building roads, but were only ever paid with flour.[20] Over the next couple of years, people began to drift away from the settlement as they found that the one-hundred-acre allotments were insufficient to command a living.[21]In December 1843 the company ceased to operate and Clifton’s position also ceased to exist.[22]

In June 1841 Clifton erected a small house on his town allotment on Koombana Crescent in Australind, allowing his family to move out of the marquee he had brought with them. The walls were constructed from weatherboards he brought from England and the roof thatched with rushes from the Leschenault inlet.[23] In July 1842 he also acquired a rural allotment of one hundred acres approximately five kilometres inland from Australind, on Leschenault Road, which he named Alverstoke farm. The family grew wheat, potatoes, and barley on the farm and produced milk and cream. [24] Clifton’s sons Waller, William Pearce, and Robert also purchased allotments at Australind and, in 1841, he bought a town lot in Bunbury.[25]  The Cliftons remained at Australind after the collapse of the Western Australian Company.[26] Many of Elinor’s wealthy Quaker relatives had invested money in the company. William Pearce Clifton built a two-storey dwelling at Australind for absentee owner, Elizabeth Fry, the noted prison reformer and Elinor Clifton’s cousin. In 1845 Fry died and the house was sold to Elinor. The family moved to Upton House two years later.[27] In June 1842 their eldest daughter, Louisa, married George Eliot, a nephew by marriage of Sir James Stirling’s sister, Mary Halsey.[28]

Clifton was made a magistrate in 1841.[29] He was appointed to the Leschenault Road Board in 1844 and became a member of the Western Australian Legislative Council in 1851.[30] In 1853, as a member of the Legislative Council, Clifton successfully moved that the parliamentary grant for financing the colonial deficit and official salaries should be abandoned.[31] He opposed the introduction of the Search Warrant Bill in 1853 and, in 1854, opposed the bill for ‘Preventing violent robberies etc for convicts illegally at large,’ stating that the death penalty should be retained only for the crime of murder.[32] At the end of Governor John Hutt’s term of office in February 1846, he applied unsuccessfully for the governorship.[33]

The Clifton family always believed that they were descended from Sir Gervase Clifton, Baronet. In 1880, on the death of Theodore Clifton of St Kitts in the West Indies, and after seeking legal advice, Clifton’s eldest son Francis assumed the title.[34] Marshall Waller Clifton died in 1861 at Australind, aged seventy-three.[35] Although the grand vision of Australind as a town based on Wakefieldian principles failed, the town of Australind is now a thriving community. Clifton’s wealth and social standing, derived from his family’s investment in slave-worked sugar on St Kitts, were instrumental in furthering the land commodification central to settler colonialism by obtaining the position of Chief Commissioner of the Western Australian Company, in purchasing land in Western Australia, and in enabling others to do likewise.

[1] A. C. Staples, ‘Clifton, Marshall Waller (1787–1861),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clifton-marshall-waller-3234/text4877; J.R. Hill, ‘The Life and Times of Marshall Waller Clifton’, PR14514/CLI/2, State Library of Western Australia (SLWA); The will of Rev. Francis Clifton, PROB 11/1526/462, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, UK; Baptism Rebecca Catherine Bingham,  Register of baptisms, marriages and burials, St Mary, Birchanger, Essex, 24 October 1763, D/P 25/1/2, Essex Archives Online; Clifton, Rebekah Katherine, National Probate Calendar, 1866, Ancestry.

[2] Marshall Waller Gervase Clifton papers, acc. 8361A/32, State Library of Western Australia (SLWA); John C. Neal, The First Methodists in South America: Lay Pioneers in Demerara, 2017, https://independent.academia.edu/JohnNeal5/Papers (accessed 28 May 2024).

[3]  Will of James Clifton, St. Christopher Register, v. P, Series 2, Book B39, no. 9401, p. 101, National Archives St Kitts and Nevis.

[4] Marshall Waller Gervase Clifton papers, acc. 8361A/32, SLWA.

[5] Anglican Bishop’s transcripts, 21M65/F8/111/1, Ancestry.

[6] Concordia, Legacies of British Slavery, ucl.ac.uk/lbs/estate/view/905.  

[7] Baptism Louisa Clifton, Bishop’s Transcripts, Alverstoke, 23 July 1786, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; ‘Fyers’, ‘Deaths’, Belfast Newsletter (Belfast), 1 December 1880; Baptism Isabella Clifton, Bishop’s Transcripts, Alverstoke, 25 January 1791, 21M65/F8/4/1/27-43, Hampshire Archives,Ancestry; Burial, Isabella Clifton, 7 December 1796, Alverstoke, Bishop’s transcripts, 21M65/F8/4/1/44-4, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Baptism, Katherine Clifton, 28 November 1792, Bishop’s transcripts, Alverstoke, 21M65/F8/4/1/27-43, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Katherine Clifton, memorial, Findagrave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/182364183/katherine-clifton; Baptism Renee Mary Clifton, Bishops transcripts, Alverstoke, 1 November 1795, 21M65/F8/4/1/27-43, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Burial, Renee Mary Clifton, 30 September 1796, Alverstoke, Bishop’s transcripts, 21M65/F8/4/1/44-4, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Baptism Joseph Bingham Clifton, Bishops transcripts, Alverstoke, 28 March 1797, 21M65/F8/4/1/46-53, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Burial Joseph Bingham Clifton, 21 May 1836,  St Mary, Putney, parish register, Ancestry; Baptism Maria Magdelene Pasley Clifton, Bishops transcripts, Alverstoke, 22 January 1799, 21M65/F8/4/1/46-53, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Death, Magdalene Clifton, 1885, Freebdm, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl; Baptism Frances Clifton, Bishop’s transcripts, Alverstoke, 8 May 1800, 21M65/F8/4/1/54-68, Hampshire Archives, Ancestry; Clifton, Fanny, 29 July 1889, National Probate Calendar, Ancestry.

