On His Majesty's Service: George Augustus Robinson's First Forty Years in England and Van Diemen's Land

By Jacqueline D'Arcy

George Augustus Robinson's voice, both in the past and in the contemporary world, is an important one. He has been used and sometimes abused by historians and others in debates about colonisation and Aboriginality. This partial biography (Robinson's first  forty years), through its thorough and forensic approach, presents a new Robinson - not the 'Black Robinson' of Rae-Ellis, James Bonwick, John West and James Erskine Calder, nor the 'White Robinson' of Mark Twain - but a 'Grey Robinson', a grey robin with a red breast. Robinson was an ordinary man with a heart which burnt for the evangelical cause. 
Myths that have grown up about Robinson's class, character and the trajectory of his public life are dispelled and a new, more subtle gradated way of considering his life and writings is offered. Robinson's life is used here as a lens; a way of better understanding the networks that underpinned the British world during the nineteenth century. Moreover, this biography provides an opportunity to examine how those networks operated within a colonial paradigm. 
This biography uncovers Robinson's sophisticated development and management of a global network and interlocking directorate which ultimately led to his appointment as Storekeeper at Bruné Island - the humble beginning of his Friendly Missions and career in protectionism. This network also upheld Robinson as an expert on the Tasmanian Aborigines in his later life. 
What is revealed is that the course of Robinson's life was sustained by networks that operated equally well both at the centre and periphery of empire: from Hobart to the metropolis. In this way he was both a child of metropolis and a man of the empire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jul 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781838599300

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Jacqueline D’Arcy

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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To Jasmyn, with love.

Contents

Comments on the Text

Foreword

the collection, 1866-1966

england, 1791-1823

new horizons, 1821-1823

The Triton, 1823–1824

early hobart, 1824-1826

city mission, 1827-1829

the aboriginal situation, 1824-1828

the calling, march 1829

bruné island, 1829-1830

the hobart aboriginal asylum, 1829-1830

departure, 1829-1830

Afterword

Reference List

Notes

Comments on the Text

Throughout the text all direct quotes have been transcribed exactly as they appeared in their original context. As there are multiple ‘errors’ of spelling and grammar in the quotes, I decided it was too disruptive to the flow of the language to insert ‘sic.’ after every error. This has been done to preserve the authenticity of the original author’s voice, which is too often lost when modern rules are imposed on old language.

Aboriginal names are in small capitals following the precedent set by Plomley in Friendly Mission and Weep in Silence. The spellings of the names are taken from Robinson’s first mention of them.

Foreword

I read Mr Bonwick’s book, The Last of the Tasmanians, and to me it is the only accurate book about the history of the Aboriginal people. I and everyone I knew was told what happened at the Settlement of Flinders Island. We were told that the Aborigines were put into a big grave. Probably only half of them were put there; the others were not there at all. They were sold. It doesn’t matter what George Augustus Robinson puts on paper, or what they find of Robinson’s. How do they know that it is the truth?¹

George Augustus Robinson’s career with the Aborigines of South East Australia officially began in March 1829 and concluded on 31 December 1849. In contrast, this close biographical study of Robinson’s formative years, which contributes much to the historical record, begins in 1791 and ends in 1830. This close examination clearly demonstrates that the Robinson portrayed by previous historians and commentators was a mere two-dimensional caricature, cut out, tailored, to suit their purposes. Here, this cartoon character is fleshed out, formed into a three-dimensional man who lived in a world with a global expanse.

Robinson can now be viewed as a man of some education, widely read and interested in current issues. His Triton journal is an excellent example of this and is examined here in greater detail than by previous commentators. What is also now clearly evident is that Robinson understood how to successfully function within several contemporary networks both in the Metropol and on the colonial periphery. These networks, explored and mapped in this biography in a way – and to a level of detail – that has not been done before, were the key to his success both at home and abroad. This, however, was not a discovery of exceptionalism, but of normality.

