MAGNUS, Edward
b. Königsberg, Prussia, 1800–1855
Waterloo (2), 1835; Convict; Sentenced to life, Sussex, 1834.
Married; Linen draper; Height: 170 cm; 1 child.
Pale complexion, large round head, black hair and whiskers, blue eyes, large nose, full lips, wide mouth. Edward Magnus had an anchor and wreath and the letters E. M. tattooed in red on his right arm. He was described as ‘a travelling Jew’. He was sentenced at the Sussex Quarter Sessions on 16 October 1834 to be transported for life for stealing a gold watch. His wife Sophia was in London and they had one child. Magnus must have arranged a religious divorce before embarking for Van Diemen's Land.
Magnus was sent to the Risdon Assignable Gang, after serving four days on the treadmill, because he had been absent from his initial assigned service with Mr R. Lewis of Hobart Town, who had discovered that Magnus was ‘unqualified for the trade of draper which he represented himself to be’. In November 1836 he was sentenced to two years hard labour, of which one was to be worked in chains. He had been a constable and was found guilty of the theft of a rug and some other household articles. One month later, on 19 December, he was absent from the Town Surveyor's Chain Gang's muster and was sent to Bridgewater with an extra three months hard labour. By 1838 he was working as a convict in Picton and in July he was removed from his post as clerk of the Picton Road Party Station for stealing tea and sugar. Magnus then began to work as a constable in Campbell Town. On 8 October 1838 he spent ten days in solitary confinement on bread and water for misconduct while on duty. On 3 April 1839 he was charged with accepting a bribe and on 6 August he was charged with receiving stolen property.
On 28 December 1840, while still a member of the Campbell Town Police, he ‘burst open the door of a female assigned servant and attempted to take indecent liberties with her’. Magnus was given two years imprisonment and hard labour and was dismissed from the police. He was sent to the Jordan's Creek Road Party and then to the Launceston Prisoners' Barracks. By the first week of January 1841, ‘from a doubt that has arisen in favour of Magnus on account of a discrepancy in the evidence’, the Lieutenant Governor ordered that his sentence be remitted and Magnus be returned to duty in the police force, although in another district.
One year later, on 8 April 1842, Magnus was sentenced to twelve months hard labour for trying to obtain money under false pretences while a member of the police force. The 1842 Van Diemen's Land Census reported that Edward Magnus, a Jew, was living at Green Ponds as a tenant in a wooden house and was married to a member of the Church of England. His 1842 conviction concluded in December 1842. On 25 July 1843 he received a further three months hard labour for insolence while working in the Commissariat Department. A ticket of leave was granted on 10 October 1843. In September 1845 in Hobart Town a further three-month sentence was imposed on Magnus for assaulting Jane Chillmore.
This led Ann Magnus, the wife of Edward, to petition the Lieutenant Governor Sir John E. Wilmot and ask for help. Ann explained that her husband had been charged with the assault of a girl employed by Mr Henry Jones (q.v.) of Elizabeth Street and that the charge had been ‘maliciously exaggerated’ by information put to the police by Michael John Davies (q.v.), innkeeper of Campbell Street. Her husband had received a sentence of three months hard labour for ‘this paltry occurrence’. Because of the prison sentence, the little business was going to ruin. She lived at Albion Cottage, New Town Road. Magnus was a member of the Hobart Synagogue between 1842 and 1845, renting seat no. 44, and was thanked for ‘the trouble’ he had taken to make the candles for the dedication of the synagogue in 1845. However, in November 1845, when Magnus was allowed out of prison he overstepped the rules of the congregation by independently writing out a traditional Jewish Marriage Certificate for the marriage of Simeon Benjamin (q.v.) and Elizabeth Solomon. He subsequently apologised to the synagogue. In the Synagogue Minutes of 6 September 1846 the following note from Edward Magnus appears: ‘Finding little happiness has attended the wrong step I have taken which has led me astray from the Rites of our Holy religion which my Forefathers professed the woman with whom I am connected has expressed a wish to be admitted to the faith which is mine’. The request was accepted on the casting vote of the president (Louis Nathan, q.v.).
A conditional pardon for Edward Magnus was approved on 23 November 1847. A certificate of naturalisation, dated 7 February 1849, exists in the hands of a private collector. Magnus was described on it as a shopkeeper residing at Tanunda in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. In 1854 he is listed as carrying on a business in King William Street, Adelaide. Edward Magnus was buried in Adelaide as a Jew on 6 August 1855, ‘Born Konigsberg, Prussia’.
CON 34/5, no. 1295; CSO 20/3/88; Ship Indent List, ML, A1059-7, p. 26; Certificate of Naturalisation (South Australia), 7 February 1849.
MAGNUS, Maurice Moses
b. Aldgate, 1809–1874
Asia (9), 1832; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1831.
Single; Salesman; Height: 168 cm; 4 children.
Dark ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, dark eyes. Large scar under left jaw. Could read. A Jew. On 30 June 1831 Maurice Magnus was sentenced to be transported for stealing a bundle from a carriage in the West End. He was seen in the act and identified and arrested a little later. He was the son of Henry Morris Magnus and Fanny (Solomons).
Magnus arrived in New South Wales on 13 February 1832. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1837 that was valid for the District of Goulburn and a certificate of freedom on 22 September 1838. He married the 23-year-old free immigrant Catherine Adolphus. Magnus was employed as a barman by Henry Robert Reuben (q.v.), and gave evidence at a trial in Sydney on 13 July 1841. He was listed in the New South Wales Almanack and Remembrancer of 1848 as an ‘agent and dealer’ living in Pitt Street.
Maurice and Catherine Magnus had four children: Henry (born 1841), who died in infancy, Philip (1843), Lazarus (1846), and Esther (1849).
According to the Sydney Morning Herald of 22 January 1874 Maurice Magnus died at his home, at 35 Wexford Street, East Sydney. He was ‘an old and respected colonist, aged 64 years, leaving an affectionate wife and three children to mourn their loss’. He was buried as a Jew. Catherine Magnus died, aged sixty-six, on 24 October 1882 and was buried as an Anglican.
Asia (9) Printed Indent, p. 17, no. 32–269; TL 37/547; Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Butts of CF 1838, no. 38/850, 4/4344; A1531-4, p. 617; family history notes from Mrs Jane Ives, Sydney.
MANDELSON, Nathan (MENDELSOHN)
b. Warsaw, 1804–1867
Children, 1833; Free.
Married; Baker; 6 children.
Nathan Mandelson arrived in New South Wales travelling steerage with his wife Phoebe (q.v.) on the Children on 31 August 1833. Samuel Moses Emanuel (q.v.), Phoebe's brother-in-law, was on the same ship. Nathan's surname was sometimes spelled Mendelson or Mendelsohn. Nathan was the son of Naphtali and Rachel.
After three years operating a business in George Street, Sydney, Nathan Mandelson opened a business in Bungonia some miles east of the Goulburn Plains where, between July 1836 and 1839, he held the licence of the Hit and Miss Inn.
He advertised: ‘The travellers up and down the Maneroo will find good stabling and feed for horses; also four hundred acres of rich lands divided into paddocks, well secured for cattle’. As the land opened up the traffic moved eastwards and in 1839 Mandelson moved to Goulburn where, in May 1840, he purchased the Goulburn Inn from Isaac Moses (q.v.) for £1750 and moved to Sloane Street in Goulburn. Mandelson applied for naturalisation in 1843 (which would have enabled him to own land). He wrote that he had carried on business in Sydney and as a licensed victualler in Goulburn. He was actually at Bungonia, some miles east of the Goulburn Plains. A Letter of Denization was issued on 2 November 1844.
On 4 April 1843 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that ‘Jacob Mandelson, an infant died after circumcision—death caused by composing a draught of opium’.
Mandelson bought two adjoining properties in the centre of Goulburn and, in 1846, built Mandelson's Hotel. The building remained a landmark in the town for the next hundred years and Mandelson became one of Goulburn's best-known identities. The Sydney Synagogue had appointed Mandelson its official representative in the district on 13 November 1843 and he was authorised to perform circumcisions.
The family moved to Sydney, where he advertised that he was a general commission agent and purveyor of wine and spirits. In June 1851 Mandelson advertised in the Bathurst Free Press offering twenty-two guineas to the first party who would find a goldfield in the Police District of Goulburn. The gold fields at Braidwood were soon discovered and Mandelson put on a coach service from Goulburn to the new goldfields. Mandelson was a staunch member of the Jewish community and in 1862 was elected president of Sydney's York Street Synagogue. He briefly returned to Goulburn, where he died on 3 July 1867 ‘from an attack of apoplexy’. He was sixty-three years old. His elaborate tombstone now stands in the Jewish section of Rookwood cemetery. Phoebe had died in 1856.
The first child of Nathan and Phoebe Mandelson was named in honour of Phoebe's family: Levy Mandelson was born on 4 July 1833 in Sydney. They had five more children: Naphtali (born 1834), in Sydney; Leah (1835), who married Abraham Cohen (q.v.) in 1856; Betsy (1838), born in Goulburn; Jacob Solomon (3 April 1843, died 18 September 1843), whose body was taken to Sydney for a Jewish burial in the Devonshire Street Cemetery; and Judah Joseph (9 August 1844), in Goulburn.
A brother, Naphtali Mandelson, joined the family at the time of the gold rush, and married Caroline Samuels in Sydney in 1857.
Children Indent 4/5805; Governors' Despatches, A1232, for 1843, p. 215f.; Sydney B. Glass, ‘The Jews of Goulburn’, AJJHS, vol. 1, no. 8 (1942), p. 282f.; Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1836, 9 September 1846, 6 July 1867; Australasian Chronicle, 10 September 1839; Sydney Synagogue Minute Book, p. 126; Bathurst Free Press, 7 June 1851.
MANDELSON, Phoebe (LEVY)
b. Leicester, 1806–1856
Children, 1833; Free.
Married; 6 children.
Phoebe was the wife of Nathan Mandelson (q.v.), and the daughter of Jacob Levy Cohen of Leicester. Her sister Dinah was the wife of Samuel Emanuel (q.v.). Phoebe had married Nathan in 1830.
Phoebe Mandelson was buried at the Devonshire Street cemetery on 1 September 1856 and re-interred at Rookwood in 1901.
MARCUS, Abraham
b. Hamburg, 1810
Clyde, 1832; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Liverpool, 1831.
Single; Tailor (‘good’); Height: 168 cm; 4 children.
Sallow complexion, a little pock-pitted, brown hair, grey eyes. Could read and write. Abraham Marcus was transported for stealing a watch and was sentenced at Liverpool Quarter Sessions on 24 October 1831.
The convict transport ship Clyde arrived in New South Wales on 27 August 1832 and in January 1833 Marcus was assigned to Mr McQuade in Windsor. He was granted a ticket of leave for the District of Campbelltown in May 1838. The ticket of leave was cancelled in February 1842 following a letter from Mr Joshua Jones to the Colonial Secretary claiming that Marcus owed him the large sum of £70, which he ‘had failed to liquidate’.
The background to the whole story was exposed in the Sydney Gazette on 22 June 1839 under the heading ‘Convict Discipline’:
Abraham Marcus, formerly an assigned servant of Mr McQuade of Campbelltown, now a ticket of leave holder acted as shopkeeper, whilst still an assigned servant to Mr McQuade in his shop in Sydney and transacted business in every respect as a free man whilst his Master, residing in Campbelltown, could not have control over him. Now Marcus is residing in Campbelltown and has succeeded to the business of Mr McQuade!
In 1842 the cancelled ticket of leave was restored and it was altered for Sydney on 16 February 1843. A conditional pardon was authorised in October 1843.
Marcus received a certificate of freedom on 23 October 1845 and was subsequently allowed a conditional pardon. In 1845 he was listed as a seat holder in the new York Street Sydney Synagogue. He was insolvent in 1847 and discharged as bankrupt on 19 May 1847. Marcus was granted a publican's licence for a house in Bathurst Street West on 23 September 1848.
Sarah, daughter of Abraham and Mary Ann, was born in 1839, Lavinia was born in 1851, Eleanor, or Ellen, in 1851, and died in 1856, and ‘Jane Marcus—an infant’ was buried as a Jew in 1848.
Governors' Despatches 1839, A1220; TL 38/1631, 26 February 1838, 4/4123, restored 42/1687; CP recommended, A1295, p. 55; Sydney Gazette, 28 February 1833, 22 June 1839; Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 1848; Sydney Chronicle, 19 May 1847.
MARCUS, Joseph
b. Mannheim, 1758–1828
William Pitt, 1792; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Staffordshire Lent Assizes, 1791.
Single; Hawker.
Marcus claimed to have studied at yeshivot (rabbinical colleges) in Poland and in Jerusalem. He was sentenced to death on 9 March 1791 for having entered the house of Michael Dainty of Leck and stealing five spoons, two salt holders, a mustard pot, four salt spoons, two pairs of sugar tongs, one wine strainer, a cup and two linen shirts. His sentence was later commuted to transportation for seven years.
Joseph Marcus arrived in New South Wales on 17 February 1792 and on 18 September 1795 he stowed away on board the supply ship Endeavour (not to be confused with Captain James Cook's ship). On board were fifty emancipists and almost as many convicts whose time had not expired. Bad weather and the leaky condition of the ship forced the captain to scuttle his vessel at Dusky Sound on the bleak southern most corner of New Zealand. In 1797 the American ship the Mercury found the starving survivors and took them to Norfolk Island. As Governor Hunter informed London they were ‘unfortunate people whose deplorable situation for so long a time had given me much concern’. Marcus was returned to the Australian mainland in April 1804. He had been ship wrecked for twenty months. Marcus was employed in Sydney as a constable from 1806 to 1808 and may well have accompanied the doomed Elias Davis (q.v.) to the gallows in 1806. In March 1806 and March 1807 Marcus applied for permission to leave the colony possibly working as a whaler. Marcus became a servant in the household of Simeon Lord and on 5 April 1807 was caught as he ‘entered his master's house through a window during the night, with a suspicious design’.
On 21 October 1809, fifteen Aborigines or ‘native bandits’ attacked his home on the Parramatta Road, and wounded his de facto wife with a spear, and stole two muskets and some artefacts from his farm. Marcus then rented a farm on the George River and on 14 July 1810 was sentenced for fraudulently obtaining seed wheat from government stores. He was charged with having supplied his seed wheat for next season's food supply to a baker. He was sentenced to three months hard labour for his ‘turpitude’. On the basis of having been in the colony for nineteen years, Marcus wrote to Governor Macquarie asking for a grant of land. Macquarie refused, writing on his petition: ‘Not to have any grants, not being a good character’. The Governor was probably referring to the fact that Marcus was not married and so, in November 1811 Marcus married Dorcas Jane Broughton at St John's Church in Parramatta. His marriage did not solve his financial predicament and he was weighed down with debt.
On 10 July 1811 the Colonial Secretary noted that Marcus could receive land in the new Districts of Airds and Appin. Grateful for ‘official beneficence’ Marcus gave a donation to the building of a new courthouse in Sydney. On 27 December 1813 the Provost Marshall announced that he would sell the four acres of land that belonged to Marcus together with its crop of potatoes. The land was finally transferred to Solomon Levey (q.v.) in 1819. In 1820, ‘Jane Marcus … a most profligate character was charged with the cruel treatment to her husband a palsied and infirm old man’. She was sentenced to six months hard labour. Marcus was granted John James, ‘a government servant’, and the arrangement worked well because in September 1824 Marcus recommended John James for a ticket of leave. In the 1828 Census he was listed as a householder, aged seventy, living in George Street, Sydney. Marcus died on 26 November of that year. The death of ‘Jane’ Marcus, aged fifty, occurred in the same year. Marcus was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Sydney. A copy of his gravestone was later moved to the Pioneers' Cemetery at Botany Bay. The Jewish community must have arranged for the headstone to be purchased and on it is carved, in Hebrew, the final verse of the medieval hymn Adon Olam.
The colony's Anglican chaplain, the Rev. William Cowper, had a long relationship with Marcus. Cowper hoped to convert Marcus to Christianity and described his conversations in some detail to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. Marcus obviously enjoyed the discussions about the Bible and the meaning of Hebrew phrases and Cowper imported some Hebrew books for Marcus to study. According to Cowper, Marcus had officiated at Sydney's first Jewish funeral services between 1817 and 1825. Marcus must be remembered as Australia's first ‘rabbi’.
William Pitt Indent, p. 272; www.tasfamily.net.a/~schafferi/Survivors of the Endeavour, HRASeries 1, vol. 2 p. 115 Governor Hunter to the Duke of Portland 10 January 1790. Sydney Gazette, 14 July 1805, 19, 23 March 1806, 29 March 1807, 5 April 1807, 21 September 1809, 24 September 1809, 10 July 1810, 14 July 1810, 22 February 1812, September 1820; Petition to Governor Macquarie, 15 January 1811, Memorial no. 204, in 4/1822; 4/1866, p. 13. Piper Papers, V. 1.387, A254; London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, Annual Reports, 1818–1827; John S. Levi, The Tale of Australia's First “Rabbi”—Joseph Marcus AJJHS, vol. 8, no. 2 (1975), p. 29f.
MARCUS, Samuel
b. Germany, 1801
America (1), 1829; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Bristol, 1828.
Widower; Fustian dealer; Height: 156 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion, brown hair, hazel eyes. Jew. Could read and write. Widower. No children. Samuel Marcus was transported for ‘stealing money’.
Samuel Marcus arrived in New South Wales on 18 August 1829. He was assigned on arrival to Andrew Brown at Toongabbie and was entered in the Campbell-town Punishments Books as a member of ‘No. 33 Road Gang’. On 21 April 1830 he was found to have been insolent to a constable and was placed on the treadmill for three days. On 9 April 1832 he was accused of insolence and given twenty-five lashes, and was to be returned to the road gang. On 16 April 1832 he was reprimanded for being absent without leave. Two days later he was convicted of having accused the overseer falsely and was given six months in irons in the road gang. A conditional pardon was granted in 1838 and on 30 October Marcus was granted a certificate of freedom.
