Convict Histories

Henry Longman (1824 – 1914) (Reg. No. 1189)

Henry Longman was baptised on 8 April 1824 at Rimpton in Somerset, to  parents George Longman and his wife Jane.[1] At the time of the 1841 census he was aged 19 (?) and his other siblings were George (11) and Jane (9).

On 28 October 1843 Henry married Isabella Hammond, daughter of John Hammond, at Sandford Orcas, a village near Sherborne in Somerset (but later part of Dorset). Henry was described as a labourer. He and Isabella were illiterate, signing their marriage certificate with a cross.

Local police in the Sherborne area of north-west Dorset had been investigating complaints from various farmers about a large number of their livestock being stolen. Over a period of 12 months, more than 100 sheep had been taken from various farms in the district and no clues had been obtained about the offenders, despite large rewards being offered.

There was much excitement when it became known that four men had been arrested for the crimes. They were 71-year-old Caleb Bartlett, his son Thomas Bartlett (25), and two brothers John and Henry Longman, who had been caught running away from the Bartlett property when police arrived. The men were charged and examined by magistrates in the Town Hall, which was crowded by local agriculturalists who displayed much interest in the proceedings. Their greatest surprise had been the arrest of Caleb Bartlett, a butcher and slaughter-house owner, well-known to all concerned and considered to be an honest and prosperous businessman, said at the time to own property worth  around £3000. His son Thomas was employed by his father as a butcher. A number of stolen pigs, sheep and other stock had been found and identified at Caleb Bartlett’s premises at Sandford Orcas.[2]

The case against John Longman was dismissed due to lack of evidence against him. His brother Henry and the two Bartletts were taken to Dorchester Gaol and in July they faced trial at the Dorset Sessions. Henry Longman was found guilty of stealing a calf, and along with Thomas Bartlett, who was convicted of receiving the calf, was sentenced to ten years’ transportation.

The charge of sheep-stealing against Caleb Bartlett was dismissed. However he was re-arrested a week later and faced another trial at Wells, this time for more felonies committed at Somerset. It was revealed that this supposedly honest and well-respected businessman was the leader of a gang of criminals responsible for plundering the livestock in the county.[3]

Caleb Bartlett

At Caleb Bartlett’s second trial, despite of the efforts of his lawyer, he was found guilty of three cases of sheep stealing, and was sentenced to 10 years and was sent to Millbank Prison.[4]

He did not survive much longer. Suffering from dropsy, Caleb Bartlett died at Wilton Gaol on 5 January 1849. He was buried at the Wilton Cemetery.

Thomas Bartlett

Thomas Bartlett, a butcher aged 25, was convicted of receiving a stolen calf and was sentenced to 10 years’ transportation. On 3 July 1848 he and Henry Longman were sent from Dorchester Castle Prison to Millbank Prison.[5]

A memorial (petition) was sent on Thomas’s behalf to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sir George Grey, pleading a case for mitigation of his sentence, on the grounds that he had been acting entirely under the control of his father when he broke the law.[6]

On 18 July 1848 the Dorchester Prison Governor informed him that enquiries were now pending.[7]

Meanwhile, a group of Reading agriculturalists who had been affected by the crimes petitioned Sir George Grey, dated 28 July 1848, for rejection of the plea by Thomas Bartlett for the commutation of his sentence, declaring that evidence showed that it was totally absurd for him to claim that his father was the Great Offender, and that he had not known that the calf had been stolen. Their petition had been signed in one day by many people who attended a local fair.[8]

Sir George Grey notified the Governor of Dorchester Prison that after carefully reading the petition from Thomas Bartlett, he found that there were insufficient grounds to justify any mitigation of his sentence.[9] The Governor of Millbank Prison recorded that on 7 September 1848 Thomas Bartlett would be sent to Reading Gaol to serve 18 months.[10]

Thomas was then transferred to Portland Prison from Reading Gaol in September 1849. In Portland Harbour he spent time on a prison hulk.

