SADLING, John
b. Prussia, 1814–1870
Recovery (3), 1836; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1835.
Married; Clerk and shopman; Height: 168 cm.
Sadling could read and write. He was sentenced at the Old Bailey on 15 June 1835. He was described as having a dark ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, dark chestnut eyes, large nose with a front upper tooth gone and a brown patch under right jaw. A Jew. Sadling was said to be a member of a street gang. He had no previous convictions. He was convicted of ‘cutting and maiming’ a horse.
The Recovery arrived in Sydney on 25 February 1836. On 18 May 1836, while working on a street gang in Sydney and housed at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sadling was ‘absent from his work gang’ and placed on bread and water for six days. In the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales John Sadling was listed as a prisoner at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney and subsequently sent to the Road Department.
Sadling received a ticket of leave in 1843 and a conditional pardon in 1847. He was buried ‘a native of Konigsberg’ as a Jew in 1870, aged 66.
Recovery Printed Indent, p. 45; AO NSW, CS, Monthly Returns of Summary Trials of Convicts Before Benches of Magistrates, August 1832 to December 1836, X707; TL 43/2131; CP 47/337.
SALAMON, Edward
b. London, 1810–1860
1832; Free.
Married; Merchant; 5 children.
Edward Salamon was the son of Sir David Salamon of London and a nephew of Mrs Harriet Levien (q.v.). Edward Salamon arrived in Sydney in January 1832 with a recommendation for a land grant from the Home Secretary. He was ‘summoned to the Colonial Office’ but, ‘unacquainted with the procedure’, entrusted his representation there to his agent and cousin Michael Phillips (q.v.), with whom his capital was invested. Salamon explained in a petition to the Colonial Secretary in Sydney on 20 December 1837 that the money he had invested with Phillips had vanished ‘because of [Phillips'] personal calamities and neglected his duties and in consequence he [Salamon] was deprived of the grant’. In 1838 he wrote again. Obviously his previous appeal had yielded no response. It was only in 1853 that Salamon had enough capital to buy land in Sydney.
Salamon went into business at 3 Colonnade, Bridge Street, as a wine merchant and general trader. He sold cut glass, Devonshire cider, stout, brandy and wine. The Sydney General Trade List recorded the importation of thirteen cases of clocks and toys on 7 February 1835. In 1836 he returned to England, gathered together some capital and stock and on 13 September 1837 announced in the Commercial Journal and Advertiser that he had returned to the colony by the Ellen and reopened his shop in Bridge Street, which sold china, jewellery, haberdashery and liqueurs.
Edward Salamon married his first cousin, Henrietta Levien, the daughter of Solomon Levien (q.v.), on 9 October 1839 under the auspices of the Sydney Synagogue. In 1845 he was a seat holder at the York Street Synagogue and donated ten guineas towards the new building.
Salamon boasted that he had a ‘large’ auction room in George Street. In October 1842 he announced that he was a wine merchant in George Street and in High Street, West Maitland, but on 26 August 1843 a meeting of creditors was called. On 30 November 1843 an arrangement was signed and the claim of insolvency was withdrawn. On 20 December he applied for an auctioneer's licence, gave up his Sydney premises and moved to West Maitland. On 23 August 1845 the Morning Chronicle reported that the storekeeper Edward Salamon of West Maitland was suing Joseph Cashmore (q.v.), who had once been an employee, and who was owed £52 in salary and some stock. Their battle was referred to Messrs L. Spyer (q.v.) and P. J. Cohen (q.v.) for adjudication. The Jewish conciliators found in favour of Salamon, and Cashmore then took the matter to the civil court.
On 27 April 1844 Salamon imported two cases of general goods from London and on 16 May 1846 exported thirty-four cases of gum. The Sydney Chronicle of 13 January 1848 described him as one of the three Jewish auctioneers in the city and he was still active as an auctioneer in the 1850s.
A daughter, Harriett, was born in Sydney in 1842. Personal tragedy overtook the family when three of Edward and Henrietta's children died. Francis Edward Salamon, aged six years and six months, died on 25 September 1850, and in the same week a daughter, Florence Matilda, aged one year and seven months, Montague Edward, who had been born in Sydney in 1846 died as an infant. John Benson Salamon, their third son, died aged two, on 21 March 1859.
Edward Salamon died ‘immediately after a visit to Melbourne’ on 27 October 1860, aged forty-nine, leaving an estate valued at £20 000. He was buried at the Devonshire Street cemetery and the grave was transferred to Rookwood in 1901 by the request of Sir Edward Samuel Bart.
Land Correspondence, 2/7965, 20 December 1837; Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1842, 26 August 1843, 30 November 1843, 28 October 1844, 20 December 1843, 21 August 1845, 29 October 1860; Maitland Mercury, 2 September 1843; Morning Chronicle, 23 August 1845; Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 13 September 1837; Shipping Gazette, 27 April 1844, 16 May 1846.
Alexander Salmon was the son of John Salmon and Rebecca (née Polack). Rebecca was the sister of Abraham Polack (q.v.), Joel S. Polack (q.v.), and Elizabeth Poole (q.v.). In 1839 New South Wales was faced with a severe shortage of wheat and Abraham Polack chartered the vessel Hope to procure wheat from Valparaiso, Chile. Alexander Salmon, Polack's nephew, sailed in the ship as Polack's representative and ship's officer. The ship left Chile in June 1839 and visited Tahiti in July, arriving in Sydney in September.
Salmon returned to Tahiti, and in 1843 married Tahitian Princess Arii-taimai, whose daughter became the wife of King Pomare V and was therefore the last queen of Tahiti. The young David Poole (q.v.), who was a first cousin of the Queen, represented Tahiti overseas.
Family history from James L. Sanderson, Sydney; ML Q659/P.
SALOM, Mark (MAYNARD)
b. Mile End Road, 1808
Elphinstone (4), 1842; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Central Criminal Court, 1841.
Single; Sailor, hawker; Height: 163 cm; 2 children.
Black hair, grey eyes, long chin, large nose. He could read and write. His dossier stated that he was a Protestant. Mark Salom had not been in prison before. After his conviction he remained in England for almost a year before embarking for Hobart Town. He behaved so well on board ship that he served as a supervisor of the convicts.
Salom originally came to Australia in 1829 working as a fourth mate on the Lord William Bentinck. He spent six months in Sydney. He then moved to Hobart Town and was briefly in business with ‘A. Solomon’. His reputation was not enhanced when, in 1834, at the theatre at the corner of St John Street and Brisbane Street in Launceston, one Mark Salom, alias Maynard, gave an entertainment ‘Maynard at Home’, with tickets at 7s 6d. Mark was his own money taker and when the hall was full he began to sing ‘Bath bricks a penny a lump’. The audience walked out in disgust and he pocketed the takings. The Hobart Town Courier noted that Salom was a resident of Launceston and had received a licence as a hawker on 5 October 1838. His behaviour aroused the suspicion of the police. The Perth police report of 27 July 1838 was printed in the Hobart Town Courier: ‘John Davis and Mark Salom, alias Maynard, who left Hobart Town under very peculiar circumstances, were apprehended at Perth and taken before the Police Magistrate at Campbell Town on suspicion of being runaway convicts and discharged’. Mark Salom was granted a hawker's licence for the District of Launceston 2 October 1839.
Having earned enough money to return to England he quickly fell foul of the law, and in February 1841 was arrested and sentenced to seven years transportation for having cashed a cheque for £6 which he had promised to take to Boulogne.
Salom arrived back in Van Diemen's Land, on the Elphinstone (4), arriving in Hobart Town on 28 July 1842. In September 1843, his second initial period of probation ended and he was sent to be an assigned servant in Launceston. He then moved to Hobart Town, became a constable, and rented seat no. 100 in the back of the synagogue for the year 1845. He was soon in trouble once again and, in the early part of 1845, was expelled from the police force in Hobart Town and given six months hard labour for falsely claiming a reward for the recovery of a missing boat and for having expropriated a five-shilling fine. On 7 May 1846 the Hobart Synagogue refused an appeal for financial aid and Salom subsequently abandoned the Jewish faith. Salom was granted a ticket of leave on 27 February 1846 ‘for having exerted himself at the hazard of his life in extinguishing a fire in Launceston’. In October 1846 he resigned from the post of overseeing the Launceston Town Surveyors' Department. In November 1846 he married Mary Marr, who had come free to the colony. In 1846 and 1847 Salom petitioned the Lieutenant Governor for permission to live in Sydney. His request was refused.