Robinson’s place in history, therefore (both in his own time and in ours) remains significant but not exceptional and in this biography Robinson is exposed to be an un-person.² This term does not de-value his place, rather shifts it, leading the audience’s eye from a small scene captured by a viewfinder, to the breadth of the vista from the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, looking down on the thronging masses of the imperial machine. This view recognises that Robinson was not exceptional in his thinking. He – like thousands of other missionaries and anthropologists and others without a formal title to their position – believed that the Aborigines were not animals but men, and he (had he not stepped up and said ‘pick me’) could easily have been replaced with another ‘Robinson’ cast from an almost identical mould.

Although Robinson’s interest to the world remains not in the small details of his formative years, but in the records that he left behind on the Aborigines in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, it must be understood that these records were produced by a man whose formative years played a significant part in shaping who he was, how he viewed the world, and, therefore, how he wrote about it. The importance of this biography for other historians and readers of Robinson’s texts is in its more accurate portrayal of the man, his worldview and the context of his writings.

This biography also highlights the value of returning to the original manuscripts rather than relying purely on the edited versions of Robinson’s journals. For future writers, this is a must. As the digital age progresses it would be wonderful to see all of Robinson’s original writings transcribed without alteration to be freely available online. This would be a mammoth task, but surely one worth pursuing considering his importance to both the Aboriginal and wider community.

As hinted at in this biography, Robinson’s texts are a significant source for Aboriginal communities pursuing Native Title claims and negotiated Indigenous Land Use Agreements in the States mentioned above. His journals provide evidence of territorial boundaries, genealogies, customs, laws and connection to country. In some cases, Robinson’s references are the only ones that survive. His journals are also of value to communities such as the Palawa (Tasmanian Aborigines) who have used them to reconstruct their histories and to better understand their own culture.

In Tasmania, Robinson is a particularly contentious fellow, whose role in assisting the government to remove the Aborigines to Flinders’ Island is seen as an act of betrayal. This was not the case as further research will explore. It is hoped, therefore, that this biography will encourage more scholarship into both Robinson’s life and the time in which he lived and will allow for a more nuanced, detailed view that more accurately represents the complicated ‘truth’ of the past. For too long the guilt of the fathers has rested on the shoulders of a select few. It is now time to share the collective blame for sins past and move into the future with a better understanding of past people and events in their proper historical context – a context that, to our modern sensibilities, is like a foreign country.³

Chapter One

the collection,

1866-1966

TO THE MEMORY OF

GEORGE AUGUSTUS ROBINSON

CHIEF PROTECTOR OF THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA

PACIFICATOR OF THE TASMANIAN ABORIGINES

WHO DIED OCT 18TH 1866 AGED 78 YEARS

***

‘HE FELL ASLEEP IN JESUS

THAT WHERE I AM THERE YE MAY BE ALSO’⁴

On 15 November 1934, the Mitchell Librarian, Sydney, Australia, wrote to a Mr Robinson in Bath, England. Having just read George Porter’s new book, Wanderings in Tasmania,⁵ he was on a mission to find the journals of George Augustus Robinson, the conciliator,⁶ which Porter had recently discovered in Bath. The Mitchell Library, described in the letter as the British Museum of the Southern Hemisphere,⁷ was then actively expanding its collection of papers by and about the early explorers and administrators of Australia. Having recently acquired the Banks papers, the Macquarie journals and other treasures including Tasman’s original 1644 map, the Library was keen to add to its assets the valuable records of George Augustus Robinson.⁸ As Porter had so eloquently expressed in his Wanderings:

no history of Tasmania would be complete without an account of the aborigines, and no account of the aborigines would be complete without the name of George Augustus Robinson.⁹

The trail of Robinson’s records is as twisted and perplexing as the story of the man’s life. Both paths contain large holes where there should be footbridges, and conflicting duplications where there should be unambiguous signposts. The Mitchell Library’s records of their acquisition of Robinson’s papers consist of five out-bound letters dated 1934 and 1935, one of which is the letter mentioned above.¹⁰ The paucity of the provenance of Robinson’s collection reflects an impetus born in the 1970s to cull the Library’s records. There was no record made of what was destroyed. The existing letters are only those of the Librarian’s initial enquiries. Frustratingly, these letters leave the reader with nothing but a riddle.

