John Gavin: The Reimagined Lives of 28 Government Juvenile Immigrants

By Jeff Hopkins

On the sixth of April, 1844, John Gavin was the first European hanged in the Swan River Colony. He was fifteen years old. His crime, trial, and execution still stir controversy and passions almost one hundred and eighty years after the event.
John Gavin was a convicted street thief in Birmingham and became incarcerated at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. In 1843 he made the voyage to the Swan River Colony on the barque the 'Shepherd'. Subsequently he became an assigned servant on the Pollard family farm in North Dandalup.
Significant personalities like Guardian John Schoales, Barrister Richard Nash, and the Reverend George King had important roles to play in the Parkhurst apprentice's life.
John Gavin's life spanned approximately five thousand, five hundred days. The one hundred and sixty-three days he spent in the Swan River Colony have been reimagined here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9780228806493

Jeff Hopkins

Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Walyalup, Western Australia. Walyalup which means 'lungs' is the Whadjuk name for Fremantle, and is part of the Noongar Nation. As the drama master at Hale School in Perth, he wrote ten original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school.In 1992, he researched and wrote a family history, 'Life's Race Well Run', and after retiring in 2006 he has written twenty novels, a memoir, and three 'faction' biographies.

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John Gavin

The Reimagined Lives of 28 Government Juvenile Immigrants

Jeff Hopkins

John Gavin

Copyright © 2024 by Jeff Hopkins

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The interpretative portrait of John Gavin on the front cover was painted by David Lin through the auspices of Whataportrait.

The watercolour painting of the Round House on the back cover was purchased by the author in 1982, unfortunately the artist’s signature is indecipherable.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-0648-6 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-0649-3 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Part 1: Generations, Incarceration, and Colonisation

1. John Gavin’s Ancestry

2. Three Young Thieves

3. Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight

4. Early Days in Western Australia

5. The Dodecahedron of Despair in the Port Town of Fremantle

6. A Letter to the Editor

7. Guardian John Schoales

8. Guardian John Schoales and Reverend George King

Part 2: Expectations and Transportation

9. Preparation and Anticipation

10. The Voyage of the ‘Shepherd’

11. The Arrival

12. Parkhurst Apprentices and Trades

13. John Kirk’s Metamorphosis

14. The Pollards

15. The Summer of 1842-1843

16. The Domination and Demise of George Pollard

Part 3: Accusation and Retribution

17. Accusation and Apprehensions

18. Mounting the Defence: Brothers-in-Law

19. The Trial Begins

20. Further Evidence and Arguments

21. The Confession

22. John Kirk Bears Witness

23. The Aftermath

Part 4: Explanations and Iterations

24. Whaling Ships and Absconders

25. From Andrews to Grant on the ‘Shepherd’s’ Manifest

26. From Gray to Peake on the ‘Shepherd’s’ Manifest

27. From Porter to Wright on the ‘Shepherd’s’ Manifest

28. Iterations and Perspectives

References

About the Author

Part 1

Generations, Incarceration, and Colonisation

Chapter 1

John Gavin’s Ancestry

Where a boy’s parents and siblings become the subject of speculation.

Assembling John Gavin’s ancestry is fraught with dangers. There are few certified documents that still exist and those that do always list his antecedents as ‘unknown’. Therefore to attempt the task requires research, speculation and ultimately educated guesswork. Hence in a book where the subtitle suggests ‘Reimagined Lives’ the caveat that these things may be true or may have happened must be strenuously applied.

John Gavin was born on the 18th of May 1827. This fits the historical data that he was thirteen years old when he appeared at the Warwick Quarter Sessions on the 20th of October 1840. He would have been thirteen years, five months, and two days old. His date of birth also tallies with his date of death the 6th of April 1844 when records suggest he was fifteen years old. In fact he was fifteen years and eleven months old, just forty-two days short of his sixteenth birthday.