Salom was involved in an acrimonious court case in which he accused Solomon Levien (q.v.) of ‘indecent language’. Salom testified ‘I was passing the shop of Bertram Nathan (q.v.) in Charles Street, Launceston, when the prisoner Solomon Levien was standing at the door. He said: “You bloody Bugger. I suppose you are looking after more shofel pitchers”, meaning passers of bad money and alluding, as I understood to a case which I was lately a witness’. Bertram Nathan testified that Salom was ‘an apostate Jew, a ticket of leave holder, a man notorious for his vindictive feelings towards certain members of the Jewish persuasion and especially towards Levien and myself (Nathan)’. Levien had worked as an assigned servant for Nathan, and Salom had abused Levien on a previous occasion. Several character witnesses testified on oath that Levien was a ‘well conducted, harmless, inoffensive man’. The magistrate was not convinced, and commented: ‘Mark Salom had rendered himself obnoxious to the lower members of the Jewish persuasion. [Bertram] Nathan's servant, or rather partner, is of the same creed—no time is lost of taunting and reviling Salom in public as he passes along the streets in his capacity of hawker, a course of proceedings which I have good reason to believe that Levien has been particularly active in’. The magistrate upheld the complaint and Levien was reprimanded.
Salom was granted a conditional pardon in 1846. The official note stated ‘Information had been given to the police which led to his conviction of receiving stolen property. He has completed six years of a seven years sentence and held a ticket of leave for fourteen months’ (sic). The pardon was approved and Salom was free by February 1848 when his sentence of transportation officially expired.
Mark Salom had a son, Maurice, and a daughter, Sarah, who married Maurice Coleman Davis (q.v.).
CON 33/25, no. 6161; CON 14/16; CSO 24/28/750, 14 September 1847; CSO 20/38/888; Permission to Marry Books CON 52/2, p. 437; HO 10/60, p. 363; Hobart Town Courier, 5 October 1838; Hobart Synagogue Minute Book, 7 May 1845.
SALOM, Maurice
1832–1903
Free.
Single; 4 children.
Maurice Salom married Kate Solomon (q.v.), the daughter of the late Moss Solomon (q.v.) of Sydney, at the bride's mother's home in Hindley Street, Adelaide, on 27 April 1856. Abraham Moss Salom was born on 16 July 1857. Rebecca was born on 2 June 1860. On 18 July 1863 their four-year-old daughter Leah Rachel died. Elias Salom, son of Maurice and Kate Salom, died at Glenelg on 16 February 1885 at the age of twenty-one.
Maurice Salom died on 12 October 1903, aged seventy-one. Kate Salom died on 7 June 1928, aged ninety-one.
Pritchard Index.
SAMSON, Fanny (née LEVI)
b. Brighton, 1824–1888
1845; Free.
Married; 6 children.
Fanny Levi was the granddaughter of the Anglo-Jewish banker Abraham Goldsmid. Family tradition relates that young Lionel Samson (q.v.) fell in love with his first cousin, Sarah, who was Fanny's mother, and the wife of Nathan (Nathaniel) Philip Levi (q.v.). In the spirit of the biblical Naomi she rebuffed him by saying that she was too old and that one day he would marry her daughter. That day would come in 1841. When they met again Fanny was seventeen and Lionel was forty-two years old. Both were visiting the Goldsmid estate in Surrey. Lionel returned to Western Australia and then travelled back to England to marry Fanny, whose uncle and family were in the throes of emigrating to the new colony in South Australia. In Perth, on 16 August 1843, the Inquirer newspaper reported that Lionel Samson with his new wife, his mother-in-law and her two younger daughters had arrived and were on their way to Adelaide.
In Fremantle, Fanny Samson was totally isolated. Her relatives remained in England and Adelaide. Her brother-in-law William Samson (q.v.) sailed for South Australia in 1846. In 1855 an Order of French nuns arrived in Western Australia and Fanny was the only person in the colony with sufficient education to be able to speak with them. She interpreted for them and ultimately taught them English.
Fanny's children were Michael (1844) (q.v.), Caroline (1845), Adelaide (1847), Louis (1849), Elizabeth Mary (1850) and William Frederick (1855). Fanny died on 6 May 1888 and was buried in the Jewish section of the cemetery in Fremantle.
AG, p. 261f.
SAMSON, Horace
b. London, d. 1910
Sterling, 1841; Free.
Single.
Horace Samson came to Western Australia with his uncle, Lionel Samson (q.v.), in 1841. Horace Samson became a draftsman and lithographer in the Survey Department. He designed and printed the first postage stamps of Western Australia, including the famous black swan stamp. His watercolours and sketches of the colony of Western Australia are important historical records of the settlement's earliest years. Horace Samson moved to Victoria and became Registrar of Titles. He died in England in 1910.
Inquirer, 17 March 1841.
SAMSON, Lionel
b. London, 1799–1878
Calista, 1829; Free.
Single; 6 children.
Lionel Samson inherited his father's seat on the London Stock Exchange. It was one of the twelve places set aside for Jews. Apparently inspired by the emigration of Michael Phillips (q.v.) and the stories of Solomon Levey (q.v.), Lionel Samson of 5 Broad Street Buildings wrote to Under Secretary Twiss on 27 January 1829 stating that it was the intention of his (younger) brother (William Samson, q.v.) and himself to emigrate to the new settlement at Swan River and to invest £1000 in the venture. He wanted to be told ‘what is required to be done to gain the advantages offered by the Government’.
Samson was the only Jewish migrant to Australia to receive a regal farewell from England. A few days before his departure, Lionel was a guest of King George IV at a grouse shoot. When the royal hunter accidently knocked and cracked his signet ring he took it off and gave it to Samson as a token of good luck. The ring still belongs to the Samson family.
Lionel Samson arrived in Fremantle on 5 August 1829 on the Calista, the second immigrant ship to Western Australia. In the colony's first muster, on 30 January 1830, he was listed as thirty years old, born in London, and ‘a merchant’. His brother William was listed as an ‘assistant’. The general muster also recorded the people who had claimed land and described their families, servants and property imported into the colony. Lionel Samson was listed with his brother, four servants and £352 5s 4d, applicable to the improvement of land, and £130 13s 5d, which was defined as working capital.
Samson established a general business in Fremantle and he and his brother became the first official auctioneers at the Swan River settlement. Lionel Samson was also the first merchant in the colony to be granted a liquor licence to deal in wine and spirits. Samson's name appeared on the colony's first grant of rural land on 29 September 1829 when he was allocated 4696 acres at Swan River. He was the colony's first postmaster and acted in an honorary capacity. Samson became one of the founding directors of the Bank of Western Australia in 1837. On 27 July 1837 he was a partner in the foundation of the Western Australian Whaling Co., and was active as ships' agent and estate agent. In 1842 Samson travelled to England and married his cousin, the 18-year-old Fanny Levi (Samson, q.v.), at Brighton, on 19 October 1842. Samson remained in England until 1844 and lived at 11 Warnford Court, Throgmorton. During his time in England he lobbied Lord Stanley about the poor postal communications between the United Kingdom and its Western Australia colony. Lionel and Fanny Samson had six children: Michael (q.v.), Caroline, Adelaide, Louis, Elizabeth Mary, and William Frederick.
In 1847 the Samsons' role in Western Australian society was described in a book published in London: ‘And now let us get on towards Mr Samson's which is that large building apparently without chimneys and seemingly but half finished. Messrs Samsons are the largest merchants in the colony and are deservedly liked and esteemed for their constant exertions to merit the confidence of their connexion’.
Samson built one of Perth's most elegant houses on the northwest corner of St Georges Terrace and Barrack Street. Lionel Samson served as a member of the Legislative Council in 1849–56 and 1859–68. He died on 15 March 1878 and was buried in the small Jewish section of the Fremantle cemetery. Fanny Samson died on 6 May 1888.
David Mosseson, ‘Lionel Samson’, in ADB, vol. 2, pp. 417–18; HRA, series 3, vol. 6, pp. 622, 625; Western Australia Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, vol. 1, no. 1; Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 26 April 1834, 17 May 1834, 25 October 1834, 16 May 1835; Inquirer, 17 March 1841, 16 August 1843; CO 18/6, 27 January 1829; Swan River News and Western Australian Chronicle (London), no. 39, 1 March 1847, by G. J. Webb, Deputy Assistant Commissioner General; Governors' Despatches, August 1844, ML, A 1274, p. 365; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 29 June 1839; Perth Gazette, 20 May 1837, 22 July 1837; Enquirer (WA), 7 May 1845; George Seddon and Barbara Haddy, Looking at an Old Suburb: A Walking Guide to Four Blocks of Fremantle, University of Western Australia Press, 2000; AG, p. 260f.
SAMSON, Michael
b. Fremantle, 1844–1907
Free.
Single; 3 children.
