People Australia

Richard Sims was born in 1827 in Shoreditch, London. His father, also named Richard Sims, was a gold beater.[1] The family appear to have lived comfortably, as evidenced in the October 1836 newspaper account that reported Richard junior’s first criminal case when he was around nine years old.[2] His father had turned him over to the police for stealing five shillings from him (approximately one day’s wage).[3] As well as theft, his father reproached him for lying, absconding, truancy, and attempting to corrupt his younger brother despite the comforts offered to him at home, complaining he ‘was so incorrigible, he had no hopes whatever of reclaiming him.’[4]The judge observed that ‘prison would do him no good and he was too young to be tried’ but ordered a few hours of solitary confinement in a cell as a deterrent before sending him home.[5]

In March 1837 Sims’s father again turned him in, this time for stealing his watch.[6] Although only ten, he was tried in an adult court, according to the custom of the day. He pled guilty and was sentenced to seven years’ transportation.[7]Perhaps remorse at his young son’s pending banishment persuaded his father to petition for mercy, or possibly this sentence was judged too harsh for a child, as it was commuted to two years in prison.[8] Yet the potential reforming influence of prison failed, and three years later in July 1840 Sims was back at the central criminal court, charged with ‘obtaining money by false pretences’.[9] Now fourteen and with a criminal record, there was no reprieve. He was sentenced to seven years’ transportation and sent to the prison hulk Euryalus, pending ‘transportation beyond the seas.’[10]

Sims was kept in this boys prison hulk for three months until 7 October 1840 when, along with 199 other child convicts and ten adult convicts, he set sail for Australia aboard the Hindostan.[11] The ship’s surgeon, Andrew Henderson, examined them all as they boarded and noted ‘the whole being tolerably clean and in good bodily health’.[12] It appears to have been a successful crossing with reasonable weather conditions and few interesting medical cases.[13] On arriving in Van Diemen’s Land on 26 January 1841 Henderson noted that all were ‘in a high state of health and robust appearance’ despite depriving them of scurvy-preventing lemon juice during the voyage.[14]

On arrival Sims entered Point Puer, the boys-only prison established by lieutenant governor Arthur in 1834 to provide punishment and training and to separate criminal youth from potential predatory and abusive adult convicts.[15] Order and discipline were the hallmark of British rule, and the boys followed a regimented daily routine, by now familiar to Sims from his years in prison and the hulk and on the sea voyage.[16] The boys laboured, continued their educational and religious schooling, and were taught a trade.[17] Sims was assigned to learn shoemaking, without success according to remarks like ‘no good’ and ‘continues indifferent, cannot earn his living’ noted on his record.[18]

Point Puer was poorly built, overcrowded, understaffed and lacking in adequate food and clothing for the inmates.[19] In 1843 the boys were said to be sleeping on the floor ‘like a hoard of gypsies.’[20] They were also punished as severely as the adults.[21] Sims was absent without leave on two occasions and received ‘ten days solitary’ and then ‘30 stripes on the breech’. Several further episodes of misconduct were punished with more floggings and solitary confinement.[22]

On 3 May 1845 Sims was released from his first stage of probation and in July was assigned as a labourer to a Mr Fry in Hobart, a master he obviously resented as his crimes over the remainder of 1845 included being absent without leave, insolence, and killing his master’s cat. Ten days’ solitary confinement did not subdue his spirit, and on 23 December 1845, for the crime of ‘Larceny under £5’, his transportation sentence was extended by twelve months. From 1846 to 1848 his militance continued with occurences of disorderly misconduct, disobedience, and gambling. Despite whippings and solitary confinement Sims remained the same tough and spirited youth evident in 1836.[23]

When Sims was twenty-one years old, on 22 July 1848 he was granted his certificate of freedom.[24] He went to work in the timber industry and became a sawyer, a skilled job that involved sawing timber into planks and beams for buildings and ships that was needed to meet the increasing demand for timber in the developing colony.[25] On 8 June 1854 he married Ann Morrell, the daughter of convicts.[26] He returned to crime in 1860, perhaps due to the pressure of providing for a growing family, and served six months’ hard labour for receiving stolen goods.[27]Thereafter, except for a couple of school truancy cases related to his children, Sims stayed out of trouble.[28]

On 25 July 1908 Sims died.[29] No mention was made of his convict history in the newspaper death notice.[30] Successfully shedding his troubled past, he had become a respected resident, the patriarch of numerous offspring who held valued and integral roles in the local community, and a loving husband.[31] One year after his death, Ann Sims inserted a moving poem into the newspaper in memory of her husband.[32] She had perhaps had an hand in reforming her once troublesome husband.

[1] Birth and baptism record of Richard Sims, born 27 February 1827, baptised 3 Jun 1827, London, Engand, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1923, Parish Register, London Metropolitan Archives, Ancestry.com, accessed 15 May 2024; England Metal Working Occupations D to S – International Institute, FamilySearch Wiki, 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/index.php?title=England_Metal_Working_Occupations_D_to_S_-_International_Institute&oldid=5698783, accessed 14 June 2024.