The Librarian received return correspondence (no longer surviving) from a Mr Sidney Robinson and also the Dean of Bath Abbey, both giving the name of George Augustus Robinson’s surviving son (whom Porter had visited) as one Mr Arthur Perry Robinson.¹¹ Curiously, when Sidney Robinson (no relation) paid Arthur Perry a visit, the man had no knowledge of G. A. Robinson but promised to pass on the Librarian’s letter to his father who lives at Croydon who may have had a brother George, whom he fancies did a little travelling.¹² Despite this, the Librarian was convinced that this Arthur Perry was the same one visited by Porter who had showed Porter pictures and portraits connected with his father,¹³ George Augustus Robinson. Frustratingly, this is where the trail goes cold – another pothole with no nearby plank of wood to take one over.

The trail picks up again in 1948 in correspondence between Raleigh A Black, then of the Victorian Historical Society (Australia), and the Lord Mayor of Bath.¹⁴ Black’s effort to track down Robinson’s papers was made in the hope of using them to compose a work similar to Chisholm’s Strange New World: The Adventures of John Gilbert and Ludwig Leichhardt. This man Robinson, Black wrote:

was probably the only man who thoroughly understood the aborigines. He could have supplied valuable information as to their tribal usages and ways of thinking, yet so far as is known he has not left behind him even the briefest account of the people for whom he ran such risks.¹⁵

Black wrote on, however, that there was a possibility that Robinson had put pen to paper in the 1860s. Robinson had:

told the father of the late James Backhouse Walker…that he had a large quantity of MS. respecting the aborigines which he intended to publish. Among the late Mr. Walker’s literary possessions was a letter dated from Prahran, Widcombe Hill, Bath, England, March 19, 1864 written by Robinson to the late Mr. Witcomb, in which he says :- ‘I am now arranging my papers (the vocabulary included) for publication.’ The papers were never published.¹⁶

The Mayor passed on Black’s enquiry to the Director of the Victoria Art Gallery and Municipal Library (Bath),¹⁷ who asked the Editor of the local paper Day by Day to run a piece on Black’s search. He also wrote to Black, informing him that although he had made an appointment with a firm of auctioneers and estate agents who may be able to give information about a purchaser of the papers some years ago, there had been considerable difficulty in finding a clue since the name disappeared from the Bath Directory.¹⁸

Luckily for Black, the interview with the local firm, Henshaw & Son, who had some dealing with the wind up of the estate¹⁹ produced a lead. The London firm Maggs Brothers, they said, had purchased the papers on behalf of an Australian client²⁰ late in 1938 or early 1939, following the death of Robinson’s son in 1938.²¹ Six days later, Frank B Maggs confirmed that the firm had purchased the papers on 2 September 1939, one day before the outbreak of the Second World War.²² The papers had then been transferred by Maggs Brothers to the National Library of Wales for safe keeping and shipped to the Mitchell Library at the cessation of hostilities.²³ The following day a staff member of the Bath Library, Reference Department, wrote to Black to inform him of the Mitchell Library’s purchase.²⁴ It seems that despite all of Arthur Perry’s denials the Library had managed to confirm that he was Robinson’s son, successfully purchasing the collection within four years of their initial enquiry.

In a further twist, however, the Bath Library staff member alluded to the earlier conversation about the collection with Henshaw & Son. The staffer claimed the firm had told him that in 1938, at the house formerly occupied by the Robinsons, they had just prevented the destruction of the papers by the housekeeper.²⁵ In more recent times this statement has sparked the imaginations of writers such as Nicholas Shakespeare. On visiting Arthur Perry’s former residence in 2008, Shakespeare was eager to discover where the housekeeper, Hilda Prescott, may have lit the bonfire which she planned to use to ignite and destroy the papers.²⁶

What wonderful imagery this story evokes: an elderly servant, keen to preserve the good name of her dead master, leaning over a fire with a precious bundle of papers in her hand. Just as she leans in to catch the corner of a manuscript to the flame, the hero of history arrives in the guise of a local real estate agent. He snatches the paper from her hand, stamps out the flame that has started to devour the said corner, and saves the day! Riveting stuff, perfect for Shakespeare’s proposed BBC documentary on Anthony Fenn Kemp and George Augustus Robinson.