The eldest child of Lionel and Fanny Samson (qq.v.), Michael was the first of six siblings. He was educated at St Peter's College in Adelaide and at the newly founded Catholic Brothers College in Fremantle. He initially worked with his father and uncle at the family business in Fremantle and was employed at the office of the Convict Department in Fremantle. Having fallen out with his family, he travelled to China where he worked as an exporter. When he returned to Western Australia and to Fremantle he became a customs inspector. Michael Samson married Mary Murphy in the old St Patrick's Church in Fremantle in 1889. They had three children: William Frederick (born 1892), Kathleen (1894) and Adelaide Rita (1896). Michael Samson became Mayor of Fremantle in 1905 and died two years later. His son, William Frederick Samson, was mayor for twenty-one years and was known as ‘Mr Fremantle’. The home built by Michael and Mary Samson in 1889 is now cared for by the Western Australian Museum.
SAMSON, William
b. London, 1801–1880
Calista, 1829; Free.
Single; 4 children.
William arrived with his older brother, Lionel Samson (q.v.), on the Calista on 5 August 1829. He was listed as his brother's ‘assistant’. He was licensed to sell goods by auction on 12 March 1831. At the end of 1834 William Samson had been appointed Government Auctioneer. Samson married Elizabeth Mary Pace on 18 June 1840. Her father was a sea captain and her mother ran a general store and hotel in Fremantle. In 1841 William Samson was appointed a Justice of the Peace in Western Australia and was listed as one of the seven directors of the Swan Boat Co. He became a member of the Governor's Executive Council in 1844. He was one of the directors of the Perth branch of the Bank of Australasia (of which Jacob Montefiore (q.v.) was a London director). The partnership between Lionel and William Samson was dissolved on 2 December 1846 and William moved to Adelaide the following year. The Swan River News of 1 March 1847 described him as one of ‘the largest merchants to the colony’, and he became an auctioneer, taking over the business of Emanuel Solomon (q.v.). The South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register reported on 4 October 1848 that Samson Wickstead & Co. had bought out Mr J. B. Neales, the largest auctioneering firm in South Australia, after which his business was one of the foremost in the colony. Samson retired from business in 1855 and worked as a broker until his death in June 1880. A Christian minister, the Rev. Frank Coghlan, conducted his funeral and said: ‘He leaves behind him a tolerably large family’. His children were Elizabeth Jessy, born 17 April 1841, Walter Louis, born 4 March 1843, and Jane Maria, born 22 January 1845.
Enquirer, 24 November 1841, 23 June 1880; HRA, series 3, vol. 6, p. 625; Perth Gazette, 20 June 1840; Swan River News, 1 February 1844, 1 March 1847; Western Australia Chronicle and Perth Gazette, 12 March 1831; South Australian Almanack, 1847; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 10 February 1847, 20 November 1847, 1 October 1842; Inquirer, 23 June 1880, p. 26.
Dark complexion, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, large nose, large mouth. Jew. Can read and write. Barnett Samuel was transported for picking a lady's pocket of two shillings and six pence and one penny and some half pence. He had previously been in gaol for one month for picking pockets. Gaol report: ‘Bad character and connections. Sullen’.
Barnett Samuel's initial period of probation in Van Diemen's Land was for eighteen months and he was released on 4 August 1845. He was sent to the north of the island for assigned service. On 8 December 1845 he received one month's hard labour for selling his master's victuals without permission. On 27 July 1846 he was in prison in Launceston when he was found to be gambling on the Sabbath day and was given six weeks with hard labour and the treadmill. He was still in the Prisoners' Barracks in Launceston when he was found to be drunk and was sentenced to two months hard labour. On 24 April 1848 in Launceston he spent a night sleeping out of the depot and was sentenced to two months hard labour, after which he was sent to Oatlands ‘in the interior’. A ticket of leave was issued on 24 September 1849 and he was recommended for a conditional pardon on 12 August 1851.
CON 33/50, no. 14732.
SAMUEL, Horatio
b. London, 1813–1832
Australia, 1830; Free.
Single.
Horatio Samuel arrived in Sydney on 18 April 1830. Horatio was the brother-in-law of Michael Phillips (q.v.), and travelled with the Phillips family. The family settled in Sydney, while Michael Phillips attempted to gain a large grant of land. Samuel was a witness of the conclusion of the partnership between P. J. Cohen (q.v.) and Lawrence J. Spyer (q.v.).
Horatio Samuel died at the home of his brother-in-law in O'Connell Street on 20 January 1832, and was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery before the Sabbath began. It was the third burial in the Jewish cemetery. On Monday 23 January 1832 the Sydney Herald carried the death notice: ‘death on Friday last, after a few days illness, at the residence of Mr Michael Phillips O'Connell St. Horatio Samuel esq. of London age nineteen years. Deeply deplored by a numerous circle of acquaintances’.
Sydney Gazette, 31 March 1831; Sydney Herald, 23 January 1832.
Samuel was convicted of receiving stolen property. According to evidence at the Old Bailey trial a thief had been told to fetch Joseph the Jew, he called him Horne Tooke. Question: ‘Was there anything said about there [sic] not being stolen?’ Answer: ‘No, because he did not care whether they were or not; I asked him where they were got, for “got” in their language is just the same as stolen I knew that if I did not turn upon Haines [the other thief in the case] the Jew would have turned upon me and hung us both’.
Samuel was sentenced at the Middlesex Gaol Delivery on 12 July 1797.
Joseph Samuel was listed in Governor King's Settlers' Muster Book (no. 907). He was not to be found in the 1805–06 Muster, nor in any subsequent record.
OBSP, 1796–97, case 439, p. 433; Royal Admiral Indent 4/3999.
SAMUEL, Kauffman
b. Germany, 1807–1851
Coronet, 1828; Free.
Single; Clerk; 3 children.
Kauffman Samuel began life as ‘Samuel Kauffman’ but reversed the order when he married. Samuel Kauffman appeared in the 1828 Census as a clerk working for Cohen and Spyers, George Street, Sydney. In 1831 he went into partnership with Lewis Cohen (q.v.), and on 10 January 1832 the partnership was dissolved and he went into business on his own at 2 Denmark Place, George Street, almost opposite the office of the Sydney Gazette. In 1833 his request for an assigned government convict was refused.
On 10 March 1835 Kauffman Samuel married Rosetta Joseph (q.v.), a sister of Moses Joseph (q.v.), under the auspices of the Sydney Synagogue. Their children were Deborah (24 December 1835 to 14 February 1850), Caroline (born 26 April 1838), and Moses (2 August 1841). On 3 March 1841 Samuel ‘of Lower George St’ acquired an allotment in Sydney and wrote to the Lands Department and asked, ‘being a German Jew’, that the Deed of Grant be made out in the name of his wife Rosetta.
Kauffman Samuel sailed for Wellington on the Exporter in July 1842, where he became a partner in the establishment of the mercantile firm of Samuel and Joseph, which became one of the largest importers of goods into colonial New Zealand. According to the obituary notice that appeared in London's Jewish Chronicle:
In the infancy of New Zealand Messrs Samuel and Joseph were extensively connected with the whale fisheries and were the largest exporters of oil and bone and were most zealous in encouraging the flax trade. As a warm and zealous advocate of free institutions he never flinched from bearing his part in the struggle which, in regard to these institutions, has so long been waged between the colonists and the Governor in Chief.
It was from Wellington, New Zealand, that Samuel sent £15 as a donation to the York Street Synagogue in 1845. He was listed as one of the three trustees to the Wellington Hebrew Congregation in 1843. He died on 29 July 1851.
Sydney Gazette, 24 January 1824, 12 November 1828; CS Letters Relating to Land, 2/7965, dated 8 September 1840, 3 March 1841; Governors' Despatches, ML, A1211, p. 695 (1833); Jewish Chronicle, 30 July 1851.
SAMUEL, Lewis
b. London, d. 1867
Patience, 1829; Free.
Single; Merchant.
A cabin class passenger on the ship Patience, Lewis Samuel came from England ‘to join his parents’. He was the nephew of Saul Lyons and Samuel Lyons (qq.v.), and the brother of Abraham Samuel and Saul Samuel (q.v.). His widowed mother was Lydia Samuel (q.v.). The Patience arrived in Sydney on 19 August 1829. In 1832 Lewis Samuel applied for an assigned servant and his request was refused. He applied the following year and was assigned one servant. In November 1832 a newspaper identified him as the nephew of Saul Lyons who, together with his brother Abraham, had been given the licence for the Governor Macquarie Hotel in Pitt Street.
