Charles Holywell

343

Maureen Withey on 1st March 2024

ADM 101/34/1 Diary of the convict ship Hercules, which sailed from England to New South Wales, from 26 November 1824 to 10 May 1825 by Michael Goodsir, surgeon and superintendent. Folios 2-4: Charles Hollowell, convict, aged 19; disease or hurt, pain in both arms from the elbows upwards also pain in the knee joints and fore part of the tibia of the right leg, has several scurfy blotches on the face and hairy scalp, on examination found a bubo open on the right groin. Taken ill, 9 January 1825 at Spithead. Discharged 31 January 1825 cured.

71

Robin Sharkey on 26th September 2023

Charles Holywell, aged 19, was found guilty at the Old Bailey on 16th September 1824 of stealing carpentry tools on 30 August 1824. Assume he was born in 1805. He and his father were employed by a carpenter named John West who lived “in Strutton ground”. In August, West lost some carpentry tools - a saw, two planes, and a stock and twelve bits - valued in total at 15 shillings. Charles Holywell had pledged the tools with a pawnbroker, James Barnes, on different days – the saw on 23rd August, the stock on 29th August, and the two planes and some bits on 30th August. He was found Guilty. He was separately charged, and found guilty of stealing a metal watch from a box in the room of an apprentice of Mr Wests’s, having also pawned it at James Barnes’s shop. The apprentice also said Charles had stolen a handkerchief and a pair of trousers. Charles claimed that carts had stood at the door of the premises all day with people coming and going; and that he’d gone to have a pint of beer in the evening and a man had asked him to go and pledge his watch. Found guilty of stealing the watch. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, he arrived in Sydney on the “Hercules” in December 1824. In Sept 1831, he obtained his Certificate of Freedom (advertised in the Sydney Gazette, 27 September 1831 p 2) “Holwell” Charles and Ann were parents of Elizabeth, baptism record year 1835 “Hollowell” Charles and Ann were parents of Ann, NSW baptism record year 1837 In 1854 or 1855 he must have been in Sydney Infirmary since there is a letter to the Colonial Secretary’s Office about him, regarding Sydney Infirmary. Charles “Hollowell” died in Sydney in 1858, aged 53 years. The age is exactly consistent with the age of Charles ‘Holywell’ tried in 1824 at the Old Bailey. Charles became caught up in a notorious Sydney murder trial in early 1844, as a witness in the trial of John Knatchbull, alias Fitch. Knatchbull was the son of an English baronet, an influential family, and had originally been sent as a convict to NSW for robbing a person ‘with force and arms’. Knatchbull became notorious for his 1844 trial for the murder of widowed shopkeeper, Mrs Ellen Jamieson, who he attacked on the night of 6 January in her home at the corner of Kent St and Margaret Place in Sydney for the purpose of robbing her, supposedly to get sufficient money for his imminent marriage to a Mrs Craig (respectable widow). Ellen Jamieson died twelve days later on 18 January, leaving two children, who became orphans. Knatchbull had been given a ticket of leave from July 1843, to be in the employ of a Mr Lewis for the purpose of operating two small craft to trade along the coast on Mr Lewis’s behalf, one being the coaster “Harriet”. Lewis then became bankrupt, but Knatchbull didn’t report back to the convict authorities as he should have. Instead, he took up lodgings with Charles Holliwell in late 1843. Charles Holliwell gave evidence at the Inquest on Mrs Jamieson’s body, held on 18 January (SMH 19/01/1844 , p.2). He lived in Clarence Lane and said that Knatchbull had been lodging with him for about five weeks after being introduced to him by a Mrs Craig. Mrs Craig was to be married to Knatchbull, who had represented himself as a free man. Knatchbull had not paid any rent at all to Charles, claiming that he owned the “Harriet” cutter and was waiting for its sale and would then pay his rent to Charles. There were lies here – Knatchbull was not a free man and Mr Lewis owned the ’Harriet’, not him. A tomahawk had been openly lying in Holliwell’s yard for several months and so Knatchbull could easily pick it up. Unfortunately, he did. He used it to bash Mrs Jamison. Charles Holliwell went to Mrs Jamison’s house after the cry for help went up, and was in the house and immediately recognised the tomahawk as his when it was found hidden between mattress and bed slats. John Knatchbull was sentenced to death at his trial on and was hanged outside the Palmer Street gates of Darlinghurst Gaol on 13 February 1844, with a huge crowd watching (SMH 14 Feb 1844, p 2 ‘Execution of Knatchbull’). Very likely, Charles Holliwell was one of those attending.