Convicts in the Colonies by Lucy Williams

Author:Lucy Williams [Williams, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526756312
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2019-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

A swindler, a pickpocket, a gentleman

Just as with their famed contemporaries facing tough justice at home on Britain’s gallows, tales of the transported captured the imagination of the British public. In its early years, transportation to Australia was perceived as so extreme, and so unknown, that the voyages of otherwise ordinary convicts became suddenly extraordinary, and every bit as good as fiction. Rumours of ‘savages’, starvation, and the unyielding bush gave Australia’s convicts a noticeably more dramatic backdrop than those that had gone to America before them. The lives of some of Britain’s earliest Australian transportees provided easy fodder for a curious public, and proved every bit as fantastical as something Dickens or Defoe created.

James Hardy Vaux (Image 11) was born in Surrey in 1782, a year after his parents, Hardy and Sophia, married. Although Vaux contended that his mother’s family were of notable social standing, both of his parents were somewhere between the upper-working-class and lower-middle-class of the time. From the age of three, Vaux lived with his maternal grandparents in Shropshire. While living with his grandparents, Vaux attended both a preparatory school and then a seminary, where he received both a general and religious education. By his own account, Vaux lived a happy and largely unremarkable childhood in the care of his grandparents. At nine, Vaux and his grandparents moved to London to live with his parents (with whom Vaux had experienced very little contact) who were running their own hosiery business. Shortly after arrival, Vaux was placed in a boarding school in Surrey. At age fourteen, Vaux came to the end of his formal education and, with little money left for his upkeep, was apprenticed to Swan and Parker, drapers (cloth merchants) of Liverpool.

Apprenticeships were a common way for young men to learn a trade or profession. A typical apprenticeship would last for a term of seven years in which an apprentice would live and serve his master in return for bed and board and a small yearly sum paid to his family. Life as an apprentice could be hard. Apprentices would work long hours at menial, unpleasant, or difficult tasks, and often found themselves subjected to strict discipline. After only a few weeks as an apprentice, Vaux struck up a friendship with an older boy by the name of King, already several years into his own apprenticeship with the drapers. Along with King and his associates, Vaux began breaching the terms of his apprenticeship, staying out beyond his curfew, gambling at cockfighting, drinking, and visiting brothels. He began to steal small sums of money from his employers in order to fund his gambling. The thefts were soon noticed, and after just five months in his apprenticeship, Vaux was dismissed.

The teenage Vaux moved alone to London, and through his grandfather’s connections secured work as a copying-clerk. His wage was small and his mode of life soon far outstripped his income. After a few months, Vaux was dismissed from his work as a clerk for poor conduct and found better paying work with a stationers.

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