On 9 August 1834 the Sydney Gazette mentioned that Lewis Samuel was living at the Governor Macquarie Inn, Pitt Street, but would apply for a reward for the apprehension of burglars of the Rose Inn, Maitland. Samuel's name began to appear in the Sydney General Trade List by 1835 as an exporter of fruit and vegetables to Launceston and importer of haberdashery from Liverpool. In 1836 he was the contractor for lighting public lamps in the town of Sydney and in April 1837 was forced to offer a reward for those caught vandalising the new street lights that he had installed. At the end of the year he terminated his partnership with Wright Thomas Burrons and took over the general store at 79 George Street.
The business in George Street expanded to include 80 George Street and in 1840 Samuel advertised paints, oils, lamps and mats. In February 1841 Samuel sold his business to Lewis Leon (q.v.) and, together with Saul Samuel, bought a property at Wellington in New South Wales. In 1845 he announced that he was looking for a horse-breaker to proceed to Wellington. Two mares were to be sold from his station in January 1846 and in February he advertised for a ‘good overseer to care for his sheep station’. Lewis Samuel was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1846. He was a member of the Sydney Synagogue and helped to organise a Jewish Library.
Lewis ‘retired’ to London, where he died on 17 February 1867.
Ship Indent 4/5200; Sydney Gazette, 18 February 1836, 5 July 1836; CS 4/23023, 36/7013; Sydney Monitor, 17 November 1832; Sydney General Trade List, 4 July 1835, 8 December 1838; Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1834, 9 July 1845, 2 January 1846, 16 February 1846; Sentinel, 29 April 1847; Australian, 17 January 1836, 18 April 1837, 1 August 1839, 4 February 1843.
The daughter of Levi and Hannah Lyons of London and widow of Sampson Samuel, Lydia Samuel arrived in Australia with her younger son Saul Samuel (q.v.), and her brothers Abraham Lyons (q.v.) and Saul Lyons (q.v.), to join their prosperous emancipist brother Samuel Lyons (q.v.). A bitter family dispute broke out shortly after her arrival, when the hot tempered Samuel Lyons refused to keep his promise and pay for the passage of the family to New South Wales.
SAMUEL, Michael (SAMUELS)
Alexander, 1835; Free.
Single; Tailor; 1 child.
Michael Samuel came steerage on the Alexander, arriving in Sydney on 30 August 1835. He travelled with Raphael Alexander (q.v.). They were both tailors. In 1849 Michael and his wife Sarah registered the birth of a daughter, Sophia, in Queanbeyan.
Ship Indent 4/5209.
SAMUEL, Saul (Sir)
b. London, 1820–1900
Brothers, 1832; Free.
Single; Merchant; 6 children.
Saul Samuel's father, Sampson Samuel, had died before Saul's birth. Saul was the brother (and business partner) of Lewis Samuel (q.v.), and nephew of Samuel Lyons (q.v.) and Saul Lyons (q.v.). He came to Sydney with his mother, Lydia Samuel, née Lyons (q.v.), on 25 August 1832. At the age of seventeen he was sent by his family to observe the first official land sale in Melbourne on 1 June 1837. He was not impressed by the village and decided not to buy anything. On 16 December 1859 Saul married Henrietta (Harriet) Mathilda Levien (q.v.) (who died on 5 June 1864). Through this marriage he became the son-in-law of Benjamin Goldsmid Levien (q.v.), the twice-related nephew of Mr and Mrs Saul Lyons, and brother-in-law of Phillip Joseph Cohen (q.v.). Saul Samuel was a committed Jew and was a seat holder in the Sydney Synagogue in 1845.
In 1837 he joined the counting house of his uncles, A. & S. Lyons, and then, with his brother Lewis, formed the firm of L. & S. Samuel with a store at Bathurst. Samuel amassed pastoral licences beyond the official boundaries of settlement, amounting to tens of thousands of acres. Saul Samuel Esq. of Wellington was appointed to the Bench in 1846, becoming the first Jewish magistrate in New South Wales.
Following the discovery of gold Samuel became a leading merchant in Bathurst, with interests in the mining industry, consigning wool and gold to Sydney and London. He diversified his business in Bathurst while the firm of L. & S. Samuel in Sydney bought gold. He became a director of the Bathurst Copper Mining Co. and a director of the Ophir Copper Mining Co. Samuel stood for Parliament. He opposed a ‘bunyip aristocracy’ that would rule through an unelected upper house. He described himself as a free trader. He favoured a national system of education. He was elected unopposed to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1854. It was his first public office in a long and distinguished political career, during which he would serve as cabinet minister in a series of governments. At his election, Samuel felt obliged to issue a statement regarding his status: ‘A report has been circulated that because he was of the Jewish faith, he would not conform to the oath required by law, prior to his taking a seat in the House. In New South Wales, he was happy to say, that such was not the fact’.
Saul Samuel was a member of the board of the York Street Synagogue, trustee of the Jewish section of the Devonshire Street Cemetery and, from 1871, chairman of the Sydney Hebrew Denominational Board. On 26 January 1875 he laid the foundation stone of the Great Synagogue and later served as the congregation's president. He was a member of the Royal Society of New South Wales and the New South Wales Academy of Arts.
Samuel became a London director of the Mercantile Bank of Sydney. He joined the council of Jews' College, which trained clergy for the Anglo-Jewish ministry. He was a member of the council of the Royal Colonial Institute and was a vice-president of the Society of Arts. In 1880 his public career was crowned with his appointment as Agent-General for the colony of New South Wales in London. Samuel was appointed KCMG in 1882, CB in 1886, and was created a Baronet in 1898.
He died in London on 29 August 1900, his estate valued for probate at £17 000. The children of Saul and Henrietta Samuel were Lydia (born 1858), Florence (1859), Lewis (1860), Edward (1862), and Henri (1864). Following Henrietta's death, at the age of twenty-six, on 5 June 1864, Saul Samuel married Sarah Louisa (née Isaacs), on 31 October 1877. They had one son.
4/5214; CS Correspondence Out 4/3550, 18 December 1846; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1837, 15 September 1842; G. F. J. Bergman, ‘Sir Saul Samuel’, in ADB, vol. 6; M. Z. Forbes, ‘The Jews of New South Wales and the Gold Rushes’, AJJHS, vol. 12, no. 2 (1994), p. 292f; Empire, 24 October 1854; Jeremy I. Pfeffer, From One End of the Earth to the Other, Sussex Academic Press (2008), p. 201f.
SAMUELS, Abraham (SAMUEL)
b. Poland, 1794–1846
Manlius (1), 1827; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Manchester, 1827.
Married; Pedlar; Height: 165 cm; 4 children (in England).
Ruddy pockmarked complexion, dark brown to black hair, dark hazel eyes. Could read and write. A Jew. Scar on nose. Abraham Samuels was transported for purchasing stolen goods in Manchester. He was sentenced on 15 January 1827. He had four children in England. Before being deported a Jewish religious divorce was arranged. The rabbinical court traversed to Woolwich on 19 March 1827. He was identified as Abraham, son of Moses of Warsaw and his wife was Reina, daughter of Ari known as Zoeb. Reina refused to accept the divorce document and she waited until Samuels returned to London in July 1843 and paid her £50.
Abraham Samuels arrived in New South Wales on 11 August 1827. In the 1828 Census Samuels was listed as a labourer working in government service with Samuel Dawson, blacksmith, and classified as an ‘Israelite’. He lived at South Creek in the district of Melville. Dawson (or Daws) was constable of the Penrith Police. Samuels worked for Daws for two years and four months. He captured two bushrangers and was ‘opposed by an axe’ and claimed to have been promised a reward by the Bench. He also claimed to have helped capture six bushrangers in a previous attempt.
A ticket of leave was issued on 2 May 1831 at Evans. On 30 March 1832 Samuels lost the ticket of leave for playing at cards and it was restored on 20 August 1833. He was appointed to be a constable in Penrith and on 1 January 1836 was promoted to be a district constable. One of the local Justices of the Peace testified that he was ‘the best constable at Penrith’. This praise was ‘noted’ and in September 1837 Samuels was told that it was too early for the administration to issue a conditional pardon. The pardon was issued on 1 November 1838 and an absolute pardon was listed on 1 February 1840.
Samuels was a member of the Sydney Synagogue Committee and, in 1845, he gave the synagogue £5 5s. The Shipping Register for New South Wales for 13 December 1845 and 1 March 1846 showed that Abraham Samuels sent bales of wool to London and brought nine cases of merchandise from London. Abraham Samuels died at Sydney on 29 December 1846, aged fifty-two.
Ship Indent 4/4012, p. 176; Sydney Herald, 2 May 1831, 30 May 1833; TL 33/459; CF 4/4264; CP 41/121, 39415; AP 40/104; Petition 4/2376, 37/8189, and Petition, 4/2076, 30/4501, in 4/4087; CF 4/4364.
SAMUELS, Abraham
b. London
Georgiana, 1830; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years.
Labourer.
