Henry Mylam Cockerill 1806-1873
By Sally Steel
My mother is pleased to be able to say that her great grandfather was a convict who came to Van Diemen's Land in 1824. It is a long time ago in years but not far in generations.
Unfortunately we do not have a picture of Henry so we do not know if the distinctive Cockerill look came from him or his wife, Eliza Vincent.
Martha Annie Cockerill
Henry Mylam Cockerill is my most interesting male ancestor because he left an interesting record. Despite having a relatively fortunate background, he got himself in trouble more than once, then moved on in life.
Much of the research into these families has been provided by Rosemary Davidson, a descendant of John Vincent, and Janet Miller of New Zealand who has written a book on the Cockerill family. Information has also come from records at the Cairns & District Family History Society, Mormon Family History Centre, Tasmanian microfilms at the Smithfield library in Cairns and the Tasmanian Archives, Garth Cockerill and Barbara Corrigan.
Henry Mylam Cockerill was born in the Curtain Road, Shoreditch, in 1806. He was christened at St Clement Danes, Westminster in November 1811. 1 His parents were Edward Cockerill and Susanna Beels who were married in 1795 at St Leonard's, Shoreditch in London. Their first son, William James Cockerill, was born in 1796. A daughter, Ann Martha, was christened at St Leonard's in February 1798.
According to Janet Miller, it was a usual requirement in those days for children to be baptised before they could go to schools which were mainly religious, especially the Brompton or Christ's Hospital Blue Coat schools which Henry and his brother are thought to have attended. They were so named as the pupils wore long blue coats. These schools were mainly for the middle classes, or children whose parents were from naval or military backgrounds. Henry attended Sunday School and in 1816 was presented with a Bible at the Church of St Sepulchures, and sang in the choir at St Stephen's. His mother was said to be buried at St Sepulchures.
In September 1823, at Middlesex, Henry Mylam Cockerill, aged 18 years, was convicted of stealing a gold watch from William Henry Booth, a barrister at Lincolns Inn. Henry's brother William was Booth's clerk. Henry went to the premises to write letters and it was on one of these occasions while Mr Booth was out of town that he took the goods and later, with Sarah Moore, took them to a pawnbroker. In a written statement she said that he had given her the property to pawn in her own name and that it belonged to him. Cockerill pleaded that the young woman was innocent. He was sentenced to be hanged. Moore, aged 17, was also found guilty, fined one shilling and discharged. His sentence was commuted to transportation for life, possibly because he could read and write and had respectable friends. His gaol report described him as full of tricks and mischief, and that his friends were very respectable. His hulk report described him as orderly and single. He was in fact only 17 years old.
He was transported on the Phoenix which sailed from Portsmouth in March 1824 with 204 male prisoners on board. The ship arrived in Hobart after a voyage of 114 days. Henry was appointed to the Lieutenant Governor's office as a clerk with a salary of £37.10.0 per annum. He remained in the Colonial Secretary's Office in Hobart Town in 1825 and 1826 at a salary of £27.7.6. His brother sent £20 out to him in 1826 and a cargo of clothing and goods for sale in March 1827.
On 12 March 1827, Henry and another prisoner, Gilchrist, were sentenced to three years hard labour on Maria Island for altering the sentence of another convict from life to seven years in both the convict register and the shipping indent. He was sent to Macquarie Harbour on board the Government brig Cyprus by 23 March 1827.2 At Macquarie Harbour he was employed as Assistant Clerk in the Commandant's office. He wrote from there in September 1827 regarding the disposal of the goods sent to him and again in April 1828 seeking to gain access to money from the sale of the goods, which had been placed in the hands of the Commissary, then sold at public auction. In January 1829, Commandant Captain Butler recommended his removal as his conduct had been perfectly correct and suggested he be assigned as a clerk to the officer in charge at the Clyde. He left Macquarie Harbour in April 1829 on board the Cyprus.3
In December 1829, when Henry was employed as a clerk in the Police Office in Bothwell, he sent a memorial to Governor Arthur seeking the proceeds of the sale of the goods, to use in establishing a carrying business from Clyde to Hobart town. This was accompanied by favourable references from Alexander Reid of Ratho and W. Williams.
