On the grounds of the old Queen's orphanage in New Town, Hobart there is a monument to the children that died while resident there. One of those names listed there is William Mallett who apparently passed away in 1839. The orphanage records reveal he was the son of William and Jane Mallett, his father is noted specifically to have arrived in the colony of Van Diemen's Land aboard the Pilot (1). The problem is younger William didn't die in 1839. He was in fact my Great Great Great Grandfather and he lived a long, full life, fathering four children by two women and eventually dying in Bullarto Victoria in 1902! We know that because of both archival and DNA research.
The paper trail is long and complicated, of course. William was baptised in the Anglican parish of Christ Church Longford in 1832 along with two of his siblings. While his church index card above lists his father's occupation as a fencer based at Campbell Town I believe this is likely a mistranscription of 'Camperdown' which was a property owned by his employer, Captain Andrew Barclay (2).
It's thought William's first marriage to Sarah Bliss Johnson was a defacto relationship but he did marry his second wife Jane Butcher nee Lloyd and his parents are listed on the registration above as well as his place of birth (3).
His death registration above also lists his parents, the names of both his wives and the names and ages of his children. His age is listed on both of these Victorian records and correlates with his baptism details. His place of birth is actually given as 'North Esk' on his death registration which was the location of the Barclay estate (4).
William's brother James Mallett's marriage registration above indicates shared parentage, although it seems Uncle Jim did not know his mother's maiden name! (5).
Of the first native Tasmanian born generation, only William and his younger brother James Mallett (1835-1901) were known to have had children. Above is an ancestry 'thrulines chart' showing genetic matches between my father (David Mallett) and various descendants of both brothers; these include six matches on our line and seven matches on Uncle James' line. While Ancestry doesn't provide a chromosome browser that could provide conclusive evidence of a shared ancestry between the two lines through a study of specific shared segments, this is evidence of a distinct autosomal correlation between the descendants of these two brothers with the varying numbers and sizes of segments all reflecting expected typical distances in relationships as determined by the closest common ancestor. My father matches 13 people in all and there are more (including his sister) but the charts only include kits that are both matches and which indicate common ancestors in their respective family trees. Other platforms though have provided evidence of specific shared segments shared exclusively between descendants of William and Jane Mallett.
So my ancestor William Mallett (1830-1902) was the child of convicts William and Jane Mallett and he was the brother of the James Mallett who established a family at Merino, Victoria and so he didn't die in Queen's Male Orphan School hospital in 1839. So what is going on? What actually happened to William?!
First a little potted history...
The orphanage as an organisation was founded as the 'King's Orphanage' in 1827, ostensibly in response to growing calls for the need to service the basic needs of the colony's destitute children. In her thesis on topic submitted in 2000, Shirley Dean describes how the assigned motivations for its founding range from the philanthropic to the creation of a 'mechanism of social control'. The initiative was taken under the direction of Governor Arthur although the Bigge Report had been silent on the problem. Certainly there was a strong element of self-interest on the part of the propertied settlers in creating a literate, trained, reliable workforce (6). It is known that approximately 6000 children were admitted to it between 1829 and 1879 (7). From the beginning only a minority of the children resident there were by strict definition 'orphans': many were children of parents who for a variety of reasons could not properly provide for them. The backgrounds of the children varied greatly: some were illegitimate, others belonged to single parent families, in some cases they had invalid parents and a few had been simply abandoned. Sadly some indigenous children too were also admitted after having been forcibly taken from their families (8).
The male orphan school opened in 1827 and the female orphan school the following year, at first renting premises. The first meeting of the management committee was held in April 1828 and a ladies committee was formed soon after to specifically oversee the running of the female school. Their weekly minutes were regularly reviewed by Governor Arthur himself. The staffing structure was highly heirarchical and consisted of a headmaster, matron, servants and beadle. From the outset the Orphan schools were beset by scandals concerning administrative mismanagement and personality clashes between the staff. The permanent buildings surviving today were in fact designed by colonial architect John Lee Archer and constructed as two wings separetly adjoining St. John's church, New Town in 1833. Children were eligible from the age of three and parents with adequate means were expected to contribute to their upkeep. Children were mostly apprenticed or assigned out between the ages of twelve and fifteen years. Perhaps one of the crueller aspects of the institution was the fact that children could only be returned to the custody of their parents with the approval of the specific committe. This was despite the orphan schools were often overcrowded and conditions described as 'worse than spartan' (9).
Improvement both moral and vocational were the fundamental aims of the orphan schools. An Act was passed on 22 November 1838 specifically to facilitate an apprecnticeship system for the children of the orphan schools (10). While the female school was from the outset always focused on preparing girls for domestic service, the emphasis in the earliest decades of operation for boys was on 'industrial training'. Children were apprenticed or assigned under indentures that were legally binding until the age of eighteen. However the population of the colony was always small, econoimc activity limited and the labour market negatively impacted by the gold rushes. The colony was primarily an agricultural one and trade apprenticeships were few and far between and so after 1860 the emphasis for the boys changed emphasis to preparation as farm labourers. In 1861 the master tailor and shoemaker were fired. Dean notes this shift was advantageous for the orphan school as it was at the time located within 150 acres of scrub land (11). In return for free labour and obedience, Masters had a obligation to provide adequete food, apparel, lodging and medical attention (12). It should come as no surprise to learn that they often didn't and Lucy Frost's recent book is full of accounts of the system's appalling limitations and failures (13).