A ticket of leave was granted to Samuels on 25 March 1836. He entered the Newcastle House of Correction in June 1837. He was sent there for ‘insolence and neglect of work’, having been assigned to Mr W. Sparke. He was put in gaol for two months. Samuels was then sent on to the Hyde Park Prisoners' Barracks in Sydney to be placed on the treadmill for fourteen days. A conditional pardon was issued in 1840.
Principal Superintendent of Convicts, Register of Convicts—House of Correction, Carters Barrack, 29 April 1837–24 February 1841, 4/4569 p. 7, June 1837; Newcastle Gaol Entrance and Description Book, 2/2005, no. 566; CP 40/104.
SAMUELS, Abraham
b. London, 1805
Susan (1), 1834; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1833.
Single; Tailor and stableman; Height: 162.5 cm.
Dark sallow and freckled complexion. Black hair. Chestnut eyes. Scar over left eyebrow, eyebrows meeting, scar on right eyebrow, mark of a burn on the left cheek, small dark mole on back of right wrist. Could read and write. Jew. Samuels stole a watch worth twenty shillings from a ship broker in Crutched-friars Lane. Samuels was part of a gang and was seized by his victim and delivered to the police. In court Samuels said: ‘My mother was ill in bed. She desired me to go to my aunt's in London Rd. I was running across Gracechurch Street and two or three persons came and said I was a thief. I was struck in the mouth several times. I can assure you I have maintained my mother for six years, ever since the death of my father. I get my living in an honest way. I know nothing of the mob they speak of’. He was sentenced at the London Gaol Delivery on 5 September 1833.
Samuels arrived in New South Wales on 8 July 1834. By 14 March 1836 he was a ‘free man’ and was appointed district constable at Penrith, only to be dismissed one month later. Samuels was listed in the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales as assigned to Mr E. S. Hall of Inverary. On 27 November 1837 he was sentenced to six days on the treadmill for ‘disobedience’. On 23 March 1840 he was reprimanded for tippling in a public house. He received his ticket of leave on 1 December 1843 and a certificate of freedom on 23 November 1844 because his behaviour ‘proved that a thorough reformation had taken place’.
OBSP, 1833, case 1295, p. 720; Susan Printed Indent, X 636, p. 83, no. 34-1327-118; New South Wales Government Gazette, 16 March 1836; HO 10/40; HO 10/59, p. 222; CF 4/4372, 42/642.
SAMUELS, Henry (SAMUEL)
b. London, 1803
Prince of Orange (1), 1821; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Middlesex, 1819.
Single; Errand boy; Height: 164.5 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion, brown hair, grey eyes. Henry Samuels was sentenced on 1 December 1819. He had stolen two sheets valued at seven shillings. He had been arrested at 6 a.m. on Edgware Road with a bundle under his arm. A policeman looked him ‘full in the face’ and he immediately threw the bundle down and ran off.
The Prince of Orange arrived at Port Jackson on 12 February 1821. Samuels received a ticket of leave on 11 June 1825 and a certificate of freedom on 28 November 1832, which replaced a certificate issued on 10 May 1827. Henry Samuels married Hannah Beson in Sydney in 1836. ‘Samuel Solomons’, who had arrived on the Prince of Orange, received an absolute pardon on 19 May 1840.
OBSP, case 151; CF 4/4313, and 4/4289; CS 4/3688, 40/300; TL 25/297; CF 32/1052.
SAMUELS, Israel
1826–1860
Free.
Single; Hawker.
‘Israel Samuels, a young man of not more than twenty years, was committed to take his trial in Sydney for embezzlement. He took stock from a dealer to hawk through the city and was to be paid two shillings and sixpence a day.’ Apparently Samuels disappeared with the stock and it was revealed that he had been before the police court on a similar previous charge. A ‘Samuel Israel Samuels’ was buried as a Jew in the Melbourne General Cemetery on 15 November 1860.
Morning Chronicle (Sydney), 22 August 1846.
Joseph Samuels was tried at Middlesex on 20 May 1795 for stealing bed and table linen cloth, and two silver tablespoons valued at seventy-five shillings. At the trial there was mention of an older accomplice. Samuels was arrested in Petticoat Lane. He was fourteen years of age.
On 28 August 1803, Constable Joseph Luker, a convict, was found, ‘a breathless corpse, shockingly mangled and with the guard of his cutlass buried in his brain’. A witness had seen the corpse being lowered into a grave by men associated with the night watch. The only clue was the bloodstained wheel of a barrow and the barrow without a wheel was soon found at the home of Sarah Laurence, where Isaac Simmons (q.v.) lived. A witness then identified Joseph Samuels at the scene of the crime. The two men were promptly arrested and were together in the same cell. Under interrogation Samuels confessed to the robbery but denied all knowledge of the murder. He cried ‘I didn't even know Luker was dead. I didn't see him. I only took his money’. Simmons and two of his cronies had to attempt to explain how a bloodstained shirt and three blood-spattered handkerchiefs had been found in his room. He declared that he had suffered a nosebleed. His friend explained away the blood on his clothes by claiming it was the result of slaughtering a pig. The trial was swift. Only Samuels was found to be guilty, and the sentence of death was decreed on 18 September 1803.
The execution was to be long remembered. The grim ceremony began at half past nine on the morning of Monday, 26 September 1803—which happened to be the Jewish Day of Atonement. The doomed man was accompanied to the place of execution ‘by a person of his own profession’. In an impassioned speech Samuels told that he had exchanged an ‘oath of secrecy in the Hebrew tongue’ with Simmons, who knew where the stolen money was hidden. Simmons, who stood among the crowd, calmly interjected during Samuels' denunciation and persuaded the crowd that Samuels was lying, and ‘at length the signal was given and the cart drove from under him, but by the concussion, the suspending cord was separated at the centre, and the corpse fell to the ground on which he remained motionless with face downwards’. Samuels was hoisted back and, again, the rope unravelled. The third time, the hangman's rope broke and pandemonium ensued. Governor King was immediately notified, and wisely granted Samuels a reprieve, saying ‘It would seem there has been Divine Intervention’.
Samuels was despatched to the new and distant penal settlement at Risdon Cove in Van Diemen's Land. When this settlement failed he was returned to New South Wales and sent on to King's Town (Newcastle). On 16 May 1805 he was suspected of plotting to escape in a boat to Timor and was sent ‘up river’ to gather cedar by the overseer who had forestalled the attempt. On 18 August 1805 Samuels was convicted of theft and whipped. In December 1805 there was a robbery in King's Town and Joseph Samuels was arrested. He eventually confessed to having been involved in the theft (with another prisoner, whom he incriminated). The stolen property could not be found but the accused was whipped. Samuels absconded from the Public Works Department in King's Town with seven other convicts on 1 April 1806 and drowned in the attempt to escape.
Story of Two Jewish Convicts', AJJHS, vol. 5, no. 7 (1963); OBSP, 1794–95, case 283, p. 759; Tardif, John Bowen's Hobart, p. 213; Sydney Gazette, 2 October 1803 (an account of the ‘execution’) and 22 December 1805; King Papers, 1799–1829, ML, A 1976, p. 103f. (Samuels is listed as ‘John’ Samuels); Sydney Gazette, 28 August 1803, 4 September 1803, 2 October 1803, 15 August 1805, 22 December 1805, 1 April 1806; AG, ch. 6.
SAMUELS, Ralph
b. Bristol, 1817
Susan (3), 1837; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1837.
Single; Labourer; Height: 171 cm; 3 children.
Sallow complexion, black eyes, black hair, medium nose. Ralph Samuels was sentenced at the Central Criminal Court on 8 May 1837 for stealing a coat, valued at £2, from Mr Davenport on 5 May. The coat had been on a carriage seat. He had previously been convicted for a similar theft. Mr Davenport was disturbed by the severity of the sentence and the effect it would have on a young man's life. In Samuels'own words, ‘He tried to get me off (the transport ship). Came on board to see me’.
The Susan arrived in Hobart Town on 21 November 1837. On 27 November 1837 Samuels was sentenced to six days on the treadmill for ‘disobedience’. On 25 March 1840, as an assigned convict to a Mr Pike, Samuels was admonished for having been seen ‘tippling’ in a public house. He received his ticket of leave on 1 December 1843 and a conditional pardon was recommended on 27 May 1845, and officially approved on 22 May 1846.
OBSP, 1837, case 1177, p. 27; CON 18/19; CON 31/41.
SAMUELS, Samuel
Free.
Samuel Samuels arrived in Sydney from Launceston on 9 March 1839. On 30 May 1853 it was reported to Sydney that Samuel Samuels, having been charged with felony, had escaped from custody at Gundagai ‘near Albury’ and had ‘made off on his horse’.
