Thomas WATKINS/BICK (General)

by themudlark , Sunday, September 01, 2013, 12:19 (4102 days ago) @ m p griffiths

Let me try to put some perspective (based on the knowledge I currently have) onto the various postings in response to my query. First, though , let me say thanks to everyone for their help to date, and their interest.

1. Sandhurst and the Severn B 1851 census:
Elizabeth Watkins was the daughter of John Smith of St Peter's, Worcester, who was a waterman and fisherman. She was also the daughter-in-law of Thomas, the transportee, and about this time ended up in the Gloucester Poor House in Great Western Road after her husband, another Thomas, went to America and Australia, ostensibly to search for his father (the transportee Thomas). Her mother-in-law would have been Ruth Bick (later Watkins) but she died before Elizabeth's marriage.

2. Waterman: It seems unlikely to me that transportee Thomas was a waterman given that he had lived at Churcham and Birdwood, some distance from the river.

3. Offence: Contemporary documents differ as to the offences the brothers were convicted of. They were arrested, committed from the magistrates court and shown in the Assize records as stealing hay. However, other documents (chiefly connected with the transportation) show them convicted of sheep stealing which was a capital offence. However, Thomas at least had previous convictions....

4. Dickens: He certainly knew the ones in the River Medway at Chatham because his father had worked at Chatham Naval Dockyard prior to his own imprisonment following financial problems. Charles walked the area after he moved back to Kent to live at Gad's Hill, Higham, and knew the privations the prisoners suffered. However, this was 40 years after the Watkins brothers' imprisonment and the prisoners who had been kept on the Medway were prisoners of war. When younger and his father was jailed, I doubt that he would have been enthusiastic about seeing the inside of floating prisons given the problems of his father. However that didn't stop him writing about the effects of bad laws and unthinking society.

5. Hulks: One legacy of that period is that Rochester Museum includes a gallery reconstructed as a prison hulk in which artefacts from the period are displayed. It is well worth a visit, and gives an idea of the conditions in which the men (and women) were kept on ships like the Justitia.

I am not saying any of the information supplied is wrong, but trying to balance it against what my late father and I have so far discovered. This is part of the fun of trying to untangle family histories, isn't it!

Alan