Thomas Kelly

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Dianne Jones on 26th November 2021

FOOTNOTE: It appears Thomas Kelly was able to remain in England or thereabouts after fulfilling his duties as a witness. But, his freedom was short-lived. In May 1821, he again faced court in Dublin City. This time, he was convicted of house robbery and sentenced to transportation for 7 years. In November 1821, he was aboard the Isabella for a now familiar voyage to NSW. See the continuation of his bio at https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/kelly/thomas/144979.

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Dianne Jones on 26th November 2021

IN ENGLAND: 11 January, 1819: Thomas Kelly was one of several witness called in the murder trial of Private James Clements (a guard on board the Chapman) and the ship's Captain John Drake. Below is an excerpt from the newspaper report of the trial: "CHARGE OF MURDER ON BOARD A CONVICT SHIP -- The Edinburgh Annual Register 1819 Admiralty Sessions, Monday, January 11, 1819 James Clements and John Drake were put to the bar, and arraigned for the wilful murder of John McArdle, on the 28th of April 1817, off St Jago, on board a convict ship called the Chapman, on the High Seas. The prisoners both pleaded Not guilty. Sir Christopher Robinson, the King's Advocate, opened the case to the Jury. He observed, that no subject of greater difficulty than the present case could be presented before any Court; the question now to be decided being, whether the prisoners at the bar had not gone much beyond the power entrusted to them. The prisoner John Drake was Captain of the convict-ship Chapman, on board which the murder was committed; and it was but fair to state, with regard to him, that this case had undergone some kind of investigation at Botany Bay. In consequence of an application to a Supreme Tribunal, the Captain had been allowed to go on bail; and he had this day surrendered himself to the laws of his country. The ship Chapman sailed from Cork on the 14th of March 1817, with about two hundred convicts, a crew nearly as numerous, and forty soldiers. For the first three weeks after the departure of the vessel nothing particular occurred; but on the 17th of April, a melancholy conflict occurred between the commander of the vessel and the convicts, under the supposition of an insurrection on the part of the convicts, and the consequence was the loss of many lives. This occurrence was not yet made the subject of a separate indictment. The principal transaction was that of the 28th of April, and to this the evidence would be chiefly directed. The leading testimony against the prisoner was that of the convicts, (who for this purpose had received the King's pardon), confirmed, however, as they probably would be, in the most material circumstances, by the soldiers, against whose evidence the same suspicion would not exist. The Attorney-General, Mr Gaselee, and Mr Reynolds, were also counsel for the prosecution. The first witness called was: Terence Kiernan. — He stated, that in March 1817, he was shipped on board a vessel called the Chapman, in the Cove of Cork. Several other convicts besides himself were shipped for Botany Bay, on board the Chapman. There were about two hundred convicts in all. The prisoner at the bar, John Drake, was Captain of the Chapman, and Clements was a marine on board the ship. After having sailed from St Jago, on the night of the 17th of April, a contest took place. He was not certain of the day, as he was not allowed to keep a log-book. Any convict with writing in his possession, he said, was immediately brought upon deck and put to death. On the 17th of April, several of the irons of the convicts were broken, and witness's among the rest. On this day there was a great contest; and on the 27th or 28th of April following, another firing took place. The greater part of the convicts were confined between decks. Before the firing commenced on the 27th of April, he was in his birth, close to the deck on the star-board side, when he heard Baxter (one of the officers of the ship) say to Clements, "Are you there?" Clements said, "I am." Baxter then said, "Raise a false alarm, and we will kill every bl--dy one of them." Clements said, "We will; but it is too soon yet. Wait till the gentlemen go to bed, and then we will have more time." Baxter replied, "It is a very good time now; the gentlemen are all in their cabins; and when you begin, don't