Colonial Secretary's Office, Letters rec'd 1853, 4/3200, 53/4749.
SAUNDERS, Alexander
1788–1851
Free.
Alexander Saunders rented seat no. 65 in the Hobart Synagogue in 1845. His death, at the age of sixty-three, was recorded by the Colonial Hospital on 23 November 1851. He was buried by the Hobart Synagogue on the same day.
Daniel Saunders paid three shillings and sixpence to the synagogue in 1845 and remained on the Hobart congregation's lists for two more years. He declined to pay the synagogue any more money.
SAUNDERS, Herbert
b. Dulwich, d. 1839 Free.
Herbert Saunders, ‘of Dulwich’, was buried on 21 July 1839 in Sydney's Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery. The birth register of the colony recorded that Hannah Saunders, a ‘Hebrew’, the daughter of ‘Hannah’, with no father specified, was born in 1839.
SAUNDERS, John
b. Holland, 1813
Waterloo (6), 1838; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1837.
Single; Labourer; Height: 171 cm.
Dark sallow complexion, dark brown hair, hazel eyes. Lost a front upper tooth. J and S tattoo inside lower right arm, scar under left eyebrow. On 23 May 1837 John Saunders picked a pocket and stole a handkerchief in Fleet Street. He had been convicted once before for a similar offence. He was sentenced at the Central Criminal Court on 12 June 1837.
The Waterloo arrived in New South Wales on 8 January 1838. A ticket of leave was issued to Saunders in 1844 and a certificate of freedom followed on 22 June 1844.
OBSP, 1837, case 1432, p. 191; 1838 Waterloo (6) Printed Indent, no. 236; CF 4/4392, 44/0953.
SHANNON, Esther
b. London, 1807–1848
Free
Esther was the sister of Lawrence and Samuel Shannon (qqv). She was a witness at Lawrence's wedding to Sarah Tucker at St James' Church in 1839. She was the wife (de facto?) of Alfred Cooper, a non-Jewish emancipist. Two months before her death she gave birth to a son, George Alfred Cooper who was baptised after her death. She was buried in the Devonshire Street cemetery. When the cemetery was uprooted for the construction of the Central Railway Station, no remains were found.
Family information: John Stanhope, Epping, NSW.
Born London. Fair ruddy complexion, sandy brown hair, eyebrows partially meeting, mole right cheek, another mole on side of chin. Could read and write. Jew. Lawrence Shannon was transported for stealing clothes. At the Old Bailey trial he was described as a slipper-maker and ‘shoe makers' boy’, who stole property to the value of ten shillings from the man with whom he shared a room in a boarding house at Mile End Road. He was sentenced on 12 May 1831. The son of Jacob and Fanny and brother of Samuel Shannon (q.v.) and Esther Shannon (q.v.).
Shannon received a certificate of freedom on 29 May 1838 at the end of his seven-year sentence. He was listed as a member of the Sydney Synagogue in 1848. On 28 January 1848 he wrote a letter from Sydney to the Chief Rabbi in England. In the letter he described himself as ‘Israel Shannon’. He wrote that he came to Sydney as a prisoner of the Crown in 1833 or 1834 as a very young man and was assigned to a settler ‘in a distant part of the colony’. In 1838 his good behaviour permitted him to marry ‘to a Christian girl in a Church’ (Sarah Tucker) and he was then assigned to his wife and allowed to work on his own behalf in his trade as a shoemaker. By 1848 they had five children. He wanted his wife to be converted to Judaism. He wrote that he had observed Jewish tradition strictly, attended the synagogue, and did not eat forbidden food. On 14 June 1848, Chief Rabbi Adler in London replied that Shannon's wife (and children) could not convert to Judaism as there was no Beth Din (Rabbinic court) in Sydney and no mikveh (ritual bath). The family of seven surviving children and their parents moved to Cooma in 1858.
Lewis (Israel) Shannon died at Cooma in December 1893 and was buried in the grounds of Samuel Shannon's house ‘The Wren's Nest’. His brother was buried beside him. The Jewish community, however, had lost a family. Sarah died on 9 June 1896 and is buried in the Mittagong Roman Catholic cemetery in Cooma.
Surrey Printed Indent, arriving 17 August 1834, p. 101; OBSP, 1830–31, case 1134, p. 567; CF 4/4342, 38/0458.
SHANNON, Leah
Leah was the sister of Esther, Lawrence and Samuel Shannon (qq.v). She married Abraham Shannon (q.v.) in London c. 1815. She arrived in Sydney on 10 January 1833 on board the Palambam with four children.
SHANNON, Samuel
b. London, 1802–1868
Richmond, 1822; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Kent Assizes, 1821.
Single; Merchant's clerk; Height: 161 cm; 8 children.
Samuel Shannon had a fair complexion, dark brown eyes and hair. He was the son of Jacob Shannon, who was a confectioner at Cannal Place, Kent Road, London. Samuel Shannon was born in Bishopsgate Street in London. Samuel was convicted for having and forging bank notes. He was imprisoned on the hulk Retribution at Sheerness for three months and then transferred to the transport ship Richmond. Gaol Report ‘good’, Hulk Report ‘orderly’.
Shannon arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 30 April 1822 and was assigned to work for James Cox near Hobart Town. In the 1828 Census Samuel was listed as aged twenty-eight (though he was twenty-six), working on the Cox family farm in Evandale as a labourer for George Cox, the brother of James. Shannon was listed as Protestant and as having arrived on the Mariner in 1821. On 10 March 1823 Shannon received 25 lashes for ‘disobedience of orders’. It was his only offence listed on his record. Shannon was issued a certificate of freedom on 28 August 1835. His certificate of freedom stated that he had a dark complexion, dark brown hair and eyes and scarred hands and that he was a carpenter. Since his arrival he had grown half an inch in height.
Shannon was a cousin of Michael Hyam (q.v.), whose mother had been Sarah Shannon of London. Samuel Shannon moved to New South Wales and married Emilia Abrahams (q.v.) in a Jewish ceremony in Sydney on 10 February 1841. Shannon became a pioneer of the Monaro district. His brother-in-law Solomon Solomon (q.v.) transferred the licence of the Squatters' Arms Inn to him on 19 December 1842. (The hotel had been established by Abraham Moses in 1838.) Shannon established a store at Reid's Flat (which was nicknamed Jews' Flat, owing to the presence in the little township of members of the interrelated families of Abraham Moses (q.v.), Solomon Solomon, and Shannon). Solomon had married Emilia Shannon's sister, Rachel, in 1840. In 1843 Shannon was appointed the official representative of the Sydney Synagogue at ‘Menero’ (Monaro).
Rebecca Shannon was born some time in 1841 or early 1842, followed by Abraham (1843-1925), John Ernest (1845), Esther, who died aged one year, on 3 June 1849, Isaac Albert (1848-1922), John Frederick (1850), and Eli Augustus (1854).
On 23 November 1850 Samuel Shannon ‘of Mowles Gully’ (about ten miles from Cooma) bought land in the township of Cooma and established a store on the corner of Sharp and Bombala streets, and in 1854 he was granted a spirit merchant's licence. In January 1856 he sold his property to Abraham Levy (q.v.). In December 1857 he was the owner of a licence for the Victoria Hotel in Cooma.
The Goulburn Herald reported: ‘Good news—five ounces of gold brought from Numeralla—a beautiful sample—bought by Mr Shannon’, in 1858. In 1859 he rebuilt his Bombala Street store and the Illawarra Mercury reported (11 September 1859) that: ‘another building worth mentioning is Mr Shannon's new store. It is about forty feet by twenty feet, and consists of a ground store and a large room above it of the same size. This is the only building with a second storey in Cooma, and a dwelling house is about to be joined to it’.
During 1860 Shannon was recorded as having built two cottages, a bakery and a new store for Solomon and Harry Solomon.
On 21 May 1860 Shannon's daughter Rebecca married Robert Barr, a carpenter from Scotland. Only Eli Shannon, who married Emily Cohen in 1892, married a Jew. Samuel Shannon died on 16 May 1868 and was buried by his brother-in-law and friend, Charles Solomon JP (q.v.). When Emilia Shannon died in 1891, Charles Solomon performed the burial ceremony, which took place on land adjacent to the Anglican cemetery.
AOT CON 31-1-38 p. 136 no. 406. Land Correspondence, 2/7969, 23 November 1850; CF 35/0914; HO 27/21; John Stanhope, ‘Samuel Shannon: Cooma Businessman, 1802–1868’, AJJHS, vol. 11, no. 2 (1991), p. 269f.
SILKMAN, Elijah
b. Algiers, 1804
Bengal Merchant (4), 1838; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1837.
Married; Barber; Height: 163 cm; 5 children.