America (1) Indent 4/4014, p. 207; CP 38/930; Campbelltown Punishments Book, ML, F47, 9 April 1832, 16 April 1832, 18 April 1832; CF 4/4344, 38/0930.
MARGERSON, George (MAGERRISON)
1813–1858
Isabella I (4), 1832; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Derby, 1831.
Single.
George Margerson arrived in Sydney on 15 March 1832 and was assigned to the Hyde Park Barracks, where he was listed as a Jew. On 26 May 1846 he was discharged from the barracks and sent to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour for punishment lasting one month. He died in the District of Wellington in 1858 and was not buried as a Jew.
ML 2/8285.
Abraham Marks married Rebecca Abraham at Hobart Town on 24 July 1850. Abraham Marks became the honorary treasurer of the Hobart Synagogue in the 1860s.
MARKS, Adolphus
b. Sydney, 1837–1882
The firstborn son of Solomon Marks (q.v.) and Hannah (née Ann Cohen, q.v.) Marks, Adolphus married his first cousin, Charlotte Cohen, the daughter of Samuel Henry Cohen (q.v.), in Melbourne in 1860.
MARKS, Benjamin Francis
b. Sydney, 1846
5 children.
Benjamin Marks was the second child of Solomon Marks (q.v.) and Hannah (née Ann Cohen, q.v.). In 1876 Benjamin Francis Marks married his first cousin Jane (Jenny) Matilda Cohen (1849–1930), the daughter of Abraham and Sophia Cohen (qq.v.). They settled in Brisbane. One of their five children, Gladys Marks (1883–1970), was the first woman to be appointed an acting university professor in New South Wales.
MARKS, Blanche
b. Austria, 1798–1846
1838; Free.
Married.
The wife of Blucher Marks (q.v.), Blanche followed her husband out to New South Wales. Blanche Marks was buried in Sydney on 21 July 1846. She was forty-eight years old, ‘a native of Austria’, and a member of the York Street Synagogue.
MARKS, Blucher (Mark BLUCHER)
b. Austria, 1801–1846
Dunvegan Castle, 1830; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Nottingham, 1829.
Married; Indoor servant and jeweller; Height: 158 cm.
Ruddy freckled and pock-pitted complexion. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Scar on forepart of left leg. Could read. A ‘Hebrew’. Blucher Marks was transported for stealing a quantity of lace at Nottingham. He was sentenced on 14 January 1829. He had no previous conviction. Blucher Marks seems to have reversed his name at some time following his arrival, causing some official confusion. He was married to Blanche Marks (q.v.).
‘Mark Blucher’ arrived in New South Wales on 30 March 1830. It was noted that the government would retain the £6 that he had brought out on the convict transport until he received his pardon. He was counted in the convict muster at the Hyde Park Barracks on 1 April 1830. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1836 and a certificate of freedom on 14 January 1843. At the conclusion of his sentence, Marks was issued with the £6 that had been held for him in the Savings Bank while he was still a convict. In 1838 he was joined in Australia by his wife Blanche, a ‘native of Austria’, who came free. Blucher Marks was licensed as the publican of the Steam Packet Hotel at Market Wharf in Sydney on 21 July 1837. He was a member of the Sydney Synagogue. Blucher died intestate in Sydney, on 20 July 1846, and left an estate of £38.
Dunvegan Castle, Printed Indent, 1830, A1217, no. 30–522, p. 463; Governors' Despatches 1838, A1218, p. 493, and 1847; Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Butts of CF, 1842–43, 4/4379, p. 499; TL 36/1120 and 36/1217; CF 43/0073; Sydney Morning Herald, 21 July 1837.
MARKS, Caspar (Casper)
b. Pest, Hungary, c. 1793–1879
Achilles, 1841; Free.
Married; Dealer; 7 children.
Casper Marks was born, probably in 1793, in Pest. By the year 1838 he was in New York, married to his wife Julia, and already the father of a number of children. The family moved to Manila in the Philippines and arrived in Sydney on 12 July 1841. He brought to Australia ‘28 Packages, one cask, one bundle, two chests and three trunks amounting to cash, jewellery and goods to the value of £600’.
The Marks family could not have arrived at a worse time due to the economic depression. As he stated before the Chief Commissioner of Insolvent Estates:
In almost every transaction, since I had been in the colony, I have lost money by the goods I purchased; on the 10th of this present month I had been twelve months in this colony … I have bought most goods by auction … I had a shop to sell the goods I bought … I can recollect every article I had in my shop that was marked; although I kept no books, I can recollect what loss I have had by distinct transactions; I swear I never told anyone that I keep books. I can figure a very little.
As a consequence of this inability to keep clear accounts, on 26 June 1842, Casper Marks, ‘a dealer in Bridge St’, was summoned to the Supreme Court in Sydney to be declared insolvent. The description of the hearing was savage as he successfully contested a charge of fraudulent insolvency. Marks was described as a dealer who maintained a linen drapery store in Bridge Street. His debts amounted to £2011 and his assets £1001. He was described as ‘an Austrian who cannot write, neither can his shopman write or count’. He gave his trustees ‘all that he had’, £252, and his insolvency was discharged on 2 January 1845 with the payment of 8s 6d in the pound. On 7 October 1842, Casper Marks was charged with ‘fraudulent’ insolvency because he had concealed two sovereigns prior to his departure for Bombay with a bag of gold. He was found ‘not guilty’ and discharged from insolvency on 3 January 1845.
On 6 January 1843 Marks had applied for a passport so that he could go to Van Diemen's Land on business. He gave his address as Brickfield Hill, George Street, Sydney. He and his wife Julia had six children still living at home. They were: Nancy, Henry, Janette, Alexander, Rachel and Maria. A daughter Ann was married to a Mr Whitefield. Ann died on 10 December 1846 at the age of nineteen. Her husband was ‘at sea’ at the time and she was buried in the Jewish cemetery.
Mr and Mrs Marks and their six children went to Manila in January 1843 on the Giraffe, returning again in June 1844. He faced a charge of fraud by John Joel Cohen (q.v.) that he had misled the court and that he possessed a bag of gold while he claimed to be bereft of funds.
Marks was listed in Low's Directory of the City and District of Sydney in 1847 as a ‘slop seller’ with a shop at 673 George Street, Sydney. Marks gave a donation of £6 to the synagogue in 1845 and was a seat holder. The family travelled to San Francisco and to the Californian gold rush and then returned to Australia. It was at his business address in Sydney that the ‘marriage of Mr Julius Rosenthal of Melbourne, son of the Reverend Moses Jacob Rosenthal, Chief Rabbi of the Province of Wartzburgh, to Jeanette, eldest daughter of Mr Casper Marks’, took place. By the 1850s the Marks sons, Alexander and Henry, lived in Melbourne. In 1847 ‘Mr and Mrs Marks’ moved to Melbourne and, in April 1847, asked for a reduced membership fee in order to join the synagogue. Casper Marks joined the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation on 28 September 1853 and remained in Melbourne as a ‘merchant’.
In 1858 Alexander and Henry Marks set out for China and Japan and became merchants in Hong Kong and Yokohama.
Julia Marks of Drummond Street, Carlton, died on 13 January 1874. Casper Marks died on 20 May 1879 at the age of eighty-six. Both were buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.
Egon Kunz, Blood and Gold: Hungarians in Australia, p. 25f.; Sydney Gazette, 2 June 1842; Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1842, 2 January 1845; Sydney Free Press, 26 June 1842; Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Minute Book, 28 September 1853.
MARKS, Charles
b. Fleet Street, London, 1821
London (1), 1844; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 1843.
Single; Tailor; Height: 152 cm.
Fresh complexion, dark brown hair and whiskers, large nose, prominent mouth and chin. Literate. Scar on second finger left hand. Small scar on forehead. A Jew. Charles Marks obtained umbrellas and stockings by false pretences using the name of a Mr Nathan. He had been convicted six months before for a similar offence.
Charles Marks arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 9 July 1844. He emerged from his initial time of service at Broadmarsh on 11 October 1845 and began a six-year period of assigned service in Oatlands (1846), Green Ponds (1846), Hobart Town (1847), Richmond (1847), and Launceston and the surrounding district (1848–50). In January 1851 his period of service was extended with six months hard labour and he was to be kept on probation for having absconded from assignment in Hobart Town.
CON 33/56, no. 13271.
MARKS, Edward
b. London, 1826
1848; Free.
Single; Dealer.
Edward Marks was a brother of Morris Marks (q.v.) and, through the Levey family, a cousin of Jacob Marks (q.v.). In 1849 Edward Marks lived on the premises of the store of Philip Phillips (q.v.) and was employed by Jacob Marks to keep an eye on the business of Philip Phillips of Geelong.
MARKS, Ellen
b. 1805
Free.
Ellen Marks, aged thirty-nine, married George Rose, aged thirty, on 1 April 1844 in Hobart Town.
MARKS, George
d. 1871
Free.
In the 1842 Census in Van Diemen's Land, David and Solomon Benjamin (qq.v.) and George Marks were listed as shopkeepers who lived in Elizabeth Street, Launceston. All three were single. George Marks signed the May 1843 Launceston Synagogue petition. On 7 June 1843 George Marks, insolvent, asked for a discharge from bankruptcy but was refused as fees had not been paid. A George Marks died at George Town on 6 January 1871, at the age of forty-three.
Launceston Examiner, 7 June 1843; CO 280/157.
The third daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Cohen (qqv.). Married Solomon Marks (q.v.), a school master in Sydney on 3 August 1836. Their children were Adolphus (1837–1882), Benjamin Francis (1846), Esther (1850), Elizabeth, Frank Samuel (c1865-1893).
Hannah died in Sydney at the age of eighty-six on 14 February 1904 and was buried at Rookwood.
MARKS, Hannah (Anna)
1818–1876, Whitechapel
Grenada, Free.
Arrived with her mother and siblings in 1827. The daughter of Philip and Sarah Marks (qqv.) Hannah ‘of the New Town Road’ married Mark Solomons (Solomon, q.v.) in the first Jewish marriage in Van Diemen's Land on 13 December 1833 (Hobart Town Courier). Mark Solomon died on 25 June 1837. On 12 June 1840, Hannah married Robert Hart (q.v.). When Hannah married Mark she became the stepmother to his young daughters, Hannah aged 10 and Rachel aged 8. Although both girls had been baptised. Hannah seems to have raised them as Jews and they both married the Anderson (q.v.) men and are buried in the Jewish section of the Rookwood cemetery. Hannah Solomon had evidently managed the King William IV Hotel in Liverpool Street, Hobart Town, together with her husband and in 1839 she was granted the licence in her own name. Mark and Hannah had one child, Simon, who was born in 1835 and died 9 August 1894. Hannah Solomon died at Melbourne 25 February 1876.
Family information Susan Groenhout and Gerry Whitmont.
MARKS, Henry
Elizabeth, 1830; Free.
Married; Tailor.
Henry Marks arrived in Sydney on 15 April 1830, on the same ship as John Hart (q.v.). Both were tailors.
MARKS, Hyam (Hoppy My Hearty)
b. Whitechapel, 1823
1840; Free; Sentenced to 7 years, Sydney Quarter Sessions, 1843.
Single; Dealer; Height: 170 cm.
Hyam Marks came to Sydney, probably in 1840, as a free, young man. He was a dealer in Prince Street, Sydney. His business collapsed in July 1843 and he was sent to gaol. On 13 September 1843 he was sentenced in Sydney to seven years transportation for stealing a cash box containing £33 from Mr Hayden of King Street. Marks had a dark complexion, brown hair, long face, long nose and small chin and mouth. He had a large scar on the top of his forehead. He was described as a labourer and draper and a Jew. He could read and write. His mother was Phoebe Marks of Church Lane in London. He had a brother and five sisters who were in London, and Hannah (q.v.), who lived in Van Diemen's Land. At the time of his trial, Marks was only twenty years of age. He was sent to Van Diemen's Land on the Sir John Byng for the crime of ‘stealing from a dwelling’.
His initial period of probation lasted for fifteen months, which he completed on 29 January 1845. He then served for several months as a constable in Hobart Town, until he was accused of making the improper arrest of Mr G. Harrison. Marks was sentenced to four months hard labour and was dismissed from the police. He received his ticket of leave on 22 February 1848. In 1849 he was given two sentences of a month in solitary confinement in Hobart Town—one for making a false statement and one for common assault. His conditional pardon was recommended on 4 December 1848 and approved on 1 January 1850. Joseph Lewis Marks, son of Hyam Marks, was buried by the Sydney Synagogue on 21 February 1859, aged eighteen months.
‘Humphrey Marks’ was listed as renting seat no. 67 in the Hobart Synagogue in 1845.
CON 31, no. 245; CON 16/1/2; CON 38/1/1; CON 37/1/1, p. 245; HO 10/61, p. 96; Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1843, 2 August 1843, 19 September 1843.
MARKS, Isaac
Free.
Isaac Marks was a member of the Hobart Synagogue from 1842 to 1845. He gave a donation of ten shillings in April 1843 and ten shillings in 1844. The synagogue ledger recorded: ‘Left the colony 4 January 1845’.
MARKS, Jacob
b. London, 1819–1896
Hercules, 1835; Free.
Single; Dealer; 14 children.
Jacob Marks was the fifth child of Lyon Marks and Frances (née Levey), known as Fanny, who was the favourite sister of Solomon Levey (q.v.). Five of Jacob's siblings also settled in Australia. Jacob Marks travelled steerage on the Hercules, arriving in Sydney on 27 July 1835, with his uncle, Isaac Levey (q.v.), and described as a ‘settler’. Jacob followed his uncle Isaac to the Yass District, where he bought land and opened a store at Curryong Creek. In a petition to Governor Gipps dated 11 June 1839, and written at Mr (Isaac) Levey's Australia House, George Street, Sydney, Marks wrote that he was a storekeeper at Curryong Creek (not his own store) when three armed bushrangers held up the store at a time when the bushrangers Hall and Mayne had just been executed. In defending the store Marks received gunshot wounds, one in his cheek, which broke his jawbone and the rest in his head and body, which ‘rendered him incapable of gaining his livelihood.’ Marks asked for a grant of a small portion of land ‘for the purpose of turning his attention to agricultural pursuits, affording him the means of subsistence’. Governor Gipps replied, ‘I have no power to grant land to anybody’.
Marks moved to the colony of Melbourne in 1840 and went into business as a shopkeeper. ‘Harris and Marks’ formed one of the most effective drapery partnerships in early Melbourne and the partners built a two-storey store. However, no sooner was it completed than economic depression forced the dissolution of the partnership and a ‘sacrificial sale’ of their ‘rich and extensive stock’.
On 14 May 1846 ‘Jacob Marks of Port Phillip’ married his 16-year-old first cousin Susannah (Susan) Levey (q.v.), the daughter of Isaac Levey and his wife Dinah, at the Sydney Synagogue. Susannah was ten years younger than the groom and had arrived in Australia on the same ship. Jacob Marks was a signatory to the 1846 address of the ‘British Jews resident in Port Phillip’, which congratulated Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler on his appointment as chief rabbi.
In the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation's Birth Register, Jacob Marks was listed as a ‘draper’ when, in 1847, a daughter, Selina, was born.
In 1840 Marks had begun to buy property scattered through Victoria in Warrnambool, Geelong, and North Melbourne. He was involved in a ‘scam’ with Philip Phillips (q.v.) of Geelong, who attempted to save part of his stock in bankruptcy proceedings by holding a fake auction at Colac. By 1850 Marks had moved to Sydney and the records show three significant purchases of land in the Sydney area costing more than £3000.
In February 1860 the Sydney City Council resolved to lease from Jacob Marks a building at 6 Carrington Street that had been the home of the Union Club. The council remained there as his tenant for eight years. When the Union Club later moved to Bligh Street, Jacob's house became the Town Hall and then the Imperial Hotel and finally the site of Australia House.
Jacob and Susannah travelled extensively in his latter years. They had fourteen surviving children. Jacob died in Brighton, England, on 3 March 1896, and Susannah in 1904.
Their children were Selina (5 August 1847), born at Collins Street in Melbourne; Leon (Lyon) (13 November 1848), at Swanston Street in Melbourne; Deborah (1850), at Scone, New South Wales; Maria (2 December 1851), in Sydney; Frances (22 May 1853); Montague (1854); John (1856); Dinah (1860); Alice (1861); Alfred (1862); Isabella (1863); Harold (1865); Arnold (1868); and Septimus (1872). The last seven children were born in London.
Petition, 11 June 1839, 39/6555, in 2/7914, Land Correspondence; Port Phillip Herald, 28 August 1843; Sydney Morning Herald, 2 September 1854.
MARKS, John
b. London, 1809
Florentia (1), 1828; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1827.
Single; Dyer's boy; Height: 161 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, black hair, dark brown eyes. Could read. A Jew. John Marks was a pickpocket who stole a watch. At Tower Hill he accidentally fell over a bundle of clothes and the watch was revealed. Marks resisted arrest. Though the court records note that he was nineteen, according to the 1837 General Muster of Convicts in New South Wales, he was twelve years of age at the time of his trial.
John Marks was the assigned servant of William Pothers, Cook's River. A ticket of leave was issued for the District of Liverpool. In the latter part of 1837 it was cancelled as he was found to be absent from muster, drunk and disorderly. A certificate of freedom was granted on 19 August 1841. On 18 June 1845 Marks was sent to the Maitland Stockade for trial where he was sentenced to twelve calendar months imprisonment in the Maitland Stockade. His behaviour was ‘orderly’.
