People Australia

Charles Weaver (1793–1866), wheelwright and convict, was born on 3 March 1793 at Knighton, Worcestershire, England, to the reverend Richard Weaver and Sarah Gibbs.[1] In 1810 Charles was working as a wheelwright in Worcestershire. On 20 March 1816 at Salop, Shropshire, Assizes, the twenty-three-year-old was capitally convicted and sentenced to death on suspicion of forging two letters with the intent to defraud Messrs. Coleman and Wellings, bankers of Ludlow Old Bank.[2] He was committed to the Shrewsbury Gaol, with his sentence later reprieved to life imprisonment.[3]

On 1 July 1816 Weaver and fourteen other prisoners from Shrewsbury Gaol were transferred to the prison hulk Portland, a decommissioned fifty-gun forth-rate ship of the line warship utilised by the Royal Navy during the American Revolution, moored at Langston Harbour, near Portsmouth.[4] Almost a decade earlier the prison reformer James Neild had published a report on the poor state of prison hulks including the Portland.[5] In line with his descriptions of poor food and violence, the conditions Weaver experienced were likely very similar or possibly even worse, as England's prolonged involvement in the Napoleonic Wars profoundly impacted the government's ability to fund prisons appropriately.[6]In mid-October 1816 the Portland was decommissioned and demolished after a dozen years as a hulk, signifying that it was no longer fit for purpose.[7]

Weaver spent just a little over one hundred days on the Portland before he was sent to the Fame, captained by Henry Dale and bound for New South Wales.[8] The Fame departed from Spithead, Portsmouth, on 9 October 1816, undertaking a journey that lasted one hundred and fifty days.[9] There are no known surviving captain or surgeon logbooks recounting its voyage, but the captain’s logbook for the Sir William Bensley, a convict vessel that made a similar voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales, detailed what would have likely been a very comparable set of circumstances for those aboard the Fame.[10] Both travelled to the colony via the Cape of Good Hope.[11] Despite the Fame arriving two days before the Sir William Bensley, the captain’s description of his five months at sea ‘amidst heavy squalls and constant heavy rain’ may be indicative of Weaver’s experience on his passage.[12]

Upon its arrival on 8 March 1817, the Fame's surgeon, John Mortimer, informed the colony’s governor, Lachlan Macquarie, of the satisfactory state of most prisoners, except two convicts who had died on the voyage. Mortimer conveyed that ‘throughout the passage, the prisoners and others on board enjoyed good health and that at this time our list is made up rather of the debilitated than of their suffering from actual disease.’[13] Three days later, the surviving 198 convicts, including Weaver, were mustered by Captain John Maunder Gill, who informed Governor Macquarie that ‘they are generally country men, young and healthy, a good proportion of carpenters but neither stone cutters or stone masons and few other mechanics of any useful description.’ The reference to ‘few other mechanics of any useful description’ indicates that Weaver’s occupation was identified as necessary in Sydney.[14] On 14 March he and his fellow convicts disembarked the Fame and were inspected by Governor Macquarie.[15] In line with government regulation, they would have been issued new clothing, including a jacket, waistcoat, trousers, shirt, stockings, shoes, and handkerchief before the onboard muster and departure to Sydney.[16]

Demonstrating he was literate, Weaver addressed a letter to Governor Macquarie on 15 December 1817, which detailed his employment as an agricultural implement maker at the Government Lumber Yards in Sydney and Parramatta since his arrival in the colony two months prior.[17] In the letter he petitioned for a ticket of leave, which was granted preceding his marriage in Parramatta to Elizabeth Tuckwell, a free settler, on 12 October 1818.[18] It is credible that Weaver was doing quite well for himself after his marriage as he owned a brick house on an allotment in Parramatta.[19] He relocated to Castlereagh Street, Sydney, in July 1823 to operate a wheelwright, chaise, and ploughmaking business, remaining at this address with his growing family for many years.[20] Highlighting his reformation, on 27 May 1828, Weaver was issued a conditional pardon.[21] The lack of newspaper articles and government documentation referencing him likely means that his life remained largely uneventful with no further transgressions, except for his insolvency in 1849.[22] Weaver died of old age and neglect in Sydney in 1866.[23]

[1] Exposition of the Church Catechism, Curate of Draycot Cerne, Wilts, and Master of the Academy in Chippenham. 8vo. 26 pp. Price 1s. Chippenham, Coombs; London, Baldwin.

