Summary
Personal Information
Voyage
Transportation
John Reilly was transported on the Robert Small, departing 1st May 1853 and arriving 19th Aug 1853 with 30 passengers.
655 ton ship built in Newcastle, UK 1835. Conveyed convicts and passengers from England to Western Australia. Also carried approx. 100 free passengers. The register of convict passengers is currently being listed but not yet complete.
Robert Small (generic)References
| Primary Source | Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924 for John Reilly; Dublin; Kilmainham; 1836-1910; image 490 --0-- |
Claims
No one has claimed John Reilly yet.
Photos
No photos have been added for John Reilly.
Convict Notes
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.
OTHER: Birth: 1798 Death: 9 August, 1853, at sea Convicted: Horse stealing; sentenced to 10 years on 18 October, 1848, at County Cavan, Ireland Family Status: Unmarried Occupation: Labourer Transported: Per Robert Small leaving from Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, on 1 May, 1853. He had been collected from Ireland prison. He died on the journey. Convict No.: 2019 (https://waconvicts.fhwa.org.au/g0/p81.htm#i2019). --000--
MEDICAL RECORD: The journal of the Robert Small’s Surgeon Superintendent, Harvey Morris, shows John Reilly suffered from dysentery for five weeks before he died: “Folios 21-22: John Riely [sic], aged 55; case number 10; disease or hurt, dysentery. Put on sick list, 1 July 1853 at sea. Died 9 August 1853” (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C11542201). --0--
TRANSPORTATION -- 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...’” The “Convicts to Australia” site notes there were “ten deaths recorded on the convict shipping and description lists. They said eight men died at sea, one died in the harbour and one in the Convict Establishment Hospital. Michael Crolly (2051) was the harbour death; John Curren (2196) the hospital death; and John Reilly (2019), William Burke (2131), Patrick Donnellan (2138), John Dea (2171), Patrick Cullen (2205), Edmund Halley (2256), Michael Meehan (2268) and Thomas Beadle (2313) died at sea. Cholera and typhus were mentioned as the cause of death in some cases.” (https://www.perthdps.com/convicts/con-wa9.html) --0--
From “Ireland-Australia transportation database”: Last name: REILLY First name: JOHN Full name: JOHN REILLY Sex: M Age: 50 Trial place: Co. Cavan Trial date: 18/10/1848 Crime desc: Horse stealing Sentence: Transportation 10 yrs Ship: ROBERT SMALL 00/04/1853 Document ref1: TR 8, p 18 (https://findingaids.nationalarchives.ie/) --0--
1849, 19 October: Sent from Kilmainham to Spike Island Prison, in Cork Harbour (Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924 for John Reilly; Dublin; Kilmainham; 1836-1910; image 490). --0--
JAILS: 1849: 31 May: Admitted to Kilmainham Jail, Dublin; inmate #409; aged 51, 5’6” tall, grey hair, brown eyes, fresh complexion; reads well; married; no trade; no previous conviction (Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924 for John Reilly; Dublin; Kilmainham; 1836-1910; image 490). A separate record from the Smithfield Depot, Dublin, for Kilmainham prisoners lists John Reilly as follows, with some differences from the above record: inmate #4670, convicted for horse stealing, 10 years, at Cavan Sessions before the Assistant Barrister on 18 October, 1848; 51 years old; 5’6” tall, grey hair, brown eyes, fresh complexion; married, two children; literate; a mason from Ballymacone, County Cavan; never convicted before; well conducted in prison (Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924 for John Reilly; Dublin; Smithfield; 1844-1849, image 182). --0--
TRIAL: 1848, 18 October: John Reilly was tried and convicted at the Cavan Sessions, Dublin, and sentenced to 10 years’ transportation for horse stealing (Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924 for John Reilly; Dublin; Kilmainham; 1836-1910; image 490). --0--
NOTE: JOHN REILLY, convict #2019, born 1798, was one of two men called John Reilly to be transported on the Robert Small. The other John, convict #2133, was born much later in 1829. --0--