William Spence

My great-great-grandfather, William Spence, was born in the parish of Holm in 1818. His parents, William Spence and Mary Ann Gurthrie, farmed there at Biggins and also at Craebreck. The journal of James Robertson5, Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney, identified that William Spence set up business as a merchant with his partner Robert Tulloch in Kirkwall in 1850. They purchased the stock of John Tait, who had just died of a stroke, and also took over his premises at 19 Albert Street. In the 1861 census, William Spence is living at 11 Broad Street with his wife, his seven children, an apprentice and two servants. He appears to be a successful Draper and General Merchant. However, in the 1871 census he has disappeared without trace and his family are living in a slum in Edinburgh. What happened to William Spence and why did his family move to Edinburgh? My father’s cousin had been told in her youth that William Spence had lent money that he should not have and this was sufficiently embarrassing to cause the family to leave Kirkwall. She had no explanation for William Spence’s disappearance from the census. Could any other source of information shed light on this mystery? The National Library of Scotland provides online access to a 19th century British newspaper library. Searching for “William Spence” between 1861 and 1871 found 220 entries. Trawling through these eventually revealed the following headline from the Scottish newspaper, The Caledonian Mercury, September 8, 1864 quoting an article from the Orkney Herald: EXTENSIVE FORGERIES BY A KIRKWALL MERCHANT (From the Orkney Herald) Could this be my great-great-grandfather? The article continued: "Much excitement was caused in the community at the beginning of last week by the rumour that Mr Wm. Spence, a well-known merchant in Kirkwall, had been imprisoned for extensive forgeries. This rumour, which many were unwilling to believe, turned out, unfortunately, to be only too true; and as the intelligence spread through the town it awakened mingled consternation and astonishment, since Mr Spence, from his position as an elder in the United Presbyterian Church, and from the apparent interest he took in religious matters, had previously enjoyed the reputation of being an honest and consistent man." Research at the National Archives of Scotland revealed that William Spence had been obtaining his shop stock on credit from Anderson and Co., Glasgow and they had refused him any further credit without letters of guarantee. William Spence then forged the signatures of James Williamson, grain-merchant, Kirkwall and Andrew Muir, farmer, Craebreck on such a letter for £300 credit. However, this did not solve his financial problems and he started to forge signatures on a series of promissory notes. His fraudulent dealings amounted to a staggering total of £2580 (using the measuringworth.com calculator, this converts to today’s money as: £188,000 using the retail price index, or £1,650,000 using average earnings). William Spence was held without bail in Kirkwall Jail until the end of February 1865 when he was sent down with Superintendent Alexander Grant and Constable John Mackay on the steamer Queen to Granton, near Edinburgh, for his trial on March 13, 1865 at the High Court, Edinburgh. He was charged with “wicked and felonious” forgery and uttering and he pleaded guilty to the first, sixth, eighth, fourteenth and fifteenth counts on the indictment. The Solicitor-General accepted his plea and withdrew the other charges. William Spence was sentenced to ten years penal servitude and a year later, on April 7, 1866, he was transported on the convict ship Belgravia to Western Australia. The Convicts to Australia3 database records: Convict 9009 was aged 47, height 5ft 5 1/4 in, dark hair, hazel eyes, oval face, pale complexion, and middling stout. The prison life, the 88 days voyage with 277 fellow convicts and the hard labour in Australia must have come as a great shock to this Kirkwall merchant. His final tragedy occurred when William Spence died of dysentery at Guildford Depot, an outpost of Fremantle Prison, on the 12th March, 1867 just 8 months after he had arrived in Australia.