BADEN, Thomas (Levy Isaacs)
b. London, 1799–1867
Lady Castlereagh, 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1817.
Single; Goldsmith; Height: 175 cm; 4 children.
Black hair, eyes dark, fair pale complexion. ‘Well behaved’ on board ship. Thomas Baden came from a family of jewellers in London. His name was variously spelled Beadon, Beedon, Beeton and Beaton. He was sentenced in January 1817 for stealing some printed cotton worth one shilling and fivepence from a draper in Oxford Street.
Thomas Baden was born Thomas Isaacs, but took his mother's maiden name. Baden (Beadon) was stationed in Launceston and in 1819 was appointed a constable. He was dismissed from the force in January 1821 and sentenced to hard labour in the gaol gang at Port Dalrymple for three months. On 8 June 1822, he was charged with neglect of duty while working in the Public Works Department, and was sentenced to work in irons for one month. On 8 October 1824 he was charged with having assaulted a Mr Mayley. No proof of the offence was tendered to the court, and the charge was dismissed. Baden took refuge on the islands at the western end of Bass Strait. It was said that his English family remitted ‘a handsome allowance’ to him through one of the Jewish residents of Launceston. By 1830 he had moved to Gun Carriage Island in Bass Strait. His common-law wife was Beth Smith, whose real name was Woreterneemerunnertatteyane. She had been forcibly removed from the Tasmanian mainland by John Harrington, and was ‘owned’ by Thomas Tucker until Baden (Beeton) obtained her—probably by buying her. They had four children, Lucy, Jane, James and Henry who were ‘home educated’ to read and write.
Baden returned to Launceston for some years, and then took his wife and his children back to live on the islands in Bass Strait, settling on Badger Island.
OBSP, 1817, case 245, p. 245; A. L. Meston, The Half-castes of the Furneaux Group, p. 50; CON 31/1, no. 109, p. 28; CON 13/1, p. 173; HO 10/43.
Listed as a Jew, Samuel Barnard was transported for embezzlement of £9, the property of his employer, Thomas Davis, after a trial in Sydney on 18 August 1841. Barnard was placed in the Clerks' Room Police Barracks in Hobart Town for twelve months.
CON 31/8, no. 494.
BARNET, Lazarus (Bernard LAZARUS)
b. London, 1801
Speke (2), 1821; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1820.
Single; Errand boy; Height: 152 cm.
Stout, dark sallow complexion, black hair, dark black eyes. Tattoo AK on right arm. Pock-pitted. Lazarus Barnet was transported for stealing a pair of stockings from a shop in Bishopsgate, having been sentenced at Middlesex on 28 February 1820.
Barnet arrived on 18 May 1821. In the 1825 General Muster list he was recorded as ‘Bernard’ Lazarus, in ‘Government employ’ in Sydney. He worked at the New Lumber Yard and in January 1822 the Colonial Secretary's records show him as a ‘Basket maker’. Lazarus Barnet was listed in the 1828 Census as a gardener at William Brown's, York Street, Sydney. His religion was given as ‘Protestant’ and he was ‘Free by Servitude’. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1829. Barnet worked as a compositor at the office of the Sydney Gazette in 1836, and was charged in March of that year with being absent from his hired service for three days. He was sentenced to thirty days on the treadmill. It was his third conviction in four months for absconding, and he claimed to have been ‘unwell’. In August he was charged again for refusing to return to work, and sentenced to two months in gaol. A Lazarus Barnet had received a certificate of freedom on 22 February 1827, and another on 12 August 1841. The certificate was renewed in 1858, where his surname was misspelled as ‘Barent’.
OBSP, 1819–20, case 498, p. 205; Speke (2) Indent 4/4007, p. 352; HO 10/19; Sydney Gazette, 20 August 1836, 3 March 1827, 6 December 1836, 20 August 1836; TL 29/398; CF 4/4368, 4/4424-41/1097, 58/6066.
BARNETT, Aaron (Aaron Moses)
b. London, 1785–1843
Glatton, 1803; Convict; Sentenced to life, Surrey, 1800.
Single; Labourer; Height: 163 cm.
Ruddy, pockmarked, yellow muddy complexion, black hair, dark brown eyes. Can neither read nor write. Aaron Barnett was sentenced at Surrey on 11 August 1800.
The Glatton arrived in New South Wales on 11 March 1803. In July 1804 Aaron Barnett was punished for ‘theft’ and whipped for stealing government provisions. He was listed in the 1806 Muster as a prisoner in Sydney assigned to P. Hibbs. By the 1814 Muster, Barnett was listed as being ‘free of the government stores’. He was a labourer, living at Windsor, when he was granted a certificate of freedom on 1 January 1814.
On 31 March 1816 he married Ann Emerson (who had been transported on the Francis Eliza in 1815 with a seven-year sentence). By May 1820 Barnett had been appointed a constable in Sydney. He remained in the police force for the next three years. Aaron and Anne Barnett were the witnesses at the marriage of Israel Chapman (q.v.) and each signed the register with an X. In 1823 he asked for, and received, one assigned convict servant. The servant was John Daniels (q.v.), who subsequently absconded from work and was wanted by the police. By 1826 Aaron Barnett had twenty head of cattle and ‘as a married man desirous of settling in the colony and free by conditional pardon’, asked for a grant of land. In the Census of 1828 he was listed as ‘Hebrew’ (as was his wife). He was a tenant farmer with sixty acres of land, twenty cultivated acres and twenty horned cattle in the District of Botany. Barnett married, for a second time, at St Luke's, Liverpool, to Eleanor Frawley, on 12 October 1831. Aaron Barnett of George Street was granted a confectioner's licence on 13 May 1843, but nine days later was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery.
Sydney Gazette, 29 July 1804, 13 May 1820, 28 August 1823, 13 January 1825, 13 May 1825; Land Correspondence 2/7796, 1 February 1826; Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1843; CP Register 4/4430, p. 76, p. 188.
BARNETT, Abigail
Free.
Single.
Abigail Barnett married Emanuel Myers (q.v.) at the Sydney Synagogue on 9 June 1845.
BARNETT, Abraham
b. London, 1807–1835
Waterloo (3), 1833; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Middlesex, 1832.
Single; Clothes dealer; Height: 165 cm.
No education. Dark sallow complexion. Dark brown hair. Grey eyes. Large nose. Barnett worked in Petticoat Lane and, together with James Wilson (aged fifty-five), stole a watch from a passerby in Essex Street. Barnett was twenty-three at the time of his trial. He was sentenced on 18 October 1832.
Abraham Barnett arrived in New South Wales on 3 August 1833. He died at the hospital in Liverpool and was buried by St Luke's Church of England in 1835.
OBSP, 1832, case 2432; Waterloo Indent, p. 81, no. 1503.
In 1847, Barnett and Sarah Barnett (née Levy) of Maitland West had a child, Folk, whom they registered as a ‘Hebrew’.
BARNETT, Emanuel
Free.
Emanuel Barnett was a committee member of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation in 1850.
BARNETT, Folk
Free.
Single.
Folk Barnett married Julia Emanuel (q.v.) at the Sydney Synagogue on 12 March 1844. Julia was the widow of Barnet Emanuel (q.v.).
BARNETT, Henry
1807–1870
1839; Free.
Single; Dealer.
The son of Barnett Barnett, ‘merchant’, and Sarah (née Levy), Henry Barnett was born in London, and married Charlotte Cohen (q.v.) at the Bridge Street synagogue in Sydney on 30 June 1841. On 1 April 1843 Henry Barnett, Baron B. Cohen (q.v), Francis Cohen (q.v.), and George Phillips (q.v.) were all out on bail after a quarrel with George O'Brien. As the cause of the disturbance was explained: ‘Yes, Harry Barnett had better mind his wife that look at Mrs D. E. or F telling Mrs B of anything of the kind would be worse than a twice told tale. As to Mrs B's “little affair” as I call it before marriage—not a word 'tis past. Mr O'Brian denies all connection with his now defunct paper’.
Henry Barnett, ‘dealer’ of George Street, was listed as insolvent on 2 April 1842 with debts of £472 and only £5 of assets. He was discharged as a bankrupt on 12 March 1844. In November 1846 Henry Barnett, publican, was fined forty shillings for selling liquor after hours. Henry died 2 December 1870 and his wife, Charlotte, died in 1 July 1871, aged fifty-one. Both were buried at Lidcombe's Jewish cemetery.
Australasian Chronicle, 14 April 1843; Omnibus and Sydney Spectator, 1 April 1843; Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 1842; Citizen, 7 November 1846.
Dark ruddy complexion, dark brown to grey hair, hazel eyes. ‘No peculiar marks.’ Could read and write. On 14 July 1828 Barnett was convicted for stealing brass. No previous convictions had been recorded in England. He was married with eight children in England when he was convicted at the Bristol Quarter Sessions on 13 October 1828.
On arrival in Sydney on 18 August 1829 Hiam Barnett was immediately assigned to work for Simeon Lord. Hiam Barnett was a prisoner at Newcastle Gaol in November 1832. Hyam Barnett was buried by the Church of England in Bathurst in 1835.
Ship Indent 4/4014, p. 202, no. 1457–16.
BARNETT, Isaac
b. London, 1811
Florentia (1), 1828; Convict; Sentenced to life, Southworth, 1826.
Single; Errand boy; Height: 151 cm.
Ruddy fair complexion, dark brown hair, dark hazel eyes. Could not read or write. Isaac Barnett was sentenced at Surrey, on 24 October 1826, for ‘robbing a person’.
The Florentia arrived on 3 January 1828. Isaac Barnett was described in the 1828 Census as a Protestant. He was assigned to the Australian Agricultural Company at Port Stephens. A ticket of leave was issued in 1836 for the District of Argyle, then changed in 1838 for Berrima. A first class conditional pardon was granted in 1842. At this time, his height was recorded as 161 cm. Barnett went to Hobart Town to live with his brother in 1843 and returned to Sydney in the following year, only to be arrested in June for picking a man's pocket.
On 7 August 1847, the Colonial Secretary asked his department to prepare a pardon for Isaac Barnett. Isaac was buried at the Harrington Street Jewish cemetery. The date was not recorded,
Florentia Indent 4/4013, p. 16; Governors' Despatches 1846, A1241, A1217, p. 139; TL 36/653, 36/705; CP 43/303; HO 10/53; CS 47/204; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 1844.
BARNETT, James
b. Birmingham, 1796–1835
Isabella I (1), 1818; Convict; Sentenced to life, London, 1818.
Single; Seaman; Height: 155 cm; 2 children.
Sallow complexion, dark hair. Barnett was among a crowd of boys at Covent Garden who were pickpockets. A stolen watch was found in Barnett's ‘right-hand pocket’ by a constable.
James Barnett arrived in New South Wales on 14 September 1818 and married Ann Bates at St John's Church of England in Parramatta on 2 January 1821. He was listed in the 1828 Census as a Jew, perhaps mistakenly, with a wife and two children, John (1824) and Sarah (1826). He was listed as working as a seaman at Newington.
Barnett died at Bathurst in 1835 and was buried by the Church of England.
OBSP. 12 April 1820, case 450.
BARNETT, John
b. London, 1804–1887
John (1), 1827; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1827.
Single; Old clothes man; Height: 168 cm; 2 children.
Sallow complexion, black hair, hazel eyes, scar on right hand. Ring on little finger of right hand. In London, John Barnett stole two sovereigns from a drunken man in Whitechapel. He was pursued and caught.
John Barnett arrived in Sydney on 25 November 1827 and was assigned to a bookbinder, Mr G. Hazard, of Prince Street, Sydney. He was listed thus in the 1828 Census. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1837. Barnett married Sarah Frances (q.v.), the daughter of Benjamin Francis (q.v.), on 21 January 1833. It was Australia's second Jewish marriage and Moses Brown (q.v.) officiated. Sarah was officially converted to Judaism in Australia (as her father was Jewish and her mother was not). The conversion was authorised on 18 January 1833 by Michael Phillips (q.v.) and J. B. Montefiore (q.v.).
Barnett's name appears on the petition asking for the establishment of a synagogue in Launceston in May 1843.
OBSP, 1826–27, case 1250, p. 479; TL 37/458, 23 February 1842; CO 2809/274; Launceston Synagogue Petition, CO 280/673.
BARNETT, John
b. London, d. 1887
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; Cooper; 4 children.
John Barnett arrived in Sydney on the Palambam, with Sarah (q.v.), his wife, and their two children, Mary Jane, aged six, and Robert Freeman, aged seven. On 2 December 1833, John and Sarah had a son, Lewis. On 10 October 1836 a daughter, Jane, was born. Both children were registered with the Jewish community. In 1836 Barnett was working as a ‘collector’ for the Australian. Mr John Barnett was recorded as having given £10 to the Sydney Synagogue building fund on 15 September 1839. A donation of £5 was recorded in the name of Master Lewis Barnett. Lewis was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery on 26 April 1841. In November 1842, John Barnett was listed as eligible to vote in the first Sydney municipal elections, as he had a dwelling house in Castlereagh Street. On 31 March 1842 the Australian announced that John Barnett had commenced a partnership with J. G. Raphael (q.v.) as an auctioneer in Lower George Street.
John Barnett was buried at Sydney's Rookwood Jewish Cemetery on 3 October 1887.
Australian, 9 April 1842.
Brown hair, brown eyes. Slightly pock-pitted with mole on right side of chin and a small mole at the corner of his right eye. His alias, ‘Youner’, sounds like the Yiddish for ‘younger’ (Yinger). He often reversed his names, and was frequently identified as Solomon Joseph Barnett. Barnett had been transported for stealing sixty dozen silk stockings. He had been on the prison hulk, Retribution, in 1812, serving a seven-year sentence, which concluded, after four years, with the granting of a pardon. His dossier notes he ‘has very bad connexions’. He was sentenced at the London Gaol Delivery on 20 February 1822, and had behaved ‘indifferently’ on board the prison hulk.
‘Youner’ Barnett arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 11 January 1823. After a brief period of assignment with the Public Works in Hobart Town, Solomon (as he appears to have been known in Van Diemen's Land) was granted an allotment of land in 1824 (in Hobart Town).
His rehabilitation came to an abrupt end, however. He was a messenger to the Colonial Secretary's Office when, on 9 October 1827, he was sent to a penal settlement for three years for not being able to account for a stolen silver watch that was found in his possession. A ticket of leave was granted on the Queen's birthday, 24 February 1832. In November 1833, he was appointed a constable. In March 1835 he was convicted of being drunk on duty and of allowing a prisoner in his charge to become intoxicated. He was dismissed from the police force, deprived of his ticket of leave, and transferred to a rural district. Barnett received a conditional pardon on 22 January 1838, and was permitted by the Lieutenant Governor to travel to Sydney, where he had a brother. He carried on ‘a respectable business in Sydney until 1844, when business caused him to return for a visit to Van Diemen's Land’. Once he had landed in Hobart Town, he discovered he needed official permission to return to New South Wales. He therefore wrote to the Colonial Secretary, stating that he would be ‘utterly ruined’ if he could not obtain the necessary permit. He was then forced to ask the Hobart Hebrew Congregation to assist him to travel to the new colony of Port Phillip. The congregation agreed to help him leave and, in 1851, he was given the necessary official permission to proceed to any port save those in Great Britain.
Morley (4) Indent 4/4008, p. 249; CON 31/38, no. 485; CON 23/3; CON 23/1, no. 485; LSD 1/73/195; Dixson Library 165a, Petitions 1845, p. 353a–f; HO 10/43; CS 38/8656, rec'd 18 August 1838, 4/2432.2; Launceston Independent, 3 March 1832; CP 1746.
BARNETT, Joseph
b. London, 1797–1850
John I (3), 1831; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1829.
Married; Jeweller; Height: 165 cm; 7 children (in England).