Now back to William...
On 30 April 1838, William Mallett, aged 7, was admitted to Queen's Male Orphan School along with three other boys: Jeb Birkins aged 7 years, Henry Williams aged 6 and 3/4 years and Charles Neale aged 3 and 1/2 years. Like William, all three of the other boys were the children of convicts and they were all eventually apprenticed out between 1846 and 1850 (14). The physical design of the orphan schools perhaps reflected the 'class views' in relation the stigma of convictism and the poor in general as religion was to play a central role in their redemption. Dean argues that the formulation of the orphan schools were in fact influenced the 'adoption of the bourgeoise middle class family as the ideal model' (15). These children had been contaminated by their parents and generally by their class as a whole and they needed to be rescued, elevated perhaps by the example and influences of the enlightened—but not elevated too far of course (!). Very little was expected of them other than to become useful. William's father had recently re-offended and been sentenced to seven years at Port Arthur. It is suspected he is the son that had a part in his family's downfall by picking up a dropped bank note from the street and taking it home to his father. Afterwards his two younger brothers (James and Thomas) were taken into service by the Henty brothers and played a first hand part in the settlement of the colony of Victoria (where their elder brother George also emmigrated). William was the only surviving child admitted to the orphanage and from his later life as a splitter and farmer there can have been little wrong with him physically—so maybe it could be inferred that perhaps because of his 'criminal history' he was not an attractive employment proposition like his little brothers? (16)
Perhaps one way of understanding William's experience of the male orphan school is to unpick the events contemporary with his tenure? While many apprentices were mistreated by their masters, as previously alluded to, the life of the scholars resident in the orphan schools was described as 'spartan'. There are also some indications that the children were inflicted with excessive discipline. The biggest scandal of William's residency were the charges brought by and against second master, John Offor. He was drawn into conflict with his superior, headmaster, the Reverand T. H. Naylor. Offor had first fell out of favour when he accompanied his fellow employee, Mrs. Girl, to deliver a complaint about another employee Mr. Gazard to the Colonial Secretary's office without leave. In May, a board of inquiry was organised to investigate no less than eleven charges of misconduct brought against him by Naylor. One of the more serious charges was one of intemperance; Naylor accused Offor of 'over severity towards the boy's at one time, and total disregard to necessary control at another...'. Two boys who testified (William Williams and Henry Bradshaw) admitted they had ran away because they were to be flogged. A record of punishments was tabled indicating that between 1 November 1837 and 10 June 1839 a punishment of 31 stripes had been delivered once, 25 stripes had been delivered 25 times and 20 stripes twice. Otherwise all punishments had been 12 stripes or less. It was further revealed that between 1 January 1838 and 10 June 1839 there were officially 374 incidents of corporal punishment although that was in response to 881 individual offences. Significantly, one of the other charges against Offor was that he had told the boys that they should have 'warm beds, good clothing and good food' as he had made some complaints and someone was coming to make enquiries. Although this charge of 'improper language' was rejected by the inquiry, the issue of the 'spartan' nature of the school's conditions does not appear to have been addressed (17).
It does seem unlikely that the listing of William's death is a clerical error. This entry precedes the one's above and below it by the better part of a decade. The insitution also wasn't so callous or indifferent that the odd child could be misplaced (18). A week after his 'death' on 15 June 1839, the Cornwall Chronicle reported that there were 226 boys and 210 girls 'under tuition' at the orphan schools (19). I have followed up on all children who died who were listed on the same page as his entry and I have failed to find a government death registration of only one of them aside from William. The fact that not all colonial records have survived probably explains the other missing death registration but I doubt there ever was one for William. So I am left to conclude that somehow William, all of nine years old, managed to extricate himself from orphanage either with or without help. It could be significant but William is described as having died in 'hospital' while other entries indicate they died in the male orphan school hospital (20). Perhaps his condition was serious enough to be taken to the local colonial hospital in Hobart and that in itself may have opened up various possibilities?
Between 1860 and 1879 almost a quarter of all the orphans apprenticed absconded (21). While most were caught and returned, some likely succeeded. Leaving a master's premises without permission could result in a month's imprisonment with additional hard labour for boys (22). There are two children listed as absconded on the same page as William's entry in the orphanage records with no indication they were returned (23). Poor conditions and harsh discipline is likely to have been a strong motivating factor for absconding. Abuse of children is also likely to have been widespread and under-reported. Lucy Frost elaborates on this point:
I think it important to acknowledge that if these adolescent boys were the victims of sexual predators, they may never have told their mistresses, fearing they would not be believed. Throughout the archive of material related to apprentices, there is no reference to boys being sexually molested. The sexual abuse of girls was no doubt more widespread than is account for by the cases brought to court or discussed in various correspondence, and it is impossible to believe that no boys were similarly abused (24).
