The Potter and the Prostitute

By Robin Flannery

Two of my great-great-grandparents, James Brough and Susan McArdle, were convicted for crimes in the United Kingdom and sent 'beyond the seas' to Van Diemen's Land during the twilight years of transportation, to that island penal colony known today as Tasmania. 1

Their granddaughter-Elsie Brough, my maternal grandmother-would marry Arthur Gordon Jackson, a descendant of another five convict forebears. They were:

• Elizabeth Goldsmith, Lady Juliana 1790 and William Rayner, Scarborough 1790, both Second Fleeters, who married at Norfolk Island in 1791;
• Samuel Spiers (also known as Pyers) who came on the Active in 1791 with the Third Fleet and married Sarah Johnson, Britannia III 1797, at Norfolk Island in 1801; and
• William Jackson on the Ocean 1816.

With the exception of Goldsmith, these earliest, and by then 'free', Australian ancestors made their way to Van Diemen's Land, where their descendants mingled with the bloodlines of Dr James and Susan Ross, and Francis and Amelia Burgess. Ross, a journalist and publisher, was a strong supporter of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur in the 1820s, while Burgess replaced Captain Matthew Forster as Van Diemen's Land's Chief Police Magistrate in 1843, shortly before James Brough and Susan McArdle, the subjects of this story, arrived as convicts.

James Brough, the son of Thomas and Mary, was a potter when he stole bread and cheese at his native place of Burslem. For his crime, he received a seven-year sentence at Staffordshire Quarter Sessions on 8 April 1843. Burslem was one of six towns known collectively as 'ThePotteries', and nowadays is incorporated into the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent. The author, Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), famous for writing about the area, depicted Burslem (using the pseudo-placename of Bursley) in Clayhanger :

In front, on a lonely hill in the vast valley, was spread out the Indian-red architecture of Bursley-tall chimneys and rounded ovens, schools, the new scarlet market, the high spire of the evangelical church … the crimson chapels, and rows of little red houses with amber chimney pots, and the gold angel of the blackened Town Hall topping the whole. The sedate reddish browns and reds of the composition all netted in flowing scarves of smoke, harmonised exquisitely with the chill blues of the chequered sky. Beauty was achieved, and none saw it.

James Brough left that landscape behind when he was transported on the Equestrian(2), leaving London on 5 July 1845, with 298 male convicts and arriving in Van Diemen's Land on 15 October at the age of twenty-three. Brough stood 159 centimetres and was of fresh complexion with light brown hair and blue eyes. Protestant and single, Brough could read a little, his skin was slightly pock-pitted, and he had tattoos, including a woman above his elbow and RJB upside down on his left arm below the elbow. During the voyage to Australia, James was 'very well behaved' and, on arrival, he was placed in a labour gang for twelve months, emerging on 15 October 1846 from Nicholls Rivulet in the Huon District.

Susan McArdle, the daughter of Hugh and Margaret, was from Newry in County Down, Northern Ireland. She had been a nursemaid at home, and was a tiny 149 centimetres, of fresh complexion with brown hair and hazel eyes. McArdle was convicted at County Down on 12 January 1846 and sentenced to transportation for seven years for stealing clothes. She was known to the authorities through a prior conviction of one month for stealing potatoes, then a staple diet of Ireland. But, by the mid-1840s, a fungal disease in potato crops wrought havoc, and the Irish population was decimated between 1845 and 1851, when an estimated two million inhabitants either emigrated or died from disease, starvation or exposure. Perhaps transportation to Australia was a blessing in disguise.

As a convicted criminal, Susan was delivered on 26 May 1846 to Grangegorman, the Irish depot for women prisoners waiting to be transported. She departed Dublin aboard the Arabian with another 139 convicted women on 12 October 1846, and arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 25 February the following year. Tasmanian records show her as aged eighteen on arrival. But, possibly more accurately, the Irish transportation record says McArdle was only thirteen and the Grangegorman Register says fourteen. 2

She was noted to have been 'on the town' for two years prior to her last Irish conviction. Despite her waywardness in Ireland, Susan's behaviour was 'good' on the voyage to Van Diemen's Land and, after arrival, she was assigned to Mr Walton at the Huon River.