Dark complexioned, black hair, black whiskers, oval face, ‘retreating’ hair, brown eyes, long nose, medium mouth and chin. ‘A Jew.’ Joseph Barnett was married to Sarah Barnett, who lived at City Road, London. They had seven children. He was convicted for ‘felony’ when he stole from a warehouse. He was caught carrying a basket containing stolen silver plate worth £100. He protested to the judge: ‘I am innocent. It is all prejudice against me’. He had been tried previously for the theft of a five-pound note. He could read and write. Barnett brought seventeen shillings with him on board the transport ship.
Barnett arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 29 January 1831. On 17 December 1834, while assigned to Mr Burton, he was arrested for stealing a watch belonging to Isaac Solomon (q.v.), the brother of Judah and Joseph, and was sentenced to an additional seven years at the Launceston Quarter Sessions on 4 January 1835. On 8 February 1835 he absconded from the road party and on recapture was sentenced to three years hard labour, attached to the Hulk Chain Gang, and sent to the convict station at Bridgewater.
On 22 November 1838, while assigned to a Mr Solomon, he was charged with misconduct. Barnett offered to give police information about a felony if he received a ticket of leave. For his impudence he was given a sentence of six months hard labour at Grass Tree Hill; it was noted that his conduct was to be reported. On 14 September 1839 he was arrested for being at the Military Barracks at Launceston without permission and was sentenced to three weeks hard labour in chains. He received his first ticket of leave on 13 July 1841.
Barnett was employed as a police constable, and on 7 September 1842, was attacked by a woman he was arresting. Others nearby also attacked him, shouting: ‘You bloody Jew. She shan't go’. Constable John Isaacs (q.v.) came to his aid and the woman was fined £2.
On 5 April 1843 Barnett was sentenced at the Supreme Court in Launceston to fourteen years for receiving stolen goods and was sent to Port Arthur. This sentence was reduced in June 1845 by two years for apprehending an absconder, and in March 1846 he was allowed to leave Port Arthur for Bridgewater. Barnett's wife must have died because on 19 August 1841 he received permission to marry Caroline Phillips, a daughter of Moses Phillips (q.v.). His second ticket of leave was issued on 29 March 1849 and a (posthumous) conditional pardon was granted on 16 November 1852.
CON 34/3, no. 1459; CON 31/4; Allport Collection; CON 18/9; CON 52/2, p. 13; Hobart Town Courier, 19 April 1839; CSO 22/35/1148, 7 September 1842.
BARNETT, Joseph
b. Houndsditch, 1804
Arab (1), 1822; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1822.
Single; Hawker; Height: 155 cm.
Ruddy complexion, blue eyes, dark brown hair. With Thomas Johnson and John Jones, who were two other pickpockets, Barnett stole eight shillings from a man watching the changing of the guard at St James Palace. He was listed as a Jew.
Barnett arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 6 November 1822. As soon as his period of probation was over, on 29 January 1824, Joseph Barnett was convicted of hawking goods about Hobart Town without a licence and was sentenced to an additional six months hard labour. On 15 June 1825, he was caught inside a private house with the intent to steal, and was sent to Maria Island. On 13 January 1827 he was found with stolen potatoes in his possession and received twenty-five lashes. On 5 January 1828 he was absent from duty while with the boats belonging to the Public Works Department and sent to the Black Snake Road Party for three months. In the next six months he received seventy-five lashes for absence and insolence and was sent to the treadmill for two days. On 22 July 1828 he was convicted for having a stolen waistcoat in his possession at the Prisoners' Barracks in Hobart Town and sent back to Maria Island.
Barnett received a seven-year sentence at the Supreme Court in Hobart Town on 10 March 1829. He was given twenty-five lashes in May 1831 for being absent without leave from the New Town Barracks and sentenced to twelve months hard labour in the Hulk Chain Gang. In July 1835 he was given a further twenty-four lashes for neglect of duty, and on 6 August 1835 was accused of robbery and, though the charge was unproven, was put in a road party for twelve months.
On 4 July 1840, Joseph Barnett was given permission to marry Margaret Reed, who had come to Van Diemen's Land on the Nautilus. His conditional pardon was approved on 8 September 1842. He briefly rented seat no. 76 in the Hobart Town Synagogue in 1845.
In 1875 the Hobart Hebrew Congregation received a letter about a Joseph Barnett who was ‘about to die’. The congregation refused to have anything to do with him. The Synagogue Minutes explain that he ‘never was a member of the congregation and has a son living in Hobart Town’. Joseph Barnett died on 17 August 1875 at the New Norfolk Asylum and was buried by the Hobart Hebrew Congregation.
OBSP, 1821–22, case 490, p. 223; CON 31/1; CSO 1/108/27, p. 27f.(1830–31); CON 23/1; HO 11/4; CP 765.
BARNETT, Joseph (John)
b. London, 1813–1851
Free.
Married.
Joseph Barnett received a publican's licence for the Lincoln Hotel. By 1850, Barnett was involved in a series of business ventures. He sold a whale fishery at Encounter Bay after it had made a profit of £600 for the previous two years. He bought a number of houses from people who had left for the goldfields and advertised that he needed ‘a respectable young man’ to collect rent on them. He owned and managed the Jerusalem Coffee House in Port Adelaide.
Joseph Barnett died at Port Adelaide at the age of thirty-eight. He was described as a wine merchant at the time of his death. Pritchard queries whether it was his widow, Elizabeth Barnett, who married Henry Thomas Cullen in 1853.
South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 16 March 1839, 31 January 1850; 4 February 1850, 11 July 1850, 15 July 1850; Pritchard Index.
Fresh complexion, black hair, dark reddish hair, dark grey eyes. Literate. Henry Barnett, the father of ‘Lewis’ as he was known, was a coach proprietor. Lewis was said to have been able to drive a pair of horses through the metroplitan traffic.
Joshua Lewis Barnett was transported from New South Wales to Van Diemen's Land on the Francis Freeling, arriving 12 March 1837, after having been sentenced in Sydney to fourteen years transportation for receiving stolen tortoise shell. The case caused wide public interest. The Sydney Gazette of 24 January 1837 told the story of ‘Two of the Hebrew Nation’ who had been charged with receiving stolen goods and who were both named Lewis Barnett.
In Hobart Town on 5 August 1837, Barnett was convicted for ‘idleness’ and put on bread and water in solitary confinement for forty-eight hours. On 28 April 1838 he was given six months hard labour for neglecting his duty as a watchman. On 7 March 1839, while a servant of Mr John Moses (q.v.), Lewis Barnett was found to be drunk and was reprimanded. On 10 January 1839, he was reported by Mr Moses for insolence, and returned to the Public Works Department to work in the interior for three months. On 19 May 1840, having been returned to the Moses household, he was found guilty of misconduct for being in a public house after hours, and received four days in the cells on bread and water. Despite his poor conduct, on 17 June 1840, John Moses asked that Barnett be permitted to go with him on business to Sydney. Permission was refused on the grounds that his offences in Sydney had been ‘very bad’.
On 27 May 1841, still assigned to Moses, he was accused of misconduct for being in the theatre after hours. He received two months hard labour. On 2 January 1844, another charge of misconduct resulted in a sentence of three days solitary confinement. A ticket of leave was issued on 12 April 1844 and it was noted that ‘The Lieutenant Governor has directed a record be made in favour of this Man for his meritorious conduct at a fire, which took place in the premises of M. McGreely’. On 8 July of that year, he was found to have been drunk and sentenced to one month hard labour. However, a ticket of leave was issued on 19 August 1845 and a conditional pardon was recommended on 26 January 1847.
In September 1846 Lewis Barnett had been granted permission to marry Rachel Nathan (q.v.). On 23 May 1846 a son, Abraham, was born in Launceston and Henry was born on 11 May 1849. Barnett's absolute pardon was approved on 4 July 1848.
Sydney Gazette, 14 July 1835, 24 January 1837; Supreme Court on Circuit, 4 February, 1837, 4/6488; Assignment Lists of Convicts, CS 4/4523, p. 42; CON 31/3, no. 2606; CON 16/1, p. 47; CON 35/1/1, p. 42; CON 52/2, p. 287; CSO 5/243/6338; Permission to Marry Book, CON 52/2; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 December 1845.
Dark complexion, black hair, dark eyes. Barnett Levi was sentenced to six months in prison at the Old Bailey 6 July 1814. A constable saw ‘the lad … slip something out of his breeches pocket and put it in his mouth. These are the two shillings I took out of his mouth’. Barnett was back in court within months of his release from gaol and was sentenced at the London Gaol Delivery on 6 December 1815. He gave his religion as ‘C of E’.
Levi Barnett arrived in New South Wales on 5 October 1816. The Parramatta Magistrates Book of 30 June 1822 recorded that, on 19 April 1822, Levy Barnett was ‘found in the streets away from his barracks late at night’. Barnett was sentenced to fourteen days in the gaol gang on bread and water and returned to the convict barracks. On 25 October 1823 he was transferred to Penrith from Emu Plains and in 1825 he was listed as a convict labourer at Evan. By the end of the year, the Colonial Secretary recorded that he was a convict in the service of John Scarfe of Castlereagh.
Barnett was listed in the 1828 Census as having ‘no religion’. According to the list of convicts for New South Wales, he was living at Port Macquarie. He was returned from prison at Port Macquarie on 16 April 1829, to be held at the Phoenix hulk and then sent to the Hyde Park Barracks. Barnett was sentenced at the Sydney General Sessions on 6 August 1829 for stealing government property, and spent the next three years at the prison settlement at Moreton Bay. He later settled in the District of Berrima, receiving a ticket of leave in 1840, and a conditional pardon in 1845. He died on 20 September 1848 and was buried at the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum ‘of Plymouth’. Barnett's body was later disinterred and buried in Sydney's Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery.
4/3896, 16 April 1829. 8; FitzRoy Correspondence, ML A1242, p. 124, in 1847; HO 10/28; HO 10/53; TL 40/1631, in 4/4142; CP 46/161, in 4/4005, p. 193.
BARNETT, Levy
1841; Free.
An ‘L. Barnett’ arrived from London on 12 June 1841. According to the New South Wales Pioneers Index Levy Barnett had a child, ‘Sarah’, in 1849. (Also in the York Street Birth Register 27 January 1849).
BARNETT, Lewis (Lewis BENNETT)
b. Aldgate, 1802
Adamant, 1821; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1821.
Single; Butcher; Height: 159 cm; 6 children.
Dark florid complexion. Black hair. Hazel eyes. Lewis Barnett was sentenced on 10 January 1821 (under the surname ‘Bennett’) for stealing a bundle of mohair cloth.
The convict transport ship Adamant arrived in Sydney on 8 September 1821. Barnett was granted a ticket of leave in 1827. In 1831, Lewis Barnett married Elizabeth, whose surname was listed as both ‘Jones’ and ‘Solomon’. She had been married to Solomon Solomons (q.v.), who had arrived on the Marquis of Wellington in 1815. Elizabeth adopted a Jewish identity, calling herself ‘Rebecca’, and their first child, Sarah, was born in 1832.
In the 1832 Sydney General Post Office Directory, Barnett was listed as a publican of George Street. The coach for Parramatta started at his public house, which was called the Swan with Two Necks. He was also the publican of the Red Lion, also in George Street. He was the agent for those in Parramatta who were waiting to have assigned female servants sent to them. He also had an assigned servant of his own. In 1837 he was arrested together with a namesake. The other Lewis Barnett had ‘recently arrived’ in Sydney as a free settler. The Sydney Gazette of 24 January 1837 told the story of ‘Two of the Hebrew Nation’ who were charged as receivers. The stolen goods were found in the house adjoining the ex-convict, who denounced the ‘free’ Barnett with the words ‘You have got me into a mess, you told me you took the house to keep a woman’. Despite his denials, the ‘free’ Barnett was convicted of receiving stolen property and was sent to Van Diemen's Land. The ‘convict’ Barnett stated that he knew the other man from London and had lived in his house until he took the adjoining house.
In 1835 Barnett moved to Goulburn Street. Hannah Barnett was born in 1837. Lewis and Rebecca Barnett registered their child, Henry, as a Jew following his birth in 1839. Julia was born in 1841, and Amelia in 1849, both in Sydney. An infant son, Abraham, was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery on 1 November 1847. Lewis Barnett appeared on the York Street Synagogue list of donors in 1839 with a donation of £20. He was a seat holder who gave a further £35 to the synagogue in the subsequent three years. In 1845 he was described as a ‘hawker’, and accused by Samuel Solomon (q.v.), a dealer, of not having paid his commission for a consignment of blouses and coats. Ford's Sydney Commercial Directory, 1851, listed two ‘Lewis Barnetts’, one as a merchant at 3 Jamison Street, and the other as a general dealer at 29 King Street West.
2/8240 p. 1, in 4/4007; TL 27/62; Monitor, 28 August 1830; Sydney Gazette, 15 November 1832, 24 January 1837; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 December 1845; Australian, 27 July 1832, 12 July 1835.
BARNETT, Miriam
1822–1917
Jane, 1843; Free.
Single; Dealer; 6 children.
Miriam Barnett was the daughter of Baron Barnett of London, and was born on 11 August 1822. She married the ‘shopkeeper’ Saul (Solomon) Solomons (q.v.) at Launceston on 20 November 1844. Three of her children, Rachel Miriam (7 October 1845), Amelia (3 October 1846), and Phoebe (11 March 1848), were born in Launceston. The family then moved to South Australia, travelling on the Halcyon, and arriving on 28 February 1849. Three further children, Baron Isaacar (8 May 1849), Henry Aaron (20 March 1851), and Matilda (Tillie) (18 June 1853), were born in Adelaide.
Miriam lived at Burra Burra House in Hindley Street for thirty-seven years and then for thirty years at her home in Gover Street, North Adelaide. She died on 5 August 1917 just prior to her ninety-fifth birthday and was buried at the West Terrace Jewish Cemetery.
Pritchard Index.
BARNETT, Moses (Morris)
d. 1838
Isabella I (5), 1833; Convict.
Moses Barnett was listed on the ship's indent as ‘Morris Barnett’. He arrived in Hobart Town on 14 November 1833. ‘Moses’ Barnett was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Harrington Street, Hobart Town in 1838.
CON 31/5; CON 27/6; MM33/2.
BARNETT, Moses (Moss)
d. 1871
Free. 2 children.
Moses Barnett applied to the Board of the Sydney Synagogue for ‘making’ Miss Maria Hart (q.v.) a Jewess, as her father was Jewish, in order for them to marry. The Board responded: ‘If she proves the same to the satisfaction of the committee that her father is a Jew they will exceed [sic] to her request’. When it came to the test, eight members of the board voted for the marriage to be performed and two against. They were married on 17 March 1841 (in Jewish wedding no. 43). Their children were Hannah (25 December 1841), born at Liverpool, and Samuel (9 September 1843), born in Sydney. Both children were registered as ‘Hebrew’.
Moses was buried at the Lidcombe Jewish Cemetery on 27 May 1871. ‘Margaret’, the wife of ‘Moss Barnett’, was buried on 1 January 1844 in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery. Her grave was transferred to Lidcombe in 1901.
Sydney Synagogue Minute Book, dated 24 February 1841, p. 63; Bridge Street Synagogue Letter Book, dated 6 November 1840 (Archives of AJHS Sydney).
BARNETT, Rachel (née SOLOMON)
b. Sheerness, 1811–1869
Trinity, 1839; Free.
Married; 9 children.
Rachel was the second daughter of Judah and Esther Solomon (qq.v.). She had married Samuel Barnett (q.v.) at the Great Synagogue in London on 11 December 1831. They had nine children: Isaac (1832), Judah (1833), and Esther (1834) in London, and Michael, David, Benjamin (1840), Samuel (22 December 1841), Louisa (1845), and Louis (1847) (whose name was changed to Lewis) in Hobart Town. In 1847, the family moved from Van Diemen's Land to Melbourne. Rachel died on 3 December 1869 at 5 Napier Street, Fitzroy. She had lived for eighteen years in Van Diemen's Land and fourteen years in Victoria. Joseph Simmons, ‘a friend’, was recorded as present at her death. Simmons was Louisa's father-in-law, as Louisa had married Lewis Simmons in 1868.