It’s never fun to be the wet blanket smothering a good story for the sake of a little thing such as truth, but that is, for the sake of historical accuracy, what has to happen here. Disappointingly to all those who love the idea of the elderly servant, the letter also contains a glaring inaccuracy regarding the history of Arthur Perry. Contrary to previous Library correspondence, which claimed that Arthur Perry had died in 1938²⁷ (he died 28 February 1939),²⁸ this letter now alleged Arthur Perry died in the Great War, sometime between 1917 and 1918.²⁹ This discrepancy on such a solid point of fact strongly indicates that the claim of the housekeeper’s imminent destruction of the records was, at the very least, an exaggeration and a furphy at worst.

There was also no mention of a bonfire.³⁰ This juicy detail was added forty-four years later by Mrs Elizabeth Bevan in a letter to Steve Turnbull of East Melbourne, a direct descendant of G.A.R..³¹ Robinson’s widow Rose, she wrote:

died 1st March 1901 aged 72. She left her husband’s diaries to her son, Alfred of 2 Isabella Place, Combe Down, Bath. When this place came up for auction in 1938 Robinson’s papers were saved from the bonfire and purchased by Maggs Brothers of London for the Mitchell library, New South Wales. I have no information about the children.³²

The housekeeper Hilda Laura Prescott (nee Dodd) was, at the time of Arthur Perry’s death in February 1939, a married woman aged in her forties with one twenty-eight year old daughter, also married with three children of her own.³³ She was bequeathed by Arthur Perry, former school master and long term bachelor, all of his furniture, ornaments, domestic and household articles, personal effects and the sum of £20, free of duty.³⁴ His paintings of George Augustus Robinson and Rose Pyne, colonial Australia, Bath, a lithograph of GA Robinson, and a Sir John Franklin medallion were to be bestowed on Arthur Perry’s nephew George Arthur Robinson. The remainder of the estate was to be sold and divided amongst Arthur Perry’s niece and nephews (including George Arthur) who lived in the United States.³⁵ Curiously, the executors did not carry out the instructions in Arthur Perry’s Will regarding the medallion, paintings and other items bequeathed to George Arthur Robinson in the United States. Instead, these items were sold to the Mitchell Library as part of the Robinson collection.³⁶

Two pieces of Chippendale furniture were excluded from Hilda Prescott’s lot, as were all books and manuscripts. In his last will and testament, Arthur Perry specifically stated what he desired to happen to the collection of documents and books belonging to his father. It read:

7. I DESIRE my trustee to take particular care in realising my father’s books and manuscripts dealing with the aborigines of Tasmania which include the only authentic vocabulary of that race and to offer them in the first place to the British museum and in the event of their refusing to buy my trustee shall exercise his discretion as to their sale in the first place to any other museum or literary institution such as the Hobart Museum of [or] Melbourne.³⁷

This direction to the trustee clearly states the importance of the collection and indicates the high level of esteem that Arthur Perry held it in. It is, therefore, more than reasonable to conclude that he had repeatedly pressed upon his housekeeper the importance of the documents. This, coupled with Prescott’s significant inheritance and the strict directions to the trustee regarding the collection’s treatment, makes it highly unlikely that she would have considered destroying the Robinson papers.

The collection that is now housed in the Mitchell Library is, however, incomplete. From the 1840s Robinson’s collection was dismantled piece by piece, first by himself and then by others. In the 1840s, for example, Robinson made copies of some of his letters and the originals were dispersed. They may have been gifted to his children around the time of his wife Maria’s death (1848), and were certainly removed from the collection prior to Robinson’s departure to England in 1852.³⁸ In 1912, Arthur Perry Robinson disposed of a number of original letters, reports and bound newspapers from the collection, selling them to the Australian Book Company.³⁹

After his death in 1866, Robinson’s second wife Rose⁴⁰ sold many of the ethnographic items in the collection, as well as several drawings and paintings, to Joseph Barnard Davis.⁴¹ Despite his continued demands she did not, however, part with Robinson’s manuscripts. In November 1917, Arthur Perry listed his assets for his insurance agency as:

•valuable M.S.S and early Australian and Tasmanian Literature. The collection of G. A. Robinson. Protector General of Australian Aborigines etc. 1820 – 1850

•A Large Collection of Prints, including Four large volumes of Rossini’s views of Rome

