People Australia

Edward Simmonds was possibly born between 1824 and 1826, at  either Yarmouth (or Great Yarmouth) or Lynn (possibly Kings Lynn), both in Norfolk, England. A twenty-year-old single labourer, he had no registered convictions before July 1845 when he was arrested and tried at the Montgomery Sessions.[1] Pleading guilty to housebreaking and ‘stealing £1 lls 6d’, Simmonds ‘denied all charity’ and was sentenced to ten years’ transportation. He was subsequently sent toMillbank prison in London, where he then boarded the Pestonjee Bomanjee for VanDiemen's Land, embarking on 22 September with 297 other convicts and forty-nine military personnel.[2]

The conditions Simmonds may have endured while at Millbank were indicated bythe ship’s surgeon superintendent, J. Wingate Johnston, in his medical log:

‘(of) the two hundred and seventy-two (convicts) ... from Millbank....agreat proportion... exhibited evident signs of impaired constitutions with a generally deranged state of their digestive organs, which Iattributed to have arisen from the long confinement that the greater proportion of them had undergone.’[3]

Johnston recorded a voyage of relentless patches of strong gales, heavy rains, and, if the weather eased, dense fog. The convicts were therefore not allowed sufficient time on the upper decks to take in fresh air and recover frompersistent illness and curb the spread of disease. The depleted health of theconvicts was of enough concern to him to have ‘put into the Cape of Good Hope’ for four days ‘to give the prisoners a more nutritious diet’.[4] Eventually, theship arrived in Hobart on 30 December 1845 with all but one of the convicts surviving the journey.[5]

Simmonds’s arrival in the colony coincided with the growth of an anti-transportation movement driven by a new system of convict punishment called the probation system, which was meant to create ‘skilled and reformed’ citizens. FreeVandemonians considered it a brutal and harsh regime that was dragging their small island’s population, with a ‘limited labour market’, into the depths of an ‘economic depression... with unemployment, bankruptcies and property depreciation’.[6]

Described as a ‘well-behaved’, pimply faced, literate young man who stood at five foot four inches, with brown hair, grey eyes, and a sallow complexion, Osborne was now reduced to prisoner 17412.[7] He was sent to Saltwater Riverprobation station on the Tasman peninsula, where he would have joined the labour gangs of convicts undertaking the deliberately arduous work of clearing the land ready for farming crops and raising stock.[8] With only one admonishment, or‘cautionary warning’, on his record, he completed his ‘full period of labour’ on 26 June 1847 to become a probation pass holder – a convict who could now provide his own labour to private employers for wages.[9]

Osborne was initially hired by farmer Joseph Walker of Westbury, where heremained for two and half years until March 1850. He was then employed by William Dalrymple Keating at Glenore.[10] While Keating was one of the smaller farmers inthe area, his family was recognised as among the founders of the region.[11] Born in 1804 in Launceston, he was the child of a British soldier who had marriedHannah Hodgetts, the grandchild of First Fleet convicts who were part of the original Norfolk Island settlement.[12] During the time Osborne worked forKeating he received his ticket of leave (January 1851) and met the woman he would eventually marry: Keating's eldest daughter, Mary Ann.[13] His relatively clean conduct record and his ability to maintain stable employment showed he could workhard and behave according to the norms of society. As a man with a family ofsignificant convict connections, Keating was perhaps able to overlook this youngman’s past.

In April 1851 Osborne left Keating’s employ. Within two months he had hissecond behavioural lapse: he was reprimanded for ‘misconduct being in a disorderly house’.[14] A reprimand meant he could have paid a fine or even received a ‘public berating’.[15] His clean record and positive character reportsfrom his employers may have helped him avoid a more severe punishment. Osborneremained with the same employer until May 1853 when, less than eight years afterbeing sentenced to transportation, his conditional pardon was approved.[16] Thefollowing month the governor of the colony, Sir William Denison, received thenews ‘that the British government would send no more prisoners to (the colony)’.[17]

A year later, Osborne and Mary Ann were married. They left Launceston for theBendigo goldfields in Victoria, where they raised their six children.[18] He diedin 1879 as a miner, having taken part in another defining episode of Australianhistory, the Victorian gold rush.[19]

[1] Edward Simmonds, Pestongee Bomangee, 1845, Appropriation List, Convicts, Tasmanian Archives, CON27/1/ll, Image 137, https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/CON27-l-ll/CON27-l-11Pl37, accessed 22 May 2024; Entry for Edward Simmonds, age 20, convicted 3 July 1845, Millbank Prison Registers: Male Prisoners Vol 2, HO24, in England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935, Findmypast.com, accessed 28 May 2024.