BARNETT, Reuben (Rheuben)
b. Warsaw, Poland, 1817–1894
Mt Stewart Elphinstone, 1845; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 23 October 1843.
Married; Watchmaker; Height: 152 cm; 11 children.
‘Polish Jew’, fresh complexion, dark brown hair, long face, brown eyes, long nose. Had been living in Harrow. His right shoulder was notably higher than his left. Could read and write ‘a little’. Surgeon's report: ‘Very Good’. Reuben Barnett's offence was stated as: ‘Receiving India Silks valued at £100 from Mr Ellis Hetherington, St Paul's Church Yard’. Barnett had married Julia Aarons, daughter of Michael Aarons, on 25 August 1841, at 21 Tenter Ground, Spitalfields, under the auspices of the Great Synagogue in London. His mother, Esther, and a brother lived in Warsaw. At the time of his conviction at the Old Bailey, his wife and their one-year-old child, Barnet Barnett, born on 25 June 1842, were living in Spitalfields.
Barnett arrived in Hobart Town on 17 June 1845 and served as a constable during that first year. Barnett was charged with minor misdemeanours and in January 1846 spent ten days in solitary confinement for ‘misconduct’. On 20 December, he was found guilty of ‘taking indecent liberties with Patrick Connor’ and his recently issued ticket of leave was revoked. Barnett was sentenced to nine months hard labour in chains. His ticket of leave was reissued on 11 December 1849.
Barnett's wife and son remained in London and, in 1881, were living at 3 Partridge Court, Aldgate. Reuben Barnett married a second time, on 16 September 1861, at the Free Campbell Church, Oatlands. His new wife was Julia Salmon, the daughter of Joseph Salmon and Ellen (McDonnell). There were ten children of this second marriage: Jane Helena Barnett (22 July 1862, born in Oatlands District), Mary Elizabeth (31 January 1864), William Rheuben (24 August 1865), Alfred Joseph (born in Fingal District), Rose Adelaide (13 February 1871), Julia Bertha (16 August 1872), Frances Ellen (26 June 1876, born in Hobart), Francis Henry (16 June 1878), Sarah Jane (21 August 1880), and Reuben Henry (14 June 1883, born at Launceston).
Reuben Barnett was buried in the Roman Catholic section of the Cornelian Bay Cemetery in Hobart in 1894.
CON 33/1/66, no. 249; CON 14/21, no. 15568; CON 18/45; Family research by Dianne Duncanson-Clark, great-granddaughter of Alfred Joseph (John) Barnett.
Dark ruddy complexion. Black hair. Chestnut eyes. Small mole on left side of chin. Nose large, inclining to the right. Eyebrows partially meeting. Can read and write. Jew. Barnett was found with a bolt of stolen cloth valued at £10. The cloth was stolen from a tailor who lived at St Paul's Churchyard. He was sentenced at the London Gaol Delivery on 3 January 1833.
Richard Barnett was granted a conditional pardon in 1838.
OBSP, 1832–33, case 341, p. 163; Heroine Printed Indent 33/963, p. 115; CP 38/317.
BARNETT, Samuel
1801–1864(?)
Free.
Married; 1 child.
Samuel and Rachael Barnett were listed in the Sydney Synagogue records with a daughter, Clara, born in Sydney on 8 September 1842. He was listed among those qualified to vote in Sydney's first municipal elections in 1842.
There were two Samuel Barnetts in business in Sydney in the latter part of the 1840s. One sold clothes at 252 George Street, and the other owned the hotel, the Cheshire Cheese, at the corner of Sussex and King streets. In July 1844, ‘publican’ Barnett was granted a night licence for his hotel. In 1845 Samuel Barnett gave £30 to the York Street congregation and was a seat holder throughout the 1840s. The hotel owner was, without doubt, the generous benefactor of the synagogue, though it is unclear whether he was this Samuel Barnett.
Australian, 7 April 1842; Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 1843.
BARNETT, Samuel
b. London, 1793–1864(?)
Marquis of Huntley (1), 1826; Convict; Sentenced to life, Newgate, 1825.
Single; Scourer; Height: 174 cm; 6 children.
Dark sallow complexion, pock-pitted, hazel grey eyes, black hair. Scar on upper lip under right nostril. Broad scar on cap of left knee. Samuel Barnett stole a tablecloth, valued at £25, from a shopkeeper's home in the City of London. His original sentence, on 15 September 1815, was ‘Death’.
Samuel Barnett arrived in New South Wales on 13 September 1826. He appeared in the 1828 Census as a ‘constable’ on ‘government service’, assigned to the Australian Agricultural Company at Port Stephens. A ticket of leave was granted on 23 August 1831 (Sydney Gazette), and a conditional pardon on 23 June 1838. An absolute pardon was issued on 1 February 1843. Barnett was listed in the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales as living in Sydney with a ticket of leave.
Samuel Barnett received permission to marry Mary Smith, who came free to the colony on 6 May 1833. The Rev. S. Marsden officiated at Parramatta. On 8 April 1840 Barnett wrote to the Sydney Synagogue from his home in Liverpool (NSW) asking that his wife (whose name was by then ‘Rebecca’) and children be admitted into the Jewish faith: ‘Mine is no novel case for several parties who are now the leading members of our congregation, have been placed in the same situation’. He added ‘It is better to save one sinner in a world than to turn him away’. His wife Mary/Rebecca was formally accepted as a convert (‘made a Geyrester [sic] by I.S.’, according to a note) on 12 August 1840, and a Jewish wedding (no. 34) was performed by Isaac Simmons (q.v.). At the time of his writing, his children were Henry Samuel, born 1834, who was uncircumcised, and Leah (Sarah), born in Sydney in 1838, and registered as a ‘Hebrew’ (she had been named in the synagogue). In 1838 Samuel Barnett was honoured by being called to the Torah by the secretary of the synagogue, Emanuel Crabb (q.v.), against the ‘explicit wish’ of the president of the congregation.
Samuel and Rebecca had four more children: Julia (1840), Hannah (1841), Abraham (1844, who died on 31 October 1847), and Moses (1844). Their son Henry Samuel drowned ‘off Tugen’ on 23 June 1852.
Barnett owned a shop in King Street in 1842. However, Low's Directory of the City and District of Sydney of 1847 listed two Samuel Barnetts. One was a clothes seller at 252 George Street and the other owned the licence for the Cheshire Cheese hotel at the corner of Sussex and King streets. On 30 June 1849, ‘Samuel Barnett of Sydney’ was listed as insolvent in the Maitland Mercury. In August 1851, Samuel Barnett, a clerk for Mr Davis, draper of George Street, Sydney, was convicted of embezzling a cheque for £4 10s, with a Thomas Murray as an accessory in the fraud.
A Samuel Barnett died in Sydney in November 1864. Mrs Rebecca Barnett, ‘relict of the late Mr Samuel Barnett and beloved mother of Mrs Myer Solomon’ died at her residence, at 89 Macquarie Street, on 26 April 1881 and was buried in the Jewish section of the Rookwood Cemetery.
OBSP, 1824–25, case 1579, p. 596; Ship Indent 4/4011, p. 70; HO 10/52; HO 10/53; Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 11 April 1840, 17 September 1842, 3, 5, 19 August 1851; Minutes of the Sydney Synagogue, 8 April 1840, p. 35, Maitland Mercury, 30 June 1849; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 April 1845, 27 April 1881.
BARNETT, Samuel
b. Sheerness, 1806–1898
Juliet, 1839; Free.
Married; Merchant; 9 children.
‘Mr Barnett from London, Cabin Class’, arrived (in Hobart Town) on the Juliet on 17 September 1839 with his wife, Rachael (q.v.) (née Solomon), the second daughter of Judah and Esther Solomon (qq.v.), and their three children, Isaac (1832), Judah (1833), and Esther (1834). Rachel had been born in Sheerness in 1811 and Rachael's sister Louisa (q.v.) and brother-in-law (John Davis) were also on board. Samuel and Rachael Solomon had married at the Great Synagogue in London on 11 December 1831.
Samuel Barnett advertised that he had taken over the inn, the Bricklayer's Arms, in Elizabeth Street, and the licence was formally transferred on 14 February 1840. In the 1842 Census of Van Diemen's Land he was described as a ‘Merchant, Owner at 4 Melville St. They live in a brick building and the family consisted of 3 boys and 2 girls under 14 two of whom were born in the colony. He has an assigned servant’. Barnett was a member of the Hobart Hebrew Congregation in 1842 and rented seat no. 57. His wife gave the synagogue £7. He promised to lend the synagogue's building fund £20 but was unable to fulfil his promise.
In 1846 Barnett briefly held the publican's licence for the Rising Sun, Bathurst Street, which was transferred to the Caledonia Hotel in Elizabeth Street in Hobart Town in early 1848. Samuel tried his luck at the gold fields in California in 1849 before returning to Van Diemen's Land by 1854. Samuel and Rachel had six children in Hobart Town: Michael, David, Benjamin (1840), Samuel (22 December 1841), Louisa (1845), and Louis (1847), whose name was changed to Lewis. Later that year the family moved from Van Diemen's Land to Melbourne.
Rachael died on 3 December 1869 at 5 Napier Street, Fitzroy. Samuel Barnett died in Fitzroy in 1898, aged ninety-two.
Hobart Town Courier, 14 February 1840, 5 September 1846; MB 2/39/4, p. 263, AOT.
BARNETT, Samuel
b. London, 1821
Anson, 1844; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Old Bailey, 1843.
Single; Labourer; Height: 173 cm.
Dark complexion, dark brown hair, large nose and mouth, large chin, clean shaven, oval face. A Jew. Scar under right eye. Samuel Barnett was transported for ‘stealing from the person’. The offence was stated as ‘picking a lady's pocket of two shillings and six pence, one penny and several half pence’. Barnett had been imprisoned for one month previously for picking pockets. Gaol report: ‘Bad character and sullen’.
Samuel Barnett arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 4 February 1844, and was consigned to an initial period of eighteen months hard labour at the Fingal Depot. He was released from this initial period of probation on 4 August 1845. On 8 December 1845, at Cleveland, he was sentenced to one month hard labour for selling his victuals without permission. On 27 July 1846, as a prisoner in Launceston, he was sentenced to six weeks with hard labour and the treadwheel for having been found gambling on the Sabbath day. He was still in Launceston on 8 August 1847, when he was sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour for being drunk. On 24 April 1848 he was found guilty of misconduct for having slept out from the prisoners' depot. He was punished by being sent to Oatlands in the ‘Interior’ and sentenced to two months hard labour. Barnett was issued with his ticket of leave on 24 September 1849, and his conditional pardon on 12 August 1851.
CON 33/50, no. 14732.
Described as an ‘emigrant’, Samuel Barnett was indicted in April 1842 for having obtained money under false pretences and was sentenced to six months at the Newcastle Gaol. The sum of money obtained was £3 1s.
Australian, 13 December 1838.
BARNETT, Sarah
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; 4 children.
Sarah arrived in Sydney with her husband, John Barnett (q.v.), and their two children, Mary Jane, aged six, and Robert Freeman, aged seven. On 2 December 1833, John and Sarah had a son, Lewis. On 10 October 1836, a daughter, Jane, was born and both children were registered with the Jewish community.
BARNETT, Solomon
John Craig, 1834; Free.
Single; Dealer.
Solomon Barnett was a steerage passenger on the John Craig, which arrived at Port Jackson on 11 December 1834. Solomon Barnett married Esther.
Ship Indent 4/5207; Australian, 12 December 1834.
BARNETT, William
b. London.
Free.
Dealer.
W. Barnett, a dealer, of 66 George Street, Sydney, ‘opposite the Market’, advertised that he was ‘about to leave the colony’ and that all claims against him should be presented. On 31 January 1832, the Sydney Gazette recorded that he had spent £927 buying two houses and a public house. His name appeared in the November 1842 list of eligible voters for the municipal elections, with a shop and dwelling house in George Street. He was unable to withstand the economic depression, and was listed as insolvent on 10 February 1843. He was listed on the York Street Synagogue subscription list in 1845 and gave the congregation £2.
4/4006; Sydney Gazette, 29 January 1824, 5 February 1824, 21 January 1828, 31 January 1832; Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September, 4 November 1842.
Hazel grey eyes, black hair.
William Barnett was assigned to Mr Dwight Richardson. The 1828 Census listed him as Jewish and working in Sydney with the ‘No. 5 Chain Gang’. Barnett died on 6 September 1841.
CO 207/2.
BARRETT, Abraham
b. London, 1823
Hindostan (3), 1841; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1840.
Single; Printer's pressman; Height: 150 cm.
Lived in the Strand, London. Could read and write. Rather dark complexion, dark brown hair, long face, ‘rather large nose’, and high forehead. Barrett was found guilty of stealing a lady's reticule containing two shillings, scissors and two handkerchiefs.
Barrett's initial period of probation was two years, which he spent imprisoned at Point Puer. There, although his behaviour was ‘orderly’ and ‘good’, he spent seven days in solitary confinement for insolence and received ‘thirty-six stripes on the breach’ for disobedience. He was released from the first stage of probation on 27 May 1844 and moved to the Prisoners' Barracks in Hobart Town. On 12 May 1846 he received his ticket of leave. On 9 April 1847 he was found guilty of misconduct by gambling at the racecourse at New Town. On 3 August 1848, in Launceston, he was found to be out of doors after curfew and received seven days imprisonment and hard labour on the treadwheel. His ticket of leave was renewed on 14 September 1849 and he received his certificate of freedom on 21 June 1850.
CON 33/4.
BARUCH, Daniel (BARUH)
1790–1875
Royal Sovereign, 1849; Free.
Single; Physician; 3 children.
Daniel Baruch was Australia's first Jewish doctor. He arrived in the province of South Australia in 1849, and had little connection with the Jewish community.
Baruch married Eleanor Reid (1823–1892), and they had three children: Daniel (1850), Louis Albert (1856), and Laura (1861).
Baruh's kosher butcher's shop was in Duke Street, Duke's Place, near the main Ashkenazi Synagogue in Aldgate. He married Jeudit (Judith) de Moshe Baruh at Bevis Marks (Sephardi Synagogue) on 21 September 1763. In 1785 he was convicted for receiving a large number of silver objects, knowing them to have been stolen by William Harding. The silver was hidden in the wood panelling of the main parlour. Baruh was apparently well known by the police as a receiver of stolen goods. He employed two Jewish servants, Jacob Aaron and Abraham Nathan. It was Nathan who denounced Baruh to the police. Baruh was defended by two lawyers and denied everything. Abraham Fernandez of the Sephardi ‘Hebrew College’ was called as a character witness. It was claimed by Baruh's barrister that Nathan had tried to extort money from Mrs Baruh, saying to her that he would not give evidence if she gave him money. The lawyer (Mr Silvester) asked: ‘Why Nathan, you did not see the bag brought in? Where were you? In the synagogue?’ Silvester referred to Nathan as ‘that little jew boy’. On 6 April 1785 Baruh was sentenced to fourteen years transportation to Africa, and sent to the Thames Hulk Justitia. His age at the time was forty-eight.
Baruh was buried in Sydney on 13 July 1790—within two weeks of the arrival of the starving, disease-ridden convicts on the Second Fleet. The burial records of St Philip's misspelt his name as ‘Huser Brewe alias Bereugh’.
OBSP, 1784–85, case 500, pp. 660–5; Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet, p. 152.
BELASCO, John
b. 1770
Pitt, 1792; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1791.
Single; Butcher's assistant.
John Belasco stole a bundle of ‘scotch thread’ from a cart in Cheapside and was caught running away with it. Belasco worked for a butcher. Moses Mendoza appeared in court as a character witness: ‘I live in Bevis Marks near the Portugeze (sic) Synagogue; I have known him from his infancy. I really think him to be a very honest young fellow’. He was sentenced at the Old Bailey Sessions on 13 April 1791.
There is only one official mention of Belasco being in Sydney, which is a reference in the Mutch Index.
OBSP, 1790–91, case 161, p. 271; Mutch Index.