The ‘unknown’ elements of his ancestry require speculation. He may well have been the second son of Andrew Gavin a catholic man born in Ireland in 1801. Andrew came to England and at age thirteen years joined the Royal Navy. He may have served on HMS ‘Reliance’. In the middle of the 1820s he was admitted to the Dreadnought Seafarers’ Hospital Ship which was moored at Greenwich on the Thames. He was treated on the hospital ship for thirteen days for suspected ‘venereal disease’. Andrew Gavin’s thirteen-day treatment probably was very crude.

‘A patient undergoing the treatment for venereal disease, particularly syphilis, was secluded in a hot, stuffy area of the hospital ship, and rubbed vigorously with mercury ointment several times a day. The massaging was done near a hot fire, where the sufferer was left to sweat profusely. The process might go on for a week or a month.’

After thirteen days of treatment twenty-four-year-old Andrew Gavin was discharged from the ‘Dreadnought’. As a former fit and athletic seaman Andrew felt he had recovered but he did not return to the sea. He sought and gained a labouring job in London and was preparing to settle down to a life on dry land.

Catherine Burke was born in 1806 and had been working as a laundress in London since she was twelve years of age. It was probably close to the bottom of desirable occupations for females. Laundry maids had a thankless job and Catherine had been at the task for nearly seven years.

The process required a large tub called a dolly, and a long-handled apparatus with a metal object shaped like an upside-down bowl with holes in it, called the dolly handle. Hot water was added to the dolly, the best kind of soap available added to the water, and a batch of clothes was loaded. With the dolly handle, the laundress would push the clothes up and down in the tub, ensuring that the soapy water passed through the garments. Catherine would do this for about fifteen to twenty minutes, until the water was dirty, remove the clothes, empty the water, and repeat the process two to three times with clean water to rinse all the dirt out. The clothes were then passed through a machine called a mangle, two rollers opposed to each other and under pressure, to squeeze the excess water out. The laundress was then required to hang the clothes on a line outside if the weather permitted. Otherwise most laundries had an indoor rack, suspended on ropes from the ceiling, to hang the clothes indoors.

At the end of a hard day’s work Catherine trudged home to her parents’ lower working-class accommodation in East London. A fellow traveller that day was Andrew Gavin, but he was going in the opposite direction. He was tired after his long, labouring day on a building site. When he saw the pretty young woman approaching, Andrew touched his labourer’s cap more out of habit from years of shipboard protocols than any real meaningful attempt at a greeting and surprisingly Catherine stopped.

‘Good evening to you, Sir,’ said Catherine in a sweet voice. ‘Do I know you?’

‘I didn’t expect you to stop, Miss,’ explained a nervous Andrew. ‘I merely doffed my cap to acknowledge the prettiest girl I have seen today.’

‘Well thank you. That is somewhat bold of you, but I appreciate the compliment at the end of a hard working day. Who are you?’

‘I am Andrew Gavin, former sailor now London labourer. May I be even bolder and ask you your name?’

‘I am Catherine Burke, laundress,’ stated Catherine without any hint of shyness.

‘Hello Miss Catherine Burke. It is lovely to meet you.’

‘By your appearance and the state of your clothes I guess you are a builder, Mr. Andrew Gavin,’ observed Catherine with a cheeky smile.

‘I apologise for my appearance and the state of my clothes, Miss Catherine. My work can be dirty at times, and I sometimes smell at day’s end. I hope my clothes and my odour have not offended you,’ said an apologetic Andrew.

‘No they have not, Mr. Gavin. However I must be getting back home. It will be dark soon, and my parents and sisters will be waiting for me. It was pleasant meeting you.’

Catherine Burke turned and was about to hurry away when Andrew Gavin spoke once more.

‘Might we meet again when I have bathed and put on some clean clothes?’ asked Andrew tentatively.

‘Well that is extremely confident and courageous of you to ask, Sir, but yes I would like that. Because I am a laundry maid my days start early and end late. I could meet you in the evening when my tasks have finished for the day, and you have had time to soap and scrub yourself.’