Very dark sallow complexion, pock-pitted, black hair with grey, dark chestnut eyes. Bald. Mole on right side of nose. Two large scars on left arm. Can read and write. No previous convictions. Silkman was tried on 28 October 1837. He kept a lodging house, was married, and had been on the synagogue's poor lists for two years. He had blackmailed a 13-year-old boy, Manley Abrahams, who worked for a Jewish wholesale dealer, John Davis, into stealing goods worth more than £20. Silkman was found with the stolen goods at his home.
Elijah and Sophia Silkman's daughter Annie was born in Goulburn in 1860. Esther was born 1863, Miriam died on 6 May 1865 aged four and a half years, and was buried by the York Street Synagogue in Sydney. Jacob Charles born 1865, Fanny born 1867.
Bengal Merchant (4) Printed Indent, arrived Sydney, 21 July 1838, p. 90; OBSP, 1837, case 2331, p. 928f.
SIMEON, David
1837; Free.
Dealer.
The nephew of David Moses (q.v.) of Hobart Town and the older brother of James and Michael Simeon (qq.v.), David Simeon was the son of Peter Simeon and Sarah (née Rees) ‘of Exeter’. Peter Simeon had migrated to England from Prussia with the original name of Simeon Cohen. Sarah's sister, Sophia (q.v.), was the wife of David Moses. By October 1828, the family was living in London and, in a court case involving the alleged theft of a bundle of clothes from young David, Peter Simeon, a tailor, testified: ‘I live in Market Street, Finsbury Newmarket’.
David appears to have arrived in Melbourne in 1837 with a cargo of cattle belonging to Solomon Benjamin (q.v.). On 12 December 1842 the Port Phillip Gazette reported ‘David Simeon, a draper in Collins Street, claimed to have been robbed of a roll of ten £5 notes. He had a brother with a shop in Collins Street and went to it while a customer waited for extra shirts’. When he returned the notes were gone. As he had not told the bank of the theft, the court did not believe the story and the case was dismissed. Ten days later the Gazette described him as ‘the Bolter Simeon’. He had ‘fled’ via Hobart Town to Sydney, leaving his debts behind, and ‘with silks, satins etc. hidden by his brother’. He claimed later that he had been solvent at the time. However, there was a claim against him from David Moses for a payment of £74 4s 4d. In the investigation that took place in Melbourne in March 1843, Simeon asserted that there had been a meeting of creditors before he left Melbourne and a schedule was drawn up that could not be conducted properly as he had not taken stock.
OBSP, 1828, case 2105, 23 October 1828; history of the Simeon family, researched by Stephen Hanford, Melbourne.
SIMEON, James
b. London, 1815–1874
1837; Free.
Single; Dealer; 10 children.
James Simeon, the nephew of Sophia Moses and David Moses (q.v.) of Hobart Town, and brother of David and Michael Simeon (qq.v.), gave evidence on 20 October 1831 at the Old Bailey at the trial of a thief who had stolen a handkerchief. Simeon described himself as ‘a shop lad, at a sale-shop in Holywell Street’. The 18-year-old thief was sentenced to be transported for life.
Mr James Simeon pledged £6 to the Sydney Synagogue building fund on 15 September 1839. In 1840 he joined in a brief business partnership with Joseph G. Raphael (q.v.). He then moved to Melbourne and opened a clothing store in Collins Street in 1841. On 1 March 1842 the Port Phillip Herald reported that he had taken legal steps against ‘his servant maid for having forsaken his lawful flea trap. Shylock was not more resolved upon his bond than his countryman’. Simeon was obviously quick to anger. On 8 April 1842, the Port Phillip Gazette reported that ‘Simeon, a clothier in Collins Street had been involved in a fight after he had made a sarcastic remark about a fish being carried by a passer-by. The fish ended up all over Simeon's clothes’.
In October 1842 Simeon opened the Emporium of Fashion in Collins Street. On 18 May 1843 the Port Phillip Patriot carried a report about the involuntary sequestration of James Simeon's assets. Asher Hymen Hart (q.v.) and John Levy (q.v.) testified that Simeon had intended to recover his capital by asking his uncle in Hobart Town to make his debt larger than it really was and therefore keep the money in the family. Hart said he remembered a conversation with Simeon in his home, where he spoke of declaring that his debt was £500 or £600 in place of £70. John Levy testified in court ‘I am a clothier (in Collins St) and I know the defendant. In passing my door he said “what do you think of my Pockle?”—it means a hump’, by which Levy implied he was carrying his cash in a hidden purse on his back. A discussion then ensued on whether Simeon's testimony on oath was valid because he had been sworn on a Bible containing both the Old and New Testaments. Hart stood up and declared that an oath was equally binding whether it was sworn with a hat on his head or on the Bible, as the Ten Commandments forbade false witness.
Simeon was always in trouble. On 15 February 1844 the Port Phillip Patriot carried a story from the Magistrates Court headlined ‘An Honest Tradesman’. It concerned a customer of Simeon's: ‘While she was paying the money, Simeon wrapped up what purported to be her purchase in paper. However, upon opening and inspecting the trousers [she had bought] she found that this honest man had “rung the changes”’.
Simeon married Eleanor Haidee Saunders at St David's in Hobart Town in March 1843. Eleanor was the daughter of John Saunders and Mary Ann Howell and may therefore have been the niece of both Judah Solomon's (q.v.) de facto wife (Elizabeth Howell) and Hannah Davis, the wife of Henry Davis (q.v.). Simeon became a founding member of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in 1844. On 16 July 1845 Moses Benjamin (q.v.) and Samuel Henry Harris (q.v.) called for a congregational meeting in order to register the birth of the son of James and Ellen Simeon. This was followed two days later by a call from five men for a meeting ‘to consider the propriety of making guerists’ (converts to Judaism).
His Jewish marriage to Eleanor, who was now called ‘Sarah’, was reported in the first issue of the Age newspaper on 17 October 1854, only three days after the family had returned from an extended visit to Europe (where four of his children and his wife Eleanor were converted to Judaism). The conversion ceremony was conducted at the Hague and registered by the rabbinate in London on 24 April 1854.
James Simeon died, aged fifty-nine, on 20 August 1874 and was buried as a Jew. He had lived at 397 Albert Road, Emerald Hill. Eleanor died in Kew, Melbourne, on 11 June 1910 and was not buried as a Jew. On her grave is a plaque which reads ‘In Memory of Eleanor Haidee beloved wife of James Simeon. One of the first colonists of Melbourne. A true wife and devoted mother of the first Jewish (sic) born in Victoria. Erected by her son Marcus’.
OBSP, case 2046, 20 October 1831; Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Letter Book, 16 July 1845; VPR, series 30P, Box 2-1-21-5; Michael Cannon Old Melbourne Town, p. 66; Port Phillip Gazette, 20 February 1841, 27 August 1842, 12 October 1842, 17 May 1843, 19 October 1844. Jeremy I. Pfeffer, ‘From One End of the Earth to the Other’ p. 319.
SIMEON, Michael
b. 1824
Flying Squirrel, 1843; Free.
Married; Dealer; 1 child.
On 22 October 1843 Michael and Sarah Simeon arrived on the Flying Squirrel, cabin class, with their son. Michael Simeon was the younger brother of David and James Simeon (qq.v.) and a nephew of David Moses (q.v.) and Sophia Moses of Hobart Town. He was one of the founders of the Hobart Town Synagogue in September 1844, and eventually rented seat no. 71 in the synagogue. Sarah Simeon rented seat no. 2 in the Ladies' Gallery. He was a chorister at the consecration service of the synagogue in 1845 and the Hobart Town Courier reported that he ‘possesses a falsetto voice of good quality rarely met with’. He donated £2 2s 6d to the synagogue in its first year and was asked to assist Isaac Solomon (q.v.) in arranging the music for the dedication of the synagogue building. Sarah Simeon was listed in the 1847 Hobart Town Directory and General Guide as a hosier in Liverpool Street.
Michael Simeon returned to England in the early 1850s and, in 1863, married Augusta Bloom Phillips in London.
CSO 92/11, p. 103.
SIMMONDS, Jacob
b. London, 1819
Enchantress, 1833; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1831.
Single; Pastry cook and baker; Height: 160 cm.
Dark complexion, dark brown eyes, long nose, large mouth. A Jew. Jacob Simmonds was a brother of Solomon Simmonds (q.v.). Simmonds stole a watch valued at twenty shillings. A shopkeeper saw him come out of a room at the back of her shop. Simmonds said that he had come in to buy a penny's worth of apples. She took hold of him. He gave her a blow on the face. His gaol report was ‘Not known’. His hulk report was ‘Good’. His surgeon's report was ‘Orderly’.