OBSP, 1826–27, case 1208, p. 469; 4/4094 lists TL 34/747; Florentia (1) Indent 4/4013, p. 21; Newcastle Gaol Entrance and Description Book, 1841–1845, 2/2008; CF 4/4368, 41/1113.
MARKS, Joshua
1816–1891
Grenada, 1827; Free.
Single; Dealer; 6 children.
Joshua Marks paid £1 to the Hobart Synagogue building appeal in 1843 and rented seat no. 6 in the synagogue. He married his first cousin Esther Marks, the daughter of ‘Leon the Hatter’, on 12 September 1844. It was Van Diemen's Land's ninth Jewish wedding. Their children were Elizabeth (Betsy) (born 27 May 1845, married Isaac Lazarus 2 August 1876 and died in Melbourne 9 April 1911), Rosetta Sarah (27 May 1846 married John Jacob Davis 6 August 1873. Died 20 August 1906), Lewis (21 July 1847 married Catherine Emden 24 February 1875. Died 19 July 1917), Solomon (24 April 1849 married Minnie Bauman 1885. Died Victoria 1921), and Catherine (22 November 1850, who died three and a half months later). Philip was born in Hobart in ca 1854 and died Melbourne 6 November 1913. He married Hamer Maria (Hannah) Cottren on 24 January 1876. The Hobart Synagogue Ledger noted that the family ‘left the colony’ in 1870.
Hobart Town Courier, 9 June 1843.
Julia was the wife of Casper Marks (q.v.). She died on 13 January 1874.
MARKS, Leah (Lydia)
b. London, 1811–1875
Penyard Park, 1850; Free.
Widow; 8 children.
The daughter of Frances Levey (1783–1857) and Lyon Marks (1780–1842), Leah Marks married Lewis Harris in London in 1829. Leah was the granddaughter of Moses Lyon Levey and Deborah. She was therefore the niece of Barnett Levey (q.v.), Solomon Levey (q.v.), Isaac Levey (q.v.), and Rebecca Ellis (q.v.). She arrived in Australia on the Penyard Park on 2 March 1850 with five of her eight children. She died in Sydney on 8 July 1875.
Leah and Lewis's children were Elizabeth Harris (born 1830), Henry Harris Marks (1831), Maurice Harris Marks (1833), Frances (Fanny) Harris (1837), Ailsie Harris (1840), Susan Harris (1842), Emanuel Victor Harris (1847), and Lionel Harris (1849).
Elizabeth married Henry Cohen, who settled first in Melbourne in 1853, and then Sydney in 1855, with his Monster Clothing Store at 402 George Street. They had thirteen children. Henry settled in New York. Maurice married Elizabeth Phillips, the daughter of Emanuel and Hannah Phillips, on 14 September 1853. They lived at Southridge, Christchurch, New Zealand. Frances married Alexander Conway, and lived in Sydney. They had seven children. Ailsie married Lewis Conway in 1859. They had eight children, and lived in rural New South Wales and Adelaide, where Conway took the surname Jacobs. Susan married Moses Moss on 7 May 1863 in Sydney (Moss was born Moses but was known as Montague). Emanuel had been living in Scone before his marriage on 28 August 1878 to Kate Moss in Adelaide. They had four children. Lionel married Leah Phillips on 17 March 1875, and they lived in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Archives of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, Sydney.
MARKS, Lewis
Free.
Single.
Lewis Marks married Eve Solomon in a Jewish ceremony in Sydney on 20 March 1850. Eve was the daughter of Elias Solomon (q.v.) and his wife Fanny.
Lydia, the daughter of Mark and Juliet Marks of Sydney, married Joseph Collins (q.v.) of Goulburn at the Sydney Synagogue on 7 October 1847. Lydia had eight children and died on 15 March 1863. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery at Goulburn.
MARKS, Mark
b. London 1801
Anson, 1844; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1843.
Married; Gold and silver refiner; Height: 163 cm.
Fresh complexion, hair and whiskers reddish, light brown eyes, medium mouth, nose and chin. A Jew. Could read and write ‘a little’. Mark Marks bought gold rings knowing them to be stolen. Marks had been tried once before for a similar charge and acquitted.
Marks arrived in Hobart Town on 4 February 1844. His initial period of probation was set at twenty months and Marks was sent to Seven Mile Creek. He emerged from the road gang in October 1845. During the following years of assigned service his record showed that the Jews of Van Diemen's Land attempted to look after him and, in quick succession, he was assigned to Bertram Nathan (q.v.), Moses Phillips (q.v.), Solomon Nathan (q.v.), and Louis Nathan (q.v.). Louis Nathan refused to put up with any nonsense and reported Marks to the authorities for insolence and for being absent without leave on 23 September 1846, one day after the festival of the Jewish New Year. He was sentenced to three weeks imprisonment and hard labour. On 17 November 1846 in Deloraine he was charged with misconduct for having in his possession a quantity of tea and sugar for which he could not give a satisfactory account. He was sentenced to seven days solitary confinement. A ticket of leave was granted on 29 May 1849. On 5 July 1850 he was fined ten shillings for a breach of the Police Act while working for Mr Nathan in Launceston and a conditional pardon was approved on 19 August 1851.
CON 33/50, no. 11624.
MARKS, Mark
1845; Free.
Married.
Mark Marks arrived in Sydney in 1845 with his wife Hannah, the sister of Rachael Ackman (q.v.) and Samuel Henry Harris (q.v.).
Mordecai Marks was sentenced at the Kent Assizes on 17 March 1794.
In the General Muster of 1806 Mordecai Marks had a ticket of leave and lived at Parramatta. In October 1809 Marks received official permission to leave Australia for England on the Boyd. However, Mordecai remained in New South Wales and, in the 1814 Muster, was listed as free with a ticket of leave and working as a constable. An absolute pardon was granted and Marks returned then to England.
Ganges Indent 2/8261, p. 3; New South Wales Muster, 12 August 1806; Sydney Gazette, 15 October 1809, 22 October 1809; Convict Indent COD/9.
MARKS, Morris
Free.
Single; Dealer; 2 children.
Morris Marks was a cousin of Jacob Marks (q.v.) and a brother of Edward Marks (q.v.). In the Sydney Morning Herald of 16 April 1842, ‘Morris Marks, Merchant, Maitland’, was listed as insolvent. In 1845 he was a Sydney Synagogue seat holder. On 22 September 1845 his store was in George Street at the former site of the Bank of Australia. He was the sole agent for ‘Electro-Galvanic Rings: for use for gout, rheumatism, cough, scurvy, ring worm’, which were manufactured in London by D. Marks & Co. In the 1847 edition of Low's Directory of the City and District of Sydney, Morris Marks was listed as a bookseller and stationer at 99 Kings Street.
Morris Marks married Rebecca Moses (q.v.) (who was a minor) in Hobart Town on 30 June 1847. Morris Marks and Rebecca were listed as early members of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation. A licence was granted to Morris Marks to manage the Rainbow Inn, King Street, providing that his house on the premises could be completed by 30 June 1848. In Geelong, on 1 April 1848, a son, Moses, was born, but lived for only one month and nine days. A daughter, Elizabeth, was born on 23 February 1849; her father's occupation was listed as ‘publican’.
Port Phillip Herald, 9 May 1848; Melbourne Morning Herald, 9, 15 February, 17 April 1849; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 1845.
MARKS, Morris Lyon
b. Liverpool, 1824–1893
Abberton, 1846; Free.
Single; Dealer; 13 children.
Morris Lyon Marks was the sixth child of Frances and Lyon Marks. He was born on 7 September 1824 and arrived in Australia aboard the Abberton on 13 December 1846. Morris Marks moved to Adelaide and, on 3 March 1847, M & S Marks was listed as one of the thirty-one principal shops in a poll on early closing (7 p.m.). On 16 February 1848 Marks advertised that he was looking for more employees. Morris Marks and his brother, Solomon Lyon Marks (q.v.), sold their store at the copper mining town of Burra Burra on 8 July 1848, and advertised a stocktaking sale on Saturday 27 July 1848. The partners called their Hindley Street store Burra Burra House. The business prospered and on 7 March 1849 they announced that they were ‘selling off prior to moving to more capacious premises in Adelaide’. On 12 May 1849 it was reported that ‘Hindley Street will soon be additionally enhanced by the opening of Messrs M. and S. Marks' handsome new drapery and silk store. The Messrs Marks have already acquired considerable eminence in Adelaide and the renowned Burra Burra store and we have no doubt their funds will follow them’.
Morris Marks became the honorary treasurer of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation in 1850. The South Australian Register reported on 31 January 1850 that Morris Marks of the Liverpool Mart in Adelaide had married Leah Solomon (q.v.), sister of Judah Moss Solomon (q.v.). They were married by Mr Abraham Solomon (q.v.), who was ‘a Jewish rabbi lately arrived from London’. Morris and Leah had two sons in Adelaide (Lyon Solomon Marks and Moss Phillip Marks). Before sailing for London aboard the Australian on 15 February 1854, Lyon died in Adelaide at the age of twenty months. On the voyage to London, Moss also died. A daughter, Elizabeth, was born in London in 1855. Between 1856 and 1860 three more sons were born in Adelaide. Morris also adopted his niece, Caroline Phillips, the daughter of his sister Susan Marks (Phillips, q.v.). The family moved to Melbourne (where a son was born in 1861), before moving to Wellington, where another six children were born, making nine sons and four daughters. Morris Lyon Marks died in Melbourne on 4 March 1893 and Leah died on 4 August 1905.
Their surviving children were Elizabeth, Morris (born 1856), Sidney (1858), Frederick (1859), Albert (1861), Marcus (1863), in Nelson (New Zealand), Louis (1865), Lionel (1867), Fanny (1869), and Leah (1870) in Wellington, New Zealand.
South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 31 January 1850; Pritchard Index.
MARKS, Moses Abraham
d. 1848
Moses Abraham Marks was buried in the Jewish section of the Old Melbourne Cemetery on 5 September 1848 and reinterred in Fawkner in 1923.
MARKS, Moss (Moses)
1815–1869
British Sovereign, 1834; Free.
Single; Butcher; 5 children.
Moses and Solomon Marks (q.v.) were passengers on board the British Sovereign, and arrived in Sydney on 18 September 1834. The Sydney Morning Herald of 16 April 1842 listed the insolvency of Moss Marks of West Maitland with debts of £1378 and assets of £1113. Marks was a butcher. His trustees were Alexander Dodds of East Maitland and Samuel Cohen (q.v.) of West Maitland.
Moss Marks married Esther Davis (née Hart) and they made their home in Adelaide. Esther had two children from her first marriage and five from the second. They were: Elizabeth (born 1842), Amelia (1844), Alice (1855), Kate (1856), Amy (1858), Maria (1861), and Charlotte (1863). Moss Marks died 5 August 1869 at the age of fifty-three. He had been the Honorary Secretary of the committee formed to organise the building of a chapel in the Goulburn Jewish burial ground.
Esther Marks died in 1914.
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April, 22 April 1842.
MARKS, Mr
Hartley, 1837; Free.
Married; 1 child.
A family of three with the last name Marks arrived in Adelaide on the Hartley on 28 October 1837. In the 1842 census in South Australia both husband and wife were listed as under thirty-five years of age, with one male child under the age of seven.
MARKS, Philip
b. Houndsditch, ca 1770–1864
Transported twice: the Alexander in 1806 and Asia II (2) in 1824; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1822.
Married; Hat-maker; 3 children.
Philip Marks first appeared at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1801, at the age of twenty, Marks together with Thomas Williams, a thirteen-year-old friend, were sentenced to seven years transportation for ‘larceny’.
Philip Mark (sic) was sent out to New South Wales on the convict transport Alexander arriving in New South Wales on 2 August 1806 by which time he had already served most of his sentence. He obviously returned to London as soon as he could and subsequently married Sarah Solomon at the Great Synagogue on 9 December 1818. They had three children. There is a family tradition that one child was given to his brother Lyon in England.
Marks was convicted at the Old Bailey for a second time on 4 December 1822 for stealing a gold watch from the person of George Cotton who was ‘hustled’ as he stood on the front step of a London public house near Pall Mall. At the time of his arrest on 11 November 1822 he brazenly protested ‘I was only standing at the door and am as innocent as my five babies at home’. Marks together with his nineteen–year-old accomplice John Ryan, were sentenced to transportation for life for larceny. After a chase through the streets of London, Marks was found to have in his possession a gold watch, a gold chain, two gold seals and a gold key, eleven guineas in gold, a pocket-book containing three one pound notes, a silk handkerchief a dollar and a new, unopened umbrella. Sarah, Philip's wife, fought a valiant battle to save her husband from deportation.
His convict dossier in Van Diemen's Land shows that Philip Marks spent most of his period of servitude frantically trying to escape. On 2 April 1824, while assigned to Mr Thornton, he was found to have secreted himself on board the Woodlark with intent to escape from the colony. He was given fifty lashes and returned to the Hobart Town Prisoners' Barracks. On 24 February 1825 he was charged with having absconded from the colony on the Prince Regent in October 1824. He was brought back to Van Diemen's Land from Mauritius per the Philip Dundas and was sentenced to another fifty lashes. In October 1825, while working as a baker on a chain gang, he was sentenced to fifty lashes for going aboard the schooner Sally with intent to escape to New Zealand. In July 1826 he received twenty-five lashes for being absent from the chain gang. On 21 October he received fifty lashes for ‘defacing his leg irons’. On 3 November he escaped from the chain gang and remained at large for two weeks. When recaptured he was sentenced to a further fifty lashes and was to be sent to Macquarie Harbour. On 27 November, while waiting to be sent to the West Coast, he ‘breaks the walls of H. M. Gaol’ and was captured while trying to escape.
Marks served his time at Macquarie Harbour and in 1830 he returned to Hobart Town, where his wife was waiting for him. On 5 January 1831, while assigned to his wife Sarah Marks (q.v.), he was ‘admonished’ for being absent from muster at church. On 20 May 1834 Marks held a ticket of leave and was reprimanded for being in the Green Gate public house after hours. A conditional pardon was granted on 10 October 1836 and a free pardon was approved on 21 May 1840.
Marks worked as a fishmonger on stall no. 25 in the new Hobart Town market in 1834. On 2 June 1837 Philip Marks of the New Town Road was considered to be respectable enough to have had the Jewish convict George Moss (q.v.) assigned to him. The arrangement did not last long and Moss was soon imprisoned at Port Arthur. By 11 August 1837 Marks was licensed as a hawker and he retained his licence until 1841. His home was at 131 Elizabeth Street in Hobart Town. In January 1852 Marks, aged 72, travelled on the Sacramento to Melbourne. His occupation was given as ‘English Grocer’ who lived at 131 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town.
He was a member of the Hobart Synagogue, donating £2 9s 6d in 1844 and rented seat no. 19 in 1845. The synagogue records that Joshua died in Melbourne in September 1891. Rosetta (q.v.), and Anna (Hannah) died in Hobart.
Despite having received 250 lashes for his escape efforts Phillip Marks died aged eighty-six in Hobart on 31 March 1864. He was buried in Hobart's Harrington Street Cemetery and re-interred in 2002 in the Jewish section of the Cornelian Bay Cemetery with his wife Sarah Marks (q.v.).
He left his estate to his son Joshua Marks.
CON 31/29, no. 464; HO 10/56; CP no. 1085; FP no. 560. OBSP 24 October 1804 case 569 and OBSP 4 December 1822 case 102. Family information from Susan Grounhout and Gerry Whitmont; vide: Sarah Marks at OBSP 9 April 1823, case 645.
The daughter of Philip Marks (q.v.) and Hannah Marks (q.v.). Rosetta arrived with her siblings and mother while her father was serving a life sentence and she was educated while living in Argyle Street. She was reunited with her father when he was assigned to her mother in 1832. Rosetta married Abraham Rheuben (q.v.) in 1837 and bore ten children, four daughters and six sons. She began her married life in Newtown Road and later moved to Elizabeth Street. (Her husband owned more than thirty properties throughout his life.)
The circumcision of Moses, her first son, on 2 January 1843, was considered worthy of newspaper coverage. Rosetta managed the house and family and frequently advertised for domestic servants. She was able to send some of her children to the prestigious Hutchins and Oldfield schools. She opened her home for the marriages of her siblings and her daughter and cared for her parents in their old age. Rosetta died at Elizabeth Street on 29 January 1865 and was buried at the Harrington Street cemetery and reinterred in 2002 in the Jewish Section of the Cornelian Bay cemetery.
AOT. ADM 1010/30 reel 3196. Family information Gerry Whitmont and Susan Groenhout.
MARKS, Samuel
Free.
Tailor.
Samuel Marks was said to be the brother of Henry Valentine (q.v.). In 1834 the Sydney Gazette wrote: ‘A man was charged with stealing a coat from a Mr Bayliss’ and the case rested on the testimony of Samuel Marks, ‘who so grossly prevaricated in giving evidence that the Bench order him to stand committed’. In the Registry of Flash Men it is noted: ‘Marks [no initial] was arrested for helping rob a cash box at Heydon's Auction Rooms on 3 August 1843. S. Marks, his brother, is involved in an illegal still’. Samuel Marks was listed as a tailor in George Street and, according to the Registry of Flash Men, was a police informer.
Sydney Gazette, 25 January 1834; W. A. Miles, Registry of Flash Men, 14 September 1843, p. 68 (2/673).
MARKS, Sarah
1828–1858
Grenada, 1827; Free.
Married; 6 (?) children.
