No Room For Regret E-Book

Janeen Ann O'Connell

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The movement of the ship seals his fate. He could be sailing anywhere, anytime, but he's not, he's going to the other side of the world. He could be anyone, but he's not, he's the son of a respectable London businessman. His crime? An error of judgement. In England, in 1812, there's no forgiveness. As the ship sails, eighteen-year-old James Tedder's seven-year sentence to Van Diemen's Land begins.

Rescuing her eldest son from slave traders in Rio de Janeiro is the most difficult thing Sarah Blay has done in the last two years. Leaving England, her life, her mother, to follow her convict husband James to the other side of the world not knowing if he lives, pales in comparison. 

Will lives rebuild? Will love survive?

Leseprobe

NO ROOM FOR REGRET

CULLEN/BARTLETT DYNASTY BOOK 1

JANEEN ANN O'CONNELL

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Preface

Chapter 1

Hampshire Chronicle (ENGLAND) 5 November 1810

2. The Shoemaker

3. The Shoemaker’s Wife

4. Farewell

5. The Other Side of the World

6. The Tinsmith in Van Diemen’s Land

7. The Shoemaker in Van Diemen’s Land

8. The Shoemaker’s Boots

9. The Shoemaker’s Assignment

10. The Tinsmith’s Job

11. The Derwent

12. New Norfolk

13. Survival

14. Van Diemen’s Land

15. London to Portsmouth

16. Van Diemen’s Land

17. Friendship

18. Sea Legs

19. The First Fleeter

20. Land Ho

21. Van Diemen’s Land

22. Sydney

23. Expansion

24. Endless Delays

25. Another new job

26. Reunited

27. New friends

28. New Norfolk, New Life

29. Tedder’s New Life

30. The New Apprentice

31. Pademelons

32. Family Matters

33. Orders

34. Bush Medicine

35. Wedding Day

36. Freedom

37. New Lives

38. The Georgian Mansion

39. Housewarming

40. The Partnership

41. Betsy’s Wedding

42. The Struggle Ends

43. Heartbreak

44. The Second and First Wedding

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2019 Janeen Ann O'Connell

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

CHILL WITH A BOOK Readers’ Award – May 2018

This book is dedicated to the memory of my maternal grandfather,

Hector Ralph Werrett

1905-1986

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction; however, the main characters are real, they existed: their births, marriages, criminal convictions, travels, and deaths, are real.

Thanks to subjects in the Diploma of Family History run by the University of Tasmania, I was able to locate the convict ancestors who had long ago been buried, literally and figuratively, by my grandfather’s family. Years of genealogical research fell into place when the brick wall surrounding Elizabeth Blay, was broken down.

Records were sourced from:

Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (Libraries Tasmania)New South Wales State Archives (Colonial Secretary’s Papers)University of Tasmania LibraryTrove – National Library of AustraliaPublic Record Office of VictoriaOld Bailey onlineUK Convict Hulk Registers and Letter books 1802-1849British Newspaper ArchivesAnd many hours on Ancestry.com.au

Please visit my website at

https://janeenannoconnell.com/

Like my Facebook Page:

https://business.facebook.com/JaneenAnnOConnell/_

This novel would not have been completed and published without the help of my alpha readers: Ashleigh Hutton and Denise Wood. And my beta readers: Heather Hubber, Luc Mackey and Julie-Anne Jordan.

Amazing encouragement and support was received from: Wordsmiths of Melton, author Isobel Blackthorn, and Liz Virtue, owner of Glen Derwent, Hamilton Road, New Norfolk, Tasmania, setting of the book launch on 28th April 2018.

EXILED: TO NOWHERE, WITH NO-ONE, WITH NOTHING

Descendant Chart – James Bryan Cullen – First Fleet – Scarborough, 1788 and Elizabeth Bartlett – Marquis Cornwallis, 1796

1

“There were confined in this floating dungeon nearly 600 men, most of them double ironed; and the reader may conceive the horrible effects arising from the continual rattling of chains, the filth and vermin naturally produced by such a crowd of miserable inhabitants, the oaths and execrations constantly heard amongst them…”

[The Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux.] James Hardy Vaux described the conditions on the hulk Retribution Written by himself in 1819 re his time on the hulk Retribution in 1810.