[2] ‘Oxford Circuit’, Kentish Gazette, 9 April 1816, 3.

[3] ‘Hereford’, Hereford Journal, 20 March 1816, 3.

[4] Charles Weaver, Portland, UK, Prison Hulks Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849, Class: HO9/8; Charles Weaver, Perseus, UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849, HO9/8, image 47, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[5] James Neild, State of the Prisons in England, Scotland and Wales: Extending to Various Places Therein Assigned not for the Debtor Only but for Felons also and Other Less Criminal Offenders (Sydney: UNSW Press; original London: J. Nichols and Son, London, 1812), 630–31.

[6] Ralph Charles Atkins and Dorothy Whitelock, ‘The Napoleonic Wars’, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/The-Napoleonic-Wars, accessed 22 June 2024.

[7] 19th Century Prison History, ‘Portland’, Prison History, https://www.prisonhistory.org/prison/portland/, accessed 22 June 2024.

[8] Charles Weaver, Fame, 1817, New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834, Class: HO 10; Piece: 8, p 552, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[9] Jen Willets, ‘Convict Ship Fame - 1817’, Free Settler or Felon website, https://freesettlerorfelon.com/convict_ship_fame_1817.htm, accessed 22 June 2024.

[10] Richard Bastard, ‘Logbook of the Sir William Bensley, commanded by Richard Bastard, on a voyage from Deptford to Sydney and the return voyage to Calcutta and England’, Bedfordshire Record Office, Reel M591, images 33-34, (AJCP ref: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1114106850),accessed 22 June 2024.

[11] Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships 1787-1868, 3^rd edn (Sydney: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1974), 340, 382.

[12]Bastard, Richard, ‘Logbook of the Sir William Bensley, commanded by Richard Bastard, on a voyage from Deptford to Sydney and the return voyage to Calcutta and England’.

[13] Colonial Secretary's Correspondence Reel 6046, 4/1737 p.200, accessed 22 June 2024.

[14] Ibid., p.203.

[15] Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, ‘Diary 10 April 1816 – 1 July 1818’, Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/lema/1817/1817march.html, accessed 22 June 2024.

[16] Richard Bastard, ‘Logbook of the Sir William Bensley, commanded by Richard Bastard, on a voyage from Deptford to Sydney and the return voyage to Calcutta and England’.

[17] Charles Weaver, Petitions To The Governor From Convicts For Mitigations of Sentence, Series: NRS 900; Fiche 3163-3253, New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary's Papers, 1788-1856, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[18] New South Wales, Australia, St. John's Parramatta, Marriages, 1790–1966, Reference Number: REG/COMP/1; Description: Vol 01, Baptisms, 1790–1825; Marriages, 1789–1823; Burials, 1790–1825; Parish: St. John’s Anglican Church Parramatta, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[19]'Classified Advertising’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 24 July 1823, 1.

[20] ‘Classified Advertising’ Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 24 July 1823, 3; Census records for Charles Weaver, 1828 New South Wales Census, New South Wales State Archives, NRS 1272, Reel 2556, 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (Australian Copy), Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[21]  Charles Weaver, Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Card Index to Letters Received, Colonial Secretary; Reel Number: 775 Roll Number 1250, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024.

[22] ‘WHEREAS the Estate of Charles Weavers’, New South Wales Government Gazette, 19 October 1849, 1531.

[23] ‘Town News’, Freeman’s Journal, 14 April 1866, 234.