BELASCO, Samuel
b. London, 1806–1875
Layton (1), 1827; Convict; Sentenced to life, Surrey, 1825.
Single; Hawker: Height: 160 cm.
Brown hair, blue eyes. A pickpocket who stole a pocket book, several sovereigns and a silver pencil case. He was arrested at the Epsom Racecourse in May 1825. According to the ship's list of convicts, he was the brother of ‘the famous pugilist Abraham Belasco who lived in Denmark Court, the Strand’. Samuel Belasco had been in gaol before for picking pockets at Epsom. His character in gaol was reported as ‘bad’. He was sentenced on 12 July 1825 for stealing a pocket book containing £3.
‘Aby’ Belasco was charged with assault and testified that he had seen his brother shamefully beaten and kicked by the officers and by Mr Lee (whose pocket had been picked) … [Aby] merely stepped forward to enquire what he had done in order to prevent him being ill-treated. When he was told he had done wrong he immediately desisted from further interference. It was not likely that he should try to rescue a brother whom he had once caused to be taken before the Thames police magistrates and committed for three months to the House of Correction …
Belasco arrived in Hobart Town on 9 October 1827, ‘with nineteen shillings and three pence, one gold ring and a breast pin’. He was assigned to Mr E. Lawrence in Launceston. He received fifty lashes in January 1829 for robbing his master's garden, forty lashes in March for fighting, and twelve months in irons for stealing some canvas in April. He was sent to work at the lime quarry near George Town.
On 7 February 1833 he was officially classified as an invalid. In April he was convicted for stealing fifty apples and he received two separate sentences of eight days in solitary confinement for assault and for being absent without leave. He was discharged from the New Norfolk Hospital on 15 March 1836 for stealing bedding. On 1 September 1836 he was placed in the cells for three days for being absent without leave from the hospital. He received a ticket of leave in April 1837 and an official warning for hawking articles ‘under suspicious circumstances’.
On 25 March 1837 Samuel Belasco was baptised at New Norfolk and, on 16 February 1838, Belasco applied for permission to marry Ann Tilsed. The marriage at first was not approved as there were official objections to Tilsed being allowed to marry. Permission was finally granted and the marriage took place on 22 March 1838. A conditional pardon was issued to Belasco on 14 July 1841. According to the Schedule for Conditional Pardons, he ‘had been 14 years in the colony and served the regulated period with a ticket of leave with only one offence charged against him since 1836’.
In 1842 he was granted a hawker's licence for the District of New Norfolk. In 1869 he was returned to the asylum in New Norfolk as a pauper of ‘unsound mind and a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under care and treatment’. The medical certificate stated that Belasco had been ‘blind now 30 years’.
Samuel Belasco died at the hospital at New Norfolk on 9 December 1875 and was buried in the churchyard of St Matthew's, where his wife was buried. Ann had died in 1864.
Susan Ballyn and Lucy Frost, ‘Sephardi Convicts in Van Diemen's Land’, in P. Elias and A. Elias (eds), A Few from Afar, p. 75f; VDL papers, ML, A1950, p. 393; Hobart Town Courier, 21 April 1837; CON 22/2, no. 985; CON 52/1, p. 35; CON 31/1; MM 31/1; CON 23/1; HO 10/56; HSD 285/1, Order for the reception of an insane person, 21 April 1869, AOT.
Benjamin Benjamin was buried at the old Harrington Street Hobart Town Jewish Cemetery on 12 September 1837. He was sixty-two years of age. His widow, Eve, aged sixty-eight, was buried in Hobart Town by the synagogue on 4 July 1852.
BENJAMIN, Benjamin
b. London, 1834–1905
London, 1843; Free.
16 children.
Benjamin was the eldest son of Moses Benjamin (q.v.) and Catherine (née Moses). Moses brought his wife and six children to Melbourne, intending to join his younger half-brother, Solomon Benjamin, in business. They arrived on 29 December 1843. Benjamin was the eldest child, at nine. His brothers and sisters were Rebecca, Rachel, Elias, David and Frances.
After he had finished school in Melbourne, Benjamin joined his father and brother Elias as a draper and haberdasher in his father's business, Albert House, Collins Street. The family initially lived at 7 Collins Street, three doors up from Elizabeth Street. On 5 August 1857, Benjamin married his niece, Fanny (q.v), the daughter of Abraham and Sophia Cohen (qq.v.). When Moses Benjamin retired in 1864, his son began a partnership with his brother-in-law Edward Cohen (q.v). The new business initially specialised in importing tea and operated as a general commission agency. Together, Benjamin and Cohen bought a substantial sheep station on the Murray River known as Canally. The partnership ended in 1877 with Cohen's death. Benjamin inherited £60 000 from his father's estate and in 1878 Benjamin retired from business and entered local politics.
Benjamin was treasurer of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation from 1860 to 1865. He was president from 1868 to 1875, in 1879, and in 1885. In 1870 he built the Italianate brick mansion, Canally, in East Melbourne. He was elected to the Melbourne City Council in 1870 and served for more than twenty years. He was elected mayor in 1887 and 1888, the year of the centenary of Australia's European settlement. He played a leading role in the formal celebrations and the Great Exhibition that was held at the Melbourne Exhibition Building. As mayor he also opened the new Princes Bridge across the Yarra River. At the conclusion of the year, Benjamin became the second Australian, and the first mayor of Melbourne, to be knighted. In 1889 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council, representing Melbourne Province. He supported the federation movement, free trade between the colonies and the eight-hour day. The financial crash in the early 1890s, and the dishonesty of his business partners, consumed his wealth and forced him to resign from every public office and he was only able to pay his debtors one shilling in the pound. The Bulletin magazine nicknamed him ‘Bingy Bingy’ and claimed that his pursuit of glory had been his undoing.
Sir Benjamin Benjamin died on 7 March 1905. He was survived by his wife, seven sons and six daughters. The sixteen children of Sir Benjamin and Lady Fanny were Maurice Edward (1858–1914), Catherine (1860–1875), Abraham Herbert (1861–1925), Florence Sophia (1863–1924), Percy Lionel (1865–1903), Edith Fanny (1867–1924), Frank Bedford (1868–1884), Howard Elias (1870–1933), Minnie Violet (1871–1953), Ida Rose (1873–1949), May Constance (1876–1952), Leslie Ronald (1878–1942), Gerald Septimus (1879–1942), Stanley Octavius (1880–1916), Oswald Deronda (1884–1944), and Myra Lilian (1885–1958).
Rodney Benjamin, ‘Early Melbourne and the Benjamin Brothers’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 3 (1996), p. 385f, ‘Sir Benjamin Benjamin’, AJJHS, vol. 6, no. 3 (1967), p. 129f; G. Solomon, ‘Sir Benjamin Benjamin’, in ADB, vol. 3, pp. 139–40; Bulletin, 11 March 1905.
BENJAMIN, David
b. London, 1815–1885
Henry, 1838; Free.
Single; Shopkeeper; 6 children.
David Benjamin was the youngest son of Lyon Benjamin and his first wife, Miriam, of Hyde Park, London. Lyon Benjamin was a sealing-wax maker and the father of four sons, all of whom came to Australia, and two daughters. A daughter, Harriet (Hart, q.v.), migrated to South Australia in 1848 with her husband Samuel Hart (q.v.) and five children. David and his brothers, Samuel (q.v.) and Moses (q.v.), and half-brother Solomon (q.v.) came to Australia as free migrants. David arrived in Australia on the Henry on 6 July 1838 with Solomon and ‘21 cases [of clothing] and 6 bales of slops’.
David and Solomon Benjamin immediately moved to Launceston and, within a month, were trading as D. Benjamin at Tamar House on the corner of Brisbane and St John streets. Their marketing slogan was ‘Small profits quick returns’. On Wednesday, 6 March 1839, David Benjamin, ‘of Tamar House, Launceston’, opened a (branch) store in Collins Street, Melbourne, and young Solomon was chosen to open the Melbourne store. David continued the business in Launceston, moving from Tamar House and opening the Launceston Emporium in Charles Street, in partnership with George Marks (q.v.). David Benjamin married Esther Solomon (q.v.), the second daughter of Henry Solomon (q.v.) of Hobart Town, on 15 December 1840. It was the third Jewish marriage in Van Diemen's Land. In July 1846, Benjamin and Marks sold the Launceston business to A & S. Solomons, being Aaron Solomons and his son, Saul Solomons (qq.v.).
On 28 October 1840, the brothers David and Solomon Benjamin ‘of Melbourne’ bought two plots of land in William's Town for £325, and an allotment of land in Portland for £361. In the 1842 Census of Launceston, David Benjamin was listed as tenant of a shop in Elizabeth Street with his partner and fellow tenant George Marks.
Benjamin took an active role in the Jewish life of the colony, donating £50 to the Launceston Synagogue in 1844 and presenting the synagogue with £25 from ‘Moses and Sons and Davis of London’. He was the president of the synagogue at its consecration on 26 March 1846.
In 1846 he had begun the process of leaving Launceston by announcing that he had ‘joined up with Moses and Nathan in Hobart Town to act as a ships' agents’. Within six months Benjamin was ready to cross Bass Strait and settle permanently in Melbourne:“Messrs D & S Benjamin, feeling grateful for the patronage of the last nine years thanks the inhabitants of Launceston and vicinity and recommends their successors Solomon and Watts'. David and his family moved to Melbourne in October 1846. At that time, he and Esther had two children, Miriam (11 October 1841), and Moses Henry (26 April 1845), both born in Launceston. Four more children were born in Melbourne: Jessie (December 1846), Alfred (1848), Louis (1850), and Edwin (1852).
David Benjamin was president of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation from 1851 to 1854. In 1853 he welcomed Melbourne's small Jewish population to his ‘extensive Collins St shop’ for the High Holyday overflow services, and in that year laid the foundation stone for the enlarged Bourke Street Synagogue.
Benjamin became a director of the Australian Joint Stock Bank and the Bank of New South Wales. A combination of gold buying and land purchases proved to be immensely successful. He commissioned the architect who designed and built the second Bourke Street Synagogue, and gave the huge sum of £1000 to help in its construction.
In 1854 the profits generated by his Australian career enabled him to retire and he took his family ‘home’ to England.
MB 2/39/2, p. 280, AOT; Rodney Benjamin, ‘Early Melbourne and the Benjamin Brothers’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 3 (1996), p. 367f; Port Phillip Gazette, 2 March 1839; Melbourne Advertiser, 2 March 1839; Port Phillip Patriot, 18 February 1839, 13 March 1840, 15 December 1850; Launceston Examiner, 29 June 1844, 11 March 1846, 8 August 1846, 7 October 1846; AG, pp. 265, 275, 282, 283, 286, 293, 320.
BENJAMIN, David
b. London, 1817–1888
Island Queen, 1840; Free.
Single; Cabinet maker; 11 children.
The son of Tzaddick and Rebecca Benjamin, Benjamin arrived in Western Australia on 10 December 1840 on the Island Queen. He was a bonded craftsman who came out to work for the ill-fated Australind Company of Western Australia. He was the only Jew in the new colony, other than the family of Lionel Samson.
On 24 October 1841 at Australind, near Bunbury, Benjamin married Mary Anne Jane Whitely (born 1826).
The Australind settlement quickly failed and in 1844 the Benjamins lived in Busselton, where their first child was born. In 1846 they lived at Wonnerup. The Benjamins travelled to Ballarat following the discovery of gold. Benjamin and his wife left for South Australia on 12 January 1846 on the River Chief. They had eleven children: Samuel (1843), at Australind, Amelia (1844), at Busselton, Charles (1846), at Wonnerup (died of dehydration on the ship and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Adelaide), Joseph (15 November 1848), Zadock Charles (1847), and Jane (1848), in Adelaide, and, in Melbourne, Symon (1856), Lewis (1858), Abigail (1860), Rachel (1862), and Esther (1863). Their son Joseph Benjamin became a ‘cigar maker’, and had a stall at the Ballarat Market. He married Elizabeth Ann Amies, who was born on 6 June 1853.
In 1853 the family travelled from Australia to Europe. It was recorded that Mary Anne Jane (Whitely) who had married in Australia on 24 October 1841 had been formally converted to Judaism in Rotterdam, together with her five children, and registered as Jews in London on 20 June 1853.
David Benjamin died in Sydney on 26 May 1888 at the age of 72. Rebecca (Mary Ann Jane) died on 19 August 1912.
Family history from (the late) Mrs Haddon Storey of Melbourne. Jeremy I Pfeffer ‘From One End of the Earth to the Other’ p. 319.
BENJAMIN, Elizabeth
William Lockerby, 1834; Free.
Married; 5 children.
The wife of Samuel Benjamin (q.v.), Elizabeth settled in Sydney with her husband and their children, Henry, Jane, Juliet, Rachael and Caroline.
BENJAMIN, Elizabeth
b. London
Hive (1), 1834; Free.
Married; 9 children.
Elizabeth travelled with her husband, Raphael (Ralph) Benjamin (q.v.), a convict, arriving in Sydney on the Hive on 11 June 1834. At the time of her husband's deportation, they had seven children (two boys and five girls). Elizabeth had two more children, who were born in Sydney.
BENJAMIN, Emanuel
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Single; Trader; 1 child.
Emanuel Benjamin was the cousin of Henry Samuel Benjamin (q.v.). Emanuel was in Hobart Town in 1834 and appeared in a law suit. On 20 June 1837 he married Sarah Pellinger at New Norfolk. A child, Benjamin Morris Benjamin, was christened at New Norfolk on 24 April 1838.
Emanuel obtained the licence for the King of Prussia Inn at New Norfolk and advertised ‘good beds, stabling etc’. He then became the licensee of the Old Star and Garter Wine Vaults in New Norfolk, which then lost the word ‘old’ and became an inn. It was transferred to his cousin on 24 February 1843. Emanuel Benjamin had been declared insolvent on 16 December 1842. On 6 May 1842, Emanuel Benjamin had been bound over to keep the peace towards Miss Julia Gregson, who was already bound over to do the same towards him, as there was some ‘ill feeling’ between the two. A charge of assault had followed a ferry trip to New Norfolk.
Sarah Benjamin died on 21 February 1855 and was buried at New Norfolk.
Hobart Town Gazette, 7 October 1836, 5 October 1838, 8 October 1841; Hobart Town Courier, 21 October 1836, 12 October 1838, 24 February 1842, 6 May 1842, 16 December 1843.
BENJAMIN, Fanny
d. 1841
Free.
Fanny Benjamin was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery on 7 July 1841.
BENJAMIN, Fanny
b. London, 1822–1913
Alfred, 1841; Free.
Single.
Fanny was the daughter of Moses Benjamin (q.v.) and Susan (née Solomon), and was born on 11 December 1822. Fanny Benjamin came to Sydney in 1841, and then returned to her parents, in London. She returned to Australia on the Sultana, arriving in Adelaide on 10 August 1851. On 28 July 1852, aged twenty-nine, she married Samuel Cohen, aged thirty. They went to New Zealand, and her husband died at Christchurch on 11 June 1865. Fanny returned to Adelaide and, on 11 April 1869, she married Samuel Hyam Isaacs, aged forty-five, at the home of her father, who lived at Tavistock Street, Adelaide. Fanny died on 24 March 1913 at the age of ninety and was buried in the West Terrace Jewish Cemetery in Adelaide.
Pritchard Index.
BENJAMIN, Fanny (née COHEN)
b. Sydney, 1839
16 children.
Fanny, the daughter of Abraham and Sophia Cohen (qq.v.), of Port Macquarie and Sydney, was born on 22 July 1839. She married her uncle, Benjamin Benjamin (q.v.). They were to have sixteen children. See Cohen, Fanny.
Ferotcha Benjamin was buried by the Sydney Synagogue in the Devonshire Street Cemetery on 21 September 1842.
BENJAMIN, Harty
b. London
Active, 1791; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1787.