Conditions on board the floating gaols were appalling. The standards of hygiene were so poor that disease spread quickly.

The sick were given little medical attention and were not separated from the healthy.

The living quarters were very bad. The hulks were cramped and the prisoners slept in fetters.

The prisoners had to live on one deck that was barely high enough to let a man stand up. The officers lived in cabins in the stern.

[www.portcities.org.uk]

February 1811

He wanted two things: the fetters on his ankles and wrists gone, and to kill the cheating, lying, evil old man who put him here. James Tedder trembled; the chains around his wrists rattled.

It was perishingly cold, the norm for winter in London, but even the cold damp air couldn’t dilute the stench. It made his eyes water; he could taste it. Was it the prison hulk itself, the water it floated on, the men crowded into every available space, or a combination? He vomited on his breeches and shoes.

‘Don’t matter ‘bout ye breeches, convict,’ sniggered a guard. ‘Ye’ll be losing them soon anyways.’

James Tedder hobbled along the deck of the prison hulk Retribution with the fifty or so other men he had travelled with from Newgate Gaol. The weight of the shackles made his arms ache and his legs longed for the ability to take powerful strides, instead of degrading powerless shuffles.

The guards manhandled and pushed and shoved until satisfied that the line of bedraggled souls met requirements. One by one their chains were unlocked. Tedder rubbed each wrist, taking it in turn to massage and soothe.

‘Strip!’ Bellowed a guard.

Confused, the convicts looked at each other for clarification. It was freezing on the deck of this old ship, and the wind mocked as it lashed at them.

The guard cracked a whip as he again bellowed the command.

‘I said strip!’

Tedder removed his once handsome jacket, the once clean shirt and his vomit covered breeches and shoes. He stood with the other convicts, shivering, naked, waiting for his flesh to be scrubbed with a hard-bristled brush and his hair to be cut back almost to the scalp. Looking longingly towards the riverbank of the Thames, and Woolwich, Tedder felt the bile again rise from his stomach; this time it carried with it the realisation of what was to become of him.

He had one more year of his apprenticeship to go, with plans to be a master tinsmith himself, but “justice” intervened. ‘That life belongs to another,’ he thought.

A boot on his bare backside and raucous laughter from the guards brought Tedder back to reality. A bald, toothless guard shoved him towards the barrel of water. He stumbled on the slippery, cold deck, finding it difficult to get his frozen feet to obey his brain’s instructions. Lumbering over to the water barrel, he managed to climb in. A convict took the caustic soap and brush, then scrubbed Tedder until he thought he must look like a boiled lobster, whilst another took to his once beautifully groomed hair with shears. The mocking wind again played with him, biting exposed ears and neck so that without the need of a mirror, Tedder knew his hair was cut as close to the scalp as the shears allowed.

‘Get out, convict,’ a guard yelled as he threw some coarse, grey clothing at Tedder. ‘Ye got ten seconds to put ‘em on or they be mine.’

Dressed in breeches, and a shirt that scratched and rubbed against their skin, the convicted men huddled together, teeth chattering, arms squeezing their torsos trying to find warmth. Stick wielding guards again pushed and shoved the hapless group into a line.

Tedder watched them coming, the bile crept from his gut to his gullet and his ankles ached in anticipation; the chains were being reattached, but this time his wrists were spared.

Standing quietly looking down at the worn boards on the deck underfoot, pondering the loss of identity and dignity, Tedder felt the savage strike of a cudgel across his back. It took the air from his lungs and his legs crumbled beneath him. The convicts either side picked him up and put him back in line. Struggling to stand up straight and breathe he shuffled with the other men toward a gaping black hole in the middle of the old ship.

‘Please God, be that not where we are going.’ On this occasion, like so many others recently, God didn’t appear to hear him.

Making their way down the ladder the prisoners tried to avoid the arbitrary strikes of the guards. Reaching the hold below, most cowered, none with the strength required for defiance.