Andrew Gavin laughed and then appreciated the sincerity of the offer. He fumbled for the words to confirm the tryst.

‘Where would we meet?’ asked Andrew. ‘Would a tavern be appropriate?’

‘I am not a regular tavern goer,’ Catherine Burke explained. ‘I expect you would know more about them than I do. What tavern would you suggest?’

‘The City of London Tavern is a notable meeting place. People gather there for beverages, and they serve food as well. The tavern is situated in Bishopsgate Street.’

‘I know it, but I have never been inside the place.’

‘Shall we meet there this Friday night. Say eight o’clock?’

‘I think I would look forward to Friday night, Andrew Gavin.’

It was just the beginning of a friendship which developed into a courtship and finally was formalised when Andrew Gavin plucked up the courage to seek out Catherine’s father and ask him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. In truth it was a relief for Mr. Burke to see one of his daughters married and Andrew Gavin presented as a solid lad with steady employment who impressed in his soaped and scrubbed state in his Sunday best clothes.

When twenty-three year old Andrew Gavin married his eighteen-year-old sweetheart Catherine Burke in the autumn of 1824, it was their intention to raise a family. Catherine Gavin (nee Burke) delivered a healthy baby boy, Thomas Gavin on the 27th of October 1825 in Westminster, Middlesex, England. With Catherine unable to work due to the birth of Thomas, resources were stretched, and Andrew and Catherine had to move into a third floor room of a lower working class tenement in East London. ‘Granny’ Wettenhall was the landlady, and she had a reputation as a fierce old curmudgeon who also acted as a midwife. She played another role helping young women who had ‘got themselves into trouble’, but no one spoke openly about that service which Granny provided.

Granny took an interest in the young mother looking after a little boy, and when Catherine fell pregnant again, Granny noticed the signs immediately and her attitude towards the gentle young mother softened. When Catherine’s waters broke, and she went into labour Granny Wettenhall attended. The experienced midwife determined that the baby was in the breech position and despite her best efforts she could not ‘turn’ the child. So the baby was delivered with the foetus in longitudinal lie with the buttocks or lower extremity entering the pelvis first. The body came out initially, leaving the baby’s head to be delivered last.

Granny Wettenhall was worried that the baby’s body may not stretch the cervix enough to allow room for the baby’s head to come out easily. She knew there was a risk that the baby’s head or shoulders may become wedged against the bones of the mother’s pelvis. Granny did her best, but it was a struggle, and she feared the child’s head may have been damaged during the delivery. The baby was born on the 18th of May 1827 and survived. The child was very small, but the head was disproportionately large, particularly at the back. When Andrew arrived home after a long day at the building site he was told he had a second son.

In the happy days that followed Andrew and Catherine decided their new son should be named John Gavin. He was a difficult and badly behaved child and Granny Wettenhall sometimes wished she had not taken so much trouble to bring him safely into the world. John seemed to always be in strife. He developed a vicious tongue, did some despicable things to other children, and was often caught stealing from residents in the tenement. He proved to be an accomplished liar when he tried to deny his misbehaviour. Granny Wettenhall told John Gavin’s parents young Johnny should be thrashed regularly to bring him in line. Andrew worked too hard to father the child effectively and Catherine was far too forgiving of his behaviours. It did not augur well for the future. Four years later in 1831 Thomas and John had a sister, Ellen, who was also born in Middlesex.

With an expanding family Andrew Gavin knew he had to look for better opportunities to support them. Hence at age thirty-one he took Catherine and his three young children to Birmingham in Warwickshire. Birmingham is in the West Midlands region of England, approximately one hundred miles, (one hundred and sixty kilometres) from London and is the most inland major city in the country, lying north of the Cotswolds and east of the Shropshire Hills. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries the River Rea and River Cole. The city had numerous canals.