And if I may be so bold as to put my hypothetical spin on this thought, children, particularly small children, were no doubt vulnerable within the walls of the orphan schools—even if it were only from predators among their older peers.
There is a gap of two decades in our knowledge of what happened next in William's life. We can infer some likely details though. He is next detected on the archival radar living as splitter as 'William Woollcott', living with his 'wife' Ada Sarah Woollcott at Black River near Circular Head in 1862 when their eldest child, William James Mallett was born (25). DNA research has revealed that Ada Sarah was in fact Sarah Curtis nee Bliss Johnson and it seems that the couple had run away together (!) Her husband, Robert Curtis worked in the timber industry in Hobart, so that may be the link (26). This is suggestive that William may have remained in the immediate area, perhaps worked with or for Curtis in a mill and formed an attachment with his wife.
St. John's Anglican Church, New Town, 2017.
(SurveyorMJF, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia Commons)
It would be impossible to estimate the damage done to all those young lives by the orphan school system in Tasmania. I have little doubt it had a lasting effect on its charges. Given William's tender age I think it likely that he found some sympathetic source of support either in the form of an employer or perhaps a family. Regardless, he was certainly one of the lucky ones who were able to get away early and for good.
- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 10 November 2023.
Endnotes
(1) Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD28-1-1, p 27.
(2) Baptisms of George, William and Elizabeth Mallett, baptised 3 October 1832, Christ Church Parish Register, Longford, Tasmania, Australia, nos. 98-100 & Colin Woollcott Mallett, 'A Convict Cold Case: William Mallett (1797-1852)', The Write Side of History blog, 13 October 2023, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-convict-cold-case-william-mallett.html , accessed 13 October 2023.
(3) Marriage registration of William Mallett and Jane Butcher nee Lloyd, married 31 July 1889, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Victoria, no. 6387.
(4) Death registration of William Mallett, died 25 October 1902, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Victoria, no. 12891.
(5) Marriage registration of James Mallett and Eliza Sarah Seaborne, St. Stephen's Church Portland, married 2 July 1856, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Victoria, no. 2351/1856.
(6) Shirley Dean, Our Children, Our Orphans, [Honour's Thesis] University of Tasmania, 2000, pp 5, 16, 22, https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Our_children_the_orphans/23236667, accessed 23 September 2023.
(7) Lucy Frost, Convict Orphans, Allen & Unwin, Crow's Nest, New South Wales, 2023, p 1.
(8) Dean, Our Children, p 9.
(9) Dean, Our Children, pp 25-30.
(10) 'From the Gazette', Cornwall Chronicle, 19 January 1839, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65952242, accessed 23 September 2023.
(11) Frost, Convict Orphans, pp 9, 79-80.
(12) Dean, Our Children, p 50.
(13) Frost, Convict Orphans, passim.
(14) Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD28-1-1, p 27.
(15) Dean, Our Children, p 12.
(16) Colin Woollcott Mallett, 'A Convict Cold Case'.
(17) 'Thursday Evening', Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen's Land Gazette, 23 August 1839, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8747354, accessed 23 September 2023.
(18) Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD28-1-1, p 27.
(19) 'Minute-Finance', Cornwall Chronicle, 22 June 1839, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65951760, accessed 23 September 2023.
(20) Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD28-1-1, p 27.
(21) Dean, Our Children, p 50.
(22) Frost, Convict Orphans, p 117.
(23) Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD28-1-1, p 27.
(24) Frost, Convict Orphans, p 62.
(25) Tasmanian Archives: Register-Gerneral's Department; Registers of Birth, RGD33/1/40, no. 760, https://libraries.tas.gov.au/Record/NamesIndex/1013013, accessed 23 September 2023.
(26) Tasmanian Archives: Register-Gerneral's Department; Registers of Marriage, RGD37/1/11, no. 204, https://stors.tas.gov.au/RGD37-1-11p85j2k, accessed 23 September 2023.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Christ Church Parish Register, Longford, Tasmania, Australia.
Cornwall Chronicle (Launceston, Tasmania)
Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen's Land Gazette (Hobart, Tasmania)
Registry of Births, Death and Marriages, Victoria.
Tasmanian Archives: Kings/Queens Orphan School (TA148); Register of children admitted and discharged from the male and female orphan school, SWD, 1828-1863.
Tasmanian Archives: Register-General's Department; Registers of Birth, RGD33/1/40.
Tasmanian Archives: Register-General's Department; Registers of Marriage, RGD37/1/11.
Secondary Sources
Dean, Shirley. Our Children, the Orphans [Honour's Thesis], University of Tasmania, 2000, https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Our_children_the_orphans/23236667, accessed 23 September 2023.
Frost, Lucy. Convict Orphans, Allen & Unwin, Crow's Nest, 2023.
Online Sources
Mallett, Colin Woollcott. 'A Convict Cold Case: William Mallett (1797-1852)', The Write Side of History blog, 13 October 2023, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-convict-cold-case-william-mallett.html, accessed 13 October 2023.