•Household Furniture & Plate including a large Silver Cup (28oz) presented to G.A. Robinson by ‘Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land in acknowledgement of his services in conciliating the Inhabitants of the Island effected by him. 1835

•A large number of Tasmanian and Australian Aboriginal weapons, ornaments, etc. The Collection of G.A. Robinson.⁴²

It is clear from this list that Davis did not purchase all of Robinson’s Tasmanian objects when he bought his 275 artefacts from Rose Robinson in 1866.⁴³

Arthur Perry Robinson, born 4 July 1864, was only two years old when his father passed away. The youngest of five children (two girls and three boys), he would have known his father only through other people’s recollections. His eldest brother, Alfred George Augustus, born 25 June 1859, perhaps came to know his father a little better when he examined his Father’s manuscripts at the age of thirteen.⁴⁴ This examination, referred to by Joseph Barnard Davis in a letter to Rose Robinson in 1873, was possibly conducted with the intention of arranging them into a memoir.

The idea of Robinson’s papers being published was not new. He himself had considered it during the early years of his ‘Friendly Missions’, drafting an introduction and even going to the trouble of having a frontispiece commissioned.⁴⁵ Later, in the 1860s, Robinson was pressed by men of the scientific fraternity to pen his recollections. Joseph Barnard Davis, ever ready to take advantage of a situation to further his own reputation, pushed Robinson to write his experiences down in a series of letters, which he would then have published.⁴⁶ William Howitt, who exchanged books and ideas with his good friend, encouraged Robinson to write and gave him feedback on his M.S. Fair.⁴⁷

After Robinson’s death Davis hounded Rose for Robinson’s manuscripts. Uncertain as to what to do (especially after the debacle of selling Davis Robinson’s objects and paintings), Rose requested Howitt’s counsel.⁴⁸ He advised her that letting the manuscripts out of her hands was a risky proposition as she may not ever have them returned. Rose then asked Howitt if he would consider writing Robinson’s memoir. Howitt, who had recently published his History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, declined, as my hands are full of work for a long time to come.⁴⁹ He did, however, advise Rose that if a Memoir of Mr Robinson is written it should be done soon.⁵⁰ Significantly, he felt that the author should be:

some one in the circle of your acquaintance…well acquainted with Australia and Tasmania, who could write in full sympathy with the subject. I could also advise that the work should not be made too voluminous. In this age of innumerable books, a moderate […] well selected and […] would do more to place Mr Robinson’s memoir before the public, and would be much more […] than a larger one…A clear, bright, sympathetic narrative…invokes the best and most lasting impression.⁵¹

As history has shown, no memoir of Robinson was written, and it was not until 1966 – one hundred years after Robinson’s death – that any significant part of Robinson’s papers became available in print.⁵² Alfred George Augustus Robinson, the son perhaps destined to write the memoir, left home in 1879 to join the army and by 1882 was serving in East London, South Africa.⁵³ He married Clara Bolwell from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in 1885.⁵⁴ The couple moved to Ontario, Canada where their first child, George Arthur was born in 1888. They had three further children and the family had relocated to Los Angeles sometime before Alfred’s death there on 9 July 1906.⁵⁵

Alfred and Arthur’s two sisters Emily Ann and Georgina Victoria became governesses.⁵⁶ Emily may have married by 1891 (she was unmarried and living at home in 1881, aged 26). Georgina, later a music and piano teacher, remained a spinster to her death in 1937.⁵⁷ The other brother, Edward Albert, born 11 May 1862, studied architecture and may have married a Susan Pode in 1914.⁵⁸

Arthur Perry Robinson remained unmarried and resided at 2 Isabella Place from the time of his mother’s death in 1901, until shortly before his own death when he was moved to a nursing home.⁵⁹ Three days after writing his last will and testament, Arthur Perry Robinson died. By directing his Executors to approach the British Museum with Robinson’s collection, Arthur Perry had discharged his final duty to the memory of the father he never knew. Arthur Perry, the son of Mr. George A. Robinson, formerly a district commissioner in Tasmania, whose work among the aborigines won him some renown,⁶⁰ was laid to rest on 3 March 1939 in the family plot at Bath Abbey Cemetery. None of his surviving family attended. Buried with him were details of his father’s life that, as the sods were shovelled onto the casket, became submerged and obscured, and put beyond the grasping reach of the historian.