be commanded by Captain, Doctor, or Officers, and I'll be accountable." He then heard a sound, which he supposed to be the drawing of a ramrod. Witness lay in his birth, under the starboard fore-scuttle. He heard Clements use some expression about the Irish, and said, "I will let go." He then put the muzzle of his gun down the scuttle, and fired his piece. The firing then became general, and it lasted nearly a hour and a half. Witness continued in his birth all the time, and never left it. Some time after the firing had ceased, Baxter, accompanied with soldiers, came among the convicts, and he there saw his messmate, John McArdle, dead in his birth. He appeared to have been killed by a bullet fired from some piece. The ball entered at the bottom of his stomach, and remained in his body. He believed the shot which killed this man had come from the soldiers' apartment. Cross-examined by Mr Common-Sergeant. — He never was in any gaol before the larceny for which he had been transported. He knew a man of the name of Crawley, a sailor on board the Chapman, who was put in irons for giving instruments to the convicts to break their irons. Witness himself broke his middle iron with a broom stick, and he saw seven or eight other convicts with their irons broken. Witness broke his irons before he arrived at St Jago, and before the 27th of April there were not one hundred and twenty convicts with their irons broken. He recollected a lever, and piece of tin in the shape of a knife, being found in the berth of himself and his messmate. He was flogged for this offence, and received a double punishment for speaking Latin to the Doctor. The Doctor said, "You are a good scholar, but a d--d rascal, and shall receive double punishment for it." The convicts made pieces of tin into knives to cut their meat, not being allowed knives. There was a Bible in the convict prison, but he never heard any oath administered. Dr Dewar and Michael Collins had said, that oaths had been taken by the convicts to be true to themselves, and to take the ship. Collins was a convict himself. There was a convict also of the name of Francis Murphy. Witness never heard Murphy say that it was his intention to murder all the crew. Baxter, the officer, died on the voyage home. After the firing of the 17th he never saw any attempt to force the prison door. The door was perforated in many places, and he supposed one of the bullets must have hit one of the hinges, as next morning he saw the door hanging on one hinge. Examined by the Bench. — He was designed by his father for the Church of Rome. The Bible found was not his property, but that of a Mr MacCoster. The muzzles of the muskets were fixed between the gratings of the hatchway. He did not see Clement fire down into the prison and only imagined he had done so by what he had said. To the best of his belief there were about twenty irons found broken. The soldiers had frequently ill used the convicts, and witness had refused to go on deck to get his allowance of wine in consequence of it. Until the 17th of April the convicts had nothing to complain of. Witness lay in a berth next to the deck. THOMAS KELLY [my emphasis] was next called and stated that he was also a convict on board the Chapman in March 1817. On the 27th of April, about 8 o'clock at night, he lay in the upper birth of the starboard fore-scuttle. While in this situation he heard Clements ask who was that talking Irish below? One of the convicts answered that there was no one talking Irish. Clements then said, "If you do not keep quiet, I will let go." He immediately fired his musket. Witness saw the flash, but not the muzzle, of the gun. Witness had been wounded in the contest of the 17th of April. The general firing commenced a minute or two after the first gun was fired, and continued for about two hours. The convicts cried out for mercy. John McArdle was killed in his berth, and witness's brother, Bryan Kelly [Bernard Kelly], also received a mortal wound. Cross-examined. — When on board the ship, he never saw anyone sworn to murder the crew or to do anything else. Examined by the Bench. — Witness slept in the upper berth, and Terence Kiernan slept under him in the lower berth. There were two tiers of berths in the ship. Witness, although he lay so near the deck, heard no conversation between Baxter and Clements..." (https://remembering-the-past-australia.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-hell-ship-the-chapman-1817.html). --00--