It took time for James Tedder’s eyes to adjust to the gloom; he didn’t think he would ever become accustomed to the stench. It required every ounce of strength to hold the tears to a trickle, but the tears stopped when James Blay slapped him on the shoulder.

‘How are you holding up, Tedder, my lad?’ probed Blay – a cellmate from Newgate Gaol. ‘Dark and stinky down here. Suppose we’ll get used to it. It’s got to be better than hanging at the end of a rope.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Tedder asked. ‘The way I see it now, hanging at the end of a rope might be a better end.’

‘Easy to see you don’t have a wife and boys to think about, Tedder. See how you feel about being strung up by your neck when you got a family counting on you.’

Tedder understood Blay’s relief at not facing the hangman and being transported instead, but he didn’t share his optimism.

‘We’ll stick together Tedder. Try to get in the same work gang and sleep near each other. We’ve got to protect one another from the guards and the other men. They’ll steal anything you’ve got. If one of us gets sick, we help the other.’

It seemed to Tedder that Blay had it all worked out. He was twenty years older and ready to take charge to protect them both. Tedder wasn’t sure he needed a protector; however, he needed a friend, and it was a friendship on offer.

Four guards lurched through the hold waving cudgels, hitting men indiscriminately. ‘Line up agin the sides, convicts. Make it snappy,’ roared the guard with the least number of teeth. Rotting teeth, Tedder knew, was a sign of too much rum. He also knew to do what he was told, and to keep his head down if he didn’t want a beating or worse, a flogging with the cat-o'-nine-tails.

‘Get yaselves inta them cells. ‘Hurry up ‘bout it.’

Tedder dubbed this one Toothless.

Twenty at a time, the men were herded into cells big enough to house eight to ten. Two men shared a sleeping space, with a threadbare blanket between them. The one Tedder shared with Blay held the rank smell of stale vomit. The guards locked the doors, the hatches closed, and desperate darkness enveloped the men. The only visible light peeped at them through the tiny cracks in the ship’s old hull. With nothing to eat, a thin blanket to share with Blay, and a constant battle to keep the rats from crawling on his face, sleep evaded James Tedder.

The first full day on the prison hulk Retribution began with a breakfast of the coarsest boiled barley Tedder had ever seen. Again, the bile crept into his throat as he tried to force himself to eat. He couldn’t.

After breakfast, at seven am, with chains rattling around their ankles every able-bodied convict struggled up the ladder to the deck and clambered into tenders, to go ashore to work at the Royal Arsenal on the south side of the River Thames. Attached to each group of twenty convicts was a guard brandishing a weapon.

The prisoners hobbled one behind the other into the work shed. Tedder gagged. It stank. He could identify perspiration, urine, dirt, dust, and the overpowering tang of rusting metal. He’d hoped working would ease the terror and give him something else to think about, but the overseer wrapping the whip around his back put a renewed focus on his misery. He doubled over as the pain reverberated from his back to his chest, and down his arms. Stumbling into the man in front of him saved Tedder from falling face down into the piles of metal on the floor.

Struggling to breathe, with the pain in his back pulsing and increasing with every step, Tedder eventually took his place at the bench, ready to chip rust off old cannon balls.

At the midday call to return to the Retribution for dinner, Tedder took a moment to examine his hands. The split skin had trickles of blood mixed with black / red rust to make a colour not unlike the floor of the shed they worked in. It was the colour of Hell.

Under the ever-watchful eyes of the brutal guards, the wretched convicts lumbered to the tenders for return to the hulk. The midday meal was a broth Tedder didn’t recognise, a small piece of tough, overcooked beef, a mouldy hard biscuit, and a half pint of ale. Ravenous hunger overtook his taste buds, regardless of the quality of the food, his stomach ached to have something in it. Tedder gagged on the first mouthful, he coughed and spluttered on the second, but managed to swallow the rest; his grumbling stomach settled a little. Within a minute or two of the convicts forcing themselves to eat the muck disguised as a meal, the bell sounded for return to the tenders, and the Arsenal.

By the finish of the first day at labour, Tedder had established a steady rhythm for cleaning the cannon balls, but his hands suffered: they burnt, cramped, and had tiny pieces of rust and metal ingrained into the scratches the cannon balls left on his skin. His feet, already uncomfortable in the ill-fitting shoes assigned to him, ached and throbbed.