Historically a market town in Warwickshire in the medieval period, Birmingham grew in the eighteenth century during the Industrial Revolution. By 1791, it was being hailed as ‘the first manufacturing town in the world’. Birmingham’s distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practising a wide variety of specialised and highly skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation. When Andrew and Catherine first arrived in Birmingham regular employment was hard to find.

In 1824, Clark Adams purchased, a parcel of land that included a section on the banks of the River Tame. On this land Clark planned to erect a tannery mill, and since access to water is essential in the tanning process, the spot was an ideal location. At age thirty-one, Andrew Gavin took up employment at Clark Adams’ tannery; it was work that not everyone wanted. For Andrew there was little choice. It was strenuous and dirty labouring not to mention the odours which were sometimes overpowering. However the money earned was fair and Andrew stuck it out. The Gavin family of five moved into an inner city dwelling house with two rooms.

In the nineteenth century, leather was a necessity that filled a unique niche. Rugged and flexible, it was used in shoes and boots for soles and uppers, tack for horses for transportation and work, and belts to run machinery in steam and water mills. A tannery would appear early in the life of any town. In the eighteenth century tanneries were small-scale, local operations, perhaps part-time work for a farmer, but as the country grew so did the demand for leather, and in the nineteenth century larger operations appeared.

Tanning required a great deal of water for rinsing and soaking the hides and a way to dispose of that water fouled by dirt, decomposing flesh, and noxious chemicals.

Often when hides arrived at the tannery, they had been salted to dehydrate them and slow down their decomposition. The first step was to wash off the salt and other offal and rehydrate the hides. Hides were then soaked in a lime solution to loosen the hair and swell the fibre. This was the first task Andrew Gavin was given at Clark Adams’ tannery. The next step was to scrape off the hair from the outside and the residual flesh from the inside of the hide. The hides also needed to be delimed, another rinsing process.

The next step was the beginning of the tanning process, which involved soaking the hides in pits or vats filled with water mixed with increasing concentrations of tannin. Tannin, derived from the bark stripped from trees especially oak and hemlock, is the chemical that stabilises hides and turns them into leather. The need for tannin also explains a second important reason that Clark Adams wanted to locate on the River Tame as a water source. In order to extract the maximum amount of tannin from the bark, it must be ground into small pieces and soaked in vats. Tanneries were often labelled in association with a bark mill.

Tanning has a high environmental impact, creating noxious odours and toxic effluent. Clark Adams and his three brothers who owned the tannery lived in a pair of duplex houses adjacent to the tannery, but they were not too close, and their dwellings were up the hill and hence the brothers were able to avoid most of the unpleasant stench. On the 17th of June 1833 Daniel Gavin was born in Warwickshire, England. With yet another mouth to feed Andrew Gavin looked around for better opportunities.

Eventually with his previous experience in Clark Adams’ tannery Andrew was given a mature age apprenticeship in William Matthams’ saddlery workshop. Matthams had a good reputation as maker of high-quality saddles, bridles, or harnesses from leather. The workshop also specialised in handcrafted items made to the gentrified and aristocratic customers’ specific requirements. Old man Matthams offered Andrew a six month trial. He explained:

‘My only son, James was killed at the Battle of Waterloo, and I have found it difficult to keep the business up to a high standard on my own. I am looking for a strong young man who was willing to work hard and learn the trade.’

William Matthams was a weathered old man who was almost completely bald. His upper body was strong, and he could still carry heavy saddles from bench to bench around the workshop. His arms were sinewy and powerful although the skin on his face and neck revealed he was in the twilight of his career. He paid attention to fine detail and was creative and had wonderful dextrous hands and excellent eyesight.

