Eugene Connor Prisoner 35/3290
Eugene Connor: Indoor Servant, Shipwreck Survivor and Convict. Born in County Kerry Ireland in 1805, he was single, literate and thirty years old, when convicted of embezzlement at the Killarney Quarter Session in April 1835 and sentenced to seven years transportation.[1]
Slightly built with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and 5’5” he was a man of his time and average in most respects, he would be almost indistinguishable from thousands of his convict compatriots.[2] His crime, described as ‘raising money under false pretences’ was one of deception, a less common type of crime for Irish Convicts,[3] and his experience of arrival in Australia in December 1835 on the only Convict Ship to wreck on mainland Australia was rarer still.[4]
As an ‘indoor servant’, Connor may have been used to a better lifestyle than many other inhabitants of Killarney, which in 1834 had a large poor and ‘idle’ population. The town itself having few redeeming features and described at the time as ‘two good streets; but many bad alleys, and close and filthy yards’.[5] Connor’s conviction effectively ended any level of comfort in his life and immediately after his sentence he would have been transferred to the Convict Hulk ‘Surprise’ moored at the Cove of Cork, where he would wait for a Convict Transport to Australia.[6]
Leaving Cork in mid-August 1835 on the barque Hive, 250 Irish Male Convicts along with a handful of passengers and a small contingent of soldiers from the 28th Regiment sailed under Capt. John Thomas Nutting.[7] They were a long and uneventful 112 days at sea sighting neither land nor other vessels when shortly before their anticipated arrival in Sydney on the night of December 10th, 1835, they were shipwrecked at Bherwerre Beach in New South Wales.[8] Errors in judgement by Capt. Nutting which were later proven to be the cause of the wreck, resulted in the Ship’s Surgeon Dr Anthony Donoghoe, and Chief Officer Edward Canney, taking temporary control immediately after the wreck, and to their credit only one life was lost during the transfer of passengers from the stricken vessel to the beach.[9]
While 200 or so convicts, passengers and the £10,000 of coins destined for the Commissariat were taken to Sydney within days of the wreck, a smaller group of convicts remained camped at wreck site, assisting with the salvage of luggage and cargo from Hive. Connor was finally admitted to the Sydney Gaol in January 1836.[11]
Arriving in New South Wales towards the end of the Assignment System which saw Convicts utilised as a source of free labour by Settlers and Landowners within the Colony, Connor was assigned to Irishman Laurence Harnett at Micalago Plains in the district of Argyle,[12] a remote and sparsely populated location to the south of Queanbeyan where Harnett ran sheep and lived with his wife and young family.[13]
The cost benefits of the assignment system for both the Government and Master were considerable; however, it was a matter of luck for both parties as to the type of Master or Convict the other would get in a system sometimes described as ‘akin to a type of slavery’.[15]
The Magistrate Bench records show us that Harnett, who would eventually become a Magistrate,[16] had ongoing problems with his ‘assigned servants’ including Connor and these records suggest there was perhaps a battle of wills between the two, as Connor seems undeterred by repeated harsh punishments. Twice early in his assignment Connor was recaptured after absconding and subsequently spent a year in a chain gang.[17] Harnett would have been well acquainted with two Magistrates at Queanbeyan; Captain Alured Tasker Faunce, known as ‘Ironman Faunce’ and James Wright, both of whom ruled on charges bought by Harnett against Connor. [18]
Often before the Magistrate’s Bench for various ‘crimes’ of disorderly conduct and neglect of duty, between October 1838 and December 1839 Connor was sentenced five times to receive some 250 lashes in total.[19] Harnett would describe him as “Careless and not inclined to do any work”, though Connor most often cited ill health, and seeking medical help as his reason for noncompliance. There is some irony in the notation “unable due to ill health to receive punishment” against the record of a punishment of 75 lashes in 1838 in which Connor cited ill health as his defence. [20] In March 1840, three months after a flogging sentence Connor was admitted to the General Hospital at Liverpool.[21]
In the early part of 1841 Connor then aged 36, possibly frustrated with the years of isolation and brutal punishments, robbed a store along with two of Harnett’s other assigned convicts, 22-year-old Irishman George Lynch and English convict John Bartlett aged 18.[23] At their trail in Berrima, Lynch was found not guilty, however Connor and Bartlett were sentenced to three years “to be worked in irons”[24] and were sent to the Towrang Stockade Penal Camp, which operated through the decade or so to 1843, beside the Wollondily River, east of Goulburn. Here Connor worked on the construction of The Great South Road from Sydney to Goulburn[25] and would have worn the woollen ‘parti-coloured’ black and yellow convict uniform and been shackled at the ankles.[26] In 1843 he twice passed through the prison at Berrima and was admitted to the North Paramatta Prison from Towrang on his way to Hyde Park Barracks in August of that year.
In January 1844 Connor’s Ticket of Leave was issued from the Campbellfield Bench and in April the location was altered to Bungonia.[27] It is likely this alteration came at his request as his social contacts and potential for employment would have been greater in the region around Goulburn where he had spent the last ten years. His Certificate of Freedom is dated September 1845,[28] though not advertised as ‘issued’ until September 1846. This is the last official record of Connor, effectively he disappears from the record books and to date no passenger list, land, marriage or birth records of children, nor a death record in Australia has been located which positively identifies him.
Figure 4 Butt of Certificate of Freedom.[29]
Location Map
Account of Expense of Convict Establishment at Cork, Enhanced Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, 1835
Faunce, Marcus De Laune, 'Faunce, Alured Tasker (1808–1856)', Australian Dictionary of Biography
Goulburn Evening Post
Inglis, Henry David, Ireland in 1834 : A Journey Throughout Ireland, During the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1834 (1835), London, Whittaker & Co, 1835.
