Melbourne and Mars/Chapter 1

I MIGHT write a volume on the details of my early and middle life, and many of my experiences would doubtless he interesting to readers in the Australian Colonies, but my experiences during the first forty-four years of my life, though stirring and eventful enough, were common to most men. Indeed there are men whom I see whenever I go to Melbourne who have gone through more than I have in the stirring times of the gold discovery.
I was born in the year 1818 in the then small town of Blackburn in Lancashire. My parents were handloom weavers and by close attention to work on all days but St. Monday, they managed to make a fair living. Power loom weaving, at that time had not reduced the rates of payment, and taken the work out of the hands of weavers as it did a few years later. My mother was a hearty, merry, affectionate woman; she had received more than the ordinary education of her class, her father having been a shopkeeper and able to send his daughters, my mother and aunt to a boarding school for a few years.
Her marriage with my father had not been approved of by her family, but a happier marriage could scarcely have been made. My father was a thoughtful man, but his education had been neglected; he could read his Bible but even that accomplishment had been taught him by mother. He was a very sober and industrious man and entirely devoted to his work, his little garden and his family. I was the third child of a family of five. The next younger than I was a brother, the rest were sisters.
Mother had some of the instincts of a lady, and had furnished a small front room as a parlor. On one of the walls was hung a large sampler in a glass frame; a mixture of queer pictures, as devoid of perspective as any work of Japanese art, and some Scripture texts worked in silk that had at one time been bright in colour. On a side table stood a kind of museum in glass, collected and constructed by father, and over a cabinet in the corner was a small hanging book-case. Of course there was the inevitable chest of drawers, and the centre table, and a bit of carpet or drugget on the floor, and sundry china ornaments on the mantelpiece and drawers.
Mother always took us into this room on Sunday afternoon and gave us a reading lesson; and generally led us in singing a hymn, taking care that we became letter perfect in words, time and at least the air of the tune. On other days this room was sacred, except some visitor or aunt came, when we were straightened up, put on our best behaviour, and shewn in one at a time.
Our garden was a small piece of rich land, rented from a farmer near by, and shared by a neighbour of ours. We grew peas, radishes, onions, lettuce, celery, cauliflowers, and cabbages, and sometimes had some to sell. Our life was a very happy one. We were poor, true, but we had plenty of food and were warmly clad. In the season we gathered whinberries, blackberries, and nuts, and spent plenty of time in the open air sometimes going miles into the country from our home in the outskirts of the town.
At this time much of the spinning was done by the "Jenny" worked by hand, and my elder sisters had much of their time employed in spinning and winding cope.
We were all taught to read, and write, and reckon. Mother doing part of the teaching, and Mrs. Carter the other part. Mrs. Carter used an old "weaving shop" as a school where she taught about sixty or seventy children the rudiments. So far as it went our education was better than is generally credited to the time. Parents who thought anything of themselves took care that the three R's were well taught. Dunces were not forced to learn and pass a certain standard; when it was found out that they could not or would not learn children were made of use by being sent to work; while those who desired to learn got a reasonable education, and some became scholars.
Indeed, I believe quite as many real scholars were turned out under the free system as under the compulsory one, and certainly more workers grew up under the old mode. I was regarded as rather delicate; for I made the most of my croup, measles, hooping-cough, scarlatina, and other diseases of childhood.
Being the oldest boy, however, I had to do a little light work about the house, to help with the crops, to weed the garden, to run errands, and so gradually became a hardy little chap, and was saved from the interesting, precocious, semi-invalidism into which so many children are now permitted to drop in these days of luxury. There are thousands of thin-necked, flat-chested, big-browed boys in this much-loved colonial land who would soon become robust if trained us I was. My dear mother saw what was best, and while taking all care of me never gave me the impression that I was an object of special attention.
So passed my life until my tenth year, when there were serious reductions in the prices paid to hand-loom weavers. There were now over 100,000 powerlooms in Lancashire, and although hand-looms still outnumbered them two to one prices were reduced. John Drylands, who employed all the people about where we lived, kept reducing wages until we had to work for one-third less, and began to feel the pinch of poverty.
Mother always kept a bit of money by her for a rainy day when we were comparatively well off; but a time frame when all was spent, and we had only bread, dripping, porridge and skim milk and a few vegetables to live upon; meat and butter, eggs and cheese we seldom saw, and as a result we became weaker and lower in health, and lived dull and hopeless lives. Our faces grew pale and our clothing shabby, and when we tried to sing on Sunday afternoons our voices almost cried.
Power-loom weavers earned more than we did, and so it was decided that we should go to the mill. My two sisters went to weaving, and I and my brother to spinning. We worked from five in the morning to seven at night, and had to snatch our meals. The four of us earned a little more than a pound a week. This enabled us to live more liberally, or would have done if we had had time to eat and enjoy life. Our lives were all work and sleep, and we had much unkind treatment from our employers. Father seemed to undergo a change. His garden did not interest him. We seemed to have fallen upon lawless times. Our garden beds were pillaged when there was anything worth taking, and hard times and poverty made men mad. Bread was dear, wages were low, and all the people were quarrelsome and unhappy. The air was full of storm; men gathered at street corners and in pothouses and talked excitedly about politics and the price of corn.