[2] ‘Bow Street’, Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal, 29 October 1836, 3.

[3] Ibid.; The National Archives, ‘Currency Converter: 1270-2017’, The National Archives website, n.d., https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result, accessed 3 June 2024.

[4] ‘Bow Street’.

[5] ‘Bow Street’.

[6] Richard Sims, the younger, England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935, Central Criminal Court, Newgate Prison Calendar, 1937, HO 77/44/00127, Find My Past.

[7] Richard Sims, the younger, Newgate Prison Calendar.

[8] Richard Sims, the younger, Newgate Prison Calendar.

[9] Richard Sims, the younger, Prison Commission: Prisons, Newgate Prison, London: Register of Prisoners, 1840, series PCOM 2, Find My Past.

[10] Richard Sims, the younger, Newgate Prison, London: Register of Prisoners; ‘Central Criminal Court. Sessional Results’, Era (London), 12 July 1840, 7; Richd Sims, UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849, Euryalus Register 1837-1843, Ancestry.com.

[11] Medical and Surgical Journal of Her Majesty’s Hired Convict Ship ‘Hindostan’, Andrew Henderson, M.D., Surgeon Superintendent, 9 September 1840 – 26 January 1841, UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, The National Archives, UK, General Remarks, pp. 28-31, ADM101/34/7, Ancestry.com.

[12] UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, Hindostan.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.; Katherine Foxhall, ‘From Convicts to Colonists: The Health of Prisoners and the Voyage to Australia, 182 –1853’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 1 (2011), doi:10.1080/03086534.2011.543793.

[15] Peter H. MacFie, Robin McLachlan & Malcolm H. Mathias, Point Puer Lads: Tried and Transported. The Point Puer Lads and Their Prison; 1833-1849 (Moorabbin, Victoria: State Computer Education Centre, 1987), 9, http://petermacfiehistorian.net.au.

[16] Victor Bailey (ed.), Nineteenth-century Crime and Punishment: Volume II Justice, Mercy, Death(London: Routledge, 2021); Rose Staveley-Wadham, ‘Colleges of Villainy – Life Onboard the Prison Hulks’, The British Newspaper Archive blog, 2021, https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/03/31/life-onboard-a-prison-hulk/, accessed 1 June 2024; ‘Convicts to Australia: Life on a Convict Ship’, Dead Person’s Society website, n.d., https://perthdps.com/convicts/shiplife.html#Top, accessed 20 June 2024.

[17] MacFie, McLachlan & Mathias, ‘Point Puer Lads’, 15-19.

[18] Conduct record, Principal Superintendent of Convicts: Alphabetical record book of convicts arriving in V.D.L. ‘S’ 1837-1841, Richard Sims the Younger, Hindostan (2), 1840, Tasmanian Archives, CON33/1/4, p. 177, accessed 8 May 2024. 

[19] MacFie, McLachlan & Mathias, ‘Point Puer Lads’, 9, 13-15, 21-26.

[20] MacFie, McLachlan & Mathias, ‘Point Puer Lads’, 13.

[21] MacFie, McLachlan & Mathias, ‘Point Puer Lads’, 19-21.

[22] Richard Sims The Younger, Conduct record.

[23] Richard Sims The Younger, Conduct record.

[24] ‘Convict Department: Comptroller-General’s Office 22nd July, 1848’, Colonial Times (Hobart), 28 July 1848, 4.

[25] Marriage certificate of Richard Sims and Ann Morrell, married 8 June 1854, Registers of Marriages in Launces-ton, Tasmanian Archives, RGD38/1/13, no. 1061; Marriage Permission of Reuben Morell and Catherine Williams, 1837, Tasmanian Archives, CON52/1/1, p. 118; ‘History of the timber industry in Tasmania’, Tasmanian TONE WOODS website, n.d., https://tasmaniantonewoods.com/pages/history-of-the-timber-industry-in-tasmania, accessed 13 June 2024.

[26] Marriage certificate of Richard Sims and Ann Morrell.

[27] Richard Sims The Younger, Conduct record.

[28] Deloraine Petty Sessions, David Morse v Richard Sims, 9 September 1885, Tasmania, Australia, Insolvency and Petty Sessions, 1829-1902, Series AE764, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Ancestry.com; Deloraine Petty Sessions, George Stuart v Richard Sims, 12 August 1887, Tasmania, Australia, Insolvency and Petty Sessions, 1829-1902, Series AE764, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, Ancestry.com.

[29] Richard Sims, d. 25 July 1808, Ulverstone, Tasmania, Ancestry.com, Australia and New Zealand, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s-Current, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/245334693/richard-sims.

[30] ‘ULVERSTONE: The Last Rites’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (Tasmania), 27 July 1908, 2.

[31] Ibid.

[32]  ‘IN MEMORIAM’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (Tasmania), 26 July 1909, 2.