Mr. Matthams always showed patience, as the saddlery work can be slow and laborious. He taught Andrew carefully when he realised the young man had an aptitude for working with leather. During his six month apprenticeship Andrew learnt how to choose the best leather for the job, select and prepare the correct saddle tree or frame. Mr. Matthams showed him how to cut the leather to a pattern, taking care to keep wastage to a minimum. The master saddler was particularly frugal in this regard. Then came the precise work of fitting and stitching the pieces together, flocking the panel to make the padding. Finally polishing the leather and finishing the saddle. Mr. Matthams could finish a saddle in three working days. Andrew Gavin took most of the week to complete his items.

The conditions in the workshop were demanding and Andrew worked ten hours a day six days a week. Occasionally longer work shifts or overtime were required to complete a special order. Initially in the workshop Andrew found he had to sit or stand in the same position for long periods of time, bending over his workbench. Some of the adhesives and preservatives used had a strong smell which having worked in a tannery did not worry Andrew all that much. Mr. Matthams was a religious man and there was never any work done on a Sunday which was a day for much needed rest for Andrew and time for him to spend with his expanding family. For William Matthams Sunday was devoted to going to church, often three times a day.

Mr. Matthams was a fair employer and once he realised he had an excellent apprentice and potentially a quality tradesman of the future he paid Andrew a good wage. It was enough for Andrew and Catherine to upgrade their domestic arrangements to a comfortable three room dwelling house in New Edmund Street not far from the saddlery.

On the 22nd of March 1835 another son was born to Andrew and Catherine in Warwickshire. He was given the name Dominick Gavin. Sadly after giving birth to her fifth child Catherine died. Some commentaries written after his death suggested John Gavin was an orphaned boy. Certainly his mother Catherine was dead between his eighth and ninth birthdays. However Andrew Gavin did not pass away until October 1846 in Birmingham Warwickshire at the age of forty-five years. So John Gavin still had a living father when he met his own demise two years earlier in 1844.

Probably once he was convicted of larceny and sentenced to ten years in prison initially in the Warwick Juvenile Reformatory and then at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight he was estranged from his father. In the middle of the nineteenth century travel from Birmingham to the Isle of Wight would have been difficult and impractical for Andrew Gavin to visit his delinquent son. He also had four other children to look after. Once John Gavin was selected as a ‘Parkhurst apprentice’ and transported to the Swan River Colony in Western Australia on the other side of the world, contact between Andrew Gavin and his recalcitrant offspring was impossible.

While the main focus of his story will be those one hundred and sixty-three days John Gavin spent in Western Australia, the time that led up to that period may be helpful in understanding the lad and his ultimate fate. It is a retelling that is bedevilled with problems, but in the main, there is a framework of facts that have been recorded. On occasions an imagined re-enactment will be presented to enhance the narrative. Nearly two centuries later an intriguing story will emerge. Some events will remain shrouded in the mists of time.

Chapter 2

Three Young Thieves

Where three young pickpockets face the dire consequences of their attempted larceny.

On Friday the 11th of September 1840, twelve-year-old John Gavin, along with John Morgan also aged twelve, and Patrick Marr aged eleven, were arrested for stealing property worth fifteen shillings and sixpence, from Richard Carr in the City of Birmingham. The larceny was all too common. The three were referred to as pickpockets or petty thieves. Each of them had been caught thieving before, but because of their young ages had been let go with just a stern warning. John Gavin had appeared in court on the 29th of July 1839 in Warwickshire charged with ‘shop breaking’ as part of the ‘Chartist’ movement but he was acquitted. He may have been caught up in a protest or riot. Patrick Marr was just eight years old when he appeared for the first time before a ‘Beak’. His friends were told to come and collect him, take him home, and try to keep him out of trouble.

Unfortunately the Magistrate had assumed that Patrick had a ‘home’ to go to which for John Morgan and Patrick Marr was not the case. John Gavin did live with his mother and father, but as he grew older and was exposed to the underbelly of criminal activities, he had begun separating himself from his parents as he revelled in the excitement and danger of being a street urchin and thief. John Gavin knew all the notorious ‘fences’ in the Birmingham area who would buy his stolen goods for a small percentage of what they were worth. His mother and father despaired at his anti-social attitudes, but by the time of this attempted larceny, his mother had died, and he had a single father with four other children to raise. John Gavin’s behaviour was ingrained and nothing his father tried caused John to change his ways. He was a difficult son with whom to deal.

