A half-pint pewter tankard issued to patients or staff at Charing Cross Hospital in London. The hospital began life as the West London Infirmary, becoming Charing Cross Hospital in 1827. “Each man” the narrator, William Barber, tells us “received an iron spoon and a tin pot, but no plates, knives or forks. Upon a kind hint from the surgeon (who is the representative of Government in a convict ship), I had purchased a tin plate, although, as I was the only member of my mess who indulged in this luxury, it exposed me to some coarse ridicule.”
Part 1 of 2
A TIN pint pot was delivered to every prisoner at the commencement of the voyage, which served to receive his cocoa, as well as his pea-soup. I had not been at sea a couple of days when I found that mine had been changed. But, as they were scarcely distinguishable one from the other, I gave the new-comer a thorough cleaning, and adopted it in lieu of my own.
The very next day, however, a man sidled up to my mess, and suddenly clapping his hand upon the pot, exclaimed, “Halloa! what are you a-doing with my tin pot?”
“How do you know it is yours?” I inquired.
“There’s my mark at the side,” he replied “and there should be a round O at the bottom.” I turned it up; and, seeing the mark of identity referred to, felt bound to surrender it. The pot was received with an appearance of indignation, and I was advised “not to try that game on again.”
Although the convict was not named, and other names in the account are fictitious, the story was a true one. The speaker was solicitor William Henry Barber, transported for life in a party of 226 on HMS Agincourt (1817), which left London on July 6th, 1844, and arrived at Van Dieman’s Land, now Tasmania, on November 9th. See Convict Records of Australia. Barber had been found guilty of forging wills, though his alleged accomplice, surgeon Joshua Fletcher (who was also transported) testified that Barber had no idea what was going on. Barber’s narrative was taken down by journalist William Moy Thomas (1828–1910), who worked on ‘Household Words’ from 1851 to 1858. The story had a happy ending: Barber was pardoned and allowed to come home, and even restored as an attorney in 1855.
Précis
In 1852, Charles Dickens’s magazine ‘Household Words’ recorded the experienced of a man transported to Australia. The unhappy convict recalled how everyone aboard ship was given a tin pot for his rations, and how on just the second day his own had been claimed by another prisoner, who could even point to his scratched marks of ownership. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Mountstuart Elphinstone’, with the cliffs of the English coastline in the distance, painted by William Adolphus Knell (1801–1875). She was built in India in 1826, and named after Scottish historian the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859), a Governor of Bombay who founded several educational establishments, including what is now Elphinstone College in the University of Mumbai. The ship worked the seas carrying cargoes of freight, convicts and emigrants for over fifty years.
MY messmates chuckled at the scene; and it was subsequently explained to me that this trick of exchanging was a common trick amongst prisoners. I suffered much inconvenience in consequence for several days; and, for want of my pot to receive them, was deprived of my rations of cocoa, tea and soup.
At length I got another; for, happening to mention the trick which had been played me to one of the prisoners, a rough fellow with a most ferocious cast of countenance, he insisted upon my taking his, saying he would try to get the use of his messmates’, and reminding me that I had written a letter for him at Woolwich — a circumstance which it is not remarkable that I had forgotten, as I had written at least fifty, while in the river.* I had, indeed, frequent proofs that a kindness is sometimes long remembered, and often gratefully requited, by even the worst of criminals.
The convicts were loaded onto the ship at Woolwich on the river Thames, where they spent some days (in constant hope of a reprieve, and corresponding with their families) before their departure, the date of which was a closely-guarded secret. It was July 6th, 1844.
Précis
The mystery of the pot turned out to be a common trick: one prisoner would exchange his marked pot for another’s, and then claim the marked one back and end up with two. Happily, a fearsome fellow prisoner for whom our man had once done a favour undertook to get him a pot, so he need not forgo his rations. (60 / 60 words)