Chapter Two

england, 1791-1823

⁶¹

It was my happy Lot & portion In Early Life to Labour among the poor, in courts, & Allys of the Metropol, in Hospitals & in prisons – among sailors & among soldiers & this God had as I believe fitted me for Labour among the heathen.⁶²

childhood: 1791-1809

London, Spring Equinox, 1791. Two days before the birth of George Augustus Robinson the city of London went about its daily business in its usual dirty, smelly, noisy and cluttered way. The filthy and chaotic living conditions of the Metropolis that Robinson was born into were, however, significantly improved from those which his parents’ and grandparents’ generations had experienced in the 1730s and 1760s.⁶³ In St Brides, the parish where Robinson’s parents had settled, the regular cleaning of the new pavements, the removal of many of the traditional wooden signs that hung above the narrow streets impeding ventilation, the lighting of the city and the enclosing of Fleet Ditch had greatly advanced the district.⁶⁴ River water was pumped through lead pipes into each household either daily or thrice weekly and privvies were emptied nightly after midnight.⁶⁵

The Old Bailey and Newgate Prison, only a few streets back from Stonecutter Street – where Robinson was born and resided for the first eight or so years of his life – reminded the residents of the consequences of crime. The Fleet Debtor’s Prison (recently rebuilt after the 1780 Gordon Riot) was around the corner on Fleet Market. It and the spunging-houses on Shoe Lane exemplified the penalty for the inability to make, hold onto, or repay money.⁶⁶ Poverty, and especially debt, confronted a child of the metropolis as a dreadful but not uncommon destiny. Crime and poverty still abounded, but this was the age of opportunity, and men with vision willing to take a little risk could rise above their positions and make something of themselves.

For those who were unable to work or earn enough, however, starvation was a real possibility. Stonecutter Street had had its own infamous brush with the consequences of poverty in 1763, when a woman named Pattent and some of her female companions were discovered dead, or almost dead and severely emaciated, in a vacant house on the street.⁶⁷ Just a few streets away, in marked contrast to this scene of destitution, was the house where, in a triumph of erudition, local resident Dr Johnson had penned the first English Dictionary.⁶⁸ It was Johnson’s Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland that Robinson read and later commented upon during his own voyage past the Hebrides to the antipodes.⁶⁹

Interest in the dissemination of information provided the basis for the main industry of the area. Shoe Lane, which ran perpendicular to Stonecutter Street between Fleet and Charterhouse Streets, housed many of the booksellers, copperplate makers, printers and stationers that serviced the thriving print industry of the Fleet Street. It was also the address of a workhouse.⁷⁰ Thus the Parish of St Brides provides a classic example of the increasingly affluent middle classes rubbing shoulders with the starving poor.

Stonecutter Street, as attested to in the Tithe and Rate Books of the Parish of St Bride’s, housed an assortment of persons of varying wealth and status.⁷¹ The street contained not just residents but also businesses such as a printer (about mid-way between the Shoe Lane and Fleet Market intersections) and, on the corner of Shoe Lane, a warehouse and coach house. The several tenements of George Sex housed a mixture of transient and long-term leaseholders but the majority of the residents of Stonecutter Street were permanent.

William and Susannah (née Perry) Robinson, George Augustus Robinson’s parents, took up residence in John Youngman’s old house during the parish tithe period ending at Lady Day 1787.⁷² The couple would go on to occupy their new home for the next eleven years.⁷³ It has not been previously known exactly where or when the couple were married, however, a newly discovered marriage registration for one William Robinson to one Ann Perry at St Boltolph’s, Bishopgate, on 28 October 1787 seems to be an excellent fit.⁷⁴ William Robinson signed the register with a confident hand, whilst Ann’s signature was shaky and suggests that she was not accustomed to writing. The marriage was witnessed by Ann Robinson, […] Perry and Martin Robert Pyrke.⁷⁵

