People Australia

Francis Wetton (1800–1858), convict and clerk, was born about 1800 at Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England. At the Derbyshire Quarter Sessions at Chesterfield commencing 7 April 1835, he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for fraud: specifically, stealing through false pretences in the town of Sinfin-and-Arleston.[1]  On hearing this outcome, the prisoner ‘burst into tears, exclaiming “What will become of my five motherless children”’.[2] Wetton’s wife, Elizabeth, had died in December 1833 at the market town of Castle Donington on the border of Leicestershire and Derbyshire.[3]  These English midlands counties were experiencing huge social turmoil, with whole families being condemned to ‘industrial servitude’: long hours in mills and ‘piece work’ at home.[4] He probably feared that his children, then aged between four and twelve, would find themselves committed to the workhouse in the neighbouring town of Shardlow.[5]

Despite having no prior convictions, Wetton had appeared the previous month at the Leicester Assizes, charged by neighbour Richard Thacker with stealing through false pretences. The outcome was described as ‘Bills ignored’.[6] However, pre-trial evidence in the Derbyshire case included a letter from thirty-three residents of Castle Donington asking that he be transported because ‘as clerk to several attorneys he has used … unlawful means to reduce the families to poverty’.[7]  This suggests that he may have been offending prior to his wife’s death. It also suggests that people from his hometown may have been reluctant to go to the trouble and expense of charging him individually.[8] Perhaps when his neighbour’s charge failed to result in conviction, other aggrieved Castle Donington residents decided to support the Derbyshire prosecution with their co-signed letter.

Transferred from Chesterfield to Derby Gaol, Wetton was then taken by a court-appointed contractor to the hulk Ganymede at Woolwich: a journey of some 225 kilometres.[9]  Having boarded on 22 April he—along with only four other April arrivals—was ‘disposed of’ on 1 May to the barque Norfolk, which departed Sheerness a fortnight later, bound for Van Diemen’s Land.[10] Surgeon Superintendent Arthur Savage made no mention of Wetton in his journal, but he wanted it noted on Wetton’s record that this man was ‘not to be trusted in any one way’.[11]  Did something happen during the voyage to provoke this statement, or was he simply relaying what he had read of Francis’ offending? 

On arrival in Hobart Town on 28 August 1835, Wetton was assigned to the clerks’ room at the prisoners’ barracks.[12] After working without incident for nearly six months, two misdemeanours were recorded in early February 1836 when he was working in the engineers’ office under John Lee Archer.[13]  The restructuring of this department following the arrival of the Royal Engineers in December 1835 did not proceed smoothly, and the antagonism between the Engineers and the Convict Department may have left men like Wetton in an awkward position.[14] For being drunk he was sentenced to solitary confinement on bread and water for forty-eight hours; for ‘falsely accusing Constable Norris of taking a Dollar from him’, he received a reprimand.[15] 

A month later, on 7 March 1836 Elizabeth Struth, a free woman, submitted a petition requesting permission to marry Francis Wetton. Permission was denied.[16] How might these two have met? Each evening, Wetton would have returned to the penitentiary in Campbell Street from the engineers’ office at Macquarie Point, but this journey would not have taken him past Struth’s home on the corner of Bathurst and Watchorn Streets.[17] Perhaps his duties as a clerk required him to deliver messages to individuals in that part of the town. Perhaps he sought her out after hearing that she was financially secure, living and running a shop in premises built by her late husband.[18] Perhaps he convinced Struth—an illiterate young widow—that his ‘legal experience’ could help her navigate the colony’s ‘fiercely patriarchal society’.[19] She married William Rands later that year.[20]

In May 1836 Wetton—still at the engineer’s office—was charged with ‘creating a disturbance in his Wards’ and sent as ‘Clerk to one of the Road parties’.[21] Although not specified in his record, he might have joined more than one hundred men assigned to construct and ‘macadamise’ a road over Grass Tree Hill, to connect the Risdon ferry with the town of Richmond and thence to the main road to Launceston.[22] Nothing was added to his conduct record until February 1839 when, while in a position of trust—that of gate keeper at the prisoners’ barracks—Wetton was found guilty of ‘gross neglect of duty’ and sentenced to twenty-five lashes.[23] Granted a ‘Queen’s birthday ticket-of-leave’ on 27 May 1840, he then committed an unspecified act of misconduct on 4 August 1841.[24] Perhaps he had strayed from his permitted district: he was admonished and ordered to remove to the Oatlands district by magistrate Peter Archer Mulgrave, who was based in Launceston.[25]

