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While many Scots travelled to Australia in the 19th century, the majority who moved there had no choice in the matter, being part of the estimated 8,300 convicts sent there from Scotland up to 1868, when penal transportation ended, or Highlanders forced off their land.
One such convict was Isaac Simpkins. In 1825, he was taken on as a servant by Matthew and Edward Pemberton (Number 29) and soon after was arrested for having stolen 25 gold sovereigns. Simpkins pleaded guilty, but did not implicate anyone else, although his wife, when asked where the money had gone, hinted at an accomplice as she told the court her husband had been ‘gracious with the cook’ at his previous employment. Simpson presented favourable references from previous employers, pleaded leniency as he had four children and blamed intoxication for his crime. This probably saved him from the gallows but did not prevent him from being sentenced to fourteen years transportation. Simpson sailed on the ship, The Minstrel, to Australia. For the whole of the 160 day trip he, like all the prisoners, was kept locked below decks. For a first offence of simple robbery, culprits would be sentenced to seven years transportation, while for the theft of goods worth more than a shilling, or assaults, the sentence was hanging or fourteen years transportation. However, men who had been convicted of lesser offences were often spared transportation unless they were repeat offenders, whereas women were more likely to be transported for a first offence.
Eviction was a constant dread for Highland families as the law allowed a Precept of Removing and Ejecting to be served. The eviction notice was broadly focused: ‘Flitt [move house] and Remove himself, his wife, Bairns, Family, Servants, Subtenants, Cottars, Dependers, Goods and Gear forth, and from his occupation and possession of the said lands.’ This draconian edict meant that one notice might evict up to fifty people. In one year alone, John Gordon of Cluny, forced around 3,000 of his tenants on the Outer Hebrides to emigrate.
John Bowie (Number 19), a solicitor who, by coincidence did law work for John Gordon, was one of three men, another being the ex-Moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland, who made a deputation to the Secretary of State for the Colonies seeking funds from the Government to enable six thousand distressed Highlanders and Islanders to be shipped to New South Wales, Australia. The plea was partly successful, with funding being provided to ship one thousand people on three ships; one to Van Diemen’s Land and two to New South Wales. Bowie wrote: ‘I am happy to add that this auspicious commencement of a Celtic emigration to the Australian colonies already promises to lead to the happiest of results.’
In Australia, the Reverend Dr Lang, who was coordinating the re-settlement of the Highlanders, wrote to Bowie to tell him how things were progressing. Lang began by comparing the terrible conditions the Highlanders faced in Scotland with life in Australia: ‘In Scotland they are a burden to the proprietor, inasmuch as they destroy the land in cutting fuel and turf, and are a grievous burden to the inhabitants generally, from the extent of pauperism prevailing among them. Such being the condition of vast numbers of people in the Highlands, it must be gratifying to every humane mind to learn how greatly the condition of our emigrants has been improved, even within the first year of their residence in Australia.’ Instead of dispersing the Highland emigrants as labourers throughout the colony, Dr Lang thought it desirable to keep them together if possible, so they might have their own schools and churches. Thus the twenty-three families who had landed in December 1837 were transferred together to Dunmore on Hunter’s River (painting of the time) , a favourable district to the north of Sydney. Lang reported: ‘The Highland settlement, which was known in the neighbourhood by the name of Skye, was formed in the month of January 1838; some of the Highlanders preferring to have their land all wooded, that they might sit rent free for four years, and others to have it all clear, that they might have it immediately under cultivation. Houses, tolerably comfortable in some instances, were easily erected by means of saplings found in the neighbourhood—the roof consisting of reeds or bark. By a little economy, the Highlanders were enabled to make the government ration of beef, which had been granted them for two months, last out four. …In short, the original settlement had been completely successful, and a number of additional families of emigrant Highlanders had also been permitted, at their own earnest request, to settle in the meantime on other small farms in their immediate neighbourhood and in the same way…. When their current possessions are contrasted with the want of all things experienced in their native country, and when we consider that but a year had then elapsed from the commencement of the settlement, we cannot doubt that a few years will see a cluster of miserable Hebridean peasants transformed into a set of farmers equal to those in the average districts of their native country.’
There were those who travelled to Australia of their own free will. John Dougall (Number 39), son of a cabinetmaker, studied divinity and moved to Australia to become the Minister of the St Andrew Scots Church in Sydney. This church was founded in 1823 by the Reverend John Dunmore Lang, who was the first Presbyterian clergyman to serve the Convict Colony.
Another who began a new life in Australia was Euphemia, the daughter of William and Barbara Beveridge (Number 13). In 1824, she married William Owen Davies who was under the guardianship of his uncle, Robert Owen, then living at New Lanark. Through his marriage to Caroline Dale, the daughter of the proprietor of New Lanark Mills, his uncle became manager and part-owner of the mills in 1810. There he began to improve the lives of those working and living at New Lanark by introducing environmental, educational and work-place improvements. He published A New View of Society in 1816, a rallying call for widespread social change, with education at its core. New Lanark, the test-bed for his ideas, became internationally famous, and is a World Heritage site today.
Following their marriage, William and Euphemia emigrated to Australia as ‘free settlers’, sailing there on the ship, Portland, from Leith. They lived in Parramatta, Sydney and after trying unsuccessfully for a job with the Australian Agricultural Company (letter from Sir Edward Parry), William became a school-teacher. They had six children, although some did not survive infancy. William later became a ‘writing clerk’, a job that involved being witness to legal transactions and, in 1837, was arrested on a charge of perjury, and convicted. However, the conviction was quashed on a legal technicality. One newspaper expressed the general outrage at the decision: ‘How can any man who sees the ends of justice defeated by such a contemptible quibble, have any respect for the excellence of the British Constitution, or the purity of the British Law. In Britain, where the good preponderate over the bad in the scale of society, it would be a matter of less regret to see a villain escape punishment by such means, because public opinion would operate as a punishment to a considerable extent; but, here, where the greater the “blackguard”, the more readily he finds companions to cry " hail, fellow, well met," the quashing of the conviction, ceases the punishment, and the culprit who to-day escapes by such a chance from justice, holds his head as high to-morrow, as if instead of incurring disgrace, he had added a new feather to his cap.’ Perhaps William’s place in society was adversely affected by the affair, for he died a few years later. One can only wonder how Euphemia fared during that difficult time. One hopes that her second marriage in 1845, to Robert Bonnor, a farmer in Bathurst, New South Wales, was less upsetting. Although the marriage in 1846, by special licence, of her eldest daughter, at the time only 13 years of age, to the son of her new husband in 1846 may not have been without its upset. Euphimia died in 1869.
Some of the travel was in the opposite direction. In 1847, Houston Mitchell (Number 45) returned to Scotland from Australia, where he had owned land in Hunter’s Valley in New South Wales, one of the areas where a number of people forced out of Scotland by the Highland Clearances ended up. Mitchell purchased the Polmood Estate in the Tweed Valley and built a house there, and also bought the Albany Street house for his stays in Edinburgh.
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