Father spent some of his time this way, and got mixed up with a lot of men whom he would have cared little to meet a few years before. Poverty works such changes. These men were ground down on all hands by the action of laws that they neither made nor sanctioned, and being ignorant they became the prey of demagogues who put their one sided statements before them. The result was the production of a crop of men ready for any crime, and especially for acts of personal violence.
About this time an election took place. Party feeling ran high. Men wore the colors of their candidates conspicuously displayed, and street fights became very common. In those several men were severely injured, and some were killed outright. For the election day special constables were sworn in, and a body of troops were sent for and held in readiness. The mills were stopped, the shops closed. The polling booths were a constant scene of riot, disorder and sometimes bloodshed. Mother kept us at home all day, and tried lo persuade father to stay at home too; but he went to record his vote in Penny-street in the afternoon, promising to come back before tea and tell us the news. Teatime came, but no father; bedtime, and still no father. Knowing that we had to be at work at five o'clock next morning mother sent us to bed and waited up alone. Waited till the day broke and until we had gone to work. It was the first time that father had spent a night away from home, and he had never to spend another night there.
At a little before the time for closing the poll father was coming out of the booth, having recorded his vote, when a waggon, load of Tory voters, noisily drunk, and carrying blue ribbons and rosettes, drove up to the door. There were some score of men who had been shepherded at a jerry shop—a low alehouse—all day, and who were now coming to give their votes or sell them for about ten shillings each. A lot of Darron Punsers came with them to clear the way into the booth. As they jumped and tumbled out of the waggon into the crowd they were seized on all hands by the wearers of pink and green, and a free fight commenced. The police and special constables were not equal to the occasion, and before help arrived several men were severely injured, one killed outright, and another so much hurt that he died a day or two after.
Father was in the midst of the crowd and received a number of blows, and doubtless gave as good as he got. One eye was blackened, a cut on the forehead covered his face with blood, and he received several bruises from the clog toes of a Darron Punser, kicker with the feet. Before he could get clear of his entanglement a squad of infantry charged down Penny-street and father suffered further maltreatment, and as he got up, after being rolled over and trampled upon, a constable slipped a pair of handcuffs on him and took him to the watchhouse.
Here early next morning mother found him, but she could not obtain his release, for he was one who had been seen struggling within a yard of where a man had fallen dead. For three weeks several men who had been arrested in that fatal crowd wore examined and remanded, and at last sent for trial to the Assize Court. Father's friends rallied round him. They testified to his general good character and conduct, and would doubtless have obtained his acquittance but for a persistent special constable, who swore that he saw father knock the man down who had been carried dead off the street.
The jury brought in a verdict of guilty of manslaughter, and five men were sentenced to fourteen years' transportation.
Our tears and prayers were all of no avail. Our father, whom we had always known as a kind man, and little likely to injure anyone, was taken from us, and all we could get to know was his ultimate destination—Botany Bay.
The first thing mother did was to determine to go out to him and to take us with her. Aunt and uncle were opposed to this step, but eventually they agreed, and helped with the preparations and found means. Nearly a year after father went out in a Government ship. We set sail in a barque, the Mary Jane, for Port Jackson. There were several families in the steerage with us. Two wives were going to join convicted husbands. One of the husbands had killed a hare and fought a keeper, and the other, driven by poverty and hunger, had stolen half a sheep. This was the justice of the time.
A voyage of one hundred and fifty-two days brought us to Port Jackson. I was twelve years old when we landed. There were four of us. Mother had been persuaded to let my younger brother and sister remain at least for a few years. She was rather sorry for this, for my sisters, about fourteen and sixteen years of age respectively, got situations immediately, and I got temporary employment in a store. This left mother at liberty to follow father upcountry, where he had been hired out by the system then in vogue.
Mother was not long in completing her preparations. Her intention was to get work in the same neighborhood as father, possibly on the same station, so that she might be near him and help him to work into a condition of relative freedom as many convicts had done. Indeed, some wives had managed to get their husbands assigned to them as servants, and were getting on well in business.
Father had been assigned to a squatter some one hundred and twenty miles inland. There were no roads and no regular means of conveyance. Those who travelled at this time generally walked and carried their swag. Some rode, but horses were scarce and very high priced. Mother could not buy nor hire a horse, nor could she have ridden had there been a horse available, and a walk of one hundred and twenty miles across a trackless country was not to be thought of.
Bullock drays went up now and then, performing the journey in a week or ten days, according to the state of the country. No other mode of travel being available, my mother secured a passage on one of these.
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