Holding a free certificate, by mid-1842 Wetton had returned to the occupation of attorney’s clerk, reportedly making ‘plenty of money at bill discounting’.[26] He became the first licensee of his own tavern, the Marquis of Hastings in November 1846—one of around 130 pubs in central Hobart.[27] The colonial budget relied on the duties on imported liquor, the government effectively ‘tolerat(ing), even encourage(ing) heavy drinking’.[28] In 1844 a daughter Mary Ann was born to Wetton and Struth (‘formerly Rand’), who finally married in 1849.[29] Wetton gave his name to all three Rand children, and all were included in the agreement with Struth which was ultimately accepted as his will.[30] 

Wetton had stayed in touch with his English children of whom at least two, Mary Ann and Isabella, had spent time in the Shardlow workhouse.[31] In 1854 a government bounty scheme enabled him to support his son George (‘brazier’) and daughter Isabella, her husband James Ward (a ‘tinman’) and infant daughter Elizabeth to migrate to Hobart.[32] They arrived on the Australasia on 3 January 1855.[33] By the time he died on 12 August 1858, he had shown himself to be a genuine family man, supporting his wife, children, and stepchildren, both during his life and beyond.[34]

 [1] Trial Register, Francis Wetton, 7 April 1835, Derby County Sessions, in the England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 22 April 2024; ‘Derbyshire Easter Sessions’, Derby Mercury (Derby, England), 15 April 1835, p 2, British Library Newspapers, accessed 13 May 2024

[2] ‘Derbyshire Easter Sessions’ 

[3] Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries, Leicester Chronicle (Leicester, England), 11 January 1835, p 3, British Library Newspapers, accessed 13 May 2024 

[4] Janet McCalman, ‘Convict Lives: A research note’, Australian Journal of Biography and History, June 2023, 7:25-33, p 27; J M Lee, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Market Town – Castle Donington in the Nineteenth Century’, in Leicester Archaeological and Historical Society publication (title and editor unknown), 1956, pp 53-80, p 60 https://www.castledonington-pc.gov.uk/uploads/1956-(32)-53-80-lee.pdf ,  accessed 22 April 2024

[5] Peter Higginbotham, The Workhouse: the story of an institution, Shardlow Workhouse, 2024, https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Shardlow/  accessed 17 April 2024 

[6] ‘Bills Ignored’ Leicester Chronicle (Leicester, England), 28 March 1835, p3, British Library Newspapers, accessed 22 April 2024 

[7] Petition regarding Francis Wetton, 16 March 1835, Criminal Petitions, Home Office, The National Archives, Kew (UK), HO17/32/148  

[8] The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, ‘The Costs of Prosecution’, Old Bailey Online website, n.d., https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/about/prosecuting-crime#initialaccusations  accessed 8 May 2024

[9] Quarter Sessions Order Books 1682 – 1853, Derbyshire April Sessions 1835, pp439-440, familysearch.org, accessed 16 May 2024; UK Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849, Ganymede Register 1818 -1836, p86, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 22 May 2024

[10] UK Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books; Australian Convict Transportation Registers-other Fleets & Ships,1791-1868, Norfolk, 1835, pp 51-63, p53, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 22 May 2024 

[11] UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, Norfolk, 1835, 27 Apr-28 Sep, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 22 May 2024; Francis Wetton, Norfolk, 1835, Conduct record, Conduct Registers of Male Convicts arriving in the Period of the Assignment System, Tasmanian Archives, CON31/1/47 p 111 

[12] Appropriation list, Francis Wetton, 28 August 1835, Colonial Secretary’s Office – General Correspondence, Tasmanian Archives, CSO1/1/820 file no.17486 image 32 

[13] Francis Wetton, Conduct record; Roy S. Smith, ‘Archer, John Lee (1791-1852)’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, first published 1966, accessed online 4 June 2024

[14] Peter MacFie, The Royal Engineers in Colonial Tasmania, Institution of Engineers, Melbourne, 1985, pp 1-7, pp1-2, viewed at State Library Reading Room (Tas)