Benjamin was found to be in possession of stolen goods in Petticoat Lane. Said that his mother lived in Petticoat Lane. Found guilty of possessing stolen goods but not of burglary. Sentenced to seven years transportation on 21 February 1787. The Convict Indents stated that he was transported on the William and Ann in 1791, but p. 202 of the Active Indent includes his name.
A letter awaited him in Sydney, according to the Sydney Gazette of 8 January 1809. In the Sydney Monitor of 25 February 1839 ‘Benjamin Harty’, a ticket of leave holder for the district of Bathurst, was charged with being drunk. He was found riding on the shaft of his master's team of horses in George Street ‘to the risk of his own neck’. He was severely admonished and was sentenced to serve fourteen days in solitary confinement on bread and water.
OBSP, 1786–87, case 282, p. 426; COD 9, 4/4523; CO 207/1.
BENJAMIN, Henry
William Lockerby, 1834; Free.
Henry Benjamin came to Australia with his parents, Samuel Benjamin (q.v.) and Elizabeth (q.v.), and siblings. They settled in Sydney. By 1844 Henry Benjamin was old enough to be listed as a seat holder in the York Street Synagogue together with his father.
Ship Indent 4/5207, 16 August 1834; Sydney Gazette, 19 August 1834.
BENJAMIN, Henry Samuel
b. London, 1810–1852
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; Dealer, innkeeper; 6 children.
Henry Benjamin was the son of Benjamin and Eva Benjamin, the cousin and father-in-law of Emanuel Benjamin (q.v.), and the son-in-law of Judah and Esther Solomon (qq.v.) of Hobart Town. Benjamin came to Van Diemen's Land on the Palambam with his wife Lydia Benjamin (q.v.), and two children, Henry and Esther. Also on board the Palambam were Lydia's mother Esther Solomon (q.v.) and two young sisters Sarah and Rebecca. A rumour swept Hobart Town that an invasion of Jews had arrived although they were the only Jews to disembark.
Benjamin first settled in the inland town of Oatlands at the York and Albany Hotel. The climate disagreed with the family and, in May 1834 he advertised its sale through ‘Judah & Joseph Solomon, Hobart Town’, as he hoped to take his family to New South Wales for twelve months. Benjamin brought a suit, Benjamin v. Griffiths, against the purchaser of the hotel. Griffiths testified that ‘that little Jew, Benjamin robbed me’ and also ‘the bloody Jew bastard took it’. Benjamin won the case, and was awarded £65 in damages. However, the family's move to Sydney was not a success and on 14 September 1835 Benjamin wrote from the Hamilton Inn to the Colonial Secretary, ‘I have been lately obliged to return from Sydney on account of the climate not agreeing with my health and being about to recommence business as an Innkeeper in this Colony’. He was dismayed when his liquor stock had been seized ‘owing to the hostility of a local constable’.
In January 1836, Benjamin recommenced business as an innkeeper at the Old Hamilton Inn and, in addition, opened a general store in the town. On 6 June 1839, H. S. Benjamin was permitted to employ one assigned convict servant. A notice in the Hobart Town Courier in 1840 announced: ‘Mr and Mrs Benjamin thank customers of their inn in the Interior and inform the public that they have taken over the “Macquarie Hotel” in Hobart Town on 4 August 1840’. In 1842 the Colonial Times announced that H. S. Benjamin of Macquarie Street was insolvent, and that he had taken over the Ferry House Inn at New Norfolk: ‘All communications are to [be] sent to Mr Judah Solomon, Temple House, Hobart Town’. In 1843 he was licensed as a hawker and changed his address to New Norfolk's Star and Garter Inn. He was involved in a court case, which resulted in a fine of five shillings for ‘filthy and indecent language’. Five days later he was bound over for twelve months ‘for endeavouring to excite Mr John Stevenson to commit a breach of the peace’. The family moved to Hobart Town and Benjamin was granted a licence to run the King George Inn at the New Wharf. In 1845, he was appointed the honorary auditor of the Hobart Synagogue.
Henry Benjamin died on board ship on his way to Melbourne in 1852 at the age of forty-two. His body was returned to Hobart and he was buried in the Hobart Town Jewish Cemetery in Harrington Street on 25 July 1852. Lydia then married Lewis Cohen.
Henry Samuel Benjamin and Lydia had six children: Henry (1831), Esther (c. 1832), Benjamin (c. 1835), Morris (22 August 1837), Samuel (1839) (q.v.) and Eve (1843, died 12 March 1863).
Colonial Times, 14 October 1834, 15 July 1834, 2 October 1835; Hobart Town Gazette, 11 October 1835, 6 June 1839, 7 October 1842, 2 October 1847; CSO 1/828/17579; Hobart Town Courier, 2 October 1835, 30 January 1842, 30 September 1842, 24 February 1843, 17 November 1843, 18 January 1845; Land Purchase, LSD 1/76/54.
John Benjamin, son of Emanuel, was married to Sarah Levey, the second child of Philip Levey (q.v.) and his wife Leah (née Mordecai) (q.v.). Their marriage had been held in London on 21 July 1843 and they arrived in Australia with Sarah's family in December 1843.
John and Sarah Benjamin settled in Burra Burra in South Australia. Two children were born in South Australia, both of whom died in infancy: Henry, on 21 March 1848 at the age of two, and Deborah, on 28 March 1848, aged eight months. The couple had six more children: John Asher Benjamin (13 January 1849) in Goulburn, Philip (1 October 1850), Lydia (25 August 1852), Fanny (16 July 1854), Jane (15 March 1857), and Asher (3 April 1859) in Yass.
John Benjamin died on 11 September 1858, seven months before his last child was born. Sarah moved back to New South Wales, where her younger sister, Hannah Hart, lived in Yass. Sarah died in Yass on 22 June 1867, at the age of forty-four, ‘leaving six orphaned children’, according to the inscription on her headstone in the Yass Cemetery.
BENJAMIN, Joseph
b. Whitechapel, 1805–1890
Sir Godfrey Webster (1), 1823; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1823.
Single; Hawker; Height: 160 cm; 5 children.
Joseph Benjamin stole a watch from the Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Emanuel Dios Santos, in the queue in front of the Drury Lane Theatre. Brown hair, light grey eyes, scar on side of forehead over left eyebrow.
Joseph Benjamin arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 30 December 1823. On 17 February 1824, in Hobart Town, Joseph Benjamin was acquitted of a charge of receiving stolen goods. On 2 April 1825 he was found to be ‘absent without leave from Church’ and was returned to the Department of Public Works. On 5 July 1825 he was sentenced to be confined to the watch house at night for ‘enticing away from her husband and repeatedly making tipsy the wife of Simon Solomon’ (q.v.). Ten days later he appeared again at the Supreme Court in Hobart Town for giving some tobacco to a runaway. While at the court, he was seen attempting to pick the pocket of a court official. He was therefore charged with ‘attempting to pick the pocket of Mr Rayner’ and, as a consequence, on 20 July, was sentenced to fifty lashes and sent to Maria Island. On 9 April 1827, as a prisoner at Maria Island, he was found to have stolen property in his possession and was sentenced to one hundred lashes. On 5 October of the same year he received a further fifty lashes for having stolen mutton in his possession.
Back in Hobart Town on 27 May 1830, he was arrested, brought to trial and convicted of receiving a stolen watch. Benjamin was sent to ‘No. 2 Chain Gang’ where, on 4 October 1831, he was found guilty of defacing his irons and his sentence was extended by six months. The Colonial Times reported on 12 November 1830 that two days earlier, Joseph Benjamin had been sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment at the Hobart Town Supreme Court. If this was so, Benjamin seems to have been speedily released, though he was certainly not out of trouble. A twelve-month sentence with the Public Works Department at Campbell Town on 15 July 1836 followed for ‘trading with fowls and eggs’. Joseph Benjamin received his conditional pardon on 17 May 1843. He received a hawker's licence for Longford on 17 November 1843. He worked as a grocer in 1846 in Perth and as a storekeeper in 1852. His signature appears on the Launceston Synagogue petition of May 1843 and he gave £19 to the building appeal in 1845. In August 1845 he received a land grant of forty-five acres at Clarence and signed the grant with an ‘X’.
Joseph Benjamin, ‘aged thirty-six’ (he was actually thirty-nine) and ‘free’ married Mary Martha Gale, aged twenty, in Launceston on 11 April 1844. Mary had arrived as a convict on the Gilbert Henderson in April 1840.
Benjamin and his wife remained in Perth. In 1854 he became the licensee of the Star Hotel, which was later renamed the Benjamin Hotel. He retired in 1876, and moved to the Launceston home of his daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Alfred Jones, the governor of the local gaol. He died on 18 February 1890, and was buried as a Jew beside his wife in Perth. He was survived by his four daughters and one son: Elizabeth Mary Ann (Jones) (1844–1923), Charlotte Louisa (Kirby) (1846–1924), Elsie Maria (Markey) (1848–1930), Joseph John Benjamin (1850–1940), and Mary Ann Sarah (Taylor) (1852).
OBSP, 1822–23, case 420, p. 157; CON 31/1; Launceston Police Register, CO 280/157; CON 32/1, supplementary vol. p. 116; CP 251; CON 70/1, p. 117; Hobart Town Courier, 17 November 1843; Family information from Alison and Gary Pollard, and Judith C. Lyne.
BENJAMIN, Lydia (née SOLOMON)
b. Sheerness, Sheppey, 1813–1880
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; 6 children.
Lydia was the third child of Judah Solomon and Esther (née Levy, Russell) (qq.v.). She married Henry Samuel Benjamin (q.v.) and came to Van Diemen's Land with her mother, husband, and her two young children, Henry and Esther, in 1832. To Judah's discomfort, the family moved into Judah's large home in Argyle Street and stayed.
Lydia and Henry's children were Henry (1831), Esther (c. 1832), Benjamin (c. 1835), Morris (22 August 1837), Samuel (1839), and Eve (1843–1863). Following Henry's death, Lydia married Lewis Cohen in Hobart, on 11 November 1855, and returned with him to England. She died on 21 January 1880 in London.
Anne Rand, ‘Temple House and the Judah Solomon Family’, in P. Elias and A. Elias (eds), A Few from Afar, p. 23f.
Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. Can read and write. No previous conviction. Sentenced on 26 October 1826. Maria stole the clothes worn by a prostitute who had been persuaded to sleep off the after effects feeling ‘very ill in the street’ at her lodgings in Pump Court, Westminster. The following day Maria was caught wearing the stolen bonnet. Her accuser also knew her by the name of ‘Simmonds’ and the police described her rented room as ‘a den of thieves’. ‘Has a brother already in Australia—Solomon S(y)imons’ (Solomon Simons, q.v.). Surgeon's report: ‘A very orderly and well-disposed woman, and I think from her conduct she will support this character’.
The Persian arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 6 August 1827. Maria Benjamin's police record there is brief. On 22 October 1827, while an assigned servant to Mr Clainbone, she was reprimanded for being out after hours. On 2 March 1829, while assigned to Mr Chapman, she was found to be absent without leave and sentenced to gaol for fourteen days. On 6 August 1829, she applied to marry Thomas Mellor as a ‘free’ person. The marriage took place in Launceston on 22 August 1829. The 1832 Muster noted that she was again in gaol. She was free by servitude on 26 October 1833.
OBSP 26 October 1826, case 1892. VDL papers, ML A1059-1, p. 420; Launceston Police Book, CON 70/1, p. 148; CON 40/1; CON 33/1; CON 45/1.
BENJAMIN, Morris
Free.
Married; Dealer; 4 children.
Mr and Mrs Morris Benjamin ran a shop in Hobart Town and had four young sons. Mr M. Benjamin gave £2 to the Hobart Synagogue building fund on 9 June 1843.
Mrs Benjamin took her neighbour, Mr Mooney, to court for having kicked her eight-year-old son in the stomach. The Mooney children were ‘making vulgar allusions to our persuasion’, she said, and had compounded the aggravation by singing the well-known ditty, ‘If I had a piece of pork. I would stick it on a fork. And give it to a Jew boy, Jew’. Mooney was fined ten shillings and ordered to pay costs.
Hobart Town Courier, 21 April 1846.
BENJAMIN, Moses
b. London, 1797–1876
Free.
Married; 10 children.
The son of Elijah Benjamin of London, Moses was married in London to Susan Solomon, the daughter of pencil-maker Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.) and Betsy (née Moses), of London. Moses and Susan Benjamin celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in Adelaide on 23 January 1871 in the presence of their ten children.
Moses Benjamin died on 24 April 1876, aged seventy-nine, at his home in Tavistock Street, Adelaide.
Pritchard Index; Observer, 27 January 1871.
BENJAMIN, Moses
b. London, 1805–1885
London, 1843; Free.
Married; Merchant; 7 children.
Moses Benjamin was the second son of Lyon and Miriam Benjamin of London and born 11 October 1805. His elder brother (by one year) was Samuel Benjamin (q.v.) and his younger brother was David Benjamin (q.v.). He also had a half-brother, Solomon Benjamin (q.v.).
Moses had married Catherine (née Moses) in London in 1829. In 1843 they migrated to Melbourne with their six children, Rebecca (1830–1902), Rachel (1832), Benjamin (1834–1905) (q.v.), Elias (1837–1870), David (1839–1901), and Frances (c. 1840–1909). An infant, Samuel, had died in London. The voyage was vividly recalled by a fellow passenger who wrote: ‘a Jewish family in the intermediate, consisting of father, mother and numerous family, had the adjoining cabin to us; they eventually became wealthy and prominent citizens of Melbourne. One of the boys was several times recently Mayor of Melbourne and is now Sir Benjamin Benjamin’.
Evidently Moses had expected to join his younger half-brother, Solomon, in business. However, soon after he arrived he opened his own drapery store in Albert House, Collins Street. His advertised stock included 2000 pairs of trousers and 8400 shirts! He also announced ‘no business transacted between 6 o'clock on Friday and 6 o'clock on Saturday evenings’.
In 1845 Moses Benjamin lived at 7 Collins Street in a wooden house of four rooms—three doors up from Elizabeth Street. He also advertised that his shop had ‘no connection with any other House in Port Phillip’. Whatever the cause had been for the family quarrel, on 9 April 1846 D & S Benjamin joined forces with Moses Benjamin at ‘Cheapside House, Collins St’. His name appeared on the address signed by the Jews of Port Phillip congratulating Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler on his appointment to the Melbourne Synagogue. Moses was elected treasurer of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation shortly after his arrival, serving from 1846 to 1849. When Solomon and David left Melbourne for London following the first years of the gold rush, they sold two city blocks of land to their brother Samuel. They were in Collins Street, near Exhibition Street, where Moses had built his house (next door to that of his son-in-law, Edward Henry Cohen (q.v.), who had married his daughter Rebecca in 1847).
Moses Benjamin built a warehouse in Little Collins Street near Queen Street. M. Benjamin and Son functioned as a wholesale firm and the ‘son’ was Benjamin Benjamin.
Moses Benjamin became a Justice of the Peace, and was a well-known identity in the City of Melbourne. He died in Melbourne in 1885, and his very large estate was valued at £201 504.
Rodney Benjamin, ‘Early Melbourne and the Benjamin Brothers’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 3 (1996), p. 345f; Port Phillip Patriot, 29 January 1844; Alfred Joyce, A Homestead History, ed. G. F. James, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1949; AG, pp. 283, 320.
BENJAMIN, Moses
Katherine Stewart Forbes (2), 1832; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Lancaster, 1831.
Single; Pedlar.
Moses Benjamin was convicted at Lancaster on 24 October 1831 for receiving stolen silver plate.
The Katherine Stewart Forbes arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 16 July 1832. From December 1833 to June 1834 Moses Benjamin was an assigned servant to Mr Fitzgerald. During this time he was punished with bread and water for nine days in the cells, six days on the treadmill and twenty-five lashes for five different counts that ranged from neglect of duty to ‘refusing good food supplied by his master’. He received a ticket of leave in July 1838. On 14 July 1841 he received fourteen days hard labour ‘for having goods displayed outside his shop after having been warned of the consequences’.