The wife of Philip Marks (q.v.)., on 9 April 1823 Sarah Marks of no. 3 Petticoat–place accused Abraham Samuel alias Romaine, George Taylor, Thomas Harris and William Allensby of conspiring to swindle her in the hope of being able to free her husband from Newgate. She had seen Samuel in Petticoat Lane who said ‘Mrs Marks, I understand your husband is in trouble. I know the officers who have taken him and if you have got any money I could settle it’. The bribe required was twenty pounds. She sold her bed, bedstead, drawers, two tables and stove. Mary Ryan, the sister of John Ryan, who had helped the pickpocket Marks, raised four pounds. It was all in vain. The court released Harris and Allensby, the police constables, and sentenced Samuel and Taylor to two years imprisonment.
Sarah arrived in Hobart Town on 9 January 1827. Travelling with her were her children Joshua (ten), Anna (nine), and Rosetta (eight). Her husband was a prisoner at the notorious convict settlement at Macquarie Harbour at the time of her arrival.
She died at the age of sixty-nine years in 1858 and was buried in the Harrington Street cemetery.
AOT, ADM 101/30, reel 3196. OBSP 9 April 1823 no. 645. Family history Gerry Whitmont.
MARKS, Solomon
1775–1817
Active, 1791; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1790.
Single.
The 15-year-old Solomon Marks was convicted for entering the house of Levy Goldsmith, 117 Gravel Lane, Houndsditch, about ten in the night of 24 April 1790 and stealing clothes and bedding valued at thirty-nine shillings. He had then attempted to sell them to Solomon Israel, who refused to have anything to do with him. Marks had then offered them to Mrs Jacob Phillips for two shillings and sixpence. Shortly before this episode, Marks had stolen two pewter pots from a public house in Whitechapel, valued at two shillings, for which he was ‘privately whipped’. Marks was sentenced on 26 May 1790.
Solomon Marks was a convict on the Third Fleet, arriving at Sydney on 26 September 1791. On 21 July 1798 he was sentenced to fifty lashes for assaulting a soldier. He appeared on the list of ‘vagrants and vagabonds’ apprehended in Sydney on 13 July 1799. He was said to be a convict who had absconded from his service and was sentenced to a further fifty lashes and to work in the gaol gang. On 2 February 1802 he was again charged with vagrancy.
The General Muster of 1806 listed him as a prisoner assigned to Mr P. Blaxcell (as was Philip Marks, who had also come on the same ship). The Sydney Gazette noted, on 10 August 1806: ‘Wednesday Solomon Marks was detected breaking into the dwelling house of James Buttersworth at Parramatta who pursued and overtaking him knocked him down with a hoe and afterwards beat him so as to prevent his escape and to render it necessary he should be received at the hospital’.
On 12 June 1808 the Sydney Gazette reported that Solomon Marks had been found guilty of stealing a shirt and was sentenced to seven years transportation. He was sent, as a convict labourer, to the Hawkesbury District and was maintained on the government stores during the first half of 1809. He was listed in the 1811 General Muster and appeared in the 1814 Muster in Sydney as a ‘convict servant’. A little later that same year he was on government rations as ‘a sick man’. Marks died at the hospital at Parramatta, aged forty-five, on 17 October 1817 (and was buried the same day).
OBSP, 1789–90, case 491, p. 542, case 255, p. 276; Minutes of the Bench of Magistrates, 1/297, 1/298; 1814 Muster, ML, A1255, A1942-2; Bigge Appendix; Returns of Births, Deaths and Marriages, ML, A2130, p. 41.
MARKS, Solomon
1816–1852
British Sovereign, 1834; Free.
Single; Dealer, school master; 6 children.
Solomon Marks was on the British Sovereign, which arrived at Port Jackson on 18 September 1834. On the same ship was his brother Moses Marks (Moss Marks, q.v.). Solomon Marks ‘of Bungadore’ married Ann (Hannah) Cohen (q.v.) at the Sydney Synagogue on 3 August 1836. The marriage was performed by Michael Rose (q.v.). Marks was granted an auctioneer's licence on 15 October 1836. Joseph Simmons (q.v.) and Marks were in business as auctioneers in King Street from January 1836 to 3 October 1837. The Sydney General Trade List of 20 March 1836 reported that Solomon & Marks had imported four cases of glass, three cases of lamps and two cases of whiting (paint) from London. On 29 June 1837 Marks purchased the business of Samuel Onions in King Street. He assured the public that he would continue as an ironmonger, and ‘from the knowledge acquired in this business in England will give satisfaction’.
Solomon Marks was declared insolvent on 19 February 1842 and George Moss (q.v.) was authorised to settle accounts for the late firm S. Marks & Co. On 10 March 1841 ‘Joseph Simmons and Solomon Marks bankrupts’ were able to pay one shilling in the pound in addition to the five shillings paid previously. Marks's debts totalled £356 and his assets £20. He had a home in Sussex Street.
Solomon Marks died, aged thirty-six, on 18 October 1852, and was buried by the Sydney Synagogue at the Devonshire Street Cemetery. The grave was later transferred to Rookwood.
The children of Solomon and Hannah Marks were Adolphus (q.v.) (2 June 1837 to 1882), born in Sydney, Benjamin Francis (q.v.) (born 1846), Esther (1850), Elizabeth, who married Sigmond Hoffnung (q.v.) in 1858, and died in England in 1914, Sarah Miriam, who died in infancy and was buried on 29 April 1850 in the Devonshire Street Cemetery, and Frank Samuel (c. 1852–1893).
Sydney Gazette, 15 October 1836, 12 January 1837, 29 June 1837, 10 March 1841, 16 April 1842, 15 September 1842; Australian, 3 August 1836, 6 October 1837; Land Correspondence 2/7914, 20 September 1836; Sydney General Trade List, 5 December 1835, 19 December 1835, 20 February 1836, 29 June 1837.
MARKS, Solomon
Free.
Hawker.
Solomon Marks was granted a hawker's licence for Launceston in July 1843. In May 1843 he signed the petition for the establishment of the Launceston Synagogue and on 19 September signed the petition for the release of the debtor Isaac Jacobs (q.v.) from the Launceston Gaol.
CO 280/157; Hobart Town Courier, 14 July, 19 September 1843.
MARKS, Solomon Lyon
b. London, 1827–1875
1846; Free.
Single.
The seventh child of Frances (née Levey) and Lyon Marks, Solomon Lyon Marks was born on 4 April 1827 and arrived in Australia in 1846, entering into partnership at the Liverpool Mart, Hindley Street, Adelaide, with his brother Morris Lyon Marks (q.v.). On 13 February 1850 he married Esther Joshua (q.v.), the second daughter of Michael Joshua (q.v.) and Sarah (née Solomon) of Glenelg, South Australia. They had four children, all of whom died young. Lyon Morris Marks (1851), born at Port Adelaide, died in Melbourne in 1860. Sarah Frances Marks (1855), born in Melbourne, died there in 1860. Herbert Leicester Marks (1857) and Florence Mary (1859) were also born in Melbourne. Florence died at the age of two.
The grave of Solomon Lyon Marks is in the Cooktown Cemetery, Queensland, and is the only grave there with a Hebrew inscription. Marks died in 1875. He had been a successful merchant in Cooktown and donated a large portion of the costs of the town's first public hall.
Pritchard Index.
MARTIN, Abraham
Free.
Abraham Martin signed the petition for the Launceston Synagogue on 20 May 1843. He donated £2 to the Launceston Synagogue building appeal in 1844. Martin married Caroline Barnett (née Phillips) in Victoria on 3 December 1870 however they appear to have been living as husband and wife by 1857.
CO 280/157; Launceston Examiner, 29 June 1844.
MARTIN, David
b. Mile End, 1814
Lady Nugent, 1836; Convict; Sentenced to life, Central Criminal Court, 1836.
Single; Height: 163 cm.
Dark complexion, black hair, dark brown eyes, long nose, large chin, wide mouth. S.M. D.M. E.L. tattooed on arms. Martin was transported for burglary and was sentenced on 9 May 1836. The prosecutor was Mrs Hart of Gravel Lane. His fellow thieves Aaron Moses (q.v.) and Joseph Aaron (q.v.) were also on board. The transport ship's surgeon reported that Martin's behaviour was ‘orderly’.
The Lady Nugent arrived in Hobart Town on 12 November 1836 and Martin was first sent out to work as an assigned servant. By the end of July 1837, after a series of minor complaints and rebukes, he was forced to work on the roads. On 7 August 1837 he was sentenced to receive twenty lashes for ‘idleness’ and was assigned to the Campbell Town Chain Gang. In February 1839 he was punished for absconding and was sentenced to six months hard labour in chains. He was sent to the Perth Chain Gang and then on to Launceston. At Perth he received thirty-five lashes for ‘idleness and disobedience’. By September 1841 Martin was an assigned convict servant in Launceston. A separate record book shows that during his time in Launceston he was punished a number of times by the lash and by solitary confinement for ‘insolence’ and ‘general misconduct’. By mid-1844 he was placed in the Invalid Party and was admitted to the hospital in Launceston as a patient. He received a ticket of leave in December 1844 and a conditional pardon on 17 November 1846.
CON 18/16, no. 1448; CON 32/4, p. 86; CON 31/31; CON 18/14, no. 1448.
MAYERS, Frederick
b. London
Fairlie, 1837; Free.
Married; Clergyman (Christian); 7 children.
The Rev. Frederick Mayers arrived in Van Diemen's Land on the Fairlie from London with his wife and seven children to take up an appointment as (Anglican) Chaplain at Hamilton. Mayers was a Jewish convert to Christianity and the Courier described his first preaching assignment at Trinity Church in Hobart Town:
We had the pleasure of hearing the Rev. Mr Mayers on Tuesday last, at Trinity Church and was [sic] highly gratified with the ease of his delivery and perspicacity of his discourse. Gratification is experienced in listening to arguments in favour of Christianity from the mouth of a converted member of the Jewish faith, combating against his own national prejudices and convinced of the Truth of the evidences in favour of the Gospel.
On 7 January 1838 the Courier noted that a son had been born to the Rev. and Mrs Mayers. Mayers was the author of The Guardian—a Useful Miscellany. On 13 March 1839 he received a grant of two acres in Hamilton. However, on 17 February 1840, he was ‘forced to resign owing to ill health and small stipend’ and returned to England.
Hobart Town Courier, 20 January 1837, 6 January 1837, 7 January 1838, 13 March 1839, 17 February 1840; ID, 1838, vol. 42, pp. 95, 102, 1840, vol. 34, p. 56.
Ruddy freckled complexion, brown hair, chestnut eyes, broad nose, scar on left cheek. Another scar on right cheek bone, two large inoculation scars on upper left arm. Blue dot tattoo on back of left hand. Jewess. No education. Sarah Meers was sentenced on 3 February 1840 and transported for robbery of three shillings, two pennies and a farthing from a 17-year-old boy client (she was also seventeen years old). She had three previous brief sentences.
Sarah Meers arrived in New South Wales on 14 July 1840 and first was sent to the Newcastle Gaol and then, on 30 July, to be a nursemaid for Mrs Crummer. She was returned to the prison in November and reassigned to Dr Walton. She was sent back to the gaol one week later. On 27 February 1842 she was assigned to be a servant for John Callanan, only to be returned within the month. On 28 March 1842 she was sent to John Champain in Maitland and on 2 June 1841 to the Rev. Mr Smith in Maitland. Her work record was disastrous until on 30 November she was assigned to Mrs Rae in Maitland where, it seems, her wanderings ceased. A certificate of freedom was issued to her on 25 March 1850.
OBSP, 1840, case 682, p. 478; Surrey Indent 1840–42, p. 202; Prisons Department, Newcastle Gaol Entrance Books, 1840, 2/2007, no. 853, no. 1201, no. 1379, and 1841–45, 2/2008, no. 1379; CF 4/4414–50/0171.
MENDEL, Moritz
Free.
Merchant.
Moritz Mendel was listed as a guest at the levee held to mark the departure of Lt Governor Grey from South Australia on 29 October 1845. The South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register stated that ‘Moritz Mendel, merchant’, had returned to Adelaide from Sydney on 7 July 1847.
South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 29 October 1845, 7 July 1847.
MENDES, Daniel (Mendez)
1775–1857
Fanny and Kangaroo, 1814; Convict.
Venetian blind maker.
On 12 October 1816 Daniel Mendes advertised in the Hobart Town Gazette that black lead pencils and Venetian blinds could be made by application to Mendes, whose residence was on the Pottery Hill. On 8 April 1817 Mendes was fined five shillings for being drunk. On 14 August 1817 he received fifty lashes for ‘assault’. On 3 October 1817 he was ‘absent from his lodging’ and was sentenced to twenty-five lashes and fourteen days extra labour. A Daniel Mendez was recorded as having been sent to New South Wales on the Fanny and returned to Van Diemen's Land on the Emu on 27 January 1818. On 17 February 1818 he was acquitted on a charge of having stolen property from the home of Ralph Jacobs (q.v.). By 1 June 1825 he was free by servitude, but was subsequently bound over for six months because he kept a disorderly house. Mendes was a resident of Launceston when he died on 11 May 1857.
CON 31/29, no. 4; Hobart Town Gazette, vol. 1, no. 20, 12 October 1816.
MENDOZA, Aaron
Active, 1791; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Middlesex, 1788.
Tailor.
Aaron Mendoza, together with a soldier, accompanied an Italian seaman to a bank on Lombard Street where the various foreign banknotes the sailor had accumulated were transferred into English currency. Mendoza then went to a Houndsditch pawnbroker, who knew Mendoza ‘well’ and redeemed his coat and waistcoat. One of the notes had been marked by the suspicious teller and both men were sentenced to transportation.
Mendoza worked as a tailor in Parramatta and, on 9 January 1792, gave evidence at the trial of John Thompson, who was accused of stealing a coat.
OBSP, 1878–88, case 591, p. 739f.; HO 11/1; J. Cobley, Sydney Cove, p. 208; Convict Indents COD/9; HO 11/1.
MENDOZA, Aaron
b. Commercial Rd, East London, 1826
Duncan, 1841; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 1840.
Single; Tinman, tailor and brazier; Height: 165 cm; 1 child.
Dark complexion, black hair and whiskers, large nose, hazel eyes, long chin, low forehead. His right leg had been amputated. ‘Jew’. Could read and write. Mendoza was convicted for stealing four brushes valued at two shillings and sixpence. He claimed to have found a customer who would buy the brushes and left the shopkeeper's wife standing outside a public house for an hour while he disappeared, only to be found later in Petticoat Lane.
Mendoza arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 18 April 1841 and was put on probation for twelve months. On 19 July 1841 he was reprimanded for having ‘feigned illness’. On 12 October 1842 he absented himself from the Bridgewater Station without leave and was found to have two flannel shirts in his possession, for which he was sentenced to hard labour in chains and in the coal mines. His overseers reported that he was a ‘very bad, cunning, suspected thief’. On 12 November 1843 in the Hobart Town Prisoners' Barracks, Aaron Mendoza was sentenced to ten days solitary confinement for fighting in the ward. On 12 April 1844 his term of probation expired and a ticket of leave was issued on 24 October 1844.
By 1845 Mendoza was in Launceston, where he was twice admonished for ‘misconduct’. He was free by servitude by 17 August 1847. Aaron Mendoza married Ann Stewart on 10 September 1854. On the marriage documents he was described as a ‘dealer’ and she was illiterate. Saul Solomons and Michael Levy witnessed the wedding, which was registered as Jewish marriage no. 28 in Van Diemen's Land.
Mendoza remained involved in the affairs of the congregation through the next twenty years. On 10 June 1872 he wrote to the Hobart Synagogue from Sydney, where he lived, in need of a copy of his marriage certificate. Mendoza was living in Castlereagh Street near the Haymarket. On 26 July 1874 he was appointed the official congregational ‘collector’ and on 1 November 1874 he resigned from his position of shamash. He was thanked for the manner in which he had performed his services and the congregation wished him and his family success. In Sydney in 1865 an Aaron Mendoza and Christina Beckman had a child named Frederick and, in 1873, Aaron married Christina.
CON 33/8, no. 1853; CON 14/5; CON 18/27; CON 27/8. OBSP 17 August 1840 case 2103.
MENDOZA, Abraham
b. London, 1790–1839
Morley (1), 1817; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1816.
Shoemaker; Height: 157 cm.
On 7 April 1816 the twenty-two year old Mendoza was found guilty of ‘felonious assault’ having stolen a watch, two seals and a key chain from a drunken man in Petticoat Lane. The victim admitted in the court that he had been ‘the worse for liquor’. Mendoza had violently pushed and robbed his victim and within minutes had been caught by a vigilant watchman. Almost immediately, Mendoza declared ‘I am totally innocent. There was a cry of “stop thief” and I was running with the others and there was a man near where the property was found.’ The court sentenced Mendoza to death which was subsequently commuted to transportation.
Abraham Mendoza arrived in Port Jackson on 10 April 1817. According to the assignment list, Mendoza was forwarded to Liverpool the following week, on 18 April 1817. Mendoza was initially assigned to John Moulds, the overseer of carpenters and then, for three years, worked as a servant to the overseer Henry Hadcock. The 1818 General Muster describes him as a ‘settler's man’. In 1819 Mendoza petitioned for a mitigation of his sentence. He asked that Governor Macquarie should ‘in your great goodness to grant the petitioner a ticket of leave. His further conduct may be depended upon … so great be made of Your Excellency's favour’. The ticket of leave was granted on 31 January 1820 for the District of Sydney and was renewed in 1831, 1834 and 1837.
The 1822 General Muster of New South Wales listed Mendoza as a convict working with the Parramatta Road Party. Mendoza was included in the 1828 Census as ‘Ambrose Mendoza, shoemaker, employed at Bakers, Cumberland Street, Sydney. Religion Jew’. The 1837 General Return of Convicts reported that he was living in Sydney and had a ticket of leave. Mendoza died at the Sydney Hospital on 19 December 1839 and was buried by the Sydney Synagogue at the Devonshire Street Cemetery.
