William Holness

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Penny-Lyn Beale on 12th November 2021

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Records, 1817 William Holness. Royal Admiral - Nov 1800 Old Bailey - No Date. 7 years. Expired DEAD - 1813

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Roger Kent on 10th August 2016

William Holness was born in 1764 and married Ann on 10 September 1796. He was tried at the Old Bailey for an unknown crime and was sentenced to transportation for life. He sailed from England on 23 May 1800 aboard the ship Royal Admiral (Master - William Wilson) together with 299 other convicts bound for Australia and 11 missionaries bound for Tahiti. His wife Ann apparently traveled with him. The voyage was difficult from the start and quite eventful for gaol fever was brought on board and the ship’s surgeon died ten days out from England. Three weeks later, a reported plot led the missionaries to organize themselves into watches standing guard on the steerage every night. Then early in August, the convoy sighted four strange sails. After a gun battle of several hours, 59 prisoners from a French ship were transferred aboard the Royal Admiral and were soon complaining that the convicts robbed them. In late August when the ship arrived in Rio de Janeiro, 25 convicts and 10 others had died. The Royal Admiral sailed in mid-September for Port Jackson arriving on 20 November 1800. There had been 43 deaths among the convicts and almost all the survivors required medical treatment. In March 1801, Governor King reported that the prisoners were still very weak and, in October 1802, declared that many remained in a state of debility and would never recover the strength of men. William was aged 36 years when he arrived in Australia. After arrival little is known of what exactly happened to him except that he lived in Parramatta before moving to Pitts Row (now Pitt Street) in Sydney. On October 5th 1806 he advertised in the Sydney Gazette, the weekly newspaper, that he was a currier (not 0n your list) and had opened business as a tannery and leather goods store. On 1 October 1808 and again on 4 June 1810, William was recorded as a member of Loyal Sydney Volunteer Association formed to assist the military in case of convict uprising. The association was formed in Sydney and Parramatta with the Sydney association being led by William Balmain Esq. In 1808 and 1809 William and his wife Ann, advertised in the Sydney Gazette that two promissory notes had gone missing. Promissory notes were a strong part of the currency of early Australia. In June 1809 they subscribed for the enclosing of the cemetery. In November 1809 William renewed a land grant of fifty acres at St. George but it is not known what eventually happened to the land. On the 22nd of January 1810 William had to reapply for his grant as a result of Governor MacQuarie revoking all grants given to the people of the colony under the Rum Corps. In the 17th November 1809 William was committed for trial concerning the ‘receiving divers articles of wearing apparel, well knowing the same to have been feloniously stolen, taken and carried away’ the goods coming from breaking and entering Mr. Charles Pickering’s premises at the Rocks, Sydney. On the 17th of March 1810 he was convicted of the above crime. The sentence of the Court - (on account of some circumstances favourable to the prisoner) that he do pay a fine to the King of £5, which being done he was discharged. Then on two occasions (4 February 1811 and 30 April 1813) Simeon Lord Esq. filed torts against William Holness. On June 30th 1813, William was murdered in front of his home at 17 Pitt Street, Sydney in cold blood by two of the King’s Officers in disguise, i.e. in civilian clothing. The two men who committed this outrage were Lieutenants Archibald McNaughton and Phillip Connor. As the transcript of the trial reads from the Historical Records of Australia the two officers beat him to death in the gutter outside his home. It was proven that the guilty were in civilian clothes (outlawed for the military) and drunk when they verbally assaulted Elizabeth Hinch, servant to the Holness’s when she was walking along Pitt’s Row with a Mr. Joseph Brown. Elizabeth and Joseph took refuge in Mr. Holness’s house with Ann his wife (William was next door at this time) when the two men began to beat upon the door with sticks and yelling indecent language throughout the street. Upon hearing the commotion William left his neighbors’ house and told the men that they should move on. The two men proceeded to beat William Holness to death and leave him dead in the gutter opposite his house. The official post-mortem report stated that William died from an infusion of blood to the lungs but could not find any physical evidence of a beating to give a cause of death. Five doctors, of whom three were at the scene almost immediately, gave this evidence. McNaughton and Connor were found guilty of manslaughter, fined five shillings and jailed at Parramata Gaol for six months. The extraordinarily lenient treatment of the murderers at the hands of the Judge Advocate Ellis Bent's Court led Governor Lachlan Macquarie, interestingly also the Colonel of the 73rd., to write that little justice towards the poor could be expected when the court was made up of brother officers of the accused. After 4 years of garrison life with no real chances for military glory, unfortunately boredom and isolation caused a number of incidents like this that soured the relationship between the 73rd and Governor Macquarie. Linked to the tension with the officers was the major factional division in the colony, that between free settlers ("exclusives") and convicts who had completed their terms of imprisonment and were now settlers ("emancipists"). This caused a furor throughout the colony and a report was made back to London about the trial and also about the terms of duration of regiments in the colony. An historical feature from the Australian Daily Mirror also tells the story.