[8] The will of Rev. Francis Clifton, 30 October 1811, PROB 11/1526/462, TNA.

[9] Staples, ‘Clifton, Marshall Waller (1787–1861).’

[10] Copy of written statement made by the late M. W. Clifton, Marshall Waller Gervase Clifton papers, acc 8361A 32, SLWA; J. R. Hill, ‘The life and times of Marshall Waller Clifton’, PR 14514 CLI 2, SLWA; ‘An Old Document,’ West Australian (Perth), 18 March 1912.

[11] Marriage, Marshall Waller Clifton and Elinor Bell, Pallot’s Marriage index, 1811, Putney Surrey, Ancestry; ‘Married,’ 4 July 1811, Morning Post (London), 3; Baptism, Elinor Bell, St Andrew, Holborn, Register, 1792, Ancestry.

[12] Ann B. Shteir, Wakefield [née Bell], Priscilla, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 (2004), https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28420?rskey=ja3jPJ&result=2 (accessed 4 June 2024); Angela Woollacott, Settler Society in the Australian Colonies: Self-Government and Imperial Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 39.

[13] Family tree, acc. PR14514 /CLI/1, SLWA.

[14] ‘Presentation of a Vase to Mr. W. Clifton,’ 6 August, 1832, Morning Post (London).

[15] Georgina Arnott, ‘Slavery, trade and settler colonialism: The Stirling family and Britain’s empire, c.1730-1840,’ Australian Journal of Biography and History, no. 6 (2022); Jane Lydon and Xavier Reader, ‘Latour, Peter Augustus (1789–1866),’ People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/latour-peter-augustus-33759/text42256, accessed 11 June 2024.

[16] Pamela Statham Drew, James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia(Crawley: UWA Press, 2003), 386-391.

[17] George Russo, A friend Indeed: Louisa Clifton of Australind WA (Perth: Vanguard Press, 1995), 109.

[18] Clifton to Thomas J Buckton, 28 May 1841, in J. M. R. Cameron and P. A. Barnes, eds, The Australind letters of Marshall Waller Clifton: Chief Commissioner for the Western Australian Company(Victoria Park: Hesperian Press, 2017), 142.

[19] Clifton to Thomas J. Buckton, 30 May 1841, The Australind letters, 143.

[20] Clifton to Thomas J. Buckton, 8 and 10 June 1841, The Australind letters, 147, 149.

[21] Statham Drew, James Stirling, 400.

[22] Clifton to the Directors of the WA Company, 15 December 1843, The Australind letters, 744.

[23] Clifton to C. H. Smith, 28 June 1841, The Australind letters, 164.

[24] Marshall Waller Clifton, 4 July 1842, The Australind Journals of Marshall Waller Clifton, 1840-1861, eds Phyllis Barnes, J. M. R. Cameron and H. A. Willis (Victoria Park: Hesperian Press, 2010), 139; Shire of Harvey, Alverstoke Inherit, Inherit, https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/printsinglerecord/d07a69da-c8bf-4897-b517-bd9f389abb61 (accessed 4 June 2024).

[25] Western Australian Government Gazette, 19 November 1841; ‘Colonial Secretary's Office, Perth, March 2, 1842’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (Perth), 12 March 1842, 4; Clifton,The Australind Journals, 142, 104.

[26] ‘The Inquirer. Wednesday, November 28, 1848,’ Inquirer (Perth), 22 November 1843.

[27] Upton House, Assessment documentation, Inherit, https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/printsinglerecord/8bf6c630-39ca-4bdf-bc11-a426dfa1dc0b.

[28] Statham Drew, James Stirling, 124.

[29] ‘Colonial Secretary's Office, Perth, March 25, 1841,’ Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 27 March 1841.

[30] ‘General Road Trust,’ Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (Perth), 27 January 1844, 3; ‘The Enquirer. Occulta vitia inquirere. Wednesday, April 23, 1851,’ Inquirer (Perth), 23 April 1851, 2.

[31] ‘Legislative Council’, Inquirer (Perth), 6 April 1853, 3.

[32] ‘Legislative Council,’ Inquirer (Perth), 6 April 1853, 3; ‘Friday, May 12th’, Inquirer (Perth), 17 May 1854, 3.

[33] ‘Occasional Notes’, West Australian (Perth), 18 January 1881, 2.

[34] Marshall Waller Gervase Clifton papers, acc. 8361A/32, SLWA.

[35] Death, Marshall Waller Clifton, 1861, Australind, no. 1722, Online Search index tool, Department of Justice, https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-justice/online-index-search-tool.