James Thomas Winstanley, a
London lad, and Priscilla Woodford, a Lincolnshire lass, were married on
29 July 1833 at Bathurst in New South Wales, on the site where now stands one of Australia's most historic
churches: Holy Trinity, Kelso.
For both James and Priscilla, their teenage years had been turbulent
times. They had both faced death and the prospect of never embracing adulthood
and fulfiling their hopes and dreams. Both had rebelled against society,
and society, in its intolerance, had dealt with them swiftly. James and
Priscilla were both convicts who had been sentenced to death for their
youthful transgressions.
James
Thomas Winstanley (aka James Benjamin Winstanley) was a man whose past is surrounded more
by mystery than by fact. Although for many years his family believed that
he came to Australia as a free Englishman of aristocractic stock who had
been duped of his inheritance, James was undeniably a convict carpenter.
On Sunday, 14 February 1819, at the age of 17, James forced an opening through
the wall of his father's house in Kennington Lane, Lambeth, and entered the premises
of shopkeeper Levi Davis nextdoor at No 4, where he stole silverware and clothing
to the value of £1.15.0.
The following day, he pawned the silverware and absconded for a few
days. On his return home, his father, embarrased by his son's behaviour,
immediately summoned the police and had James arrested.
At the Surrey Assizes in April, James was found guilty of burglary and sentenced
to death. However, on the recommendation of the jury, mercy was extended
on the understanding that James would never return to England. Thus he
came to Australia to serve a 14-year sentence.
According to convict records, James was born in Bristol. Yet, although
no baptism record has ever been found, it seems that he was born in Southwark,
on the southern banks of the Thames. James told his son John Thomas Winstanley
that his parents were William Winstanley and Jane May.
Rumours of James's aristocratic connections intensified when in 1862
another James Winstanley, a man of considerable property and High Sheriff
of Leicestershire, disappeared, prompting a wide search for his whereabouts.
He was eventually found to have drowned in a river in Germany. This was
James Beaumont Winstanley (1832-1862).
Papers at the time wrote that James Beaumont Winstanley's heir was a
young nephew, the son of a sister living in Australia. The sister would
have been Mary Elizabeth Winstanley, wife of Charles Walker. Mary spent
but a short time in Australia. There is no evidence of a connection between
her and James Thomas Winstanley.
For whatever reason, James's son John Thomas Winstanley, while in England in 1875,
tried to establish that James was the rightful heir to Braunstone, the Winstanley family estate in Leicestershire.
In the event, the courts ruled against James's claim.
Priscilla
Woodford, from a family of agricultural labourers in the village
of Billingborough in Lincolnshire, came to the notice of the law when,
on 8 December 1831, at the age of only 15, she desecrated one of the very
symbols of agriculture: a common haystack belonging to Isaac Teesdale of
Hacconby.
Priscilla had started in service with the Teesdales only one week earlier
and was obviously not enjoying her new station in life. Whether this was
because she disliked the Teesdales or because she resented being thrust
out the door of the family home is not clear. Priscilla herself said that
she wanted to leave because the Teesdales mistreated her.
It is clear, however, that Priscilla was a single-minded, obstinate
young girl with more than enough pluck to fight her own fights. She did
not like her duties, especially the milking, and had already voiced her
resentment of the fact in a tirade against both her new master and her
new mistress.
She now felt the need to increase the stakes in her quest to settle
her differences with life in service to the Teesdales. But in her youthful
petulence she went too far. While Mrs Teesdale was upstairs dressing, Priscilla
proceeded to set fire to a haystack on the property. Another servant saw
her, and the game was up.
When Priscilla came to trial the following March, the court saw her
spirited temprament and her insolence towards authority as the product
of ignorance and a bad upbringing. A knowing parent might well have seen
just another tempramental teenager.
At a time when agriciultural workers all around England were engaging
in the infamous swing movement, rebelling against tithes, taxes, wages, the enclosure of land and
the mechanisation of farming, the law saw Priscilla's burning of
a haystack as an act of political revolt punishable by death. No one else
did - not the jury that found her guilty nor the aggrieved Mr Teesdale.
Nevertheless, the law was the law, and Priscilla was sentenced to death
and sent to Lincoln Castle to rue her foolhardiness and to make ready to
be hanged from the ramparts. She was barely 16.
The public obviously disapproved of the harsh sentence bestowed on Priscilla
and soon a petition praying for mercy on her behalf was presented to the
trial judge. The judge, swayed by this expression of public opinion, relented
and substituted a lesser sentence of transportation to New South Wales.
Now in Bathurst in 1833, given
time to learn life's hard lessons, the newly married James and Priscilla
had matured into perfectly decent law-abiding citizens about to move to
Sydney and start a family. Their debt to society had been paid in full,
and they were now free to start a new life. They would eventually settle in Glen Innes.
Family details
James Thomas WINSTANLEY (12 Mar 1804 - 13 Sep 1882)
Married
Priscilla WOODFORD (07 Feb 1816 - 05 May 1899)
Children
1. Elizabeth Ann WINSTANLEY (18 Jun 1834 - 26 Mar 1911)
2. William James WINSTANLEY (c. 1838 - 02 Mar 1839)
3. Caroline Louisa WINSTANLEY (21 Jun 1840 - 18 Jan 1916)
4. Henry WINSTANLEY (10 Dec 1843 - 21 Jan 1854)
5. John Thomas WINSTANLEY(08 Feb 1847 - 21 Aug 1927)
6. Susan Emma WINSTANLEY (27 Oct 1849 - 23 Nov 1934)
7. Henrietta WINSTANLEY (19 Aug 1852 - 08 Aug 1910)
8. Mary Woodford WINSTANLEY (15 Jul 1857 - 30 Jul 1935)
© Bob Bolitho 2001
Updated January 2004