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Dianne Jones on 26th November 2021

A MUTINY OR A LIE?: The deaths of 12 men and serious wounding of up to 30 more during the Chapman's voyage to NSW were caused by (an unsubstantiated) “fear” of mutiny, according to Oxley Batman’s 1952 article: “The Hell Ship” — The Tragic Story of the “Chapman” Convict Ship 1817 By Oxley Batman (1952) Fear caused the death of 12 men in the transport Chapman. The transport Chapman was a reasonably happy ship, as convict transports went, until a convict named Michael Collins decided to feather his own nest. Hoping for favors, he told Captain Drake a lurid story of a planned rising among the convicts. That story began a series of tragic events which ended in 12 convicts being killed, 30 wounded, and the others starved and ill-treated for the remainder of the voyage. Governor Macquarie’s secretary, Mr. Campbell, mustered the convicts when the Chapman reached Sydney in July, 1817, and was appalled by the reports he heard from them. Macquarie ordered an immediate inquiry and wrote to the authorities in London. Macquarie placed equal blame on Captain Drake, his officers, Surgeon Dewar (the officer in charge of the convicts), and Lieutenant Busteed, commanding the military escort. These officers, he alleged, had shown “wanton, indiscriminate and unprovoked cruelty toward the miserably unfortunate men entrusted to their charge.” The evidence at the inquiry was shocking. From the time Collins told his story, the seamen and soldiers were in a state of panic. Every unusual noise, and many quite common noises, from the convict quarters were magnified into mutinies. At last, on April 18, a cook on sentry duty near the convicts shouted an alarm. Seamen and troops rushed to arms and fired indiscriminately through the bulkheads. Terry Kiernan, a convict, told the court of inquiry that most of the convicts were in bed, and all were in irons when the shooting began. He heard third mate Baxter shout, “Fire away, boys, and kill them all.” The firing continued for an hour and a half, although the convicts had cried for quarter from the fourth shot. Even then the frightened crew would not enter the convict quarters. The wounded and dying convicts, floundering in the dark, bled and suffered until dawn when a strong armed party ventured in. The dead were thrown overboard, the wounded taken to hospital and the remainder double-ironed. Four men, arbitrarily declared to be ringleaders of the “mutiny,” were taken to the deck and chained in the open. One of them, William Leo, said Dewar told him they would be kept there in all weathers until they reached Port Jackson. The seamen put a rope around Leo’s body and threw him over board. Eleven times they let him sink under the water, then dragged him back again. When he was dragged back on the deck, more dead than alive, soldiers pricked him with bayonets until the sergeant intervened. On top of all that, he was given 42 lashes — and Dewar ordered brine to be poured on his bleeding back. Later, Leo said, during a second minor panic, Baxter ran up with a musket and shot one of the four chained men on deck. The ship’s log supplied damning evidence of brutality. The day after the shooting, Captain Drake flogged 10 convicts — and one of his crew who was seen talking to a convict. He punished 46 more convicts the next day; 33 convicts the day after that. Thomas Higgins was given 24 lashes for telling a seaman, “It isn’t over yet.” Thomas Hall got 24 lashes for “rattling his chains and alarming the sentry.” There was another panic one night when a few convicts rolled in bed at the same time causing a rattling of chains. The following night someone shouted an alarm, “The convicts are rushing aft.” Another convict was killed and four wounded before Drake and Busteed could check their frightened men. The officers used the excuse of a mutiny to put the convicts on half rations—and pocket the profits. Dewar told Kiernan, “If any one complains about rations I won’t flog him. I’ll shoot him.” Kiernan was flogged for breaking a link of his chains so that he could remove his trousers and get rid of vermin. He was flogged for speaking to Dewar in Latin. Only two or three men of the 200 convicts on board escaped a flogging during the voyage, he said. In desperation, to allay the fears of the crew, the convicts asked that they be chained to a cable at night. This, they thought, would free them from the incessant flogging. But convicts who coughed on the chain were flogged (Baxter said they had “insinuating coughs”). If they rattled their chains unduly they were flogged; if they wedged their clothes on the chain to stop rattling they were flogged. The frightened crew would not give the convicts knives to eat their meat. Some broke off the handles of their tin mugs to cut up their tough meat-and were flogged for it. The ship’s officers blamed each other. Lieutenant Busteed said Captain Drake was drunk “a good deal of the time,” and had no control over his men. On the night of the firing, they said, Drake “seemed very far gone in liquor.” Captain Drake said he had no doubt a “most horrid conspiracy” existed among the convicts. Busteed’s troops, he added, “were in a mutinous and disorderly state and my own crew could not be trusted.” They had fired without orders, he complained, and would not stop when he intervened. Campbell returned a withering report. Apart from the killings, the floggings and starvation — the convicts were on half-rations for three months — the chaining of 76 men to a cable all night was inhumane, he said. “Let a humane man figure to himself a fellow-creature, double-chained to a cable and handcuffed for three months — except when he was taken off to be flogged,” Campbell wrote. “This was inhuman, barbarous, and cruel beyond all reason — even a mutiny could not justify it.” But the other members of the court — Judge-Advocate Wyld and Police Magistrate D’Arcy Wentworth — reported to Macquarie that no criminal charges could succeed against the officers of the Chapman. Macquarie, who had intended to send them all home in irons to face trial for murder, wrote bitterly to London about the inadequacy of the report. Captain Drake took action to sue Macquarie for unlawfully detaining his ship during the inquiry. Macquarie sent Busteed and Dewar home under open arrest, together with three soldiers and a group of convict and military witnesses. [The convict witnesses included THOMAS KELLY, whose brother Bernard was shot and killed by a soldier on 28 April, 1817, while chained on the ship’s poop deck.] But he [Macquarie] knew no one would be adequately punished. Convict lives were cheap in 1817.” (https://remembering-the-past-australia.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-hell-ship-the-chapman-1817.html) —00—