In the 1842 Van Diemen's Land Census, Moses Benjamin (aged between forty-five and sixty) was living with another Jew (male) in Liverpool Street. The other man at the same address was recorded as being younger and having come free to the colony.
A conditional pardon was granted on 18 November 1842 and was extended to the Australian colonies on 8 July 1845.
CON 31/5, no. 1706; CON 18/10; CON 27/5; Hobart Town Courier, 13 July 1838; Colonial Times, 26 May 1834, 10 June 1834.
BENJAMIN, Moses
A ‘Benjamin Moses’ was listed as a storekeeper in Goulburn in 1839 in the New South Wales and Port Phillip Directory for 1839. It may have been a reference to two people, Samuel Benjamin (q.v.) and Elias Moses (q.v.), who were in business together in Goulburn around that time.
BENJAMIN, Phoebe
b. London, 1793
Mary Anne I (2), 1822; Convict; Sentenced to life, Middlesex, 1821.
Single; Silk glove maker: Height: 145 cm.
Florid complexion, dark hair, hazel eyes. Phoebe Benjamin was first sentenced to six months in prison after having stolen a bundle of clothes from a drunken man. She was found with the stolen goods as she walked home through Whitechapel at midnight. She was sentenced on 12 September 1821.
Phoebe arrived in Hobart Town on 20 May 1822. She was listed as having absconded from her assigned service on 12 August 1824 (Sydney Gazette). Phoebe married Solomon Lyons (q.v.) at St John's Parramatta in July 1826. It was the second official marriage between two Jews in Australia. On 28 October 1826, she was ordered to serve time at the Female Factory in Parramatta.
OBSP, 1819, case 1303, p. 458, Ship Indent 4/4008, p. 114.
BENJAMIN, Raphael (Ralph)
b. London, 1791–1873
Hive (1), 1834; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1833.
Married; Dealer; Height: 165 cm; 9 children.
Sallow complexion, freckled, brown and grey hair, grey eyes. Lost all front teeth but two. The father of seven children—two male and five female. Ralph Benjamin was convicted for selling stolen ribbon. He had 1224 yards of material valued at £39. ‘The prisoner came to my home in the afternoon of 20 August [1833] and said he wished to speak to me—my young man called me down to him: he said he had some goods [to sell], would I stop home and look at them. I had bought before off him in that manner. He keeps a clothes shop in Golden Lane. He said he had bought them off a respectable man’. Benjamin told the court ‘I am totally innocent. I never dealt in such [stolen] articles. I have been eighteen years in the clothes line’.
Raphael Benjamin arrived in Sydney on 11 June 1834, with his wife, Elizabeth (q.v.), and two of their children, Henry and Jane. Ralph Benjamin was assigned to the Australian Agricultural Company at Port Stephen and Mr James Barker of Sydney wrote to the Colonial Secretary concerning the employment of male convict servants. Benjamin had been assigned to him and he did not wish to accept him, because his wife and children had arrived in Australia and were in need of him. Barker wrote: ‘give me another man of the name of Benjamin in exchange which will answer my service much better’. The Colonial Secretary replied on 1 January 1835 that the transfer of Ralph Benjamin to Charles Barnett was not possible. Mr Henry Dumaresq had paid for the assignment of Benjamin and the ‘prison regulations forbade transfer of prisoners from the country to Sydney’. Dumeresq asked again, because Benjamin's wife and children ‘have followed him to the Colony and being without the means of support or protection may seem to warrant me in so doing’. The Colonial Secretary replied that he could not ‘impinge in these matters’.
Ralph was a member of the Sydney Synagogue and was honoured by being Chatan Torah in September 1842. ‘Mr and Mrs Raphael Benjamin’ had given £15 to the Sydney Synagogue building appeal on 15 September 1839. Raphael and his son Samuel were both members of the Sydney Synagogue in 1845. Family tradition recalls that Raphael was a publican and a ‘merchant’.
Ralph Benjamin received a ticket of leave in 1841 and a certificate of freedom on 10 September 1847. He died at the residence of his son, at 513 George Street. He was buried at the Lidcombe Jewish Cemetery, Sydney, on 26 February 1873, described as the father of Jane (Mrs Solomon Lazarus), Caroline (Mrs Morris Nelson), Henry Benjamin and Lewis Benjamin.
CS 35/129, 1 January 1835; TL 41/2198; CF 47/0672; Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 1873; Family information from Mrs L. Walters, Melbourne.
BENJAMIN, Reuben
b. London, 1816–1856
Roslin Castle (4), 1834; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1833.
Single; Dealer; Height: 155 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, black hair, chestnut eyes. Thick large nose. Lost canine teeth in upper jaw. Scar right cheek. Eyebrows partially meeting. Large wart lower right arm. Legs hairy. Benjamin stole a bundle of laundry valued at ten shillings from a fourteen-year-old boy in Hyde Park. Benjamin was chased and caught and brought to the police.
The Roslin Castle arrived in New South Wales on 15 September 1834. Reuben Benjamin received a ticket of leave for the District of Goulburn in November 1838 and a certificate of freedom on 17 November 1840. A conditional pardon followed in 1842, also for the Goulburn District. He was buried by the York Street Synagogue on 29 October 1856, at the age of forty.
OBSP, 1832–33, case 1059, p. 855; Printed Ship Indent, p. 119; Letters from Governor's Office from Goulburn District; TL 38/1879, p. 213 A664; Governors' Despatches for 1839, ML, A1220, p. 456; CF 42/1413, 40/1892—District of Goulburn, 4/4124, 4/4362.
BENJAMIN, Samuel
b. London, 1804–1854
Ann, 1833; Free.
Single; Merchant; 11 children.
Samuel Benjamin was the eldest son of Lyon Benjamin and his first wife Miriam of Hyde Park, London. His brothers were Moses (q.v.) and David (q.v.), and Solomon Benjamin (q.v.) was his half-brother.
Samuel Benjamin arrived in Sydney on the Ann on 13 November 1833 with Elias Moses (q.v.), and the two men went to Goulburn in order to establish a wholesale and retail business. Both men were aged twenty-four and were described as ‘dealers’. Samuel was married in Sydney on 4 February 1835, at the Bridge Street Synagogue, the announcement reading: ‘by the officiating minister of the Jews Synagogue (Solomon Phillips) Samuel Benjamin, of the firm Benjamin and Moses, to Rachael [Rachel Moses, q.v.] the youngest sister of Elias Moses of the above firm’. The two partners therefore became brothers-in-law.
The couple's children were Mary (born 24 October 1835 at Sydney and died 16 March 1849), Elias Abraham (1837–1838), Benjamin (1838–1912), Maurice (Moses) S. (born at Illawarra, 1840–1885), Fanny (born in Sydney in 1840, died thirty-one days later), Jane (8 June 1841), Clara (8 September 1842–1911), Rachel (born in Sydney 1844, died 13 November 1849), Elizabeth (1846–1875), David Hobart (born 1847, died 8 February 1849), and Sarah (1849–1880). The children's remains were removed from the Devonshire Street Cemetery and reburied in the Rookwood Cemetery in 1901.
In 1835 Benjamin had opened a business at Sydney House, 44 Lower George Street, and also at 321 George Street, ‘opposite the Burial Ground’. In 1836, a store was established on George Street, Windsor, called the London Stores, which boasted that it was the town's ‘pioneer store’ and, in 1842, was the only one of its kind between Sydney and Melbourne. Benjamin also owned a boiling-down works in Goulburn, the Argyle Steam Boiling Establishment, Tourang, which employed one hundred men at the height of the season. Samuel Benjamin and Elias Moses bought two city blocks in the 1839 Melbourne land sale. They also had a general store, the Goulburn Store, in Queanbeyan in 1844.
Samuel Benjamin gave £30 to the York Street Synagogue building appeal in 1839. He joined the synagogue's board in 1840 and helped to prepare the 1845 Sydney Synagogue Report. Benjamin was an enthusiastic supporter of the Sydney edition of the Voice of Jacob and the early Jewish Library. Between 1836 and 1852 he and Elias Moses bought land parcels in a dozen townships, which included the first land purchases in Portland, Victoria (1840), and early purchases in Melbourne, Queanbeyan, Windsor and Braidwood. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 7 January 1845 that Samuel Benjamin, along with two servants, had been held up by bushrangers while travelling to his Queanbeyan store, but had escaped unharmed.
Samuel Benjamin died in Sydney on 4 December 1854 and was buried at the Devonshire Street cemetery. Rachael died in Sydney on 15 June 1862.
Rodney Benjamin, ‘Early Melbourne and the Benjamin Brothers’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 3 (1996), p. 384; ML 4/5205; Great Synagogue Journal (Sydney), July 1950; Noel F. Learmonth, The Portland Bay Settlement; Port Phillip Patriot, 10 October 1840; Land Purchases 2/7799; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1845; AG, pp. 182, 282, 305, 308, 314.
BENJAMIN, Samuel
William Lockerby, 1834; Free.
Married; Dealer; 5 children.
Samuel Benjamin arrived on 16 August 1834. His wife Elizabeth and their children, Henry (q.v.), Juliet, Jane, Rachel and Hannah, travelled with him in steerage. The 1842 municipal voters' list showed that Samuel Benjamin owned a shop and dwelling in George Street, Sydney. He was a seat holder in the York Street Synagogue in 1845 and gave £30 to the building fund. Samuel Benjamin signed a petition that new settlers should get more assistance from the colonial government.
William Lockerby Indent 4/5207; Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1842; Petition, Governors' Despatches, ML, A1216, p. 583.
The child of Henry Samuel Benjamin (q.v.) and Lydia Benjamin (q.v.), the daughter of Judah Solomon (q.v), Samuel was born on 21 July 1839. At the age of thirteen, after his bar mitzvah, Samuel went to work at Judah and Joseph Solomon's business at Temple House in Hobart Town, and remained there until the firm ceased operation in 1854. Samuel Benjamin then went to Melbourne in partnership with a cousin—a son of Joseph Solomon (q.v.). When his partner proceeded to London to establish a boot and shoe factory, Samuel remained in Melbourne to look after the business. The business grew and he moved to Sydney and saw his boot and leather business grow to produce £200 000 a year. It was in Sydney that he married Fannie Benjamin (no relative). They had a son, Montefiore Moses Benjamin, and two daughters, Eveline Rosetta and Lydia.
Benjamin lost his personal fortune in the Stock Exchange crash of 1880. He left Australia and, in 1884, started a wine and spirit business in New York. When this was burned down he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was there that he received news that he had inherited £100 000 from his uncle, Joseph Solomon. He returned to Tasmania, after an absence of thirty-five years, to live at Temple House in Argyle Street, next to the synagogue. The mansion was the home of his extended family. His daughter-in-law was Myra Lindo Levien of Melbourne and his grandchildren were Joseph, Eileen, Dorothy and Eveline.
Benjamin was elected an alderman of the Hobart City Council in 1897. He was a turbulent representative of the people. Stefan Paltrow observed: ‘Unfortunately, his personality was such that independence led to isolation, and impartiality to aggressive personal criticism. Cooperation was not his style, and so he was unable to achieve any reforms unless these were already generally supported’. The Mayor of Hobart, George Davies, declared ‘Benjamin threw mud at the rest of them [the aldermen] in the hope that some of it would stick, and it must stick in some places’. He served as president of the Hobart Hebrew Congregation until his death, on 5 March 1926, at the age of eighty-seven.
Mercury, 6 March 1926; L. M. Goldman, ‘The History of Hobart Jewry’, AJJHS, vol. 3, no. 5 (1951), p. 209f; S. Paltrow, ‘Fearless and Independent: Jews Elected in Public Office in Tasmania 1855–1902’, and Anne Rand, ‘Temple House and the Judah Solomon Story’, in P. Elias and A. Elias (eds), A Few from Afar, pp. 104f., and 25.
BENJAMIN, Sarah (née LEVEY)
b. Whitechapel, 1823–1867
Andromeda, 1843; Free.
Married; 8 children.
The barque Andromeda arrived in Port Jackson on 7 December 1843. On board the ship was the family of Philip Levey (q.v.), his wife Leah (q.v.) (née Mordecai), their nine unmarried children, and their daughter Sarah, who had recently married John Benjamin (q.v.). Sarah and John Benjamin settled in Kooringa, Burra Burra, in South Australia.
BENJAMIN, Simeon
1817–1859
Free.
Single; Draper.
Simeon Benjamin was the son of Benjamin Benjamin of London. He was penalized one guinea by the Hobart Synagogue's committee for declining the honour of being a bridegroom of the Torah in October 1841. A member of the Hobart Town Synagogue in 1842 (but not in 1844), Benjamin gave £2 to the synagogue and was shown in the congregational ledger as owing two shillings in 1845. He was not a seat holder in the new synagogue. Simeon Benjamin married Elizabeth Solomon on 21 January 1846 (the tenth Jewish wedding in Van Diemen's Land), at Victoria House, Liverpool Street, in Hobart Town. It was Elizabeth's second marriage. The officiating minister was Henry Jones (q.v.). Edward Magnus (q.v.) was rebuked by the congregation's leadership for writing the traditional Hebrew marriage certificate without authorisation. At the time Benjamin's occupation was given as ‘draper’ and Elizabeth was described as a ‘jeweller’.
In 1846 ‘Simeon Benjamin in Liverpool St, a jeweller’, was robbed by Michael Solomon (q.v.), a ‘near relative’ of Mrs Benjamin. (He was her estranged son-in-law).
Benjamin died, aged forty-two, on 8 August 1859. He left an intestate estate. His principal asset was his stock in trade (drapery), which, on 24 August 1860, was offered for sale by order of the Curator, Mr Sorrell.
BENJAMIN, Simon
b. London, 1799
Malabar (1), 1819; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1818.
Single; Fishmonger: Height: 165 cm.
Light brown hair, fair ruddy complexion, hazel eyes. Simon Benjamin stole a watch from a drunken man in a London street and was caught in the act. He was sentenced on 2 December 1818.
In New South Wales, Simon Benjamin was listed among the convicts on 5 November 1819 who had been sent to Parramatta. On 11 July 1821, he was sentenced to be sent to Newcastle for three years. Subsequently, the Sydney Gazette announced, on 27 November 1823 and 13 January 1824, that Benjamin had absconded from ‘Mr Terry's Clearing Party’ (in the bush). He was officially listed as an absconded prisoner from 1 April 1824.
OBSP, 1818–19, case 115, p. 49; 4/4006, p. 424; HO 11/3; Sydney Gazette, 27 November 1823, 1 April 1824, 13 January 1825; Convicts Sent to Parramatta, 5 November 1819, 4/3501; Convicts Sent to Newcastle, 11 July 1821, 4/3504.
The son of Lyon and Phirely Benjamin of London, Solomon Benjamin was born on 20 March 1818. He was the half-brother of Moses, David and Samuel Benjamin (qq.v.), and arrived in Australia in 1838 with David. They travelled to Van Diemen's Land. David established a drapery and clothing store at Brisbane and St John streets in Launceston in premises known as Tamar House. In November of that year, Solomon Benjamin appears to have visited Melbourne briefly to ‘spy out the land’. On 14 February 1839 Solomon sailed from Launceston to Melbourne on the barque Wallaby to set up a branch of the Launceston store. David maintained the business in Launceston but Melbourne was experiencing a boom and in June 1840 the Benjamins opened Cheapside House on the northeastern corner of Collins and Queen streets.
In March 1840, after Solomon had turned twenty-one, the name of the firm became D & S Benjamin, and it was at Cheapside House that Asher Hymen Hart (q.v.) conducted the first High Holyday services in Melbourne.
At the Sydney Synagogue, on 11 August 1841, Solomon Benjamin married Miriam Nathan (q.v.) ‘of George St’, who was sixteen. Miriam (1825–1882) was a daughter of Nathan Lyon Nathan (q.v.) and Sarah Nathan of London. A sister, Rosetta (Nathan, q.v.), was married to Moses Joseph (q.v.) of Sydney.