OBSP, 1816–17, case 591, p. 739; Morley (1) Indent 4/4005, p. 260; Petition 4/1859, p. 44; Bigge Appendix, p. 283, CO 201/118; TL Register, 4/4069, 29/113, and 4/4078, 31/118; Principal Superintendent of Convicts: Death Register 4/4549.
MENDOZA, Isaac (John JONES)
b. London, 1809
John (2), 1833; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1833.
Single; Height: 159 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, dark brown whiskers, low forehead, dark brown eyes, medium long nose, long fleshy chin. Isaac Mendoza was convicted at the Old Bailey on 4 July 1833 for stealing a handkerchief. He had served a previous sentence for breaking a window (in an attempted robbery). He was the second-youngest child of ‘the noted pugilist’ Daniel Mendoza, and brother of Sophia Mendoza (q.v.). His accuser testified: ‘On 13 June I was trying to get through St Paul's Churchyard. I could not get on and was forced to stand still—I felt a hand in my pocket. I turned and saw the prisoner giving my handkerchief to another person. I took it from his hand and took him into custody’. Mendoza had a different story. ‘I had taken some work home for my master and was going through the crowd when this gentleman took hold of me’.
Mendoza arrived in Hobart Town on 1 December 1833 and eleven days later was sent to the treadwheel for six days for being absent from the muster at the Prisoners' Barracks. Mendoza was then sent to work with various road gangs during 1834. On 29 December 1834 he received thirty lashes for feigning sickness. One year later, on 3 December 1835, he was found to have in his possession a silk handkerchief and a waistcoat for which he could not give a satisfactory account, and was sent to Reiby's Ford Road Party for six months. In January he received fifty lashes for idleness, an offence that one year later, as an assigned servant, caused his sentence to be extended three months. He was returned to government service. On 9 May 1839, as an assigned servant, he received thirty-six lashes for neglect of duty and on 4 April 1840 he was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment and hard labour for feigning illness while a member of the Red Hill Road Party. A certificate of freedom was issued in 1840.
Mendoza crossed Bass Strait and turned up in the Police Court in Melbourne on 11 March 1843. He was charged by Mr Elms of the Geelong district of having absconded from his service after signing himself up for twelve months and drawing sundries on account. The prisoner, who claimed to be partially deaf, passed himself off as John Jones. He was sentenced to spend one month in prison on the treadmill.
Mendoza remained in the district and the Port Phillip Patriot of 1 November 1845 noted that he had arrived at Port Phillip on the schooner Ellen and Elizabeth from Portland. On 11 August 1847 the Port Philip Patriot noted: ‘An Israelite, named Isaac Mendoza, was yesterday brought before the bench of magistrates charged with appropriating a watch valued £4 belonging to a brewer named Mr McDonald’. Mendoza was caught in the act by Mrs McDonald who ‘surrounded’ him until her husband returned home. The evidence given in court was so contradictory and the McDonalds, it was noted, ‘do not bear the very best of characters’, that the case was dismissed. On 17 March 1849 the Melbourne Morning Herald reported ‘Isaac Mendoza, a pugilist of some former ability, was charged with stealing a breast of mutton valued at sixpence. Mendoza claimed that it had been given to him by the butcher's assistant. On 17 April 1849 he was found guilty and imprisoned for two months. The Melbourne Morning Herald reported that Mendoza was back in court on 18 July 1850 for having stolen a waistcoat from a private house and pawned it for three shillings. This time he was imprisoned for four months with hard labour for his ‘paltry offence’. In August 1854 the Melbourne Jewish Philanthropic Society voted to pay for his passage to Launceston where ‘his sister could take care of him’.
CON 18/11, no. 1156; CON 31/31; CF 496; Melbourne Times, 11 March 1843; Melbourne Morning Herald, 17 April 1849.
MENDOZA, Sophia
b. London, 1792
Harmony, 1829; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1828.
Single; Servant-maid of all work; Height: 155 cm; 3 children.
Dark complexion, dark brown hair, high cheek bones, forehead high and narrow, eyebrows brown, eyes, dark brown. Lost one front tooth. ‘Jewish countenance’. Sophia Mendoza was one of ten children, and the third child of the Jewish pugilist Daniel Mendoza, ‘the noted bruiser’, and sister of Isaac Mendoza (q.v.). At trial she said that ‘I was last with Mr Shepherd, Mile End Rd as a servant of all work’, and that she was a ‘Protestant’. She was transported for ‘larceny’.
During her first six years in Van Diemen's Land Sophia Mendoza was assigned to eighteen different masters and was in court twenty-one times for such crimes as ‘gross improper conduct’, ‘drunkenness’, ‘disobedience’, and ‘making use of gross and beastly language’. On 27 January 1835 she was given an additional three years servitude for ‘absconding’. From 1832 to 1845 she was under the jurisdiction of the Launceston Police. On 19 May 1835, while assigned to a Mr Wellman, she was convicted of being repeatedly absent without leave and sentenced to six months in the Female House of Correction with an additional three weeks in solitary confinement on bread and water and was not to be assigned for two years.
She was granted a ticket of leave on 15 September 1843. Mendoza received permission to marry Daniel Denyer, who came free, on 12 January 1844, and at the end of the year (20 December 1844) applied to marry John Wilson. They were actually married at Launceston on 26 March 1845. Despite a charge of felony in March 1844 Sophia Mendoza appeared to settle down. On 13 April 1847 it was noted that she had served twelve years of a fourteen-year sentence and had been free from offence for two and a half years. On 9 January 1849, a conditional pardon for all countries (except Great Britain and Ireland) was granted. On 23 August 1853 she was issued with a certificate of freedom.
CON 40/7; CON 32/4; VDL Papers, ML, A1059.2, p. 207, and 1059.5, p. 114; Launceston Police Book, vol. 2, p. 434; CON 72/2; ML, A1059-5, p. 114; CON 52/2, p. 234; HO 10/60, p. 579; Hobart Town Courier, 15 September 1843.
Abraham was the brother of Solomon Meyer (Meyers) (q.v.), and Benjamin Meyer (Meyers) (q.v.). On 4 September 1833 the Cross Keys public house in Goulburn South was transferred to Abraham Myers. As a young man he had joined the firm of Benjamin and Moses at Goulburn and managed their Argyle Steam Boiling Works. On 21 April 1844 he sent to Sydney the sum of £17 12s, which he had collected from his Goulburn ‘friends’ for the building of the Sydney Synagogue. He was a seat holder in the synagogue in 1845 and then became the manager of the Queanbeyan branch of Benjamin and Moses. He then established himself in his own business.
He married Julia, the daughter of Asher and Phoebe Hart (qq.v.), at the York Street Synagogue on 5 November 1845 and their first child, Hannah, was born in Goulburn in 1849.
He sold out in 1854 and with his wife and six children went on a voyage to England. He and his family were drowned on their way back to Australia in the wreck of the Dunbar 20 August 1857.
Sydney Gazette, 4 September 1833; Errol Lea-Scarlett, Queanbeyan, District and People.
MEYER, Benjamin (MEYERS)
d. 1860
Free.
Benjamin was the brother of Solomon Meyer (Meyers) (q.v.) and Abraham Meyer (Myers) (q.v.). In 1860 Benjamin Meyer of King's Plains was riding to Carcoar to attend court when his horse bolted and he was killed: ‘The deceased being a member of the Jewish persuasion, he was buried in accordance with the rites of the Church, in consequence of which Mr S [Solomon] Meyer read the Burial Service, and while reading it, was so overcome, that at times he could not proceed’.
Sydney Morning Herald, 2 November 1860.
MEYER, Solomon (MEYERS)
b. London, 1823–1902
Ageaoria, 1841; Free.
The brother of Abraham Meyer (Myers) (q.v.) and Benjamin Meyer (Meyers) (q.v.), and the son of Jacob Meyers, a silk manufacturer, Solomon arrived in Hobart Town on 21 December 1841. Solomon Meyers gave £10 to the Hobart Synagogue building fund in 1843. Meyers held the wine and spirit licence for the Derwent Hotel, Murray Street, Hobart Town, which was sold to Frederick Seville in November 1844. The Hobart Synagogue listed an additional donation of £5 in 1845.
Solomon Meyer married in Launceston in 1844.
In 1849 Meyer bought the store of Joseph Simmons (q.v.) at Carcoar and was therefore involved in the wealth of the gold rush. The Sydney Morning Herald described his store as ‘most commodious’. It was ‘literally like a bee hive, from the ingress and egress of customers, and the numerous calls on the worthy proprietor to see what this [gold nugget] will weigh’. Meyer was arrested for ‘sly grog selling of liquor on a large scale and in the most impudent manner’. Meyer moved to Sydney to develop his business there. However, ‘unfortunate speculations’ sent him back to Carcoar, where he managed and owned a flour mill. He became a magistrate and represented Carcoar in the colony's parliament from 1874 to 1876. He rebuilt his business in Sydney and, surprisingly, was elected to the Board of the Macquarie Street Synagogue in 1873. Meyer moved to Goulburn and the Australian Stores, served as an alderman and president of the local hospital and was a leading freemason. When Meyer died in 1902 his funeral was held at the Anglican Cathedral in Goulburn. In the eulogy the celebrant said: ‘We rejoice that a Jew who had lived such an honourable and useful life in our midst could be held up as an example for others to follow’.
CSO 92/7/F83; Van Diemen's Land Courier, 19 November 1844; Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June, 17 June 1851; G. C. Mundy, Our Antipodes, vol. 3, p. 348f.; M. Z. Forbes, ‘The Jews of NSW and the Gold Rushes’, AJJHS, vol. 12, no. 2 (1994), p. 288f.
MICHAELS, Michael
Neptune, 1790; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1788.
A convict on the Second Fleet, Michael Michaels was convicted for stealing 100 pounds weight of lead, valued at fifteen shillings, on 15 May 1788. He was caught with the stolen material in his possession. He was sentenced on 25 June 1788. His name indicates he may have been Jewish.
OBSP, 1787–88, case 479, p. 597; CS 4/4427 Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Register of CF, 1810–14, vol. 1, p. 274.
MICHAELS, Michael
b. Liverpool, 1776–1824
Calcutta, 1803; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1802.
Single; Brickmaker; Height: 170 cm.
Michael Michaels, son of Jonas Michaels and Rebecca (née Russell) and cousin of Esther Solomon (q.v.), was part of the Jewish community at the Thames Estuary port of Sheerness and was transported on two counts. The first was making and uttering seven counterfeit shillings. The second was trying to sell a watch to Captain Lucas, master of a coastal vessel. The transaction took place near Tower Hill in London. Michaels offered the sailor a watch for a bargain price and then pretended to change his mind. Michaels had received two seven-shilling pieces from the captain, but returned him two forged coins. In court he was described as ‘the Jew’, with a ‘dark complexion’. He had already served a year in the County Gaol in Surrey and had been convicted in Guilford on 15 July 1800 for a similar crime. He was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation for life.
Michaels had three brothers (David and Jonas were two of them). When David visited Michaels at Newgate Prison to give him a guinea, Michaels, furious at not having been rescued by his family, ripped his brother's stomach open with a knife. David was taken to St Bartholomew's Hospital and survived the attack.
Michaels was sent out to Australia on the Calcutta which, under Lieutenant Colonel David Collins, first attempted to start a colony at Sorrento in Port Phillip before proceeding to the River Derwent. Soon after arrival in Van Diemen's Land Michaels became an overseer of the convicts. Subsequent surveys of the colony's livestock and housing showed Michaels' increasing wealth and power. He was one of the first ‘general dealers’ in the colony. The Rev. Knopwood noted in his diary that: ‘at 4 A.M. on 3 January 1805 the home of Joseph [sic] Michael, a Jew, caught fire and was consumed’. He received a free pardon on 10 October 1810 and owned a farm of sixty acres at Cornelian Bay. Michaels also owned a pawnbroking and money-lending shop in Elizabeth Street. Michaels returned to England in 1812 and sold his 30-acre farm at Risden to William Mann. Michaels appointed Dr Bowden as his agent to collect notes of hand to the value of £1333. This task in turn was taken over by Thomas Newby who, on 5 June 1819, advertised in the Hobart Town Gazette: ‘In consequence of the total disregard that has been paid by the whole of the persons to the several notes May 10 and onwards including printed handbills distributed requesting payment to Michael Michaels late Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town, merchant’.
The colony's chaplain the Rev. Robert Knopwood had inherited the task. Michaels, who lived at 2 Swan Street, East Smithfield, in London, died in 1824 and his wife's nephew, Abraham Aaron (q.v.), took up the challenge to recover the fortune. Aaron travelled to Australia on what would be a futile mission, as the Rev. Knopwood denied all knowledge of the money.
The family's links with Australia continued to multiply. Jonas Michaels, his brother, was a dealer in marine wares and pawnbroker. Hannah, his sister, married Isaac Tobias in Scotland, where Isaac was a lay reader of the Jewish community and a theatrical entrepreneur. Hannah and Isaac Tobias had seven children: Janet (born 1835), Julius (1837), Reuben (1839), Jonah (1843), Rachel (1848), Tobias (1849), and Sarah (1852). In 1853 Isaac sailed for Australia on the Anna Maria with his three oldest children and they were shipwrecked on Kangaroo Island. Upon arrival in Melbourne, Julius and Reuben went to the goldfields, where Isaac died of dysentery. Janet stayed in Melbourne. Julius was at the goldfields near Stawell, where he met Harriet Sarah Tucker. He not only changed his name to William Julius Thompson, but also converted to Christianity and lied to his new family about his parents and his origins. Hannah Tobias and her four remaining children came out to Australia in 1866 to join Reuben, who had settled in Queenscliff, Victoria. Hannah was buried in the Jewish section of the Ballarat Cemetery, ‘a native of Sheerness’.
OBSP, 1802, case 262, p. 188; HO 11/1; CSO 1/242/5844; CS, Musters of Van Diemen's Land, 1811–22, 4/1233, 4/1234; Hobart Town Gazette, 28 March 1817, 11 April 1817, 10 May 1817, 5 June 1819; Returns of Livestock, CO 201/35; 4/433, p. 29; CS 4/4427; Marjorie Tipping, Convicts Unbound, p. 295.
The son of Joseph van Millingen, a Dutch diamond merchant, Phillip Millingen married Rachel Abrahams (q.v.), the daughter of Abraham and Elizabeth Abrahams (qq.v.). The marriage was celebrated in Sydney on 15 November 1843. The bride was fifteen years old. Mr P. D. Van Millingen gave £5 to the Sydney Synagogue's building appeal on 15 September 1839. Phillip and Rachel moved to Port Phillip. Phillip was accepted as a new member of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation on 7 February 1847. They settled in Geelong, where Phillip initially worked as a watchmaker and then as an auctioneer. Thirteen children were born (at least two of whom died in infancy) during the next eighteen years, and Rachel died in 1861 at the age of thirty-four.
The children were: Joseph (1844), born in Sydney; Elizabeth (1845), Charles Samuel (1847), in Melbourne; Kate (1848), Sarah (1850), Henry (1852), Hannah (Annie) (1854), Phillip, James (1856), Caroline (1859), Louisa, Grace, and John.
Family information from Tony Ingram, Melbourne.
MITCHELL, John
b. Stepney, 1812–1880
St Vincent (3), 1853; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1849.
Tailor; Height: 157 cm.
Dark complexion, black hair, grey eyes, medium nose, large mouth. Jew. Can read and write. Previous conviction in Gibraltar. John Mitchell's prison report stated that this was his second conviction, though he denied it Documents were produced showing that he had been tried in 1841 under the name of Abraham Davis and sentenced to be confined for two years. On 29 January 1849 Mitchell was found in a private house having forced a locked drawer, stolen its contents, attempted to escape only to fall at the bottom of a flight of stairs into the arms of a constable. Mitchell was transported for housebreaking and larceny. Mitchell claimed to have a brother in Hobart Town. His claim seems to be correct. In 1836, a case was heard that involved a nineteen- year- old thief named Solomon Hyams, who was also known throughout the East End as ‘Mitchell’.
Mitchell came out on the last convict transport to Van Diemen's Land, arriving on 26 May 1853. By 15 December he had a ticket of leave. On 11 May 1854 he was arrested on suspicion of sacrilege in the Hobart Synagogue. The prisoner was discharged without a conviction because the damage (theft?) had not occurred in a church but rather in a Jewish place of worship. On 3 January 1855 in Hobart Town he was convicted of playing skittles (on Sunday?). He was admonished. A conditional pardon was issued on 14 May 1855. Michael Mitchell, age 6, the son of John and Sarah, was buried by the synagogue in 1863. ‘Residence Woolloomoloo’. John Mitchell died in Sydney on 20 August 1880 and was buried as a Jew in the Rookwood Cemetery. He was said to be sixty-eight years old.
CON 33/115, no. 54581; OBSP, 9 May 1836, case 1134. CON37/9, p. 2954; CON 14/47; CON 18/59.
MITCHELL, Joseph
1801–1847
Canada (5), 1819; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Surrey, 1819.
Joseph Mitchell arrived in New South Wales on 1 September 1819. He was issued with a certificate of freedom on 2 March 1826. Joseph Mitchell was buried as a Jew in Sydney on 26 May 1847. The synagogue recorded that he was forty-two years old and that he was a member of Sydney's Jewish Philanthropic Society.
Ship Indent 4/4006, no. 4990, p. 362; CF 018/4990.
MOCATTA, George Gershon
b. London, 1815–1893
Jupiter, 1829; Free.
Single; 4 children.