The day the convicts were manhandled, hit, and shoved into line. Chains rattling, they trundled along the pier, heads bowed in defeat. Tedder could feel the air of desperation and hopelessness as they shuffled into the tenders to return to the hulk.

‘That was hard work, Tedder. I don’t use my hands to work with metal. Leather is softer on the skin,’ Blay complained in Tedder’s ear.

Tedder grunted. He was too tired to speak.

Supper on the Retribution was broth made from boiling the left-over beef they had for dinner, a small piece of cheese, a piece of bread so hard Tedder thought a nail wouldn’t penetrate it when banged with a hammer, and another half pint of ale. He and Blay ate greedily, neither tasting the muck that made its way into their still empty stomachs.

Longing for the loaf of fresh bread, cheese, potatoes, and salted pork the master tinsmith’s wife used to bring him for dinner in the middle of the day, Tedder looked at the plate in front of him, trying to imagine the good food he once ate. Staring, he could see himself in the tinsmith’s foundry. Making plates and mugs like these. Hands trembling, he turned over the plate to find the maker’s mark underneath. Through tears welling in strained, red eyes, Tedder saw the mark of his master tinsmith. Near the edge of the plate, where you had to look hard to see it, his own mark as the maker of the plate. The irony was mind-numbing. He remembered making about fifty of these plates over two or three days without giving the ultimate users a first, let alone a second, thought.

Supper ended, and the hatches closed on the men crowded below deck. The day was over. Darkness descended on Tedder as he wondered how long he would be on this floating hell before being transported to the other side of the world. He lay in the cot next to Blay, burning with such hatred for Bagram Simeon, the old man who had ruined his life, that he could hear his heart pounding in his ears and see the pulses of rage inside his eyelids.

This nightmare began the day Tedder told his older brother Henry, what the Jewish diamond merchant, Bagram Simeon, had done to him.

‘No! James!’ Henry had wailed. ‘It’s a sin. You must get the money and tell him no more. Why would you even go along with him?’

The seventy-year-old well-respected diamond merchant had come to Islington to conduct business with Tedder’s employer. When introduced to the apprentice, Simeon smiled and patted his hand. At day’s end, the old man sat outside the tinsmith foundry in his carriage, waiting.

He beckoned, ‘Come on, young James, come along and I’ll give you a ride home.’

At seventeen, the attention flattered Tedder, and he accepted the businessman’s offer. But Simeon didn’t take him home, he took him to a quiet place by the Thames and instructed the carriage driver to go for a walk. Sliding onto the seat next to Tedder, Simeon picked up his hand and squeezed it. Tedder pulled away, ‘What are you doing?’ was the obvious question, but he was too stunned to speak. He sat, open-mouthed, staring at Simeon. The old man grinned. Conflicted, Tedder instinctively felt uncomfortable, but social norms indicated he should show the older man respect.

‘How long have you worked for the tinsmith, James?’ Simeon queried.

‘Why do you ask, sir?’

‘I am trying to make conversation, James so we can be friends,’ Simeon smiled at him.

Tedder squirmed on the seat.

‘I might help you once you finish your apprenticeship, James. Help you set up your own business. Would you like to have your own business?’

Confusion swirled in Tedder’s mind, the chaos of thoughts like leaves being thrown around in the wind. He didn’t know how to respond to this stranger, the old man trying to befriend him.

Simeon pressed on. ‘How long did you say until you finish your apprenticeship, James?’

‘I have one year to finish, then I will be a craftsman, a tinsmith.’

‘I’m sure you are an amazing craftsman already, James. But how long will it take you, do you think, to make enough money to set up your own business?’

‘I haven’t thought about it, but many years, I’d say.’

Simeon lent back in his seat, looked fondly at Tedder, and asked ‘Do you have a lady friend in your life, James?’

‘No, not yet. I’ve been too busy working. Maybe someday soon I’ll meet someone.’

Tedder often thought of meeting a girl he could love and marry. He wanted to build a life; a life such as his parents had built for him and his siblings.