On 12 September 1850 a second application for leniency was submitted on behalf of Thomas’s mother Elizabeth Bartlett.[11] Her plea was that she was living alone and suffered mental distress as a consequence of her son’s absence. This submission was also rejected.[12]

On 30 January 1851 Thomas Bartlett was sent as a convict to Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) onboard the Lady Kennaway, to serve out the rest of his term of imprisonment.[13]

Henry Longman

Henry Longman deeply regretted his involvement with Caleb Bartlett and son. At the time of his arrest he and his wife Isabella had three children Phillip (4), Harriet (2) and Jane, just six months old.

[Later, at the time of the 1851 census, Isabella was working as a servant, and her two eldest children Phillip and Harriet were in the Union Workhouse at Rimpton. Her youngest child Mary Jane had died in the December Quarter of 1850.]

Henry was deeply concerned about the welfare of his family and asked the Prison Chaplain to write a letter on his behalf to Mr R. George of Rimpton, from Dorchester Castle Gaol. This letter, dated 30 June 1848, reads as follows –

Sir,

I have taken the liberty to address these few lines to you, from this my unfortunate situation. I am now under the sentence of Ten Years Transportation. It is useless now Sir, to say either good or bad. But I do assure you, Sir, that although I knew it was stolen property, yet I had no hands in it at all, when I came to Bartlett’s on Monday morning the Calf was then alive and that was the first time I had seen or heard any thing of it. Sir, my object in writing is to pray you to be merciful to my poor Wife & Children. That the disgrace that has fallen on me may not rest on them, for they Sir could really help nothing. I hope you will do the best for them (now like a Widow & Orphans) & void of an earthly protector. Mr Legg was at my trial, he put all he could upon Thos. Bartlett and me stating things most untrue about us on purpose to get Old Mr Bartlett out of it. It is not I and my brother that supplied Bartletts with all the Stolen goods he received. No person from Sandford Corton, Sutton & Compton, perhaps Mr Legg forgot yesterday in Court when he was speaking against us, that he endeavoured to conceal the Wheat that was stolen from Mr Crocker, Clackton Farm. When he went to Sherborne to get Yeatmans (?) to carry it away because it should not be found upon Bartlett’s premises. I send this Sir, to let you know Mr Leggs character. I was accused for the Wheat, I knew the party that stole it, they asked me to go with them but my wife said if I did she would tell of it & I did not.

I hope Sir you will excuse my liberty in writing to you. I hope after I have been gone a year or two, if you and other gentlemen will give me then a character what you have known of me perhaps I shall be able to have my wife with me

I remain Sir

Your Hble Servant

Henry Longman

Please tell my wife to send me a letter as soon as possible.

Mr R. George(?)

Rimpton, nr Sherborne.[14]

There was no remission of Henry’s sentence of ten years.

He was sent from Dorchester Castle Prison to Millbank Prison on 5 July 1848, then was transferred to the Stirling Castle Hulk at Portsmouth on 23 January 1849.[15] His conduct there was mostly good.[16] He remained there until he was taken onboard the convict ship Marion on 27 October 1851, bound for Western Australia.

Upon arriving at Fremantle on 30 January 1852, Henry was described as aged 27, 5’7’, with dark brown hair, brown eyes, an oval face, fair complexion and of stout build. He had a cut over his left eye, a scar over his forehead, and another on the little finger of his right hand.[17]

It wasn’t long before Henry was released on Ticket of Leave, which meant that he could find his own employment, provided that he regularly reported his whereabouts. Erickson states that Henry was employed as a farm labourer and then took up land near New Norcia, at a property known as Marbro Farm. He employed various Ticket of Leave men between 1864 and 1871.[18] There is no record of any offences against his name.

At some stage Henry had formed an association with Mary Halpin, daughter of James and Margaret, of Irish descent, born in Limerick in 1830. Mary was registered as a Roman Catholic by Bishop Salvado, as residing at Toodyay in 1854.[19]

From 1856 they had six children, registered under the Longman name, but baptised as Halpins.[20] Henry and Mary were married in 1896, as Roman Catholics.[21] Their children’s names were George (b.1856), John (b.1858), Mary Ann (b.1860), James Henry (b.1870), Jane Winifred (b.1867) and Louise Anna (b.1875).