Susannah may have worked but no records about her life in St Brides survive. What is known is that William was a builder,⁷⁶ and that in 1794 to 1795 he experienced ‘a reverse of fortune’. William Robinson was the designated ‘Housekeeper’ of 11 Stonecutter Street and, as such, he was responsible for the payment of taxes and rents.⁷⁷ Although William and Susannah, like many of their neighbours, were long-term tenants who did not appear to need to sub-let rooms in their home, the Parish Tithe Books reveal that the couple soon descended into poverty.⁷⁸

The Tithe Books do not note the cause of William’s reverse of fortune but it is reasonable to argue that he suffered some kind of injury or sickness, which prevented him from working and generating an income. In 1794 William paid the Parish tithe of 1s 3d in full, however, a ‘q’ was noted beside his name. At the following collection William paid a tithe of 2s 6d, but when the collector arrived at his door on Lady Day (25 March) 1795, he was unable to produce the sum owed.⁷⁹ Although he did not pay, William was not noted as ‘poor’, and there may have been an expectation that he would repay the parish at the next collection.

When the Tithe Collector made his rounds on Christmas Day, 1795, he would have observed that William and Susannah had at least four children to sustain – two boys and two girls, ranging in age from six years to six months. Henry-Thomas was the eldest, born May 1789, followed by George-Augustus, born 22 March 1791. The two girls, Mary-Ann and Elizabeth, were born 27 May 1793 and 28 June 1795, respectively.⁸⁰ Unable to pay the Collector his arrears of 1s 3d or his new Tithe of 2s 6d, Poor was jotted against William Robinson’s name in the register. From that date to the final entry for William Robinson and his family made on Lady Day 1798, the Collector’s entries read Wm. Robinson P.⁸¹ William died sometime after this last entry but was survived by his wife Susannah Robinson for another thirty years.⁸²

The story told to George Augustus Robinson’s granddaughter Emily Allen, eldest child of Maria Amelia (Robinson’s third child and eldest daughter born c1818), was that after William’s death Susannah was married to a man whom her children found distasteful.⁸³ This man, whose name did not survive in the family version of the tale,⁸⁴ was so dreadful that sometime between 1800 and 1804 both Henry-Thomas and George-Augustus left home to seek their fortunes in the world…without assistance or advice from his [their] relatives.⁸⁵

This distance put between the brothers and their mother, however, does not appear to have been as far or as dramatic as the family tale suggests. It seems that Susannah had lived, since at least 1805 or 1806, on Bunhill Row – a road that runs off Old Street, parallel to City Road, London.⁸⁶ From at least as early as 1812, Henry-Thomas resided on Old Street,⁸⁷ with George-Augustus advertising his residence on the same street in an 1822 Trade Directory.⁸⁸ This, and the fact that Henry Robinson bore the cost of Susannah’s funeral in 1828,⁸⁹ calls into question the persisting interpretation that the relationship between the mother and her sons was of a fraught nature. It also gives an indication of the type of personal myth that Robinson and his progeny cultivated about his upbringing. A myth that promoted the ordinariness of his origins, the independence and strength of his character, and his desire to be separate from anything sordid or immoral.

It may never be discovered, however, if Henry and George Robinson did leave home because of their mother’s new husband, as between 1798 and 1809 the archive falls silent and the trail goes cold. To sketch out the next decade of Robinson’s life in England our attention must now turn to the records that he made shortly after his arrival in Hobart in 1824.

bricklayer and builder: 1809-1823

In 1824, soon after he disembarked in Sullivan’s Cove, Robinson became friendly with Robert Houshold, a fellow builder.⁹⁰ This relationship with Houshold, a Methodist, would prove to be a crucial one, enabling Robinson to acquire work and to ingratiate himself into the local humanitarian network. On 29 July 1824, Robinson sat down at Houshold’s to write to Lieutenant Governor George Arthur in support of his earlier application for a land grant.⁹¹ In the letter he outlined his former occupation in England:

in early Life I was initiated into the building department as Bricklayer and builder my father having practized in that Profession for more than twenty years in the Parish of St Brides fleet St London at eighteen years of age I received an appointment in the Civil department at Chatham Lines under Colonel de Arcy of engineers and held that situation for nearly five years when I excepted another under (hobson) the Government Contracter to Superintend the erection of martilla [Martello] towers on the Coast of Kent and Suffolk subsequent to which I held Situation under (Rolls) Contractor for drury Lane Theater and blackwater Colledge.⁹²