In April 1831, he wrote to the Colonial Secretary from Bothwell. He had received some ground from the Governor, which he had fenced and dug for a garden and he had himself laid foundations and put up framework for a house 12 x 24 feet, purchasing front door and window sashes and some furniture. He had been in Bothwell two years 'seeking a good reputation' and required the means to complete his house and obtain 'a respectable partner for life', referring to the money from the sale of his brother's goods which was in the hands of the Government and, he felt, belonged to him. He feared that his relatives had abandoned him after his imprisonment and sought to be informed if there had been any communication with his brother. This letter was accompanied by a recommendation from Rev. Garrett and a letter from Captain Wentworth, the Police Magistrate at Bothwell. Despite his own letters to his brother and those of the Government, we have found no further communication from his connections in London.
By May 1832, Henry had applied to Governor Arthur for permission to marry. He also asked Captain Wentworth to speak to Arthur concerning the money. The situation was resolved by the end of the year when Cockerill obtained a bond from two Bothwell settlers, Alexander Hudspeth and Andrew Smith to guarantee the Government in case any claim arose later against the money, and a sum of £101.5.7 was received by him.
In 1832, Archibald McDowell wrote to the Lands Department complaining that Thomas Burrill had commenced selling his land in half acre blocks to persons not of the first respectability. One of these blocks had a wooden building in Alexander Street next to 'Rock Cottage' and was built for Henry Cockerill, boot and shoemaker. The cottage, still standing today, was lined with low grade bricks then boarded over, as was the style in common practice in Bothwell last century.4
Henry Mylam Cockerill married Eliza Vincent on 15 June 1832, in the presence of John and Harriet Vincent of Spring Hill. Eliza was the daughter of John Vincent who had arrived in Hobart Town as a free settler in 1823 with his family. He built the Castle Inn at Bothwell in 1829.
Henry was a clerk at Bothwell when his first son Henry William was born in 1834. He received a Conditional Pardon on 6 July 1836 and a Free Pardon four years later. He was granted the licence of the Castle Inn from October 1836 to 1846.
In September 1841, Bothwell was rocked by an attempt to rescind his recently approved membership of the Bothwell Literary Society. Their daughter, my great grandmother, Martha was born at this time.
In 1842, he owned a partly constructed brick house in Patrick Street, in which two bachelors, Edward Andrews and Edward Fotheringham were living.5 1843 he was a courier and storekeeper in Bothwell. In July that year he wrote to Governor Franklin that he wished to give up innkeeping, as he felt 'the great responsibility attached to the education of my children' and sought employment with the Government. In 1846 Cockerill had borrowed a sum of money from John Clark of 'Cluny Park' in order to pay off John Vincent for the Castle Inn property in Bothwell. He had titles to two houses and some land for security and appeared to have tenants in four houses as well as a plentiful supply of wheat, oats and barley. The family lived in 'Enfield Cottage', an eight roomed, brick house on ten acres in Bothwell, which they advertised to be let when they left there for New Norfolk in 1851. This sounds like the house that John Vincent built which stood on the same land as the Castle Inn.
In 1854, their seventh son was born at New Norfolk. Jane died of scarlet fever in 1853 when she was ten years old and Caroline Susannah died of croup in 1855 when she was three years old. In the 1856 electoral roll, he was listed as having land at Back River and freehold of the Bothwell Castle Inn. Another daughter, Emma Louise, was born in 1856 at Back River followed by a son, Alfred Gower, in 1858 when Henry was living on a property of 700 acres at Back River, owned by William Young of Hobart. The youngest child, Alice Ellen, was born in 1861 at 'Sunningdale' on the Derwent River.