‘The problem with girls, James, is that a young man like yourself has desires that need to be met, but meeting them with a girl results in her becoming with child. I can satisfy your desires, James. You won’t have to worry about an unwanted infant. I will pay you five hundred pounds for your time. I will look after you.’ Simeon sat back on the seat studying Tedder for a reaction.

Tedder didn’t like what the old man was doing to him, but it was easy to talk himself into cooperating; five hundred pounds was a lot of money. After several rides in the carriage, he asked when he would receive the promised payment.

‘Soon, James,’ murmured the seventy-year-old. ‘Just a few more trips and I’ll get the money for you.’

Frustrated by Simeon’s stalling tactics, Tedder told his brother, Henry, about his arrangement with the diamond merchant. With Henry’s encouragement, Tedder wrote to Bagram Simeon:

“Sir – Having innocently informed my brother of what a friend you had promised to be to me, if I would let you do something to me, which you have done with me several times, I not knowing what a horrible crime it was; but having discovered its wickedness, and refused to suffer you to repeat it any more, you seem angry, and want to get off your promises to me. My brother is determined to see me righted

Saunders Newsletter [England] 7 November 1810 (British Newspaper Archives)

Tedder’s younger brother William delivered the letter to Simeon on 22nd August 1810.

The devious businessman took the letter to the constable and together, they planned a trap. Simeon wrote to Tedder asking him to his home to discuss the matter.

In the early morning of Monday 27th August feeling buoyed by the old man’s encouraging reply, Tedder dressed in his finest clothes. He put on a clean white shirt, breeches his mother had tailored for him and his best jacket. He polished his leather shoes until the beautiful summer sun reflected from the surface. His heart light, head spinning, a huge grin on his face and thinking about his five hundred pounds, Tedder walked the short distance to Simeon’s home and place of business in Sydney Street. He tapped on the door, and the old man invited him in.

‘Good day to you, James,’ Simeon began. ‘I beg you to explain the meaning of the letter you had delivered to my hand this last week.’

Tedder, unaware that the constable hid in an adjacent room listening to their conversation, spoke candidly.

‘You promised me five hundred pounds if I let you do those things to me, that you did on many occasions. Each time I brought up the subject you told me you would give me the money soon. If you do not give me the promised money, you leave me no choice but to go to the constable and have you prosecuted for the abominable acts you performed on me.’ He took a deep breath.

Tedder was still breathing rapidly, waiting for a response from the old man, when the constable, having all the evidence he needed to prosecute for extortion, stepped out from the adjacent room and arrested him. His efforts to get the five hundred pounds and have the old man leave him alone, resulted in a trial in October 1810.

‘James Tedder, the jury has found you guilty of the extortion of Mr Bagram Simeon in the amount of five hundred pounds,’ announced the judge. ‘You are to be transported beyond the seas, for the term of seven years.’(Old Bailey on Line ‘Summary of Sessions of the Peace, Middlesex, October 1810.)

The truth didn’t matter, Simeon had a position of influence and power; he had won.

Tedder pulled his knees up into his body, folded his arms around them, and turned away so his friend, James Blay, would be less likely to hear his sobs.

HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE (ENGLAND) 5 NOVEMBER 1810

(BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES)

Middlesex Sessions – James Tedder, a young man about eighteen years old, was indicted for writing letters to a Mr Simmons, a diamond merchant, on the 22nd of August last, threatening to prosecute him upon a charge of an abominable offence, for the purpose of extorting from him the sum of £500.

Mr Simmons is an Armenian of the Jewish persuasion and a diamond merchant, living in Sydney Street, Goswell Street; the prisoner is an apprentice to a tinman at Islington with whom the Prosecutor had dealt for some small articles in his line of business. On the day above stated, the Prosecutor received a letter signed in the Prisoner’s name, demanding the 500L, which it alleged he had promised him; and threatening, in failure, of performance of the pretended promise, to prosecute him for the alleged crime. The Prosecutor, astonished at such a letter, went immediately to the Public office, at Hatton-garden, stated the circumstance, and asked advice how he should proceed. It was advised that he should answer the Prisoner’s letter, and appoint an interview; which he accordingly did, and the Prisoner in consequence promised by another note to come to his house on the morning of the 27th, at which time Hancock, the police officer, attended, and was within hearing in an adjacent room, while the Prosecutor entered into conversation with the Prisoner, and elicited from him a distinct explanation of his object and intention. Immediately after which the Prisoner was taken into custody, and the letter of Mr Simmons was found in his possession. His own two letters to Mr Simmons were also produced in evidence, and proved by a little boy, his fellow apprentice, to be his hand writing, and that this witness left them at Mr Simmons’s house by his desire.