In 1870, after a period of unusually heavy rainfall, Henry narrowly escaped drowning in the Moore River –

Mr. Longman narrowly escaped being drowned when fording the river on horse-back at the Mission, he had been clinging to some branches, up to his neck in water, for an hour and a half, until assistance arrived. Mr. Thos. Fitzgerald’s man was fording the river at Bindoon, with a horse and cart, when the horse and cart were carried away into deep water, and there had to remain until the horse was decomposed, when the remains rose with the cart. One need not wonder at the mail-bags being saturated with wet, and the addresses partly effaced. The sand-plains and every other part of the country will this season have no scarcity of water; let us therefore hope His Excellency the Governor will not forget the new surveyed line of road direct through, the Plains to the North.[22]

In 1879 Henry Longman was connected to an unedifying episode which resulted in the death of a man at Victoria Plains. Longman had taken six bottles of rum to a mill-house on the property of J Clune, where he and others, including a man named Taylor, his wife and their son, 21-year-old George Taylor, began drinking together. In a drunken state, George Taylor went out and returned with another bottle of rum to his father’s house. An argument ensued between the two drunken men and as a result, George Taylor grabbed a rifle from where it was hanging on a wall and shot his father dead. He was later found guilty of manslaughter, with a sentence of 12 years.[23]

Henry Longman’s wife Mary died in 1903 –

LONGMAN.—In fond and loving memory of our dear mother, Mary Longman, who died at Victoria Plains on April 24, 1903.

She sleeps within a bed of dust,

A loving mother, true and just;

Beloved she lived, in peace she died,

Her life was craved, but God denied.

Not dead to us who loved her,

Not lost, but gone before;

She lives with us in memory still,

And shall for evermore.

—Inserted by her loving daughter and son-in-law, J. and J. Broadwood.

May her dear soul rest in peace.

‘Tis one sad year ago to-day

Since we kissed her cold, cold brow;

And in our aching hearts we know

We have no mother now.

—Inserted by her loving son and daughter-in-law, J. and A. Broadwood.[24] 

Henry Longman’s death was registered at Victoria Plains in 1914.[25]

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[1] Bishop’s Transcripts 1830-39, at https://@www.family search.org

[2] Berkshire Chronicle, 6 May 1848.

[3] Salisbury & Winchester Journal, 15 July 1848.

[4] Home Office, Minister of Security, Series HO27, Piece No. 86.

[5] Home Office, Minister of Security, Series HO13, Piece No. 94, p.281.

[6] Home Office Registers of Criminal Petitions, Series HO19, Piece No. 11.

[7] Dorchester Prison, Correspondence and Warrants, Series HO13, Piece No. 94.

[8] Home Office Registers of Criminal Petitions, Series HO19, Piece No. 11.

[9] Dorchester Prison, Correspondence and Warrants, Series HO13, Piece No. 94, pp.395-396.

[10] Correspondence and Warrants, Series HO13, Piece No. 95.

[11] Home Office, Criminal Petitions: Series ll, Series HO18, Piece No 214.

[12] Correspondence and Warrants, Series HO13, Piece No. 99.

[13] https://convictrecords.com.au/ships/lady-kennaway/1851

[14] Home Office, Criminal Petitions: Series ll, Series HO18, Piece No. 214.

[15] Millbank Prison Registers, Series HO24, Piece No. 14.

[16] Home Office, Convict Hulks, Quarterly Returns, Series HO8, Piece No. 105.

[17] Convict Department, Estimates and Convict Lists (128/1-32)

[18] Rica Erickson, Dictionary of Western Australians, Vol.3, (Free), UWA Press, Nedlands, 1979.

[19] Rica Erickson, Dictionary of Western Australians, Vol.3, (Free), UWA Press, Nedlands, 1979, p.1898.

[20] Ibid.

[21] WA Department of Justice, https://www.wa.gov.au/, Marriage Index, Reg. No. 1011.

[22] Inquirer, 7 September 1870.

[23] Herald, 4 January 1879.

[24] West Australian, 23 April 1904.

[25] WA Department of Justice, https://www.wa.gov.au/, Death Index, 1914.