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Dianne Jones on 26th November 2021

24 November, 1817: Thomas Kelly, "brother of the deceased Kelly", is on a list of convict witnesses to be sent back to England to testify in proceedings against the Chapman's Commander and Captain John Drake, the Surgeon Superintendent Alexander Dewar and Officer of the Guard Lieut Christopher Busteed of the 69th Regt (https://archive.org/details/historicalrecord00v9aust/page/677). 12 December, 1817: Governor Macquarie writes to Earl Bathurst in London, his letter per the Harriet which carried the accused men and the witnesses back to England. In reporting on the Chapman's arrival in NSW, he says "the Convicts on board this ship were most cruelly used and inhumanely treated during the voyage from an ill-founded apprehension, that they intended to rise and take the ship and destroy the officers, soldiers and crew, no less than 12 convicts having been killed and 28 wounded badly; but the unfortunate occurrences which took place on board this ship and the measures taken by me thereon, will form the subject of a separate dispatch to your Lordship..." (https://archive.org/details/historicalrecord00v9aust/page/708). 1818: Thomas Kelly is [incorrectly] on a list of convicts in government employment in NSW (New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834; New South Wales; Male; 1818). --00--

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Dianne Jones on 26th November 2021

31 July, and 1 August, 1817: Colonial Secretary John Thomas Campbell held a muster of the Chapman's remaining 176 male prisoners. His subsequent report to Governor Macquarie led to the establishment of a Committee of Enquiry into the deaths, wounding and other instances of ill-treatment of the convicts during the voyage, and allegations of a convict-planned mutiny (New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary's Papers, 1788-1856). 28 August, 1817: Thomas Kelly is mentioned in convict James Talbot's evidence before the NSW Committee of Enquiry. Thomas is referred to as the brother of Bernard Kelly [also called Bryan Kelly] who died during the voyage from a gunshot wound -- the shot allegedly fired by a soldier called Jordan while Bernard Kelly was in irons on the poop deck (New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary's Papers, 1788-1856). --0--

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Dianne Jones on 25th November 2021

IN NSW: 1817: On arrival in NSW, Thomas Kelly was listed as a slater from Dublin; 5’1½” tall with a dark, freckled complexion, brown hair and grey eyes. On the ship's Muster Roll, he was listed as 19 years old but was recorded as 18 on the Convict Indents (New South Wales, Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849; 1817; and New South Wales, Convict Indents, 1788-1842; Bound Indentures 1814-1818). —00—

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Dianne Jones on 25th November 2021

IN IRELAND: February, 1816: Thomas Kelly appeared before the court in Dublin City and was convicted of picking pockets. He was sentenced to 7 years' transportation and was held, meantime, at Newgate prison in Dublin. --0--

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Dianne Jones on 25th November 2021

NOTE: Three men called Thomas Kelly were transported on the Chapman. All were from Dublin at the time of their prosecution. Two were tried in Dublin City, and both were sentenced to 7 years. The third, tried in County Dublin, was sentenced to transportation for life. --00--

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Dianne Jones on 25th November 2021

OCCUPATION: He was a slater. As this option is not listed above, "Not known" was used.