A number of witnesses attended on behalf of the prisoner and gave him a most excellent character; but the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced by the Court to seven years transportation.

2

THE SHOEMAKER

JAMES BLAY

The Bloody Code had a major effect on the American Colonies and later Australia. Judges frequently offered transportation, i.e. being sent to one of the overseas colonies and indentured as a servant for a term of years, as an alternative to execution, by some accounts at a rate of 10:1.

(From:http://theglitteringeye.com/the-bloody-code)

James Blay could hear Tedder’s sobs. He could feel the young man’s body shaking with grief and rage. The sobs didn’t quieten or lessen. Lying in the cot next to Tedder, listening to his heartbreak, made Blay brood over his own situation. He ached for his boys and wife, Sarah. Once we leave England, I’ll never see them again, he thought. His mind wandered to the chain of events that brought him to be lying in squalor, on a prison hulk, on the River Thames.

* * *

January 1811

‘What’s happened to the maker’s mark on the boots?’ Alexander Wilson, a footwear trader, asked Blay. ‘It’s been inked over and can’t be read. Where did you get them?’

‘I don’t know the man I got them from, or how he came to have them. They could be cabbaged,’ Blay declared in defence.

In the blink of an eye, Wilson grabbed Blay around the neck and dragged the shocked shoemaker into the storeroom, locking him in. Wilson then sent for the constable who arrested Blay, and charged him with:

“burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling house of George Hobey, about the hour of twelve in the night of 3d January, and burglariously stealing therein, a pair of boots, value two pounds, his property.”

(Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials 9th January 1811.)

Head reeling from the speed at which he’d lost his liberty, Blay found a clear space on the floor in the cell at Newgate Gaol between two pitiful looking prisoners. Going over and over the events in his mind, he became convinced the jury would see his innocence; he’d soon be home with his wife and three boys. One of the pitiful souls sitting on the floor next to him was staring.

‘What are you looking at, you snivelling shit?’ Blay demanded.

The boy shifted position but didn’t answer.

The slowness to respond infuriated Blay; he shoved the boy who then fell onto the prisoner next to him. Blay noticed there was no indignant reaction from any of the prisoners who were knocked about by the effect of one falling on another. His palms became clammy, beads of sweat appeared on his brow, he recognised, in the eyes of every man and woman in the cell, the mark of despair. It smouldered like the dregs of a fire.

The young fair-haired boy he’d shoved into the others came back to his position. Defiance emanating from his being, he sat on the floor as close to Blay as he could, without touching him.

Curiosity piqued, Blay began a conversation. ‘Why you here, boy? And what’s your name?’

‘It’s a long story,’ the boy answered.

‘I have nothing else to do.’ quipped Blay.

Tedder told his dismal story and James Blay listened without interruption.

‘Doesn’t matter if it isn’t fair, does it?’ Blay commented when Tedder finished speaking. ‘The rich and powerful always win.’

‘Why are you in Newgate?’ Tedder asked.

‘I did something very foolish. I took a risk. I had a good business, I’m a respected craftsman, belong to the Cordwainer’s Guild, have an apprentice and feed and house my family and pay for my boys’ schooling. But I thought I could make quick, easy money. Not unlike you when you accepted the diamond merchant’s offer. Now I face court, and like what happened to you, I don’t like my chances of anyone believing me.’

Blay wrung his hands so hard, the knuckles were bone white, and the flesh fire poker red. Tedder didn’t press for more information, and Blay didn’t offer.

* * *

10th January 1811.