Born on 21 March 1815, George was the fifth of eight children of Daniel Mocatta and Anne, née Goldsmid. Daniel Mocatta was the tenth son of Abraham Lumbrozo de Mattos and had taken his mother's surname. George Mocatta's brother-in-law was Joseph Barrow Montefiore (q.v.). George was fourteen years old when he arrived in Sydney with his sister and family on 22 February 1829.
George Mocatta spent four years in Sydney and was listed in the New South Wales Calendar and General Post Office Directory as living in O'Connell Street. In 1835 he was in Mudgee, and then moved to Wellington Valley where, in 1837, despite his youth, he became manager of J. B. Montefiore's properties. At the time this region was the Australian frontier and in 1836 he asked the government to provide more soldiers for the district. In 1839 he was granted a number of pastoral leases totalling 18000 acres in the counties of Bathurst, Westmorland and Georgina and 3200 acres in the Brisbane Valley. When the transportation of convicts to New South Wales ceased, Mocatta was forced to engage immigrants. On 13 June 1840 he advertised in the Australian and offered £10 for information leading to the apprehension of two hired migrants who had absconded. On 17 April 1841 Mocatta advertised in the Australian that he was leaving the district, but in December 1842 he was still in Blacktown. Mocatta bought ‘Dalbey’ in the Darling Downs and took 1600 head of cattle in a pioneering three-month journey overland from Sydney to Moreton Bay. The stock belonged to Messrs Suter, Mocatta and Lee.
In May 1848 he was present at Adelaide's first Jewish marriage, when his cousin Esther Hannah Montefiore (q.v.) married Eliezer Levi Montefiore (q.v.).
In 1848 George Mocatta of Myall Creek Station was running 4000 sheep on Crown lands near Gwydir. Mocatta was listed in 1849 as holding a run of 20 000 acres in the Darling Downs District. There was Johngboon of 16 000 acres, Malmaison of 24 000 acres, Wigton of 16 000 acres and a further 16 000 acres near Gayndah. A mountain on the Great Dividing Range bears his name. There is a family tradition that George Mocatta was the last white man to see the explorer Leichhardt alive.
Mocatta moved to Sydney and opened a grain store on Circular Quay in July 1857 and in 1858 married Mrs Lydia Harries Hankin, née Voss, at the Registry Office at Balmain. Mocatta became a merchant, opening ‘exclusive stores at Circular Quay’ in connection with their stores in Liverpool. In 1858 and 1859 he was listed as a ‘produce merchant’. Mocatta was a member of the Sydney Synagogue until 1843 and continued to contribute to the congregation even after he moved to Darling Downs. Following his marriage, he became an Anglican.
After many years in Europe, Mocatta went to New Zealand, where he owned the Tauranga Station, returning to Sydney to retire. He died at 248 Liverpool Street in 1893, one day after his seventy-eighth birthday. His death certificate listed him as a ‘shipbroker’. He was buried at the Gore Hill cemetery (near Artamon) in the Congregational section, and his four children were not brought up as Jews. His death certificate noted ‘no minister present’.
George Voss Mocatta was born at Camden in 1860. William Hugh Mocatta was born at Balmain on 17 November 1861 and was appointed Judge of the District Court in New South Wales in 1922. Houlton Walters Mocatta was born in Wales on 28 September 1863. Brenda was born in 1865.
Ship Indent 4/4823; G. F. J. Bergman, ‘George Mocatta: A Notable Pioneer Squatter’, AJJHS, vol. 8, no. 1 (1975), p. 62f; CS Letters Received 1848, Attorney-General, 4/2823; CS letters Received 1849, Miscellaneous B-G, 4/286.1, 36/4930; Sydney Gazette, 24 August 1842; Commissioner of Crown Land, A1764.1, no. 56; family history research by Chris Robson, Kalinga, Queensland.
MOCATTA, Jonathan Brandon
b. Altona, Germany, 1800–1852
Free. Single; Teacher.
Jonathan Mocatta was from Altona, near Hamburg, which had a small but significant Sephardi community. He was a remittance man sent out to the colonies by his distinguished family. His father was Aaron Mocatta who, at the time of his son's death, was living at 112 Kings Road, Brighton, England. Soon after Jonathan arrived in Van Diemen's Land the Colonial Times carried the following warning: ‘Caution to the Public!—Whereas Jonathan Brandon Mocatta has left my service as a Teacher without any reasonable cause—This is to give notice that any person or persons harbouring him after this date will be dealt with according to Law—23 February 1838 sgd Richard Lucas’.
Mocatta moved to Launceston and on 9 January 1840 announced in the Launceston Advertiser that he had established a ‘Commercial and Classical Academy’:
Mr J. B. Mocatta begs leave to apprize the Public of Launceston generally, that he is about opening an Establishment in Wellington Street, two doors from the Colonial Hospital for the instruction of Young Gentlemen. Mr Mocatta's experience in the Scholastic profession in England, and on the continent of Europe to blend into one the excellence of the British and continental system of education. Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons private tuition is available.
At the Jewish New Year in September 1843 Mocatta gave £2 to the synagogue building fund. He died in Hobart Town on 8 May 1852 of ‘delirium tremens’ in the Hobart Hospital. In the hospital's record book was written: ‘Free to the colony—object of charity but considerable property depends on his correct age [written] on proper death certificate’. Mocatta was buried by the congregation at the Harrington Street Jewish cemetery.
Launceston Advertiser, 9 January 1840; Colonial Times, 6 March 1838.
MOCATTA, Solomon
b. London, 1818–1862
1828; Free.
Single; Merchant.
Solomon Mocatta, the seventh child of Daniel Mocatta of London, and three years younger than his brother, George Mocatta (q.v.), arrived in Sydney in 1828, then and returned to England where he married Anne Hort, daughter of Abraham Hort (q.v.), in London on 21 January 1835. He returned to Sydney on the Hope on 17 October 1838 with Eliezer Levi Montefiore (q.v.). In 1843 Solomon Mocatta and his wife settled in New Zealand with his father-in-law, Abraham Hort. In 1849 Solomon and his wife moved to Port Adelaide in South Australia. According to the South Australian Almanack in 1849 he was a ship broker and merchant. He served as the appointed lay minister to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation in 1857. Solomon Mocatta died in Adelaide on 7 February 1862 and was buried in the Jewish section of the West Terrace Cemetery. His wife Anne died in Adelaide on 9 February 1857 at the age of forty-two.
Ship Indent 4/5213.
MONTEFIORE, Eliezer Levi
b. Barbados, 1820–1894
Hope, 1838; Free.
Married; Merchant; 13 children.
Born at Barbados on 24 June 1820, Eliezer was the second son of Isaac Levi and Esther Hannah (née Montefiore, the sister of Jacob and Joseph Barrow Montefiore, qq.v.). He arrived in Sydney on 17 October 1838 with Mr and Mrs Mocatta (Solomon Mocatta, q.v.). Eliezer's elder brother was Jacob Levi Montefiore (q.v.). Both Jacob and Eliezer took on their mother's maiden name in order to please their eminent uncle, Joseph Barrow Montefiore.
Eliezer arrived in South Australia in 1843 and set up business as a shipping agent and importer. On 20 September 1843, E. L. Montefiore was appointed trustee of the Jewish part of the Adelaide Cemetery. The South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register recorded on 16 June 1843 that E. L. Montefiore ran a General Store in Hindley Street that sold ‘everything from coffee to whaling gear’. He was agent for the Australasian Colonial and General Life Assurance Company of London and Sydney and Jacob Montefiore was one of the directors (12 July 1843). The Sydney Morning Herald carried the same announcement in a similar advertisement that added he was ‘agent’ for Adelaide. On 3 February 1844, E. L. Montefiore announced he was agent for the Clipper, taking cargo to Sydney. In 1845 Montefiore moved his store to King William Street and on 18 January 1845 proclaimed that he was a strong opponent of sending convicts to South Australia.
Eliezer married his 19-year-old first cousin Esther Hannah Barrow Montefiore (q.v.) at the home of the bride's father, Joseph Barrow Montefiore, at St John's Street (now called East Terrace), on 3 May 1848. The ceremony was performed by Burnett Nathan (q.v.). Their first son, Arthur Augustus, was born on 6 May 1849 (died in 1883). Frederick was born on 12 March 1852 (died at the age of three months).
The Montefiore family left Adelaide in mid-1852 and visited Jacob Levi Montefiore in Sydney. Five months later they settled in Melbourne. Jacob Levi Montefiore was born in 1853 in Collingwood, Victoria. An infant son, George Jacob, aged three months, died on 1 February 1855, ‘of Richmond’. More children followed: Caroline (1856–1932), Frank Albert (1857–1858), Amy (1859), Eliza Jessie (1861), Mary (2 May 1863), Esther Lilian (7 July 1866), Ethel Octavia (1868–1873), Ella Hortense (1871), and Alice (1873, died the same year).
The firm of Montefiore and Graham, which Eliezer managed in Victoria, was to be found in William Street from 1854 to 1859. Montefiore's sketch books of his travels and of early Melbourne and Adelaide are now held by the La Trobe Library. The Art Gallery of New South Wales also holds a portfolio of sketches and etchings. Montefiore exhibited black and white sketches and etchings in a number of exhibitions. In February 1871 the Argus announced: ‘The Public will be glad to learn that Mr E. L. Montefiore, the late secretary of the Australasian Insurance Company, who will shortly leave Melbourne to fill the post of Secretary of the Pacific Insurance Company in Sydney, has consented to not wholly withdraw himself from the conduct of the affairs of the [Victorian] Public Library, Museum and National Gallery’. Montefiore had served as a trustee of both the Victorian National Gallery and the Melbourne Public Library.
Montefiore moved to Sydney in 1871 and lived in Balmain at the ‘Hampton Villa’. In 1884 the insurance industry in Sydney formed the Insurance Institute of New South Wales and, even though Montefiore was overseas at the time, his colleagues elected him to become the first president of the institute. He was actively involved with the founding of the New South Wales Academy of Art. Upon retiring from business at the age of seventy-two, in 1892, he was appointed the first full-time director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He was a prolific author and an accomplished artist. He organised the first exchange exhibition of pictures between the Sydney Gallery and the galleries in Melbourne and South Australia.
Eliezer Levi Montefiore died in Sydney on 22 October 1894 and was buried at the Rookwood Cemetery. His wife had predeceased him in 1882. His surviving children were Caroline, Amy, Jessie, Mary, Lily and Ella. Mary married Amos Henriques Iffla on 13 March 1889 at the Great Synagogue in Sydney.
Nicholas Draffin, ‘An Enthusiastic Amateur of the Arts: Eliezer Levi Montefiore in Melbourne, 1853–1871’, AJJHS, vol. 13, no. 4 (1997), p. 687f; Ruth Faerber, ‘Eliezer Levi Montefiore’, AJJHS, vol. 8, no. 4 (1977), p. 185f; Rodney Benjamin, ‘Eliezer Montefiore, 1820 to 1894: Artist, Gallery Director and Insurance Pioneer: The First Significant Australian Jewish Artist’, AJJHS, 2004; ML 4/5213; Sydney Morning Herald, 11 January 1845; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 14 June 1843, 12 July 1843, 3 February 1844; SA Archives, GRG, 24 January 1843, no. 226 (20 September 1843).
MONTEFIORE, Esther Hannah Barrow
1829–1882
1846; Free.
Single; 13 children.
Esther married her first cousin, Eliezer Levi Montefiore (q.v.), in Adelaide on 3 May 1848. She died in Sydney on 10 July 1882, and was buried in the Rookwood Cemetery.
MONTEFIORE, Frederick Barrow Levi
Free.
Single; Merchant.
Frederick B. Levi Montefiore was in business in Moreton Bay on 8 April 1848. ‘Fred Montefiore’ was listed on the electoral roll for Brisbane in 1848: only eighty-three (male) property owners were eligible to vote. He appears to have left the colony in 1849.
MONTEFIORE, Jacob Barrow
b. Jamaica, 1801–1895
Medway, 1846; Free.
Married; Stockbroker; 11 children.
Jacob Montefiore was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and was the eldest of three children. His father was a merchant and owned a sugar plantation. Jacob grew up in England. He became a member of the Committee of the Royal Colonial Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a partner of Montefiore Brothers, which developed extensive land holdings in New South Wales. Through the influence of his illustrious cousin Sir Moses Montefiore he became one of the eleven commissioners appointed by King William IV to plan and supervise the colonisation of the new colony of South Australia. Prior to this appointment he had been a commissioner with the Colonial Produce Trade.
Jacob was the older brother of Joseph Barrow Montefiore (q.v.), and uncle of Eliezer Levi Montefiore, and had visited Australia in 1837, 1840 and 1842. In 1837 he had visited Adelaide in May before travelling on to Sydney on the Lord William Bentinck, arriving on 10 October. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 23 February 1840 that ‘our old and esteemed colonist’ returned on the Hope ‘after an absence of four years’. On 17 April 1841 he was described as a Director of the Australian Colonial and General Life Assurance Co. He arrived in Adelaide again on 29 July 1846, on the brig Medway. The party included Mr and Mrs Joseph Barrow Montefiore and their children, Misses Esther, Emily, (Sarah) Evelina, Justina, Augusta, Josephina, Marion and Edith, Master Horace Montefiore, another Miss Montefiore, and two female servants.
In 1852 Montefiore came to Victoria as an agent for the Rothschilds. In Victoria he went into business as the gold rush transformed the colony's economy and a number of newspapers carried his appeals to buy ‘drays’ (wagons), which were in very short supply because of the need to transport supplies to the goldfields.
J. Montefiore & Co was located at Market Square in Melbourne. Jacob Montefiore and his wife, Justina Lydia (née Gompertz), had a Melbourne-born child named Victoria Violet (whose birthplace was recorded as Collingwood) in 1853.
CS Letters Received 1837, Miscellaneous, 4/2363.2, letter 37/9105, 4/2240.5, letter 34/7994, ML; Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 1844, 10 January 1845; Melbourne Morning Herald, 20 March 1852; H. Munz, Jews in South Australia, p. 11f.; Australian, 24 June 1841; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 1 July 1848, 25 May 1850; SA Archives, GRG, 24/1/1845/5.
MONTEFIORE, Jacob Levi
b. Barbados, 1819–1885
Prince Regent, 1839; Free.
Married; Merchant.
The son of Isaac Levi and Esther Hannah (née Montefiore, sister of Jacob Barrow Montefiore, q.v., and first cousin of Sir Moses Montefiore), Jacob Levi took on his mother's surname. He was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies. Four of Jacob Levi Montefiore's siblings settled in the Antipodes: Eliezer Levi Montefiore (q.v.), who married Esther Hannah Barrow Montefiore), Joseph Barrow Levi Montefiore, who married Justina Barrow Montefiore, Octavius Montefiore (q.v.), and Frederick Barrow Levi Montefiore (q.v.).
Jacob Levi Montefiore arrived in Sydney on 19 August 1839 to join the firm of Jacob Barrow Montefiore. He soon went into partnership with Moses Joseph (q.v.) and from 1846 was in partnership with the Scot, Robert Graham. Montefiore, Graham & Co. soon opened branches in Brisbane and Melbourne. The Melbourne branch was managed by his brother Eliezer. He was a director of the Bank of Australasia by 1855 and president of Sydney's Chamber of Commerce in the 1860s. He was associated closely with George Mocatta (q.v.) and his squatting ventures in New South Wales and Queensland from the 1850s.
The Mitchell Library preserves a letter written by Jacob Levi Montefiore from Sydney of 6 November 1846 to T. Cohen, in which he discussed the Governor's refusal to approve a grant to the Sydney Synagogue: ‘I am willing to believe that in respectability our community is approaching a higher stand although they are still very far from what they might be’.
Montefiore was a lifelong friend of Henry Parkes and a Member of the Legislative Council in New South Wales from 1856 to 1860 and 1874 to 1876. Parkes recalled: ‘In 1852 I began to take an active part in the constitutional discussion outside the Legislature. The Gentlemen who took part with one in those agitations were certainly not demagogues or men wanting in social influence. Among them … Mr J. L. Montefiore’. Montefiore represented merchant interests against ‘landed interests’ and published two substantial pamphlets about Free Trade, A Catechism of the Rudiments of Political Economy, and A Few Words upon the Finance of New South Wales. Addressed to the Members of its First Parliament by One of Themselves (1856). He was one of the first to write about economic theory in Australia, and he also wrote the librettos for French light operas and comedies. He composed the Jewish historical libretto for Isaac Nathan's (q.v.) opera, Don John of Austria. He wrote the text for The Duel, A Drama in Two Acts, first produced in Sydney in 1843, and in 1847 Marguerite or He Might Do Worse—A Comedy in Three Acts.
Montefiore was an active member of the Jewish community. He married Caroline Antonine Geradine Louyet in London in 1851. He became a magistrate in 1857 and was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, 1866–69 and 1874–75. In 1863 he became the Belgian Consul in Sydney. (One of his brothers, George Levi Montefiore, was a member of the Belgian Senate.) Montefiore left Australia in 1876, resigning from the Legislative Council, and settled in England. He was Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute from 1877, and in 1880 served on the London Commission for the Sydney International Exhibition. He was a director of the Queensland National Bank and the Queensland Investment Company. Jacob Levi Montefiore died in England on 24 January 1885.
Martha Rutledge, ‘Jacob Levi Montefiore’, in ADB, vol. 5; Libretto and Plays 4/474, 43/5494, in 4/4561.1; 47/3785, in 4/2771.1; H. Parkes, Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History; Montefiore family research by David and Jill Stevenson, Turramarra.
MONTEFIORE, John Israel (John Julius)
b. London, 1809–1898
Prince Regent, 1829; Free.
Married; Merchant.
