By Irma Walter, 2020.
At the time of the 1841 census Charles Niblock was recorded as an agricultural labourer employed on the farm of Robert Robison. He was aged 30, residing at Little Campford, Kirkinner, in Wigtownshire, Galloway. [A Charles Broadfoot Niblock was born in 1807 at Kirkinner in Wigtownshire. His parents were John Niblock and Susan Maclure.[1]]
Niblock’s age varies in different records. On 30 April 1850 Charles Niblock, (alias Nibloe,) was described as a married man aged 32 when he was convicted in the High Court at the Ayr Court of Justiciary for ‘the crime of theft, habit and repute with previous conviction’. His address was again recorded as Kirkinner, Wigtownshire, Scotland.[2] Charles pleaded guilty to having entered a house in Torhousemuir and stolen a bed cover and some clothing. He was sentenced to seven years’ transportation.[3]
By the time of the 1851 census Charles was a prisoner in the Wakefield House of Correction in Yorkshire. This time his birth date estimate was 1813.
On 2 February 1853 he left Torbay in England on the convict ship Pyrenees (second voyage), arriving at Fremantle in Western Australia on 30 April 1853. His description at this time was married with three children, 5’4½”, with dark brown hair, brown eyes, an oval face, sallow complexion, of slight build and the forefinger of his left hand contracted.[4]
On June 1855 he received his Conditional Pardon.[5] Less than a year later it was recorded in the journal of Marshall Waller Clifton, the former Chief Commissioner of the failed Western Australian Company at Australind, that an inquiry by Bunbury Resident Magistrate George Eliot had been instigated into the death of Charles Niblock, killed at ‘Wedderburn’, the property of Scottish sheep farmer Alexander McAndrew, where Charles was employed.
On 10 February 1856 Clifton recorded – ‘Eliot & Mr Wright rode up early in their way to Wedderburn & enquire into death of Chas. Niblock.’ [6]
The following day Clifton wrote – ‘Before breakfast I went to the Burial Ground Hill[7] & buried the Man killed at Wedderburn.’ Clifton concluded the journal entry with a comment that – ‘The heat this day greater than I have ever felt it. 101 at 8 a.m., & 104 at half past 8 a.m.’
Cemetery records list Charles Niblock’s grave as Lot 16.[8]
[1] Ancestry births Scotland, https://search.ancestry.com
[2] National Records of Scotland, Ref. AD14/50/310 , at http://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/nrsonlinecatalogue
[3] North British Daily Mail, 2 May 1850.
[4] Convict Ships to Western Australia, at members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts
[5] Government Gazette, in Perth Gazette, 13 July 1855.
[6] Phyllis Barnes, JMR Cameron, HA Wills, et al, The Australind Journals of Marshall Waller Clifton 1840-1861, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, WA, 2010.
[7] Australind Cemetery. [See this website for Australind Cemetery records.]
[8] Ibid.