From what we know of James’ activities in Australia during his visit there in 1824 as Surgeon Superintendent of the Convict ship Brothers [PAGE2000] and his connection with the Emu Plains case it seems unlikely that he was very popular with Lord Bathurst and other officials in the Colonial Office when he returned to England at the end of 1824. However this does not seem to have prevented him from sending a series of letters to the unfortunate Wilmot Horton MP during January 1825, shortly after his return. This correspondence was a curious mixture of trying to give Lord Bathurst information about the Emu Plains case, to further justify his behaviour during the Ann Rumsby case and asking for assistance over a grant of land in Australia in which he had made an investment. We do not know what the Colonial Office reaction to these various requests were, but they do not appear to have been favourable, and in March James received a naval appointment as Dispenser to the RN Hospital in Bermuda.
We have no diaries covering James’ time in Bermuda but we have some evidence of his activities from material in the National Archives covering the final stages of his long running dispute with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst. It was also during this period that James married for the second time, and did so under rather unusual circumstances.
James sailed with his family for Bermuda aboard the Barque Valleyfield in May 1825. According to the records of the Transport Board, his party consisted of 7 persons. Five of them would have been himself and his immediate family consisting of his wife Mary Ann and his three children, James, William and Ann aged 15, 9 and 7 respectively. Who the other two were is a slight mystery - James was not well enough off to employ numerous servants. It is however possible that one of them could have been a young girl of fifteen called Frances Miller, who was a niece of Mary Anne's and daughter of her brother who had died in a boating accident in 1809 at the time of her wedding to James. She may have been included in the party to help look after the young children.
As far as we know James' first year in Bermuda was uneventful, but in the summer of 1826 two problems arose to disturb what must otherwise have been a very pleasant existence. By September Mary Anne's health had deteriorated sufficiently for him to request a home appointment. In reply the Admiralty accepted his request to return to England, but were not prepared to offer him another appointment on his return. At about the same time he began to receive information that serious allegations were being made against him concerning the Emu Plains affair in New South Wales. These two problems, and their possible relationship with each other, were to dominate James' life for the next two years.
We will look first at the problem of Mary Ann's health. We know almost nothing about it except that in March 1828, almost 18 months later, James was married in Bermuda to her niece Frances and that during that period he had returned to England for about six months with some of his family. We can therefore conclude that her health must have deteriorated and that sometime between September 1826 and March 1828 she had died. Despite a thorough search we have not found any firm evidence to show whether she died in Bermuda, in England, or perhaps on the voyage crossing the Atlantic.
We know rather more about his second problem connected with the Emu Plains affair from records that exist in the National Archives. For instance we learn that the warning he had received from friends was substantiated by a letter written by the Colonial Office to the Victualling Office (at that time responsible for Surgeons) recommending that he should not be employed again by any Government Department.
While James was not aware of this letter he was sufficiently indignant about the warnings he had received to send on the 20th Nov letters to both Wilmot Horton and R.W. Hay, Secretary of the Colonial Office. asking them to reserve judgement until he returned to England in a few months time. The depths of his feeling can be detected in the following extract.
Were I not aware, Sir, how often the minds of the most virtuous men are biased by the first impressions made on them, I should not have taken the liberty thus early to address you, but would have waited till my arrival in England, which will be in a few months. Believe me, Sir, I have no other object in writing than to afford you a proper motive for withholding the expressions, ex officio, of any feelings that may have been excited in your breast by those erroneous aspersions.
The next development connected with this problem occurred on the 9th March 1827 when Adm. Luke, Flag Officer Bermuda, granted James 3 months leave of absence "in consequence of some very urgent private business".
It seems likely that James sailed to England in either the Nocton on the 11th April or HMS Niemen on 12th May. These two ships arrived in England on the 29th May and 1st June respectively which fits in well with James reporting his arrival in England on the 4th June.
On his arrival in England he continued his campaign to clear his name. On the 16th June he sent a reply to the Colonial Office letter of 8th Feb asking that the Colonial Office November letter to the Victualling Office be withdrawn. On 30th June this request was rejected in a letter which stated that the new Colonial secretary, Lord Goderich, after consultation with his predecessor, Lord Bathhurst, had decided that the accusations against James were well founded and indeed were further confirmed in verbal communications which had taken place since his return from Bermuda.
This exchange in June 1827 seems to have ended James' attempts to clear his name with the cooperation of the Colonial Office and led him to to try another approach.
Ever since serving with him in HMS Jason James had kept in contact with the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV). In 1821 he had received an invitation to visit the Duke at Bushy House and as recently as Jan 1825 had received a letter thanking him for his offer to present a collection of Australian birds to George IV who was forming a collection of animal and birds at Windsor Castle. Its not known how close or genuine this connection was, but it seems to have produced the necessary result.
Having been granted a three month extension to his leave at the end of July, on the 8th October the records show that the Duke of Clarence as Lord High Admiral had "acquainted the Victualling Board that HRH does not think it necessary to go into any investigation of the charges preferred against Mr Hall as a surgeon in several convict ships at New South Wales" . With this decision James was free to return to Bermuda. On the 8th/9th February 1828 he sailed from Plymouth in the transport Southworth, reportedly accompanied by two of his children. His eldest son James had been left in England to carry out an apprenticeship to be a doctor.
The Southworth arrived in Bermuda on Mon 24th March. James resumed his duties at the hospital the next day and five days later on Saturday the 29th he was married to Frances Miller, the niece of his first wife, in St James church in the parish of Sandys.
This account so far largely settles James' problems with the Colonial Office, but throws very little light on the fate of Mary Ann and the circumstances leading to his second marriage. The rest of this section is an attempt to clarify this situation.
As far as the death of Mary Ann is concerned, there are two possibilities. Either she died in Bermuda between Sept 1825 and the following Spring when James and the children returned to England or she accompanied her family and died on the voyage to England or after she had arrived there.
At first sight there are a number of reasons why the second alternative seems the most unlikely. The wording of the reason for him being given leave i.e. "very urgent private business" are more appropriate to his dispute with the Colonial Office than with Mary Anne's health.
In the 1930s George King Hall, wrote to his daughter, who was publishing the family diaries "I believe that Fanny (Francis Miller) went out or was taken out to Bermuda. Dr Hall's wife died there and he married Fanny there later on. It Is not known whether this remark was based on the family diaries, which he held, or from conversations with his father William.
There is a third reason which may have some merit. The Rev Robert Hoare, who married James and Fanny in March 1828, had been rector of the same parish since 1808. He would therefore have known if James had been widowed before he went to England in the previous year. If Mary Ann had been alive when the family had left for England it seems unlikely he would have have been prepared to conduct a marriage at such short notice - five days - considering the age and relationship of the two participants.
Taking all these reasons together it is very difficult to understand why, having failed to take the opportunity to return to England the previous autumn, James should subject an ailing wife to two voyages across the Atlantic and indeed this question only has to be asked because no record can be found of Mary Ann's death in Bermudan Records. One possible reason for this circumstance has recently come to light. By a coincidence the church of St James', where James' second marriage took place, was consecrated in 1826 and its incumbent was promoted from Curate to Rector. If Mary Ann died during this ecclesiastical reorganization, it might explain this gap in the church records?