[2] Entry for Edward Simmonds, Millbank Prison Registers: Male Prisoners Vol 2, HO24; ‘HobartTown’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 1846, 2.

[3] General Remarks of J. Wingate Johnston, Surgeon Superintendent, Pestonjee Bomanjee, lSeptember 1845-12 January 1846, Admiralty and Predecessors: Office of the Director General of theMedical Department of the Navy and predecessors: Medical Journals, The National Archives (UK), ADMl0l/59/1 in UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, Ancestry.com, accessed 30 May 2024.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Alison Alexander, Tasmania’s Convicts: How Felans Built a Free Society, (Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 91, 94-96.

[7] Edward Simmonds, Pestongee Bomangee, 1845, Conduct Record, Convicts, Tasmanian Archives, CON33/l/74, Image 230,  https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/CON33-l-74/CON33-l-74P230, accessed 22 May 2024.

[8] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record; Libraries Tasmania, ‘Salt Water River’, Convict Portal Map,Convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, Libraries Tasmania website, n.d., https://libraries.tas.gov.au/family-history/convicts-in-van-diemens-land-now-tasmani , accessed 12 June 2024.

[9] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record; Ian Brand, The Convict Probation System: Van Diemen’S Land1839-1854 (Hobart: Blubberhead Press, 1990), 237.

[10] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record; Entry for Edward Simmonds, Pestonjee Bomanjee (1845), Ledger Returns, 1849, Home Office: Settlers and Convicts, New South Wales and Tasmania, The National Archives (UK), HO 10/40, in New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 May 2024; Census record for Joseph Walker, Westbury, 1848, inCensus, Tasmanian Archives, CENl/1/104, p 164,  https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/CEN 1- l- l04/031b49bl-4d0a-4ab5-bc82-4e4fcbc2ab3 , accessed 12 June 2024; Peter McKay, A Nation Within aNation: The Lucas Clan in Australia (Geelong: Peter McKay, 2001), 388; Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record.

[11] 'A Curiosity', Tasmanian (Launceston), 14 January 1882, 38.

[12] McKay, A Nation Within a Nation, 21–22, 388; 'William Keating: First White Child in N.Tasmania', Examiner (Launceston), 29 October 1941, 4.

[13] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record; ‘Convict Department’, Hobart Town Advertiser, 17 January 1851, 4; Marriage register entry of Edward Simmonds and Mary Ann Keating, married 21 April 1854, registered 1854, Launceston in Marriages, Tasmanian Archives, RGD37/l/13, no. 1096, Image 430, https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Digital/RGD37-l-13/RGD37-l-13P43 , accessed 22 May 2024.

[14] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record.

[15] E. Crawford, ‘Admonishment or Reprimand’, Female Convicts Research Centre Inc. website, October 2011, https://femaleconvicts.org.au/convict-institutions/punishments?view=article&id=370:admonishment-or-reprimand&catid=6 , accessed 12 June 2024.

[16] Edward Simmonds, Conduct Record; ‘Conditional Pardons Granted’, Cornwall Chronicle(Launceston), 4 June 1853, 4.

[17] Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era (Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2008), 220.

[18] Marriage register entry of Edward Simmonds and Mary Ann Keating; Passenger list entry forEdw. (Edward) Symons and Mrs Symons, Lady Bird, departing Launceston for Melbourne, 7 May 1854, in Departures, Tasmanian Archives, POL220/l/3, p 559,  https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Record/Nameslndex/607309, accessed 22 May 2024.

[19] Death registration of Edward Simmonds, died 5 September 1879, Births, Deaths and Marriages,Victoria, 9097/1879.