BEGINNINGS
‘Twas the night before Christmas
when all through the house
not a creature was stirring
not even a mouse…
(Clement Clarke Moore, 1823)
At midnight on Christmas Eve in 1782 Elizabeth Pulley broke in and stole 10 lbs cheese, 3 lbs bacon, 24 oz butter, 3 lbs raisins, 7 lbs flour and 2 rolls of worsted material from the shop of Elizabeth Mimms at Hethersett in the South-East of England.
Elizabeth was a single woman, poor and had no known trade. Little else is known about her background at this time, except that she was orphaned at six years of age, so we can only imagine how she lived and survived.[1] According to Portia Robinson (The Women of Botany Bay) “it was the very poor, especially the single women, the washerwomen, the charwomen, the street-sellers, the silk-winders, streetwalkers and those of “no trade” who lived in...cellars and garrets...” in “...all the major cities and towns of Britain”. Their lives “were characterised by squalor, poverty, dirt and disease...”. The poverty had grown with the spread of the industrial towns and cities which were unable to deal with the increased population.
Everyone at the time seemed to agree that poverty was the principal cause of crime but no one was interested in exploring the cause of poverty. People like her were considered ‘feckless’, ‘indolent’, ‘reluctant to work at an honest trade’. The authorities believed that the only remedy to the problem was to increase the severity of the punishment so that the pain and the fear of pain would deter the criminal from acting again.
When Elizabeth stole from Mrs Mimms it was the middle of Winter and, after all, Christmas, the time of celebration and the giving of gifts. Some of the more privileged made a habit of giving gifts to the poor as well. Perhaps Elizabeth had nothing and wanted what everyone else had - a good meal, a Christmas pudding and a new dress for herself, or her siblings or friends.
Whatever the case Elizabeth was arrested, tried, confessed and sentenced to death. She had done this before. During the previous four years at least she had been arrested annually and convicted of stealing. She had been gaoled, publicly whipped and sentenced to twelve months hard labour in the house of correction at Aylsham. It had made no difference. She still stole. Perhaps there was no alternative for someone like her.
The courts had tried everything. There was no improvement. The gaols and prison hulks were overflowing already. Transportation was no longer possible after 1781 when America won its independence from Britain. So in 1783 the judgement was made that Elizabeth “should be hanged by the neck till she be dead”. She was about 22 years old.
Meanwhile in 1770 Captain James Cook had found “New Holland”. Since then the British government had set up a committee to examine the possibility of reviving transportation and New Holland was suggested as a potential site. James Maria Matra’s ‘A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales, 23 August 1783’ was presented to the English Government and the idea of transporting convicts there “...became for the first time a matter of serious consideration...”. Although the report did not at first receive a positive response, by 1786, three years after Elizabeth’s conviction, the plan to send convicts to NSW was put into operation by the government and preparations began.
At some stage during this period Elizabeth’s death sentence had been reprieved and instead she was to be transported for seven years. She spent the time waiting, imprisoned in Norwich Castle. [2]
It was 1787. The seed was planted. The seed of hope and new beginnings for the 778 (numbers differ, some sources say only 759 actually sailed, some convict names did not appear on the Registers, and others had aliases) convicts who were to travel from England on the First Fleet...and the seed of despair and death for the Indigenous Peoples of this ‘new land'.
Two years later in another Winter, the Winter of 1789 on the other side of the world, thousands of the Original Peoples of the Sydney basin died from the effects of the first wave of smallpox considered to be brought in by the new arrivals. That was another beginning.[3] Over the next ten to fifteen years the original population of Australia was decimated by 50% - 90% as repeated waves of smallpox, measles and influenza as well as the resulting wars and massacres spread as the new arrivals moved through the country.. [4]
And Elizabeth?
Image: A. Maie
© A. Maie, (1999) 2021
[1] Elizabeth and her siblings were orphaned on her mother’s death in 1768. Her father and one brother had already died in 1764. There is as yet no record of Elizabeth’s life until a conviction in 1779 when she was about 17 years old. (Annegret Hall, In For the Long Haul)
[2] In 1786, while in Norwich castle gaol, Elizabeth helped deliver a baby boy, Henry Jnr., to gaol-mate Susannah Holmes. The father was Henry Cable/Cabell, who had applied for but did not receive permission to marry. Susannah, Henry jnr., and Henry snr. were eventually permitted to travel together to Australia embarking initially on the Friendship with Elizabeth and other women from the gaol. (information from 3x great grandson, Jim Kable)
[3] Recent research indicates that smallpox had in fact travelled beyond this region. The question ‘where did it come from?’ remains
unanswered. Smallpox has a 10-14 day incubation period so it is unlikely to
have come directly from the fleet’s human cargo. Test tubes of scabs were apparently brought
in for inoculation purposes and probably stored in the hospital laboratory,
although there are questions about whether it would have remained active for
the length of, and weather changes during, the journey. So either someone
accidentally or purposefully let it loose or it came from somewhere
unknown. I doubt if it would have been
on Governor Arthur Phillip’s orders although he had enemies and some officers, let alone the
rest of the rabble, did target the First Peoples.
[4] More of these sites are being brought to public notice - Map of massacre sites in Australia
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