Although Robinson states that in early Life I was initiated into the building department as Bricklayer and builder,⁹³ it is not clear whether this initiation was by means of a formal apprenticeship or as a result of his father’s individual instruction.⁹⁴ There are no records of a George Augustus Robinson having served an apprenticeship in the City of London, nor of a Henry Robinson doing likewise.⁹⁵ Despite there being no record of his apprenticeship, Robinson stated that he was contracted to D’Arcy from around 1809 until 1814.⁹⁶ Robinson was next employed by William Hobson, Superintendent of the South Coast Martello Towers.⁹⁷

NJB Plomley has asserted that Robinson merely inspected Hobson’s work on behalf of D’Arcy and that he was perhaps the foreman of a gang.⁹⁸ This assertion, however, does not encompass an understanding of Hobson’s importance in the construction of the Martello Towers. Hobson was a brick maker. No ordinary brick maker, he had won the Martello brick contract by cornering the market in bricks.⁹⁹ Hobson had been able to do this by developing a new type of mortar of lime, ash and hot tallow, which set phenomenally hard.¹⁰⁰ This significantly decreased the amount of time which it took to build each tower by speeding up the process of laying and setting the 200,000 to 250,000 bricks needed for each structure. With such an ingenious brick maker as his employer, it is not unreasonable to suggest that this is where Robinson learned how to produce and lay bricks on an industrial scale.¹⁰¹

William Hobson did not confine himself to the Martello Towers project. He owned a large brickworks at Kingsland Road, Dalston (his bricks were used to build the majority of this Victorian suburb), and was a building contractor in the capital.¹⁰² Hobson also won other major tenders such as the contract to build the Old Bailey.¹⁰³ Robinson may have received an education in how to ‘contract in gross’ under Hobson, a skill most likely honed during his time with Henry Rowles, Contractor for drury Lane Theatre and blackwater Colledge.¹⁰⁴

When Robinson wrote to Arthur in 1824 he was careful to highlight the time that he had spent working on military projects with military men. He purposefully mentioned Colonel D’Arcy, the OC of 9 Company of the Royal Engineers (1804 to 1812-13),¹⁰⁵ and Henry Rowles’ contract to build Blackwater College.¹⁰⁶ Robinson’s emphasis on his military connections cannot be seen as coincidental. Robinson was writing to a man who had a significant military background and who would have been familiar with the military network which Robinson was trying to associate himself with. Robinson was trying to impress Arthur with his connection to the network that Arthur moved within, and to engage Arthur in the kind of reciprocal behaviour he would normally display to members of that network.

Veteran networks, as Zoe Laidlaw explains, were founded on permanent obligatory bonds created through shared military service.¹⁰⁷ These networks, such as the Peninsular network (the most powerful web that Laidlaw identified), were generally comprised of military officers and gentlemen who had served in the nation’s defence forces. These networks provided their members with multidimensional support regardless of differences such as political affiliation.¹⁰⁸

Although it was clear to Arthur that Robinson did not belong to the network, that he was neither an officer nor a gentleman, the fact that Robinson was astute enough to emphasise his connection, however fleeting, to Arthur’s world, demonstrates that Robinson understood the importance of networks in the imperial world. It is highly significant, therefore, that in 1829 when applying to Arthur for the Storekeeper position at Bruné Island, Robinson chose to emphasise not his military connections, but his links to a humanitarian network. This shows his clear understanding of how networks operated and how to use them to persuade persons in authority. In 1824, Robinson consciously used his military connections to try and impress Arthur and influence his decision to grant his request of 30 acres, Contigious to the town for the purpose of establishing a tile work & the manufacturing of brick.¹⁰⁹

Having filled in a little of Robinson’s employment history by working backwards from his 1824 letter, the contemporary archive can again be revisited. By 28 February 1814, George Augustus Robinson had returned to London, and on this day he married Maria Amelia Evans at Christchurch, Newgate.¹¹⁰ Although both the bride and groom were described in the register entry as of this Parish, the pair soon settled in the Parish of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch.¹¹¹ The Reverend