The Benjamin brothers bought a block of land at William's Town at the third Port Phillip land sale in September 1840 as they hoped to build a warehouse with easy access to Port Phillip Bay. Shortly after the purchase, the mouth of the Yarra River was widened so that ships could sail up the river to the site of the new town. The Port Philip Gazette advertised on 12 August 1843 that ‘Cheapside House … the oldest establishment in Melbourne’ was selling off all its extensive stock ‘in consequence of business of importance requiring their presence in London’. In fact, Solomon's half-brother Moses, with all his family, arrived in December 1843 and joined the business. The business itself moved up Collins Street. The gold rush brought the Benjamin brothers great wealth, not only through their drapery trade but also through extensive gold trading.
Solomon Benjamin witnessed the first three Jewish weddings in the Port Phillip district and served as first vice-president of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, and then became the honorary treasurer. Between 1846 and 1849 Solomon Benjamin bought £700 worth of land in the new settlement. In 1843, with Asher Hymen Hart and Michael Cashmore (q.v.), he applied for land for a Jewish cemetery in Melbourne.
The Benjamins had seventeen children. They were Miriam (7 September 1842 to 19 February 1923) (the second entry in the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation's Birth Register), Sarah (18 May 1844 to 5 April 1880), Benjamin Albert (26 February 1846 to 1942), Louis (20 July 1847, died eight and a half months later), Samuel (10 February 1849–1870), Charlotte Victoria (5 September 1850), Nathaniel Lionel (21 June 1852), Morris (born at 44 Bedford Square, London, on 2 May 1854), Alfred Leopold (27 September 1855), Rachel Amy (26 November 1856), Rosa Kate (8 December 1857), Jacob Henry (Brunswick Place, Regents Park, 13 May 1859), David Frederick (5 June 1860), Esther (1861), Louis Stanley (Clifton Gardens, 2 March 1863–1934), Clara (16 March 1865, lived two days), and Florence Gertrude (13 October 1865).
Benjamin retired from business at the ripe old age of thirty-five in 1853, and returned to England, where he bought a house in Clifton Gardens. He died in London in 1888 and was said (in a Jewish American newspaper report) to have left an estate worth US$3 million. His Australian-born daughter Miriam (q.v.) married Lewis Sanders.
Rodney Benjamin, ‘Early Melbourne and the Benjamin Brothers’ AJJHS, vol. 13 no. 3 (1966), p. 365f; ML 2/7799; Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Birth Book; AG, pp. 282, 283, 286, 287, 293, 320; Ms. Family Register, written for S. Benjamin Esq. and Rev. Moses Rintel, Melbourne, held by the Jewish Museum (Melbourne).
BENTLEY, James
b. Winchester
Hyderabad, 1843; Free.
Single; Soldier.
Bentley was classified as a labourer when he enlisted in the British Army on 1 January 1843. He joined his regiment in Van Diemen's Land on 17 November 1843, arriving on the Hyderabad, a freight ship. Bentley was listed as being on garrison duty from July to September 1844. He was then sent to the Tasman Peninsula from October 1844 to March 1845. He remained on duty, including a period in hospital, until he was discharged from the army, on 31 October 1845. On 28 August 1845 the Commanding Officer of the 96th Regiment stationed in Hobart Town, Lieutenant Colonel Elliott, wrote to David Poole (q.v.), who at that time was acting as honorary solicitor of the Hobart Synagogue, expressing concern about the discharge ‘of a Hebrew James Bentley from the Army’. The letter was received by the synagogue's committee but no action appears to have been taken.
Minutes of the Hobart Synagogue; Research by the late Dr Peter Elias, Hobart; Regimental no. 1565, Box 3183, no. 6205, pp. 69, 129, 189, no. 6207, pp. 10, 70, 130, AOT.
BERKMAN, Marcus
b. Berlin, 1814 Roslin Castle (4), 1834; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1833. Single; Saddler, upholsterer, pedlar; Height: 165 cm.
Ruddy complexion, brown hair, grey eyes. Left leg diseased. On 11 November 1833 Berkman stole jewellery worth £20 from Samuel Jacobs, a hawker, who slept in the same room as he did at a boarding house in London. Jacobs was at synagogue when Berkman stole his stock. Berkman had been in England for a year and claimed in court that he was not able to speak English and needed an interpreter. The witnesses insisted that he could speak English.
Berkman was issued a ticket of leave on 13 September 1844 for the Cassilis District. This was altered to Moreton Bay on 5 December 1844. A conditional pardon was granted on 24 October 1848. At that time, he was allowed to remain at Darling Downs for twelve months service to Mr George Leslie by recommendation of the Brisbane Bench.
On 20 February 1851 Marcus Berkman of Darling Downs was naturalised. Almost immediately after that he was able to begin to buy land and Marcus Berkman ‘of Warwick, Queensland’, bought a parcel of land. In the mid-1850s, alluvial gold was found in the vicinity, and Berkman purchased this gold.
OBSP, 1833–34, case 140, p. 107; TL 44/2282, in 4/4193; HO 10/54; Land Correspondence, 2/7796.
BINDER, Barney (Bernard)
b. London, 1799
Midas, 1827; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Guilford, 1826.
Single; Carter and labourer; Height: 155 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, brown eyes. Tattooed with a figure of a man and the letters JB on his right arm, and the date 1826 on his left arm. Barney Binder was convicted at Guildford on 17 July 1826 for stealing poultry, and listed on the ship's indent as a Protestant.
The Midas arrived in Port Jackson on 15 February 1827. Binder was listed in the 1828 Census as Bendor, a government servant and a ‘Jew’. He was listed as a salt boiler at John Blaxland's estate at Newington.
Ship Indent, 4/4012, p. 54.
BIRSTINGL, Lewis
b. Arad, Hungary, 1819
1842; Free.
Single; Jeweller.
The younger brother of Maurice Birstingl (q.v.), Lewis was born in the south-east of Hungary. The two brothers were orphaned in the wake of a cholera epidemic, after which they went to Paris and then London. Lewis learned to deal in glassware and glass jewellery and apparently travelled extensively through Europe developing his considerable linguistic skills.
Lewis Birstingl arrived in Sydney at a crucial time in the life of his older brother, who was standing trial for stealing the drawing-plate from his former business partner. Once the trial was over, and his brother pardoned, Lewis took over the responsibility as Maurice's ‘agent’ for the jewellery business of ‘Birnstingle (sic) and Co., watch and clockmakers, jewellers, silversmiths and importers of British and foreign novelties’, at 478 George Street, while Maurice journeyed to Europe on a business trip from 1843 to 1844.
In early 1845 the brothers presented the new York Street Synagogue with a silver pointer for the reading of the Torah.
During the late 1840s the jewellery shop began to be described as ‘general merchants’ and at the beginning of the gold rush as ‘a bullion office’. The brothers imported material for the miners, such as camp ovens, paper, soap, and wines, including the ‘most superior champagne’. ‘L. Birstingl & Co.’ opened a shop in Wynyard Lane that catered for haberdashery goods. At the same time, the brothers exported large quantities of gold to Great Britain, and imported large quantities of merchandise into New South Wales.
On 17 September 1853, Lewis Birstingl sailed on the steamship Victoria for England, where he married and had children. In London, at Glasshouse Street, he opened a photographic studio and experimented with the colouring of photographs.
Biography in Egon F. Kunz, Blood and Gold: Hungarians in Australia, p. 20f.
BIRSTINGL, Maurice
b. Arad, Hungary, 1807–1903
John, 1838; Free.
Single; Jeweller.
In 1831, following a cholera epidemic which took the lives of their parents, Maurice, aged twenty-four, left Hungary with his twelve-year-old brother, Lewis (q.v.). They made their way to London by way of Paris. Maurice worked as a jeweller and silversmith and then, together with a French jeweller, Bartholomew Guion, set off for Australia, arriving in Sydney on 1 July 1838. The two jewellers announced that they, having:
just arrived from Paris and London, where they had been working for several years, have the honour to inform the Public that they have established a Manufactory of every kind of jewellery, at No 5 Bridge Street, Colonade, where orders will be executed after the most fashionable patterns. Jewels altered and repaired. Messrs G and B. have imported a choice assortment of Fancy Goods to an inspection of which they especially invite the ladies of Sydney.
The partnership came to an end on 25 May 1840, when Guion paid Birstingl £900 for all stock in trade, tools and debts. Maurice Birstingl then went to Europe to buy stock for a new business. Upon his return the Australian hoped that ‘as Mr B. went away while the colony was flourishing he will not suffer because he came back when it was depressed’. An advertisement in the same paper gave the new address of the business ‘M. Birstingl and Co. manufacturing watch and clock makers, jewellers and silversmith, 2 Bridge St Sydney’.
When Birstingl returned to Sydney, a jealous, and obviously nervous, former colleague charged him with having stolen a drawing-plate, which was now the property of Guion. Birstingl claimed that he had bought the plate in Paris. A handsome testimonial from Captain Innes and others allowed the Governor to issue the accused with an Absolute Pardon as ‘an act of grace’. By this time, Lewis Birstingl had arrived in Sydney and the two brothers advertised for 2500 ounces of silver to fulfil orders received. Maurice then left for an extended business trip to Europe while Lewis acted as his ‘agent’. Maurice sent back ‘watches, clocks, musical boxes. Ornaments jewellery, looking glasses imported from Munich, Vienna and Paris’ to the business, now located at 478 George Street.
Both Maurice and his brother were members of the Sydney Synagogue, contributed to the building fund, and gave a silver Torah pointer to the congregation.
In 1845 Maurice received his naturalisation certificate, which was the first issued to any Hungarian in the colony of New South Wales. By the end of the 1840s the firm had diversified into a ‘general business’, which, with the gold rush beginning in 1851, quickly added the description ‘bullion office’. The Birstingls imported all the stock required by miners, from camp ovens to cigars and champagne. M. Birstingl and Co. was among the leading bullion exporters in the colony.
In November 1853, Maurice left New South Wales on the steamer Chusan, bound for Marseilles. He settled in Paris, where he married and had two children. He died in Paris in 1903, at the age of ninety-six.
Biography in Egon F. Kunz, Blood and Gold Hungarians in Australia, p. 20f.; Ship Indent 38/137, 4/5213 (name spelled Maurentius Bartengle); Australian, 10 August, 15 August, 22 August, 28 October 1842; Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April, 29 June 1844.
BLAU, Adolphus
b. Hungary, 1825
Prince of Wales, 1850; Free.
Single; Jeweller.
Adolphus Blau's arrival in Sydney on 21 February 1850 was connected with the Birstingl brothers, Lewis and Maurice (qq.v.), and their commercial activities. Blau brought with him four cases of watches for the firm of Birstingl. In October 1853, Blau emerged as a jeweller as the Birstingl brothers left Australia. It is likely that Blau worked for the Birstingls in his first three years in Australia before opening his own shop, at 489 George Street, which carried a wide selection of silver, rings, watches and other jewellery.
The end of 1854 saw the business of ‘Blau, Adolphus, jeweller and silversmith’, move to 177 George Street. Blau then left Australia and his business was taken over by Edward Morize. In 1861, Blau returned to Sydney and was an importer of jewellery and a watchmaker in Hunter Street.
Egon F. Kunz, Blood and Gold: Hungarians in Australia, p. 31f.
BOAZ, Joachim (BOAS)
b. Poland, 1785
Baring (1), 1815; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1814.
Single; Clerk; Height: 160 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, black hair, brown eyes. Together with Moses Rockotz (q.v.), Boaz was charged with two offences. Having arrived in England on 27 May 1814, the two men had visited two drapers' stores on 14 June. In the first store they had successfully stolen twelve yards of cambric valued at thirty shillings. At the second, they stole seven pieces of cambric lace valued at £15, but their nervousness betrayed them and they were arrested. Boaz submitted a written plea: ‘I did not come [to England] to rob this country or to settle’. The two thieves were unable to speak English. They were sentenced to death on 6 July 1814, their sentences subsequently commuted to transportation for life.
Boaz arrived in New South Wales on 7 September 1815. By 1821 he had rented a small farm in the District of Evan and was able to supply the government with twenty-nine bushels of wheat worth £13 1s. On 20 October 1825 he petitioned the Colonial Secretary for a mitigation of his sentence. He had ‘rented a smal [sic] farm in the District of Evan until very recently when Memorialist was obliged to relinquish it in consequence of several times being robbed of his little all. Now a shoemaker by which he procures a comfortable maintenance’. A ticket of leave was granted. Boaz then asked for a conditional pardon, signing his name ‘Joachim Boaze’. In the 1828 Census, Boaz was listed as a ‘Hebrew’ and shoemaker, employed by John Williams of Camden.
Boaz waited ten years for his pardon, which he received on 23 September 1834 (358), when his occupation was listed as ‘pedlar’.
OBSP, cases 585, 586, pp. 315–16; Ship Indent 2/8243, p. 174; TL Register 4/4060, 441/195, in lieu of lost ticket 24/411; CP Register, 221/358, 4/4433, p. 221, 3 November 1835; CS, In Correspondence, 4/1748, p. 181; State Receipts, CS, Petitions for Mitigation of Sentence, 4/1873, p. 19.
BOCKERAH, Ann
d. 1793
Neptune, 1790; Free.
Married; 1 child.
The wife of Solomon Bockerah (q.v.), Ann arrived on the Second Fleet, and may have been the first free adult Jewish settler in Australia. She died in 1793 and was buried on 21 February 1793 by St John's, Parramatta, leaving a child, Sarah, born in Australia. Evidently, following the death of Solomon Bockerah, his widow, Ann, together with Sarah, her daughter, joined the Atkins household. In the diary of Atkins Ann's death is obliquely recorded as ‘a great domestic loss’. Atkins wife, Elizabeth, arrived in New South Wales in 1802 and seems to have adopted Sarah as part of her household. In 1800 Ann became one of the first pupils of the Female Orphan Institute.
Sarah's death is commemorated by a table shaped, sandstone monument on which is inscribed:
Sacred to the memory of Sarah Buckrell (sic) who died Febr 21 1793. Aged 22 years. This monument is erected by Richard Atkins, Esq as a testimonial of the regard he bore her when living. Requiescat in Pace.
Research by Justin Cahill of New South Wales who is a direct descendant of Ann.
On 1 November 1788, Solomon Bockerah and Robert Hobbs broke into a dwelling place at 7 p.m. and stole a piece of velveteen worth £8 4s. Bockerah was the leader of a gang of four or five men who broke into a shop in the City of London. The others escaped, but he was taken in a fight when the coach that was taking him to the police station was attacked by Bockerah's friends. Hobbs was found not guilty and Bockerah was sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation for life.
Bockerah was held in Newgate for more than a year before being officially discharged from the prison and put on the Scarborough, a ship of the Second Fleet. The Scarborough lost 85 of its 259 convicts through maltreatment and Bockerah survived the voyage only to die in Sydney. He was buried on Saturday, 16 July 1791, by the chaplain at St Philip's. He was officially described, at the time, as ‘a Jewish convict’.
Bockerah's wife Ann (q.v.) must have accompanied him to Australia on the Second Fleet as a free woman. She was buried by St John's, Parramatta, on 21 February 1793, leaving an orphaned child, Sarah, who had been born in Australia. On 29 January 1810 Sarah Bockerah petitioned Governor Macquarie for a grant of fifty acres of land. She wrote that she had been left ‘an orphan during her infant state, having been admitted into the [Orphan] Institution from which the petitioner was taken by the late Mrs Atkins, in whose employ continued three years. The Petitioner being a native of this Settlement, and a Mother, will she flatters herself Induce your Excellency to confirm the said Grant’. Macquarie wrote ‘to be renewed in the name of her husband John Lawrence—now Free’. Lawrence was actually John Laurie, whom Sarah married in April 1810. If Ann was Jewish, and there is no reason to think that she was not, then her daughter, Sarah, must be numbered among the first Jewish children in the colony.
OBSP, 1788–89, case 82, p. 53; CS 4/1821, Memo to Gov. Macquarie no. 27, 4/4003.
BOTIBOL, Esther Henrietta
b. Portica, Italy, 1834–1910
Anna Maria (2), 1852; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 1851.