Kerry Evening Post.
Lambert, G. The Squatter’s Daughter.
New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave, 1834-1859, Ancestry.com.
New South Wales Government Gazette.
New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1814, 1827-1867, Ancestry.com.
New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842, Ancestry.com.
New South Wales, Australia, Convict Records, 1810-1891, Ancestry.com.
New South Wales, Australia, Criminal Court Records, 1830-1945, Ancestry.com.
New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, Ancestry.com.
Nutley, D and Smith, T. 2nd Report on the Maritime Archaeological Investigation of the Convict Transport HIVE (1820-1836).
Smith, Babette, The Luck of the Irish : How a Ship Load of Convicts Survived the Wreck of the Hive to Make a New Life in Australia, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2014.
The Sydney Herald.
The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser.
Tipperary Free Press.
UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1857, Ancestry.com.
Weidenhofer, Margaret, The Convict Years : Transportation and the Penal System 1788-1868, Melbourne, Landsdowne Press, 1973.
[1] Tipperary Free Press, 11 April 1835, Vol IX, No 847, p. 1 c. 3; Kerry Evening Post, 08 April 1835, p. 3. c. 2; Eugene Connor, Convict Muster Records, New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849 General muster A-C 1837. Ancestry.com.
[2] Eugene Connor, Certificate of Freedom, New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1814, 1827-1867, Ancestry.com.
[3] Account of Expense of Convict Establishment at Cork, 16 July 1835, Sessional Papers, Enhanced Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, HMSO, Paper # 535, http://www.dippam.ac.uk/eppi/documents/10953 Accessed 26 May 2018, p.6.
[4] Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish : How a Ship Load of Convicts Survived the Wreck of the Hive to Make a New Life in Australia, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2014, Ch. 1.
[5] Henry David Inglis, Ireland in 1834 : A Journey Throughout Ireland, During the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1834 (1835), London, Whittaker & Co, 1835, v.2, p.221.
[7] Convict Indents, New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842, Warrants of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1835, Hive, Ancestry.com, State Archives NSW; Series: NRS 1156; Item: [4/7077]; Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish, Ch. 1.
[8] Voyage of the Convict Barque ‘Hive’1835 12 Jul - 1835 10 Dec, UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1857 Ancestry.com; The Sydney Herald, (NSW: 1831-1842), 17 Dec 1835, p.2; Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish, ch.1; David Nutley and Timothy Smith, 2nd Report on the Maritime Archaeological Investigation of the Convict Transport HIVE (1820-1836), NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning Underwater Heritage Program, 1995.
[9] Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish, Ch. 1.
[10] 2nd Report on the Maritime Archaeological Investigation of the Convict Transport HIVE (1820-1836).
[11] New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930, Sydney Gaol January 1836, Ancestry.com; Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish, Ch. 1.
[12] Margaret Weidenhofer, The Convict Years : Transportation and the Penal System 1788-1868, Melbourne, Landsdowne Press, 1973, p. 38; Eugene Connor, Convict Muster Records.
[13] Monaro Pioneers, Laurence Harnett, Micalago Plains 1837, http://www.monaropioneers.com/harnettl.htm Accessed 27 May 2018.
[14] George Lambert, The Squatter’s Daughter 1923-24, National Gallery of Australia, Gwendoline ‘Dee’ Ryrie in white shirt and jodhpurs leading her horse (which Lambert had given her) across the family property, Micalago, during the Christmas and New Year of 1923–24.
[15] Weidenhofer, The Convict Years, p. 36; Babette Smith, The Luck of the Irish, Ch. 4.
[16] Monaro Pioneers, Laurence Harnett.
[17] A New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW: 832-1900) 3 Aug 1936 [Issue No. 233] p. 594; Eugene Connor, Convict Records, New South Wales, Australia, Convict Records, 1810-1891, Assignment and Employment of Convicts Queanbeyan Depositions, 1838-1844, Volume number 4/5650, Ancestry.com; New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930, Sydney Gaol 26 Oct 1836, Ancestry.com.
[18] Marcus De Laune Faunce, 'Faunce, Alured Tasker (1808–1856)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/faunce-alured-tasker-2036/text2515, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 23 May 2018; Eugene Connor, Convict Records.
[19] Eugene Connor, Convict Records.
[20] Eugene Connor, Convict Records.
[21] Eugene Connor, Gaol Entrance, New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930 Berrima 1840-1842, 20 Mar 1840, Ancestry.com.
[22] Eugene Connor, Convict Records, Verdict of the Queanbeyan Magistrate’s Court signed by Tasker, Wright and Harnett, 2nd Oct 1838, noting the prisoner was “unable from ill health to receive punishment”.
[23] George Lynch and John Bartlett, Convict Records, New South Wales, Australia, Convict Records, 1810-1891, Assignment and Employment of Convicts, Queanbeyan Depositions, 1838-1844, Volume number 4/5650, Ancestry.com
[24] Eugene Connor, Criminal Records, New South Wales, Australia, Criminal Court Records, 1830-1945, Registers of criminal cases tried at Berrima, 1840-1844, Ancestry.com; The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, (NSW: 1838-1841), 3 May 1841, p. 2, c. 1.
[25] Eugene Connor, Convict Records; Goulburn Evening Post (NSW: 1940-1954) 12 Nov 1951, Story of Towrang Stockade, p.5.
[26] Goulburn Evening Post, Story of Towrang Stockade.
[27] Eugene Connor, Convict Ticket of Leave Records, New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave, 1834-1859, Ancestry.com.
[28] Eugene Connor, Certificate of Freedom; New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW: 1832-1900) 29 Sep 1846 [Issue No. 81] p. 1160.
[29] Eugene Connor, Certificate of Freedom.
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