William Burke

218

Dianne Jones on 29th November 2023

NOTE: Year of Birth is taken from official records but day and month are not known. The latter dates have been entered as 01/01 because the site does not allow those fields to be left empty.

218

Dianne Jones on 29th November 2023

MEDICAL RECORD: Harvey Morris’s journal shows that William Burke contracted dysentery about one month into the voyage. He battled the disease for more than 2½ months before it killed him: Folio 22: William Burk, aged 23, prisoner; case number 11; disease or hurt, dysentery. Put on sick list, 3 June 1853. Died 17 August 1853 (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C11542201). --00--

218

Dianne Jones on 29th November 2023

THE DREADFUL VOYAGE ... By Weaver, P (2004) at https://fremantlebiz.livejournal.com/37766.html “Part 1. Irish prisoners for Western Australia on Phoebe Dunbar & Robert Small in 1853 This is the first part in series of eight which were extracted from a public talk which I gave at the Old Fremantle Prison celebrations in June 2000: On 30 August 1853 the 704 ton hired British convict ship Phoebe Dunbar hove-to in Owen’s Anchorage off Fremantle, Western Australia. On board was a consignment of 286 mostly Irish convicts and 29 British pensioner guards with their families, numbering 21 women and 42 children. A few days earlier on 19 August a similar sized consignment of Irish prisoners and British guards had arrived at Fremantle on board another hired convict ship, the Robert Small. Robert Small lost nine convicts and the figure would have been higher had it not been forced to put into Rio de Janeiro to off-load 150 tons of putrefied ballast, a black peat-like mixture of sand and Dutch clay. A medical board of enquiry convened at Fremantle laid most of the blame on the ballast, ‘...the smell of which was most offensive and likely to prove a fertile source of disease.’ However, had the leaky ship not inadvertently stopped off in South America where fruit and vegetables were purchased the death toll probably would have been much higher than nine. Surgeon Superintendent Harvey Morris -- doctor on at least three other convict shipments to Norfolk Island and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) -- had by his own admission deliberately falsified his records by registering only one third of those who came to him sick. His intention, as he wrote in his shipboard journal, was to instil in the prisoners a false sense of confidence in his abilities: ‘It is always advisable in a Convict Ship, especially when diseases are numerous, to keep the sick list down, as it is termed, with a view of deceiving the general body as regards the healthiness or unhealthiness of the Ship; and the more effectually to do this it is often necessary to keep the names of some off the list who ought to be there, and to register those of others who have little or nothing the matter with them...’” --0--

218

Dianne Jones on 28th November 2023

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM BURKE Birth: 1829 Death: 17 August 1853 at sea Convicted: Stealing a bullock and sentenced to 7 years on 28 July, 1851, at Athy, County Kildare, Ireland Family Status: Unmarried Occupation: Labourer Convict No.: Assigned with 2131 on 1 May, 1853 Transported: To WA on the Robert Small leaving from Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, on 1 May, 1853. He had been collected from Ireland prison. He died on the journey (https://waconvicts.fhwa.org.au/g0/p86.htm#i2131). --0--

221

D Wong on 17th April 2015

William Burke was 24 years old and was transported for 'stealing a bullock'. William died on the voyage.