Single; Dressmaker; Height: 136 cm; 6 children.
The dossier lists a brother, Isaac, and a sister. Fair complexion, light brown hair, small face, brown eyes, small nose, mouth and chin. Very much pockmarked. ‘Jewess.’ Esther Botibol was transported for stealing a gold ring and a dress valued at £5. She had previously been convicted for four minor offences, and was sentenced on 12 May 1851.
Esther Botibol was listed as being ‘uncooperative and disagreeable’ on board ship. Her transport arrived in Hobart Town on 26 January 1852. On 17 May 1852 she absconded. She had been an assigned servant in the household of a Mr Marks and, having absconded a second time, on 1 June 1852 she was sentenced to six months hard labour. On 28 June she was sentenced to ten days in the cells for tearing her apron, the ‘property of the government’. On 22 July she repeated her ‘crime’ and spent fourteen days in the cells. On 25 October she was convicted of ‘disorderly conduct’ and sentenced to a month's hard labour, to commence at the conclusion of her previous sentence. In February 1853 she was returned to the cells for disorderly conduct, and on 1 December she was sentenced to a month's hard labour for ‘refusing to keep her bed and refusing to allow the nurse to apply remedies prescribed by the Medical Officer’. A ticket of leave was issued on 17 October 1854. In November, she was sentenced to eighteen months hard labour for larceny under £5.
Her criminal career continued. By December 1855 she was once again assigned to work within a household in Hobart Town. She absconded and was sentenced to a month's hard labour. On 19 February 1856 she was sentenced to nine months hard labour for absconding, and on 26 June she was placed in solitary confinement for seven days for using profane language to the matron and her existing sentence was extended. A second ticket of leave was issued on 17 February 1857. Five weeks later she was caught ‘being out after hours’ and given seven days hard labour. On 18 September 1857 she was returned to the cells for ten days for ‘misconduct’. On 9 October a charge of ‘Misconduct’ in being absent from her residence resulted in three months hard labour. In the Supreme Court in Hobart on 19 August 1876 she received a sentence of six months for ‘larceny’ and on 14 July 1877, a twelve-month sentence for another theft. It was decreed that she was not to reside in Hobart Town but she was unable to keep out of town.
She had become involved with Thomas Simmonds, a millwright and wood splitter and she was to bear him six children. They married at the Wesleyan Parsonage in Hobart on 12 November 1872, when their youngest child was eight months old. Esther was thirty-three and Thomas was fifty-five. In 1868 they had applied to have three of their children cared for in the Queen's Orphanage. The children were Ann Jane, aged two, Esther, aged nine, and Thomas, aged eight. Nicholas, aged five, and Susannah, aged one, were not included in the application. Their sixth child, Mary Ann Eliza, was born in Hobart Town on 29 March 1872.
On 19 August 1875 Esther was given a six-month sentence, and two years later she stole a pair of boots, resulting, on 14 July 1877, in a sentence of twelve months imprisonment. Thomas Simmonds died on 25 May 1894 and Esther Henrietta Symmonds (sic) died in Hobart in 1910. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Hobart. Esther was certainly the last Jewish convict to have been transported to eastern Australia.
CON 15/6; CON 40/1, no. 1136; Susan Ballyn and Lucy Frost, ‘Sephardi Convicts in Van Diemen's Land’, in P. Elias and A. Elias (eds), A Few from Afar, p. 79f, where it is noted that on various documents her ‘place of origin’ is given as ‘Lisbon, Portugal, and Rathbone Place, London’. All are probably correct. She lived at Rathbone Place, she had been born in Portica, and her Sephardi family remembered that they came from Lisbon.
Braham was convicted for a felonious assault on the highway and stealing a gold watch valued at £25. The theft occurred in Fleet Street at 10 p.m. on 30 March 1810. The victim testified: ‘A man ran against me. I was walking at the time and, at the same moment, I felt my watch was gone’. Braham took the watch to a pawnbroker in Houndsditch. He returned to the pawnbroker with another man and the pawnbroker became suspicious and called for the police. Braham was later arrested in a public house at Bow Street. The police office said ‘Oh Master Braham is it you? I have been looking for you a good while for a watch that you stole in Fleet St’. Braham pleaded ‘I am entirely innocent of the charge. I have dealt in watches. The gentleman must be mistaken in the man. I have pledged to the amount of a £100 of watches at his shop and Mr Morris never knew any harm in my character’. Braham was sentenced at the London Gaol Delivery on 6 June 1810.
Braham arrived in New South Wales on 10 October 1811. On 3 September 1814 Abraham Hart Braham advertised in the Sydney Gazette for the right to administer the estate of his late brother, William Brown (q.v.), whose real name was Moses Braham.
On 13 January 1815, Braham was sentenced to one year colonial transportation for theft and sent to Newcastle. He was transported again on 21 July 1817 and was listed as being in Newcastle at the time of the 1817 Muster.
OBSP, 1810, case 414, p. 230; Ship Indent 2/8240, p. 122, AO; 4/4004, p. 380; HO 10/1; HO 11/2; Sydney Gazette, 28 May 1814, 3 September 1814; CS, Prisoners sent to Newcastle, 4/3493.
BROCKSTEIN, George Jacob (BROCKSTAYNE)
b. Kolo, Poland, 1819–1887
Free.
Single; Dealer; 3 children.
George Brockstein, ‘late of Bishopsgate’, married Esther (Hester) Cohen (née Isaacs, q.v.) at the Sydney Synagogue on 11 April 1848. Esther was the widow of Edward Daniel Cohen (q.v.). George and Esther had a son in Sydney in 1849. He was named Alfred and registered as a ‘Hebrew’. A second son, Lawrence, was born probably in 1853 (died 11 February 1882), and Isaac was born in 1855.
Brockstein was a gold buyer on the Bathurst goldfields. The pioneer gold prospector, Edward Hargraves, scornfully wrote about his business dealings with the London-born Jewish businessman: ‘Vell, ven you find de gold I think you get good reward’.
Esther died in Sydney in 1857 and George (who now spelled his surname ‘Brockstayne’), was buried at Lidcombe Cemetery's Jewish section on 10 July 1887, survived by Alfred and Isaac. On his grave his sons inscribed that their father's ‘heart was in God's Torah. His lips spoke the Torah’.
M. Z. Forbes, ‘Hargraves’“Mishter Cohen”: A Prelude to the Goldrushes', AJJHS, vol. 10, no. 1 (1986), p. 61f.
Kate (Catherine) was the wife of Meyer Brodziak (q.v.). Together they had eight children: Rosalie (1848), Alfred (1850), Francis (1851), Mark (1852), Hannah (1853), Julia (1856), Hannah (1858), and Bertha (1859). Kate died on 10 June 1885 and was buried at Lidcombe Cemetery's Jewish section.
BRODZIAK, Lewis
b. Poland, 1823–1884
Triton, 1842; Free.
Dealer.
Lewis was the brother of Meyer Brodziak (q.v.) and the son of Abraham and Golda (Julia). Lewis Brodziak donated ten shillings to the Hobart Town Congregation on 11 April 1843 and, in 1844, an additional three shillings. He married Annie Davis, sister of Samuel and David Davis (qq.v.). In 1845 it was announced that ‘Mr Brodziak, formerly of Davis and Brodziak, has recommenced business as watchmaker and jeweller at 99 King St, Sydney’. The 1845 Shipping Register recorded that Davis and Brodziak imported ‘one box’ from London and sent 123 bags of maize to Hobart Town. In 1846 Brodziak was given a hawker's licence for the Hunter River District.
On 2 February 1853, Lewis Brodziak, a jeweller of 9 George Street, Sydney, became a British subject and was granted a naturalisation certificate. Lewis Brodziak was buried at Lidcombe Cemetery's Jewish section on 29 August 1884.
Hobart Town Congregational First Minute Book; Sydney Morning Herald, 8 November 1845; Maitland Mercury, 31 January 1846.
BRODZIAK, Meyer (Myer)
b. Prussia, 1817–1885
Kelso, 1842; Free.
Married; Silversmith; 8 children.
The brother of Lewis Brodziak (q.v.) and son of Abraham and Golda, Meyer Brodziak was listed in the New South Wales Almanac and Remembrancer of 1848 as a silversmith and jeweller at 106 King Street East. In 1848 his wife Kate had a baby girl, called Rosalie, who was recorded as a ‘Hebrew’. Their other children were Alfred (born in Scone, 1850), Francis (1851), born in Sydney, Mark (1852), Hannah (1853, who died in infancy), Julia (1856), Hannah (1858), and Bertha (1859). ‘Myer’ Brodziak was naturalised in October 1850.
Kate Brodziak died on 10 June 1885 and was buried at Lidcombe Cemetery's Jewish section. Myer Brodziak died on 6 August 1885, aged sixty-eight.
Letters of Denization 1849, 4/1173.
BROWN, John (né Joseph DANIELS)
b. Petticoat Lane, 1824
Henrietta, 1843; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1843.
Single; Sail-maker; Height: 155 cm.
Black hair, head rather long, dark eyes, large nose, small mouth, medium chin. Tattoos: hearts and darts on left arm above elbow, small blue mark on back of second finger on the left hand. He could read. John Brown was convicted for picking pockets and stealing a purse containing money. Brown claimed: ‘I am not guilty. I was never in prison before’, but he had been convicted before. Hulk report: ‘Bad. Flogged at the Hulk for swearing and quarrelling’.
The Henrietta arrived in Hobart Town on 19 November 1843. Brown's initial period of probation extended for two years and he was assigned to the convict station at Southport. During that time he was given four lashes on the back for being absent without leave on 25 November 1844. Charged with idleness, absence from work, pilfering, disobedience, and making use of profane language, he received twenty-four lashes on 7 March 1845. His first placement as an assigned convict began in 16 December 1846. Within three days he was found guilty of disobedience of orders and insolence and put in solitary confinement for ten days. On 13 May 1847 he was found guilty of larceny under £5 and sentenced to twelve months hard labour. On 1 October 1847, for using threatening language to an assistant superintendent, he was given seven days in solitary confinement. On 13 January 1848 he was found to have two pairs of linen trousers in his possession and his existing sentence of hard labour in chains was extended by two months. Three more acts of disobedience and general misconduct with minor punishments followed. On 26 February 1850, Brown received his ticket of leave. However, this was revoked on 19 March 1851 when he was found to be absent from the muster. A certificate of freedom was issued on 23 August 1852.
CON 33/46, no. 10880.
BROWN, Moses
1809–1859
Wellington, 1830; Free.
Single; Dealer; 1 child.
Son of Moses Brown and Hannah (née Moses) of London, Moses Brown arrived on the Wellington on 24 October 1830, and opened the Grand Repository in Lower George Street, selling jewellery, furniture and general merchandise. He married Matilda De Metz, who was eighteen, on 23 July 1834. Brown officiated at Sydney's fifth Jewish wedding (of Abraham Joseph Levy, q.v.) and was elected to the committee of the first general meeting of Sydney Jews.
In December 1832, Moses Brown charged Mosely Moss Cohen (q.v.) with perjury. Cohen's brother, the convict Edward Daniel Cohen (q.v.), had been set up in business by Brown, to whom he was assigned, as a watchmaker. Brown had lent him his name and advanced him money. Brown had given Edward Daniel Cohen a large antique gold ring to modernise. When M. M. Cohen arrived in Sydney, Brown ‘transferred’ his brother to him in exchange for £25. The ring was then handed on to M. M. Cohen who sent Brown a bill for £5 10s. Brown refused to pay, saying that Cohen was responsible for the work. The Bench dismissed the case. Brown moved his jewellery business to King Street in 1837 and, in July 1838, advertised for ‘a young man who will make himself useful in business’. In September 1842 he was declared insolvent.
Brown was actively involved in the life of the Jewish community and officiated at a number of marriages. The synagogue registered that he had a child on 8 September 1842. Moses Brown died at Camden in 1859.
CON 33/46, no. 9547; Australian, 24 October 1830, 26 September 1842; Sydney Gazette, 17 February 1833, 5 July 1838; Currency Lad, 15 December 1832, p. 3.
BROWN, William (né Moses BRAHAM)
d. 1814
Duke of Portland, 1807; Convict; Sentenced to life, Middlesex, 1806.
William Brown was sentenced on 16 April 1806. His name was spelt ‘William Bowen’ in the ship's indent. He was the brother of Abraham Hart Braham (q.v.), who arrived on the Admiral Gambier in 1811.
William Brown arrived at Port Jackson on 27 July 1807. He died in early September 1814, and his brother Abraham applied for administration of his estate on 3 September.
Sydney Gazette, 3 September 1814.
BURDO, Sarah (BURDOE)
1764–1834
Lady Penrhyn, 1788; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1786.
Single; Mantua-maker, prostitute.
The evidence that Burdoe was Jewish is not conclusive. Her surname could have been Bordeaux (where there was a significant community of Sephardim). John Nicol, who sailed as a steward on board the Lady Juliana, believed that there were ‘a number of Jewesses’ on board the First Fleet. As the fleet anchored at Tenerife, ‘One, Sarah Sabolah, had a crucifix, and the others soon got them and passed themselves for Roman Catholics, by which means they got many presents from the people on shore and laid up a large stock for sea’. Nicol could easily have mixed up the surname and the combination of ‘Sarah and Rebecca’ is interesting. Sarah's surname indicates that she may have been able to speak Spanish or Portuguese. At the Old Bailey it was charged that Burdoe, together with Rebecca Davison (q.v.) robbed a man and stole £313s 6d. They had taken their ‘client’ to the Jewish-owned Jerusalem Tavern in the East End where the robbery took place.
Burdoe's sentence expired in October 1793. She received a certificate of freedom on 8 February 1811 and was issued with a document attesting to her status. In the 1814 Muster she was listed as independent of the Government Stores, and the wife of Isaac Archer of Parramatta. She was identified as a ‘midwife’ in 1819, and appeared in the 1828 Census, living in Clarence Street. Her death, on 16 July 1834, was recorded in the Register of St James' Church in Sydney.
Mollie Gillen records that when Sarah married the former marine Isaac Archer she signed her name ‘Bordeaux’. She also notes that in London, in 1786, a Sarah Purdoe had been involved in an attack with a knife on her former lover and almost killed him.
OBSP, 1785–86, case 811, p. 1270; T. Flannery (ed.), The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner 1776–1891, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1997, p. 126; Register of Pardons, 4/4427, p. 546; Mutch Index, p. 112; M. Gillen, The Founders of Australia, pp. 58f.
BURNSIDES, Mary Ann
b. London, 1811.
1828; Free.
Single; 3 children.
Mary Ann, the daughter of Private Ambrose Burnsides, converted to Judaism and changed her first name to Rebecca, in order to marry Emanuel Myers (q.v.) in 1829. She was eighteen years old, and was his first wife. She had a son, Benjamin, in 1829, who was registered as a ‘Hebrew’. A son, Joseph, was born in 1833, and a daughter, Hannah, at Windsor in 1836, and both were registered as ‘Hebrew’. There is a synagogue record that ‘E. Myers’ was buried at the Devonshire Street Cemetery on 6 November 1832. This may well have been a child of Mary Ann/Rebecca and Emanuel. It can be assumed that Rebecca had died by August 1840, as Emanuel remarried at that time.
BURNSTEIN, Jacob
b. Prussia, 1827
Anna Maria (1), 1848; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1848.
Married.
While Burnstein was listed as a Protestant, it is unlikely that he was because his parents were Isaac and Hinda Burnstein. He had six brothers and three sisters and no family in England. He was convicted for ‘stealing a silver plate, spoons and forks’.
Burnstein arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 7 June 1848. Later that year and again in 1851 he was found to be hawking goods without a licence. In 1852 his sentence was extended for eighteen months when he was found attempting to leave the colony on the Rebecca, bound for Port Phillip. In 1853 he was stationed at the prisoners' work detail at Bridgewater, where a causeway was being built across the River Derwent.
CON 31/26, no. 20641; CON 33/89; CON 14/38.