It is not known whether Henry ever resumed contact with his brother William, however the names of his two youngest children suggest that they were in contact. In 1853, William James Cockerill, a gentleman and widower, married Ellen Gower in England. He is listed in a London Post Office Directory in 1858 as secretary to the Cancer Hospital at Piccadilly W. and was still there in an 1864 PO Directory. He died around 1868 and his Will mentions his son, William Augustus Marsden Cockerill, as well as his wife Ellen and her sister Louisa Gower, a spinster and artist of Bechingley, Surrey, but not his brother Henry. Ellen died in 1873 aged 43 years. As well as her son, she had four daughters; Emma Maria, Ellen Mary, Flora Theresa and Louisa Edith. William Augustus Marsden Cockerill became a minister and after some years in Australia from about 1887 which included some time at Sorell in Tasmania, he went to the Hawke's Bay area of New Zealand where he died in 1913.6
Eliza Cockerill died in 1864 of a liver complaint. She was 4 7 years old. The death was notified by her son Dennis who was only 19 and living at Arundel, at Macquarie Plains.
COCKERILL - On the 20th June, 1864 Eliza the wife of Mr Henry M Cockerill of Arundel, New Norfolk Tasmania. The Funeral will move from the Vestry of St. Matthews Church New Norfolk on Thursday next at 2 o'clock. Friends are invited to attend.7
Several of the children emigrated to New Zealand around this time. This may have been prompted by the Otago gold rush or the family situation. Eighteen months after Eliza's death, Henry remarried a widow, Alicia Macleay nee Corrigan, at her home at Jerusalem, now known as Colebrook. According to Janet Miller, she brought a nephew to live with them and these circumstances prompted more family members to go to New Zealand. Dennis went in 1867 and Matilda, Edward and John, in 1868. Frank, Emma and Alfred also went to New Zealand. The older children, Henry William, Charles, Eliza and Martha remained in Tasmania, Charles and Eliza at Back River while Henry and Martha later lived near each other south of Hobart.
Alicia Corrigan was born in 1816 and arrived in Van Diemen's Land from Dublin with her parents and six younger siblings in 1832 on the brig Sarah. Her father, Lieutenant James Corrigan, was in the 74 Highland Regiment and took up land at 'Altamont', Colebrook.8 In 1836, she married Dr Kenneth Macleay, a widower aged 62, at Jerusalem. He had arrived in VDL in 1833 with his two-year old son, his wife having died on the voyage. In 1848 he was the Assistant Surgeon at Bothwell, and from 1848 till the time of his death in 1858, he held the same position at Jerusalem. In 1850, his son John married Alicia's sister Elizabeth (born 1823). The marriage notice said he was the cousin of the late Hon. Col. Secretary of Sydney.9 Elizabeth died at Richmond in 1857, leaving two sons and a daughter, so it is possible that Alicia helped bring them up. It is also possible that the Cockerills and Macleays had known each other when they lived in Bothwell.
Henry Mylam Cockerill died at Colville Street in New Town in 1873. He is buried in an unmarked grave at Cornelian Bay. Alicia died at Garden Crescent in Hobart in 1894.
The Cockerill family has been recorded in a book by Janet Miller produced for a Cockerill reunion in Christchurch in October 1994.
I have recorded the information I have accumulated in an unpublished booklet called Cockerill and Vincent Ancestors in Van Diemen 's Land, a copy of which I have given to TFHS Inc. in Hobart.
References:
1 Cockerill family Book of Psalms 2 Colonial Times23 March 1828
3 CSO 1/372/8497
4 Bothwell Gateway to the Highlands, Gwen Webb, p.138
5 Bothwell Gateway to the Highlands, Gwen Webb, p. 68
6 Research by Garth Cockerill
7 The Mercury Hobart Thursday 23 June 1864
8 From Barbara Corrigan
9 Hobarton Guardian 23 October 1850