John Gavin was an excellent liar, and he could twist the truth to explain away many of his nefarious activities. Being a small boy with a quick wit, and a clever tongue he was able to convince authorities of his innocence of certain crimes of which he was accused. With a pleasant face and an innocent look about him John Gavin was rarely suspected of being mendacious. John Morgan and Patrick Marr were not so clever so that is why they tagged along with Gavin, supposing he would manage to inveigle his way out of most situations and get them ‘out from under’ as well. However Gavin’s charmed life as an accomplished street thief was about to be brought to an abrupt halt.

An autumnal chill was in the air on the morning of Friday, the 11th of September 1840, when John Gavin, John Morgan, and Patrick Marr set out for Edgbaston Street in the Birmingham city centre. There was a purpose in their collective step. They had decided to search for a prospective ‘mark’ and see if they could turn a profit with a little pickpocketing. It had all worked before, why shouldn’t it do so again today?

They walked three abreast. John Gavin walked on the outside of the group closest to the edge of Edgbaston Street. John Morgan guarded the other flank nearest to the shop fronts, and Patrick Marr was in the middle. Patrick who was the youngest of the group, was a little boy with a runny nose which he was constantly wiping on the sleeve of his jacket. They looked scruffy, poorly nourished, and dirty, and any casual observer might have suspected that these three likely lads were on the lookout for mischief, which of course, is exactly what they were about.

John Gavin and John Morgan were shod with worn out boots, but Patrick Marr was barefoot. Each wore a threadbare jacket that did little to keep out the autumn chill, and the trousers varied in length. Being small in stature, the bottoms of John Gavin’s pants fell over his boots. John Morgan was not so neat. He had ‘spurted up’ in recent months, and his pants had not grown with him, and ended halfway up his calf. Patrick Marr in a pair of ‘hand me downs’ had rolled the bottoms of his trousers up. He would roll them down when greater length became a necessity. On top of the unkempt heads of hair each of the three boys wore a cap with a peak. The cap immediately identified them as ‘boy labourers’. John Gavin had been employed as a ‘spoon polisher’, John Morgan worked in a ‘foundry’, but the cap was deceptive for Patrick Marr because he had not been employed regularly not even in basic labouring jobs. The purpose of the caps was to keep their heads warm. The oversized cap that Patrick wore rested on the tops of his ears.

Petty larceny is a crime of opportunity, and that is what the three boys sought, an opportunity. As they travelled jauntily along Edgbaston Street their eyes darted around looking for their chance. It was John Morgan who spotted Richard Carr, Esquire first. Morgan stopped in his tracks and shot out an arm to restrain Patrick and John from going any further. Wordlessly he signed to the other two to look towards the other side of Edgbaston Street and the three sets of eyes focussed on the gentleman.

Richard Carr was expensively and appropriately dressed for the cooler weather. The blue woollen frock coat, a formal piece of men’s wear characterised by a knee-length skirt cut all around the base just above the knee was worn buttoned against the biting wind over doeskin trousers and well-polished boots. The shirt was mostly obscured, but the yellow necktie stood out like a beacon. The tall hat was in a similar colour to the coat and featured a bright yellow band that, at first glance, seemed to match the necktie. He carried a walking cane made of dark wood. Under the hat the hair was evenly light brown, and John Morgan guessed he was a younger man maybe in his late twenties or early thirties.

Richard Carr, Esquire was window-shopping, actually he was passing the time. He had an appointment later in the morning, but he was early, and was filling in the gap in his schedule looking at the displays in the casement windows of the shops he passed. The gentlemen’s outfitters window featured a collection of men’s garments and accessories arranged for public viewing and it had caught his eye. He was engaged in assessing