John Israel was sometimes called John Julius Montefiore. He was a cousin of Joseph Barrow Montefiore (q.v.) and of Jacob Montefiore (q.v.). J. J. Montefiore, Mrs Montefiore and Master Montefiore arrived in New South Wales on 19 August 1829. After two years in business in Sydney, Montefiore went on to New Zealand. In Sydney in 1831, together with some businessmen, he had become involved in plans to purchase land in New Zealand when the site for the capital city had been chosen. Montefiore arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1831 and opened a store trading with the Maori. He returned to Sydney in 1837–39 and then went back to New Zealand. He established a business in Auckland as a trader and land agent at 3 Lower Queens Street. He died at Portsea, in England, in 1898.
Prince Regent Indent 4/5200; 4/4823, no. 643/312; Sydney Gazette, 13 October 1831.
MONTEFIORE, Joseph Barrow
b. London, 1803–1893
Jupiter, 1829; Free.
Married; Merchant; 13 children.
Joseph Barrow Montefiore was born in London on 24 June 1803, the son of Eliezer Montefiore, a merchant of London and Barbados, and his wife Judith (née Barrow), and the cousin of Sir Moses Montefiore. He was educated at Hurwitz's school in Highgate and Garcia's Academy at Peckham, and had a strong Jewish background. He was nineteen years of age when he entered the London Stock Exchange in 1826 and became one of the twelve ‘Jew Brokers’ at the price of £1500. At the same time he obviously began to dream of Australia. Like Lionel Samson (q.v.), Montefiore was inspired by the return to London of the emancipist Solomon Levey (q.v.).
Joseph Barrow Montefiore arrived in Australia in 1829 with glowing testimonials paving his way. Mr G. R. Brown wrote to Sir George Murray on 19 June 1828 that Montefiore was ‘a most respectable gentleman. Mr Montefiore's means are most ample, his character excellent and his exertions being founded on practice and experience, will I should think, render him a most valuable acquisition to the colony’. Montefiore wrote from Finsbury Square on 1 June 1828:
I am now desirous of removing there with my family to establish myself as an agriculturalist I respectfully solicit a grant of five thousand acres of land my means are entirely adequate I propose taking with me an experienced agriculturalist in all its branches and as I have resided many years in the West Indies I anticipate being able to develop the cultivation of drugs, marino [sic] sheep, breeding of horses and horned cattle.
Joseph arrived in New South Wales on 22 February 1829 with his wife Rebecca (née Mocatta) (q.v.) and two daughters, Judith Georgina and Esther Hannah Barrow Montefiore, accompanied by George Mocatta (q.v.) and David Ribeiro Furtado (q.v.) and his wife. The Sydney Gazette reported: ‘It is said that Mr Montefiore, who arrived the other day by the Jupiter, is connected with the highly respectable house of that name in London and that he has brought out a capital of £20 000. He has found us at an unfortunate crisis but we hope he will not ultimately be disappointed’. By July, Montefiore was inadvertently and unfairly involved in the Sudds Thompson Affair. The Monitor commented on 18 July 1829: ‘We will be glad to know that Montefiore, and Mr Poole, signed the address [of protest to the Governor] for seeing they are hardly fixed in the Colony. What can these gentlemen know of Sudds and Thompson, as indeed of any other of the subjects of the address?’
The Montefiore family moved into ‘the residence of the late Mr W. Balcombe Esq. in O'Connell Street by Mr Montefiore, the merchant’. His firm was called Montefiore Brothers and the brother was Jacob Montefiore (q.v.) of London. He served as the first president of the Jewish congregation of Sydney from 1832 to 1835 and helped secure land for the Jewish cemetery in 1835. He was determined to have the Jewish community of the colony treated as political equals in matters of state aid. However, when the emancipist Abraham Polack (q.v.) became president in 1836 he severed his relationship with the congregation and even refused to pay his annual dues.
Montefiore negotiated the matter of a land grant and satisfied the Land Board that he had almost £5000 capital to invest and access to additional capital. He was granted 5000 acres at Wellington at the confluence of the Bell and Macquarie rivers. He told the board that he had ‘no intention to leave mercantile pursuits but hoped to put profits into development of land’. Between 1834 and 1839 he bought more than 4000 acres adjoining his original grant in the Wellington District. On 23 December 1840 he purchased land at Portland in the Port Phillip District.
During the 1830s he had travelled extensively, usually taking Horatio Samuel (q.v.) with him. He went to New Zealand in 1831, having taken the time and trouble to hire two Maori in Sydney to teach him the language. He chartered a barque in August 1830 and stayed four months. He later stated that New Zealand was ‘a perfect paradise. I think so highly of the country that, although when I went out to New South Wales, His Majesty George IV granted me 5000 acres of land, I would readily have changed it for 1000 in New Zealand’. Montefiore was in London in 1837–38, 1840 and 1843. He gave evidence to the Select Committee of the House of Lords that was set up to investigate the viability of a colony in New Zealand.
In partnership with his brother Jacob Montefiore, who was a member of the South Australian Colonisation Commission in London, he made a fortune in real estate, helped found the Bank of Australasia and was one of those responsible for the importation of English capital into New South Wales. On 25 July 1840 Montefiore arrived in the new district of Port Phillip on the barque Andromache and on 17 August paid the highest prices for allotments in the Melbourne and Geelong land sales. In Melbourne, where only 3000 people lived at the time, he bought block no. 1 in allotment no. 9 for £440. In Geelong he bought a block for £420 before proceeding to Sydney. In 1841, to the shock of the entire business community, the Montefiore firm of Sydney and London went bankrupt and Joseph returned to England.
On 29 July 1846 Montefiore returned to Australia with his wife, nine daughters, two sons, two servants, a harp, a piano, 300 packages, and capital newly raised through family connections. He and his nephew Eliezer Levi Montefiore (q.v.) set up in business in Adelaide as importers and shipping agents.
Montefiore found a friendly and supportive city. He invested heavily in mining ventures, was a member of the Stock Exchange, a committee member of the Adelaide Chamber of Commerce and a founding trustee of the Savings Bank. In December 1848 he was appointed a magistrate in the Province of South Australia, the first Jew to sit on the Bench in any Australian colony. His 19-year-old daughter, Esther Hannah Barrow Montefiore (q.v.), married her first cousin Eliezer Levi Montefiore on 3 May 1848. It was South Australia's second Jewish wedding.
He stood for election to the Legislative Council in 1851 and was defeated. He returned to England in 1860 and in retirement was one of the active members of the West London Synagogue of British Jews, the first Reform Synagogue in the United Kingdom.
He died in Brighton, England, on 4 September 1893 leaving ten daughters and three sons! They were: Judith Georgina Barrow Montefiore (Mrs Henriques), Esther Hannah Barrow Montefiore (Mrs Levi Montefiore), Emily Barrow Montefiore (Mrs Henriques), Sarah Evelina Barrow Montefiore (7 June 1832), born in Sydney, Justina (29 September 1835), born in Sydney, Augusta Barrow Montefiore (1836), born in Sydney, Josephina, Herbert Barrow Montefiore (10 April 1839), born in London, Marion Barrow Montefiore (May 1842), born in London, Horace Barrow Montefiore, Edith Barrow Montefiore, George Barrow Montefiore, and Helen Barrow Montefiore (14 February 1855), born in Adelaide.
Ship Indent, ML, 4/5200; HRA, series 1, vol. 14, pp. 243–5, vol. 18, p. 8f.; ML 2/7930, Land Correspondence, 4 September 1830; Lord William Bentinck Indent 4.5212; Hope Indent 4/5216, St George Indent 4/5223, ML; Sydney Gazette, 26 February 1829, 4 June 1829, 13 October 1829, 25 November 1830, 9 July 1831, 15 December 1831, 22 July 1834, 8 October 1836; Monitor, 18 July 1829; Port Phillip Herald, 28 December 1848; Port Phillip Patriot, 10 October 1840; Montefiore family research by David and Jill Stevenson, Turramarra.
MONTEFIORE, Octavius
b. London, 1835–1893
Single; Merchant.
Octavius was the younger brother of Jacob Levi Montefiore and Eliezer Levi Montefiore (qq.v.). He died in Sydney in 1893 and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery.
MONTEFIORE, Rebecca (née MOCATTA)
b. London
Jupiter, 1829; Free.
Married; 13 children.
Rebecca Montefiore arrived in New South Wales on 22 February 1829 with her husband, Jacob Barrow Montefiore (q.v.), two daughters, and her brother, George Mocatta (q.v.).
Mordecai was caught with forty shillings worth of lead stolen and hidden in a yard in Houndsditch. He was charged together with Thomas Homer: ‘We were very much in liquor and coming along we saw the gates open and we went in and that there gentleman came and knocked at the gates and he said thieves and we were afraid and we run away’. Mordecai called four witnesses to testify in his defence, but was sentenced at the Old Bailey on 25 February 1789.
The Salamander arrived in New South Wales on 21 August 1791. Mordecai was permitted to leave Sydney to settle in Norfolk Island in May 1806. He was then sent on to New Norfolk in Van Diemen's Land on the brig Estramina in 1803. Mordecai's sentence had expired in 1796 and a certificate of freedom was issued on 6 March 1811. By 1814, Mordecai had returned to the mainland as a labourer at Windsor. In November 1816 he was in the Hawkesbury District on a list of convicts who had no ticket of leave yet who were ‘free’ and could therefore be officially considered ‘impostors’. In the General Musters of New South Wales of 1816 and 1818 he was listed as ‘Free’ and a labourer.
On 24 February 1818 Joseph Mordecai was found drowned at the water's edge of the farm of Thomas Ardell Esq. He had been working as a member of the crew of a small boat collecting grain from farmers. His job had been to weigh the quantities of wheat. An inquest was held on 28 February 1818.
OBSP, 1789, case 206, p. 268f.; CS Copies of Conditional Pardons, May–August 1849, 4/4467 p. 294–5; HO 10/8; Sydney Gazette, 25 May 1806, 16 November 1816; Bigge Appendix, BT Box 12, p. 152; Arthur File, 4/4306, p. 224, Inquest, 28 February 1818, pp. 235–40.
MORRIS, Aaron
b. London, 1816
Arab (2), 1834; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1833.
Single; Labourer; Height: 165 cm; 2 children.
Dark complexion, low forehead, brown eyes, brown hair, medium large nose, small chin. One mole back of neck. A Jew. Aaron Morris was transported for larceny, for ‘stealing a hat’. He had previously been in prison three times for picking pockets. His hulk report was ‘very bad’. Surgeon's report: ‘careless, thoughtless, no application to his lessons though somewhat improved’.
The convict transport ship arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 30 June 1834. Morris was assigned to the Public Works Department. On 18 April 1835 he was placed in solitary confinement on bread and water for ten days for ‘feigning sickness and refusing to go to work when ordered’. On 20 May 1835, for ‘repeated idleness’, he received twenty-five lashes on the back. The convict overseer charged Morris with insolence and refusing to work and he was sentenced to a further fifty lashes. He was assigned to a road party in March 1836 for refusing to work and for gross disobedience. By 30 September 1839 he was working as a constable and was fined five shillings for ‘misconduct’. He held a ticket of leave, and was dismissed from the Police Force and sent to the interior of the island. Aaron Morris received his certificate of freedom in 1840.
An Aaron Morris married Rachel Hart on 14 June 1843 in the Bridge Street Synagogue. In 1845 he was listed as a seat holder in the newly dedicated York Street Synagogue. Aaron and Rachel had a son, Joseph, in Sydney in 1845. Another son (not named in the official records) was born in 1848.
CON 31/31, no. 1213; CON 18/3; CF 723.
MORRIS, John
b. London, 1793
Almorah (1), 1817; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Middlesex, 1816.
Single; Watch motion maker; Height: 166 cm.
Very dark complexion, black hair, brown eyes. ‘Well behaved’ on the Almorah. John Morris was sentenced at the Old Bailey on 18 September 1816.
Morris arrived in New South Wales on 29 August 1817 and was sent on to Van Diemen's Land. In Hobart Town on 30 October 1818 he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly and spent seven nights in gaol. He was absent from the Muster on 17 May 1819 and spent another seven nights in gaol. On 20 July 1819 he was found to have entered the government stores and stolen crown property. He was sentenced to 200 lashes, which he evidently survived, and was sent to Newcastle for four years. By the time of the 1828 Census he was listed as aged thirty, a Jew, free by servitude, and a dealer. Elizabeth, his wife (alias Gill), twenty-four years of age, in government service, had arrived in 1824 on the Grenada.
A certificate of freedom was issued for John Morris on 2 March 1826. The Hobart Town Courier recorded that on 11 August 1837 he was licensed to be a hawker in Van Diemen's Land. The Van Diemen's Land convict records state that he came on the Almorah and the Pilot.
CON 21/39, no. 55; CON 13/1, p. 125; CF 4/4423–159/2749.
MORRISHESKY, Moses
Ocean (1), 1816; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Portsmouth, 1815.
Musician.
Morrishesky arrived in New South Wales on 30 January 1816. He was on the list of convicts disembarked and sent on to Windsor for assigned work. He was listed as ‘Moroseholy’ with a life sentence. On the list of prisoners to be sent to Newcastle on 10 June his name is recorded as ‘Henry Die Mozesky’. In June 1818 his name appeared on the list of prisoners who were punished at Newcastle. ‘Merrishesky’ was tried at the Sydney Criminal Court in 1820 for stealing various articles in the dwelling house of Mary Burrows of Sydney. He was found guilty and sentenced ‘to be transported back to Newcastle for the term of his natural life’. On 25 February 1825 he was removed from Newcastle on the Mermaid to Port Macquarie. Henry Mosesky was listed in the Sydney Gazette as an absconded prisoner on 31 May 1817. The 1822 General Muster of New South Wales listed Henry Moseshesky as a convict in Newcastle serving a seven-year sentence.
Reports of Prisoners tried in the Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction 1820–24, 4/3503, 4/7021, X820, p. 21; CS Copies of Letters Sent 29 March 1815 to 19 June 1816, 4/3494, p. 337; Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Butts of CF, 24 December 1844 to 18 February 1845, 4/3496, p. 178; 4/1718 p. 65; CS Copies of Letters to Port Macquarie 1822–25, 4/3864, pp. 393–4.
MOSES, Aaron
b. Spitalfields, 1815–1858
Lady Nugent, 1836; Convict; Sentenced to life, Central Criminal Court, 1836.
Single; Labourer; Height: 173 cm.
Fresh freckled complexion, reddish hair, dark brown whiskers, long face, grey eyes, a broad nose. The letters RM AM were tattooed inside his left arm and EH inside his right arm. Aaron Moses was sentenced for burglary at the Old Bailey on 9 May 1836, and transported along with fellow culprits, David Martin (q.v.), Solomon Hyams and Joseph Aaron (q.v.). All four young men were sentenced to death with a recommendation for mercy by the Prosecutor ‘on account of their youth’. The ship's surgeon reported that Aaron Moses was ‘Ironed and handcuffed on board for thieving and threatening the Chief Constable that he would “do” for him’.
Aaron Moses'‘bad conduct’ on the passage to Van Diemen's Land led him to be sent immediately to Deep Gully to work on the roads in the chain gang. He remained at Deep Gully for a year. On 10 October 1837 he received thirty-five lashes for being absent without leave ‘under very aggravated circumstances’. On 21 March 1838 he was found guilty of pilfering and given twelve months hard labour. He was sent to the Perth Chain Gang and on 16 July 1838 received fifty lashes for disobedience. He remained in the chain gang for the remainder of 1838 through to May 1839. On 23 October 1839 he was sentenced to twelve months hard labour in chains and was sent to the Hulk Chain Gang at New Town Bay. On 20 January 1840 he received thirty-six lashes for having apples in his possession for which he could not account. On 17 August 1840 Moses was given two years hard labour in chains for having absconded from government service and for having stolen four pounds weight of pork from Mr John Fox.
In March 1842 Aaron Moses, a prisoner in the Penitentiary, wrote to the Hobart Town Synagogue Committee and asked that Mr Reuben Joseph of New Norfolk be ‘caused to pay the balance of an allowance due to him the nonpayment of which he would place Joseph in gaol’. The synagogue took no action. A ticket of leave was granted to Aaron Moses on 15 October 1844. On 1 April 1845 Moses received a second-class pardon.
Aaron Moses, son of Charles and Frederica Moses, died in Sydney in 1858.
OBSP 9 May 1836, case 1134, CON 31/31, no. 1449; CON 32/4, p. 86; CON 31/31, no. 1449; CON 34/6; VDL Papers, ML, A1059–8, p. 471.
Abigail Moses was the wife of Marcus Warschauer (q.v.), alias Mordecai Moses. She had followed her husband out to Australia following his conviction.
She was the stepmother of George Moss (q.v.). According to the inscription on her tomb, Abigail was ‘the wife of Mordecai Moses, ‘an officer of the Sydney Synagogue and sexton of this ground’, the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery. Abigail died on 6 July 1841. Her grave was transferred to the Rookwood Cemetery in 1901.
MOSES, Abraham
Free.
There were a number of public notices in the Sydney Gazette regarding the departure of Abraham Moses from the colony (12 October 1806, 12 June 1808), indicating that he was working as a sailor.
Sydney Gazette, 12 October 1806, 12 June 1808.
MOSES, Abraham
b. London, 1791–1858
Dora, 1840; Free.
Married; Dealer; 2 children.
The son of Harry Moses and Ann (née Lazarus) and brother of Isaac Moses (q.v.). Abraham Moses arrived in New South Wales on 17 March 1840 and settled Muswellbrook. Abraham Moses had married Rebecca Davis (in London in 1824. They had two children, Sarah (Moss) Moses (1824), who married Lewis Lipman (q.v.) in 1847, and Isaac Moses. Abraham Moses died at Sydney in 1858.
MOSES, Abraham (Jacob JOSEPHS)
b. London, 1792–1837
Surrey I (1), 1814; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1813.