After completing her assignment with Walton, Susan became a problem child for officialdom in Hobart Town and did several stints in the cells for being absent without leave, using threatening and obscene language, and disobeying orders. Susan and a Joshua Hodges applied to marry in October 1848, but there is no record of a marriage. 3

Hodges may have gone cold on the idea the next month when Susan was placed 'under strict separate treatment in the Female House of Correction at Hobart Town for six months and her conduct was to be specially reported on at the end of that time'. Susan mended her ways after that term in custody and did not re-offend beyond 1848, but her ticket-of-leave was not issued until 11 May 1852. James Brough was granted a ticket-of-leave on 5 June 1849 and married Susan McArdle at St George's Anglican Church, Hobart Town on 5 November 1849. 4

The couple's first child, Mary Ann Bruff, was born on 28 October 1851. James' certificate of freedom was issued on 8 June 1852 and, on 4 December 1853, the day before her mother received her certificate of freedom, Mary Ann was baptised at St Joseph's Catholic Church, Hobart. 5

Perhaps they deferred the religious sin-cleansing rite so their daughter avoided the stigma, in the eyes of God, of her parent's criminal past. On the baptism certificate, the father and mother are recorded phonetically as James Bruff and the former Susan Carroll. In later life, Mary Ann Brough married John Parkin in Victoria in 1870, and married for a second time in 1908 to George Goodfellow. When ninety-two-year-old Mary Ann Goodfellow died at West Melbourne in 1943, her parents were recorded as James Brough and Susan McArdle.

Susan gave birth to their second child-my great-grandfather, James Henry Brough-around 1856, but neither a birth nor baptism record has yet been located. James Henry married Jane Ann Dixon in Victoria in 1877 and, after Jane Ann's death, married widow Elizabeth Carter (née Dial) in 1887. In 1921, at the age of sixty-five, James Henry died in Victoria, and his parents were recorded as James Brough and Susan McArdle, with Huonville as his birthplace. 6

How the Brough family travelled to Victoria is not known. Once there, James Brough became a miner at Ballarat, and died of cancer at nearby Happy Valley on 9 January 1875. 7

James' death certificate indicates he was aged fifty-two and that he had spent seventeen years in Tasmania after being transported in 1845, plus twelve years in Victoria. The Black Swan departed Launceston on 1 July 1862 and arrived in Melbourne at Hobsons Bay two days later. It carried a Brough family, probably my forebears, but, with such general descriptions of the passengers, it is not possible to conclude it was the family of James and Susan.

On Christmas Day 1876, the widow, Susan Brough, married Thomas Leech, a widower, whose wife had died in 1864. 8

Susan had two living children, Mary Ann and James Henry, from her marriage to James Brough, but the certificate shows another seven deceased. There is no record of Susan giving birth to children other than Mary Ann and James Henry in Tasmania or Victoria. That 1876 entry of seven deceased children is odd, but may be symptomatic of Susan's deteriorating mental condition. Nine years on, Susan spent a week in the lunacy ward of Bendigo Hospital and, in the opinion of the Medical Surgeon, was 'partially imbecile' and unable to care for herself: 'She is lunatic and is not under proper care and control. I recommend she be sent to the Kew Asylum'. The police report showed her husband, Thomas Leech, lived at Mackenzie Street, Golden Square, Bendigo, in 'very poor circumstances'.

Upon admission to Kew Asylum on 17 December 1885, Susan's insanity was diagnosed as dementia, causing her to be dangerous and destructive, but neither suicidal nor epileptic. Her bodily health was satisfactory. She was allowed leave on a trial basis in late 1886, but returned permanently to the asylum on 5 July 1887.

On 6 March 1900, a doctor was called to attend Susan Leech at the asylum. She had vomited, her heart sounded weak, but her temperature was normal, and she laughed during the medical examination. At six o'clock the next morning, the night attendant found her dead. A post-mortem showed Susan suffered from chronic kidney and heart disease, but her death at the age of seventy-nine years was put down to strangulated hernia. 9

Susan was buried at Melbourne Cemetery on 10 March 1900. 10

It is doubtful that any family member attended her burial because her death registration is devoid of information that would normally be provided by a close relative, such as the names of the deceased's parents or spouse. All the authorities could record was that she was married at some stage and that she was from Ireland.

But, to me, her passing is of special significance. Susan was the last surviving convict ancestor on my mother's side of the family. From 6 June 1790 to 7 March 1900, I had a transported felon, under sentence or free by servitude, in Australia. That period, just three