[15] Francis Wetton, Conduct record

[16] Application for Permission to Marry, Francis Wetton and Elizabeth Struth, 7 March 1836, Register of Applications for Permission to Marry, 1834 -1840, Convict Department, Tasmanian Archives CON52/1/1 p89 

[17] Map, Hobart 5: Map of Hobart Town, 1831, Hobart Maps, Lands and Surveys Department, Tasmanian Archives AF394/1/5; Survey of Hobart Streets, J E Calder, 1833-4, Lands and Surveys Department, Surveyor’s Field Books, Tasmanian Archives, LSD355/1/21, p119, viewed at State Library Reading Room (Tas)

[18] ‘Land Board Jurisdiction’, The Hobart Town Advertiser, 20 August 1859, p3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/264660258 , accessed 24 March 2024 

[19] Marriage Register entry for Francis Wetton and Elizabeth Rand, 2 July 1849, Register of Marriages in the District of Hobart, Tasmanian Archives, RGD37/1/8 p194; James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land, Black Inc, Carlton, Victoria, 2009, p.131

[20] Marriage register entry for William Rands and Elizabeth Struth, 24 May 1836, Register of Marriages solemnized in the Parish of St David’s Hobart Town, Tasmanian Archives, RGD36/1/3 no.3171

[21] Francis Wetton, Conduct record

[22] Peter MacFie, ‘Dobbers and Cobbers: Informers and Mateship among Convicts, Officials and Settlers on the Grass Tree Hill Road, Tasmania 1830-1850’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1988, 35(3), pp 112-27,  p 114

[23] Francis Wetton, Conduct record

[24] Government Notice no.109, The Hobart Town Gazette 29 May 1840, p507, Tasmanian Archives, accessed 16 June 2024; Francis Wetton, Conduct record

[25] Female Convicts Research Group, 22 May 2013, ‘Magistrates & Justices of the Peace in Van Diemen’s Land’, Female Convicts Research Centre website https://femaleconvicts.org.au/docs/lists/Magistrates.pdf  accessed 2 June2024; Lloyd Robson ‘Mulgrave, Peter Archer (1778-1847)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, first published 1967, accessed 12 June 2024

[26] Francis Wetton, conduct record; ‘Land Board Jurisdiction’

[27] ‘Publicans’ Licences, Hobart District’, The Courier (Hobart), 7 November 1846, p 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2944516 accessed 15 June, 2024; The Hobart Town Gazette [968089], Extraordinary edition: Property Assessments and Rates, 5 January 1847, p30, Tasmanian Archives, accessed 16 June 2024; Donald Howatson, Hobart’s Pubs, Past and Present, self published, Hobart, 2021, p 3

[28] James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land, p220

[29] Birth registration for Mary Ann Wetton, born 4 March 1844, Register of Births in the District of Hobart, Tasmanian Archives, RGD33/1/2 no.197; Marriage Register entry for Francis Wetton and Elizabeth Rand

[30] Memorial of Indenture, Francis Wetton and Elizabeth Rand, Land Titles Office, Historic Registry of Deeds, Dealing no.04/6202, thelist.tas.gov.au, accessed 12 March 2024; ‘Supreme Court’, The Hobart Town Daily Mercury, 15 December 1858, p 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3252082   accessed 24 March 2024

[31] Census record for Mary Ann Whetton, age 13, and Isabella Whetton, age 10, Shardlow Workhouse, Aston upon Trent, Derbyshire, 1841 England and Wales Census, The National Archives (UK), HO107/188/7, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 22 May 2024

[32] Ian Pearce and Clare Cowling, Guide to the Public Records of Tasmania, Section Four: Records Relating to Free Immigration, Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart, 1975; Tasmania, Australia, Immigrant Applications and Bounty Tickets, 1854-1887, April 1884, no. 278, ancestrylibrary.com.au, accessed 2 June 2024

[33]  Descriptive list of Immigrants entries for James Ward, Isabella Ward, Elizabeth Ward, George Wetton, Australasia, arriving Hobart 3 January 1855, Immigration Agents Department, Tasmanian Archives, CB7/12/1/3, pp103-4, pp108-9 

[34]  Death registration of Francis Wetton, 12 August 1858, Register of Deaths in the District of Hobart Town, Tasmanian Archives, RGD35/1/5, no 1035; ‘Died’, The Hobart Town Daily Mercury, 18 August 1858, p 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3249976 accessed 24 March 2024