Single; Watch finisher, dealer; Height: 171 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, black hair, brown eyes, large nose. On 25 January 1813 Moses was seen entering the home of Mr Judah Cohen in Whitechapel and stealing some silver candlesticks. He was caught when he tried to sell the candlesticks to a pawnbroker. He was convicted at the Middlesex Gaol Delivery on 17 February 1813 and sentenced to death, though this was later commuted to transportation for life. He was the brother of Joel Joseph (q.v.) and David Josephs (q.v.).
Moses arrived in New South Wales on 28 July 1814 and was sent to Parramatta and assigned to Mr Faultless. He was listed in the 1816 Male Muster as a ‘Government Labourer’ in Parramatta. On 3 February 1816 the Sydney Gazette reported that Moses had stolen two silver spoons, the property of James Wright of Parramatta, and the following week he was sentenced to seven years hard labour in the gaol gang at Newcastle. In the 1818 General Muster he was listed as a government labourer.
In October 1820 Moses sent a petition to Governor Macquarie stating that he had spent five years at Newcastle and that his brother Joel Joseph, ‘lately deceased’, had left him some property. A few days before his death he had ‘expressed his earnest wish to see his brother’. Moses wrote that he hoped Governor Macquarie ‘will be humanely pleased to dispense with the unexpired part of his Sentence by ordering his return to Sydney “because the offence he had committed was not of an atrocious Nature”’. Macquarie responded: ‘The remaining portion of his sentence at Coal River is to be remitted and he is to be permitted to come to Sydney’ (14 October 1820). The prayers, which were held for a week following the death of Joseph, are the first recorded Jewish services held in Australia.
On 11 June 1821 his name appeared on the list of prisoners transported to Newcastle on the Governor Bligh. He was listed as ‘Abraham Moses or Jacob Josephs’. The 1822 General Muster of Convicts in New South Wales listed Moses as a prisoner serving his sentence in Newcastle.
In 1825 Moses wrote again to the Governor begging for a ticket of leave. He had been in the employ of the government for twelve years, three of which on the estate of the late Secretary Mr Campbell, until called to join the party of (the explorer) Major Ovens. His present employment was in the government boat that served the hulk Phoenix in Sydney Harbour.
Moses eventually received a ticket of leave, dated 8 November 1830, for the District of Sydney. On 2 November 1836 he asked for ‘a reward for his uniform good conduct’. He claimed his character would bear ‘the strictest scrutiny’, and was recommended for a conditional pardon on 14 December 1836. He died in Sydney on 23 January 1837.
OBSP, 1813, case 281, p. 168; Convicts sent to Newcastle 4/3494; Petition to Governor Macquarie, October 1820, Letter 24, 4/1861; Petition 161, 24 October 1825, for Mitigation of Sentence 4/1784; TL 30/791; CS Letters Received 1836, Convicts, Petitions, 36/9610, in 4/2309; Sydney Gazette, 3 February 1816, 10 February 1816; 4/3516, p. 66.
MOSES, Abraham
b. London, 1798–1873
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; Dealer; 4 children.
Abraham Moses was the son of Joseph Moses and Deborah Moses (née Barnett), and the brother of Phoebe Hart (q.v.), Moses Moses (q.v.), Isaac Moses (q.v.) and John (Jacob) Moses (q.v.). He arrived on the Palambam in 1832 in Van Diemen's Land with his wife Leah (née Moses) and children. Leah was the sister of Samuel Shannon (q.v.), which is probably the reason that Samuel employed Moses prior to their falling out over a ‘lost’ cheque in 1842. Moses was a bonded migrant. A John Barnett (q.v.), a ‘Cooper’, was on the same ship.
Abraham Moses arrived in New South Wales on 10 January 1833 as a free settler, travelling with his family. With them was ‘Norman Simon, a rabbi’, who was Norman (Nahum) Joseph (q.v.). Abraham Moses' wife had an infant in arms. The children listed included Sarah (who married Nathan Joseph, q.v., on 1 June 1836), Julia (who married Elias Moses, q.v., in 1840), Moses and Jacob, who was born in Australia in 1834.
In 1833 Abraham Moses was the owner of the Joiners' Arms in King Street, Sydney, and, in the same year, was the proprietor of the Red Cross Hotel in King Street. In March 1837 he went into business at the Monaro Plains. He had a consignment of new stock in his store in Monaro by 9 March 1838 and became the agent of the Australian newspaper. In November 1838 he advertised that his store was for sale and on 1 January 1839 the Australian reported that he was about to travel to England. Mr and Mrs Abraham Moses gave £30 to the Sydney Synagogue building appeal with additional pledges of £5 in the name of Jacob and Julia. Abraham Moses returned a year later and opened the Squatters Arms at Dr Reid's Flat. In 1839 he wrote in a petition that he was living at Bangery or Dr Reid's Flat: ‘For the past year he has run the mail from Queanbeyan to the Snowy River, a distance of 100 miles. Owing to the drought he has suffered a great financial loss. There is no hotel to be found within 40 miles of Maneroo [sic] where the petitioner resided. He asked for ten acres at Bangery or Doctor Reid's Flat for a hotel for travellers to Cooma, the Snowy River, Nimatabell, Twofold Bay and Biger’ [sic]. He politely wrote that he was visiting Sydney because his licence to run a licensed public house ‘seems to have been delayed’.
During 1840–41 Abraham Moses managed the White Hart Hotel in Yass. In March 1840 his store ‘on the road to the Snowy River, Port Phillip and South Australia’, which had been there for the past two years, was declared to be trespassing on ground given to a cattle man. There was, claimed Moses, no other store within 27 miles of Woolwoi Creek. He had built a house, a store, and a stockyard and fenced in a small paddock. The petition to set aside the ruling was refused. The official wrote that he ‘regrets very much’ that Moses must move. The newspapers were filled with numerous appeals to debtors to pay him during the depression of March to October 1841 and, in 1842, he moved to Sydney.
By September he had a house and store in Bridge Street, had purchased extensive land in Sydney and was active in supporting candidates in the first municipal election in 1842. Moses rented two rooms in his Bridge Street residence for the Sydney Jewish community to use as a temporary synagogue. His property in Bridge Street was described as ‘a forge and store’. However, he used it as a liquor store and, in February 1844, charged four women and a man with stealing a dozen bottles of wine. In 1844 he purchased the schooner Mumford and in 1845 advertised that he sold the ‘only genuine sperm candles in the colony’ from his store in Bridge Street.
Moses donated £60 to the building fund of the synagogue in 1839 and was a seat holder in 1845. He served on many congregational committees and was particularly concerned about a proper supply of kosher meat. In August 1848 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the post of president of the synagogue. The Land Correspondence files show that Abraham Moses made some substantial purchases in Sydney totalling more than £50 000 in the years 1849 to 1852. In 1837 he had become the first Jew to receive a licence to pasture stock beyond the established boundaries of settlement in the colony. In the 1840s he acquired the leasehold of nearly 50 000 hectares along the Murrumbidgee.
In 1852 he was listed as an original shareholder in the Australian Joint Stock Bank and owned a Bond Store in Argyle Place. Abraham Moses left Australia for London in 1859. When he died in London at his residence at 68 Russell Square, on 27 February 1873, his estate was said to have been in the vicinity of £650 000. Abraham Moses Esq., ‘late of Sydney, was in the 75th year of his life’.
His son Moses married Caroline Joseph, daughter of Moses and Rosetta Joseph (q.v.) in Sydney in 1851. They moved to London in the 1850s. Moses changed his name to Sydney Merton and died in 1880.
Palambam Indent 4/5204; Sydney Gazette, 13 August 1833; Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1842, 7 February 1844, 9 February 1844, 23 May 1844; Australian Israelite, 9 May 1873; CS 39/13050, dated 5 December 1839, in 4/2457.1; Land Correspondence, 2/7933, for urban property purchases, 1849–1851, Petition ‘Upper Pitt St’, 25 February 1839; Errol Lea-Scarlett, Queanbeyan District and People.
MOSES, Abraham
b. London, 1799
Lady Castlereagh, 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1817.
Single; Fruiterer; Height: 167.5 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion, hazel eyes, dark brown hair. On 14 June 1817 Abraham Moses stole one watch valued at £1, a seal, chain and key from a passerby in Crooked Lane near the Monument. He was sentenced on 2 July 1817, and was ‘Well behaved’ on the ship.
Moses arrived in New South Wales on the Lady Castlereagh in May 1818 and was then sent on to Van Diemen's Land. Abraham Moses was off the government rations in 1821. On 12 June 1822 he received fifty lashes for ‘discharging firearms, refusing to give up same, assaulting a constable’, and in November 1822 was reprimanded for having been absent from church. The Hobart Town Gazette advertised on 31 August 1822 that he had a sale at his house in Elizabeth Street of ‘clothing, knives and forks, crockery, tomahawks, Bengal soap etc etc’. In December 1823 he was returned to the Public Works Department for ‘harbouring a female named Prince’.
Moses received his certificate of freedom on 17 September 1824. By 1824 he was free by servitude. He appeared in the Launceston Police Book in 1825 for ‘abusing and challenging H. Bateman to a fight’ and was bound over to keep the peace for six months.
OBSP, 1816–17, case 949, p. 327; Ship Indent 4/4006, p. 37; CON 31/29, no. 90; Launceston Police Book, CON 78/2; CON 13/1; Hobart Town Gazette, 31 August 1822, 17 September 1824; HO 10/43.
Dark complexion, black hair, hazel eyes, medium nose, high retreating forehead. Breast hairy. A Jew. Could read and write. Abraham Moses stole a basket containing clothes from a shop. He had been imprisoned once before for assault, and previously fined 20 shillings and £2 for similar offences. Abraham Moses had married the Sephardi woman Hannah Martinis at London's Great Synagogue on 25 March 1828.
Moses arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 19 May 1842 and was allotted eighteen months initial period of probation and sent to Flinders Bay on the Tasman Peninsula to work as a baker. By 9 September 1842 Moses was at Impression Bay. During that year his file recorded frequent complaints that he was dirty and impudent. He was charged with misconduct when he permitted a prisoner to enter the cook house but was found not guilty of the charge. His original term of probation expired on 21 November 1843. He was moved to the Prisoners' Barracks in Bridgewater and on 8 April 1844 he was charged with feloniously receiving stolen goods, under the value of £5, and his existing sentence of transportation was extended by nine months. In 1846 and 1847 he was at the Prisoners' Barracks in Launceston. Abraham Moses received a ticket of leave on 8 February 1848 and a certificate of freedom on 2 November 1848. A curious footnote has been discovered in the records of the London rabbinical court dated 19 December 1850 when Hannah bat Yaacov Nunis Martinus came before the rabbis to confess that she had been living illicitly with one Joseph Hart of 7 Buckle Street, Whitechapel for three years'. Her husband had been transported to Sydney ten years before ‘and has not been heard from since’. Hannah obviously hoped that, in the prolonged absence of her husband, she would be permitted to marry a second time.
CON 33/20, no. 4817. Jeremy I Pfeffer ‘From One End of the Earth to the Other’ (2008), p. 208.
MOSES, Alexander (MOSS)
b. London, d. 1850
1836; Free.
Single; 5 children.
Alexander Moses was the son of Marcus (Moses) Warschauer (q.v) and the brother of George Moss (q.v), Catherine Moss (q.v.) and Rosetta Moss (q.v.). He arrived in Australia in 1836 with his sisters and stepmother, Abigail Moses (q.v.). Moses was the first Jew to apply for a licence for depasturing stock beyond the boundaries of the colony (New South Wales Gazette, 18 January 1837). His place of residence was in Sydney and he applied for licence no. 47 for the Monaro. Alexander Moss (Abraham Moses) married Rachael Hyam (q.v.) at the Sydney Synagogue on 28 February 1841. Two children were registered in the synagogue's birth book, Moses (Morris) (15 January 1842) and Abigail (11 May 1843). Alexander Moss (as he was now known) returned with his family to England, where he died, in London, in 1850. His poverty-stricken wife was sent back to Australia on the Ann in 1853 with her five children. The fare was paid by the Jewish Emigration Loan Society. Moses (Morris) married Elizabeth, daughter of Michael Joseph Russell (q.v.), on 10 May 1868. They lived in Maitland.
Family history by Lea Woolf and Lynn Samuel, Melbourne.
MOSES, Benjamin
b. London, 1797–1876
Free.
Benjamin Moses was the son of Elijah Moses. A publican's licence was granted on 13 October 1843 to Benjamin Moses, for the public house Labour in Vain on Campbell Street, Hobart Town. The licence was transferred on 6 February 1845 following the announcement of his insolvency on 10 December 1844. On 5 December 1844 Benjamin Moses ‘late of Campbell St in Hobart Town was confined to gaol for debts’.
Hobart Town Courier, 13 October 1843, 17 December 1844, 6 February 1845; Hobart Town Advertiser, 10 December 1844.
MOSES, Daniel
Convict.
Daniel Moses was issued with a certificate of freedom on 19 October 1842.
Australian, 20 October 1842.
MOSES, David
b. London, 1795–1870
Duckenfield, 1831; Free.
Married; Dealer.
David Moses was the son of Moses and Elizabeth Moses of London, and the brother of Rachel Moses (q.v.) (who married Samuel Benjamin, q.v.) and Elias Moses (q.v.). He was the uncle of Michael Simeon (q.v.), James Simeon (q.v.) and David Simeon (q.v.) of Victoria. David Moses and his wife Sophia (q.v.) came to Sydney in 1831 and arrived in Hobart Town on the Duckenfield on 17 August 1831. Having seen the local conditions, he travelled to London in 1833, returning to Hobart Town on 6 December 1834 on the Margaret. He then commissioned J.C. Clark to build the London Mart in Liverpool Street, which opened in late 1836. The business prospered and he moved to a new shop in the same street in 1840.
The Hobart Town Courier on 30 March 1838 graphically recorded a fight between David Moses and John Moses (q.v.): ‘It appeared David was trying to force himself into the pit of the theatre and, prevented by John, who succeeded in pushing him into the street; half an hour later he returned and asked for John who, the moment he appeared, was knocked down by a huge piece of paling which struck him on the head. He was fined forty shillings or two months in the House of Correction’. David paid the fine!
David Moses was one of those involved in founding the Hobart Town Synagogue and became a member of the first committee and eventually rented seat no. 2. He donated £20 to the congregation in 1844 and £25 in 1845. The Hobart Town Courier reported, on 7 January 1842, that Moses exported a case of china and clothing apparel on the Flying Squirrel to Port Phillip and on 4 February imported two cases of British goods. The Van Diemen's Land Census of 1842 recorded that he was married to a Jewish woman, that they were both ‘aged between 21 and 45’, that they had arrived free, and owned their own home in Liverpool Street. David Moses was listed as a member of the committee of the Tasmanian Masonic Benevolent Society (Hobart Town Courier, February 1846). The Tasmanian Colonist on 1 December 1853 announced his ‘departure from this colony’ and recorded that he was presented with a silver snuff box. He had been a resident of Tasmania for twenty years. His departure had been delayed by Sophia's illness. On 6 May 1853, she died at their residence at Liverpool Street at the age of fifty-seven, and was buried in the Harrington Street Cemetery.
David Moses had already established links with the Jewish community in Sydney and was listed as having given £50 to the Sydney Synagogue in 1843 and £10 in 1845. Upon his arrival in New South Wales he became the licensee of the Barley Mow Inn in Castlereagh Street. He died there on 26 July 1870, aged seventy-five. David and Sophia Moses had no children.
Tasmanian Times, 13 August 1870; Wayne Index; Hobart Town Courier, 30 March 1838, 7 January 1842, 18 November 1842; Tasmanian Colonist, 1 December 1853; Ship Indent 4/5213.
MOSES, David
b. London, 1809
Asia I (4), 1828; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1827.
Married; Glass cutter; Height: 161 cm.
Fair ruddy complexion, brown hair, hazel eyes. Tattoos: DN upper part, doves, heart and anchor on under part of left arm. D N, heart and A C on right arm. David Moses, together with Lazarus Jacobs (q.v.) (aged twenty) struck a woman in Petticoat Lane and stole her purse. He was sentenced on 12 July 1827, and had two former convictions.
David Moses arrived in New South Wales on 13 March 1828 and was initially assigned, briefly, to Susannah Fletcher, Lower Minto. Moses appeared on the 1828 Census twice and was listed as ‘Protestant’ and as a member of the No. 14 Road Party and also in the town gang of Parramatta. Moses was still in Parramatta in 1834 when he appeared in the gaol record, having been admitted on 12 May 1834 and sent on to Sydney on 19 May 1834. His trade was listed as ‘none’. At the Bathurst General Sessions on 26 June 1829 he was convicted for stealing and sentenced to three years colonial transportation. He was sent to Moreton Bay in August 1829 on the Waterloo. He was returned to Sydney from Moreton Bay on 4 February 1833, and was granted a certificate of freedom on 17 January 1842.
On 10 October 1846 the Citizen told the story of a man named David Moses who was committed for trial upon a charge of stealing four one-pound notes from a sailor. Moses ‘snatched the notes from his bosom’ but when apprehended denied the charge. By the time of his arrest he only had six shillings and sixpence left. Fortunately for the accused, in January 1847, Moses was discharged because the principal witness in the case had ‘gone to sea’.
OBSP, 1826–27, case 953, p. 360; Ship Indent 4/4013, p. 68; CON 18/16, no. 899; Launceston Police Book, CON 78/2, p. 347; Prison Department, Parramatta Gaol Entrance Books, 1833–34, no. 646, 4/6530; Chronological Register of Convicts at Moreton Bay, no. 1856; Citizen, 10 October 1846, 2 January 1847; CF 42/0076.