The wonderfully named Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet, and General Advertiser of Saturday 30 March 1816 contained a peculiar mix of news. There was the death of the “Indian Juggler,” whose sword-swallowing act had gone horribly wrong. A servant had words with his master, and killed the man with a dung-prong. A trunk of clothes from the Mediterranean caused the deaths of pretty much an entire household.[i]
At the Worcester Assizes, several petty thieves were sentenced to death, but a 25-year-old Gloucester-born shepherd named Caleb Atkins, convicted of uttering two forged £1 notes, was comparatively lucky. He was permitted to live – albeit in New South Wales under sentence of fourteen years.
Caleb Atkins was transported to Australia in the Sir William Bensley, along with 200 other convicts. (Some of the names of his fellow-travellers were exquisitely of their time: Essau Cheeseman, Brabazon Christian, John Daft, John Easy and Obediah Hards.) On arrival on 10 March 1817, he was described as 5 ft. 8, with a fair complexion, brown hair and blue eyes.
Atkins led a fairly uneventful life in New South Wales, shepherding at Liverpool and Bathurst, and showing up on the various Censuses taken at the time.
In 1828, only two years from the expiration of his original sentence, Caleb Atkins was tried at Sydney for knowingly receiving stolen sheep, alongside George Walker, Cornelius Keefe and Patrick Cuff, who were accused of stealing the sheep. The trial was largely conducted on the evidence of one John Donohoe, who was prone to long, off-topic addresses to the jury, stretching the presiding judge’s patience to its limit. There was a lot of confused and confusing evidence about detestable tea, sheep brands and creek crossings.
After two days of sittings, Walker, Keefe and Cuff were sentenced to death, and Caleb Atkins was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. Atkins’ co-accused were respited, and sent with him to Moreton Bay[ii].
Atkins, who had at one point been slated for Norfolk Island, must have experienced a mixture of relief (at not receiving the death penalty), and remorse, at having another fourteen-year term of transportation to serve. He didn’t suffer any protracted illnesses at Moreton Bay, nor did he abscond or receive any negative attention from his Commandants (Logan and Clunie).
In January 1833, five years into his term, he petitioned the Governor. He had learned, presumably from convicts who had since arrived at Moreton Bay, that others who had been tried and sentenced at the 1828 Criminal Court sittings had been granted their liberty due to a legal technicality. Caleb Atkins understandably hoped that the same technicality applied to him. Commandant James Clunie reported that Atkins had conducted himself well.
The same scribe who had prepared John Norman’s petition took down Atkins’ humble prayer for clemency, albeit with slightly less ornamentation in the headings.
The Honourable the Colonial Secretary begged to acquaint Commandant Clunie that Caleb Atkins had not qualified himself by length of servitude for indulgence under the regulations, and his application could not be complied with.
If only the legal technicality (if it existed) had applied to Caleb Atkins’ case. Two years after his petition was refused, whilst shepherding at the Limestone Station, Caleb was killed by indigenous people. The Moreton Bay Return of Burials states that he died on 17 June 1835, but does not record a date of interment, with “killed by Natives” in that section. This suggests that Atkins may have been buried at Limestone, rather than taken down to Brisbane Town to repose in the convict cemetery.[iii]
[i] “Some time ago a trunk of clothes was imported into Belfast from some port on the Mediterranean. several individuals in the house in which it was opened became very soon infected with malignant disease, and died. A relation of those persons, who was present at the opening of it, and exposed to the effluvia issuing from it, returned to his residence, where, after ten days’ sickness he also died. The disease was marked with excessive swelling of the legs and arms, copious expectoration of putrid blood, yellowness of the body and extreme putrescence of the whole system. The clothes which the deceased wore were boiled, and the apartment in which he had lain fumigated with sulphuric acid and nitre.”
[ii] Only Walker and Cuff would return to Sydney. Keefe and Atkins both died in 1835.
[iii] The only similar case in the Return book is that of William Reardon, who met the same fate in 1832 at Amity Point.
Moreton Bay and More 