Dawn crept through the grates that masqueraded as windows in the cell. The watery streaks of sunlight promised warmth but delivered the cold hard light of day. A day that Blay knew would see him in court.

Standing in the dock with the other accused on the day’s list, terror crept into Blay’s soul as the three prisoners before him were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of transportation.

If it wasn’t his life in the balance, Blay would have been impressed with the way the prosecutor, Mr Ally, elicited information from the various witnesses called for the Crown. Alexander Wilson described the scene where Blay had offered to sell him the boots; even remembering the alias Blay gave, along with the false address.

When the witnesses for the defence took the stand Blay hoped justice would prevail and they would reduce the charge to receiving the stolen boots. He thought he had a strong case. He lived an hour and a half’s walk from George Hobey’s shop in Piccadilly, where the boots were stolen from. Being accused of walking this distance, on a bitterly cold London winter night, breaking a window, stealing three pairs of boots and walking home again carrying the boots, made little sense. His lodger, Mary Wood testified that he had to pass her to leave the house and she did not see him leave. A customer of Blay’s, Thomas Fuller, testified that he took a pair of shoes to Blay for repair and as he waited saw another man, unknown to him, sell the boots to Blay. He saw Blay pay twenty shillings for the boots.

James Blay concentrated while the defence and prosecution badgered the witnesses. As he listened, he became more confident of being charged with the lesser crime. He even managed a small smile in his wife’s direction as she sat in court waiting, like him, to find out his fate.

He didn’t remember the closing remarks of the defence or the prosecution. He remembered the judge’s gavel thundering on the bench and declaring him guilty, with a sentence of death. His wife put her hands to her face and sobbed. Blay’s knees went from under him, and he collapsed onto the chains attached to his ankles. Striking Blay with his cudgel, a guard ordered him to get up. Blay dragged himself to an upright position whilst trying to hold down the terrible scream that wanted to launch from his throat. The judge was talking again and Blay cleared his head enough to make out what was being said.

‘James Blay the jury has found you guilty, you are hereby sentenced to death. The sentence can be commuted to transportation for life if you so agree. A decision is required immediately.’

Blay blurted out that he would be transported. Sarah’s anguished cries penetrated his soul.

3

THE SHOEMAKER’S WIFE

LONDON

Sarah Blay

8 Crispin Street, Spitalfields, London.

January 1811

‘I couldn’t look at him; he was wretched and I’m furious. We were getting along fine. There wasn’t heaps of money left at the end of the day, but there was enough to feed and educate the boys and pay the rent. Now he’s being sent to New South Wales and I’ve got to bring them up on my own.’

Sarah Blay sat in the tiny kitchen of her Spitalfields home with her mother and youngest son. Using her hands, she wiped her reddened, sore eyes. Eyes that had been dispensing tears since her husband’s sentence that morning.

Her mother picked up three-year-old John who was pulling Sarah’s hands away from her face, trying in vain for her attention. John was the youngest; Sarah wasn’t worried about the effect her husband’s transportation would have on him, but the older two, James Jr, eight, and William, six, would know their father’s predicament.

‘Ye’ll have to find a way to keep the apprentice on,’ Sarah’s mother reasoned. ‘He can keep workin’ for ye till ye can sell the business. Then at least ye’ll have money comin’ in. The lodger will stay too. She’s nowhere else to go.’

Sarah knew her mother was right; an immediate solution could be found. The long-term worried her.

‘He’ll be moved to one of those prison hulks in the Thames before he’s transported. It’ll be harder than Newgate to see him, to bring him food and clothes.’ Sarah said.

Her mother thundered, ‘I don’t know why ye worry about him going to them hulks. Ye’ll never see him again after he’s sent to New South Wales. How many of them has ever come back? Do ye know? None, that’s how many.’

The tears again welled; they ran down Sarah’s already sorrow stained cheeks. John, whimpering at his mother’s distress, climbed up onto her knee, and flung his arms around her neck. Sarah hugged her youngest child and wept into his little shoulder; overwhelmed with anger and fear.

Ignoring her daughter’s distress, Sarah’s mother continued: ‘The lodger, what’s ‘er name?’

‘Mary Wood.’