Jacob Simmonds arrived in Hobart Town on 31 July 1833. On 4 December 1833, while assigned to the Public Works Department, he was reprimanded for ‘neglect of work’. A second reprimand followed on 11 February 1834. On 11 April 1835, as an assigned servant to Mr Underwood, he was placed in solitary confinement on bread and water for insolence and neglect of duty. On 15 September 1835 his master Mr Wilman found that Simmonds was absent from his premises during the night, for which he was severely reprimanded. On 4 March 1836 he was absent without leave and insolent and was given seven days solitary confinement on bread and water. Simmonds received permission to marry Jane Goodwin on 20 January 1838. He received a licence as a hawker in Launceston on 24 July 1840. Simmonds, with his wife and child, travelled steerage from Launceston to Port Jackson by the William, arriving on 1 February 1841.
CON 31/40; CON 18/6; CON 52/1; William Indent 4/5219; Permission to Marry Book, 1834–40; Shipping records 4/5219; CON 31/40; Hobart Town Courier, 24 July 1840.
SIMMONDS, Michael
b. Shoreditch, 1810
Augusta Jessie (1), 1835; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1834.
Single; Labourer; Height: 153 cm.
Fresh complexion, small oval head, dark brown hair and whiskers, eyebrows meeting, brown eyes, straight nose, large full lips. A Jew. Blue mark on right cheek. Michael Simmonds was transported for stealing from the person. He stated this offence: ‘Stealing linen’. His gaol report noted that he had been ‘Imprisoned and transported before in 1826’. His previous sentence, of seven years, was for stealing pocket books. He had served the whole time at Chatham on board the hulk Cumberland. His hulk report was ‘Good’. He had also served a 14-day sentence for vagrancy. The surgeon's report was ‘Good though once flogged’.
Michael Simmonds arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 22 January 1835. His probation period was not a success and he was ordered by the Secretary of State to be worked in the 2nd Class Chain Gang. On 2 February 1836, while assigned to Mr Cleary and Mr Davis, Simmonds was admonished for disobedience of orders. On 31 October 1836 he was admonished a second time for being out after hours. On 9 February 1837 he was again found to be out after hours and guilty of using obscene language, and given thirty-six lashes. On 4 July 1837 he was found to be ‘insolent’ and sentenced to the treadmill for forty-eight hours and ‘returned to the Government for a period of punishment’. By 24 August 1839 Simmonds was serving as a constable when he was ordered to refund the poundage fees out of his wages for illegally impounding a cow, the property of Mr Lucas. He was also to be kept in prison with hard labour on the treadmill for one month. On 13 January 1840 Simmonds, holding a ticket of leave, was again sent to the treadmill for forty-eight hours for ‘misconduct’. On 26 February 1840 he was still listed as a constable when he was found guilty of misconduct for being out after hours and for making use of indecent language in a public house. He remained a constable and, on 8 February 1841, was accused of assaulting Alfred Williams. The case was dismissed. However, on 6 May 1841 he was fined ten shillings for neglect of duty when he failed to come to the office to prove the service of some summonses. A certificate of freedom was granted in 1841.
CON 18/3, no. 1944; CON 31/40; CF 467.
SIMMONDS, Ralph
b. London, 1818
Mangles (8), 1840; Convict; Sentenced to life, Central Criminal Court, 1839.
Married; Salesman; Height: 152 cm.
Fresh complexion, dark brown hair, oval face, blue eyes, long nose, large mouth, eyebrows partially meeting. A Jew. Could read and write. The letters R. S. were tattooed on his lower left arm. He was sentenced for having broken into a house using stolen keys and taking linen and a number of clocks from a clockmaker's shop. He had served a previous sentence of fourteen days for having stolen a violin. He was convicted on 21 October 1839.
Simmonds' wife died during the early part of his sentence in Australia and they had no children. Simmonds arrived in New South Wales on 27 April 1840 and was then sent on to Norfolk Island on the same ship in May 1840. Several days later his name was included in a list of nine Jewish convicts who wrote to the Sydney Synagogue asking for a set of prayer books. The words ‘lately arrived’ appear next to his name—the letter being dated 29 May 1840.
Simmonds was at Norfolk Island when an experimental individual ‘mark system’ was in force. He earned 6111 ‘good’ marks and was fined 159 marks for the following: careless field labour; selling a shirt, and pilfering clothes at Government House, for which he was given two months in gaol and sent to field labour.
Two minor offences completed his record on the island. He arrived in Hobart Town on the Maitland in 1844 and was placed on assigned service. A brief period as a constable came to an end on 4 January 1845. He was acquitted of a charge of petty larceny but was dismissed from the police force and sent to Bridgewater. On 9 March 1847 he received his first ticket of leave. He was again allowed to join the police force. In January 1848 he was found guilty of larceny under £5 and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment and hard labour in chains. Simmonds was condemned to be sent to Port Arthur and remained there a year. A second ticket of leave was approved in August 1850 and he was permitted to live in the district of New Norfolk. On 17 February 1852 he was reprimanded for misconduct for being absent from the district. A conditional pardon was approved on 28 October 1853.
CON 33/51 no 12143; Mangles Printed Indent 40-932, p. 96; CON 14/26; CON 18/42; Return of the English Prisoners under sentence of Transportation for Life, ML, A 1228, p. 701.
SIMMONDS, Solomon
Free.
The brother of Jacob Simmonds (q.v.), Solomon Simmonds was licensed as a hawker at Hobart Town in July 1840. On 20 June 1847 the Hobart Synagogue voted that ‘Solly [Solomon] Simmons—a poor man’ be granted three shillings a week from the charitable funds held by the congregation.
Hobart Town Courier, 24 July 1840.
SIMMONS, C.
Free.
‘C. Simmons’ lived in Portland, Port Phillip District, in 1841. On 14 April 1841 he applied for membership in the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and in 1844 he is recorded as donating 11 shillings.
SIMMONS, Henry
b. London, d. 1850
Palambam, 1833; Free.
Married; Bricklayer; 2 children.
Henry Simmons, with his wife Sarah (q.v.) and their children, John, aged two, and Ann, ‘an infant’, arrived on the Palambam. They may have been bounty migrants.
A Henry Simmons died in Sydney on the same day and was buried by the synagogue as a pauper in the Devonshire Street Cemetery on 25 September 1850.
SIMMONS, Isaac (Ikey BULL) (Hikey BULL)
b. London, 1765–1833
Glatton, 1803; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1799.
Single; Labourer.
The Old Bailey trial described a robbery that happened in Gracechurch Street. Simmons and another man followed a victim from a shop where he had changed a £30 bank note. Simmons, who was illiterate, declared ‘I am as innocent as the child unborn’. He was sentenced to death, though this was commuted to transportation for life. Ikey Bull appeared in the records of the Old Bailey in 1802, when he was cited as a witness in the trial of Levi Cohen and Ephraim Jacobs, who were accused of forgery. In Newgate Gaol, Ikey Bull ‘always has money’ and was a turnkey in the prison. Martha Graves was his de facto wife and went by the name of Simmons. His sentence was handed down at the London Gaol Delivery on 15 February 1799.
The Glatton arrived in New South Wales on 11 March 1803. Simmons was obviously a big man, and his nickname ‘Bull’ was written on his Indent page (on which his surname was recorded as Simmonds). He was appointed a constable very soon after he landed in New South Wales. The Court of Magistrates was told on 7 May 1803 of the following confrontation between Simmons and one James Oram. On Thursday night, between 10 and 11 p.m., Simmons accosted Oram and asked ‘Who comes there?’ ‘A friend!’ came the answer. Simmons replied ‘Damm your eyes why don't you go home?’, and hit Oram upon the head with a staff of office. Witnesses testified that Oram was drunk and that Simmons was brutal. The constable was advised for the future to be careful not to beat prisoners but to offer assistance and to conduct them, when disorderly, to prison and report them.
Simmons was soon implicated in the brutal murder of Constable Joseph Luker on 28 August 1803. The Sydney Gazette reported that the body of Luker had been seen being lowered into a grave by persons belonging to the Watch, ‘one of whom is at present in confinement on suspicion of his murder’. At the trial Simmons declared that he was innocent, even though he had to explain why he had bloodstains on his clothing: ‘He said that his nose had long been habituated to bleed, whereby his handkerchiefs had become stained, and the spot of blood on the shirt must have proceeded from a fish he had cleaned, or a duck stolen by Samuels which he had killed. The Court cleared and in few minutes returned with a verdict—Not Guilty’. The abortive execution of Joseph Samuels (q.v.) followed the trial of Simmons. Nobody really believed that Simmons was innocent. The Sydney Gazette of 9 October 1803 wrote: ‘Yesterday Isaac Simmons was brought from the Battery at George's Head, and punished with fifty lashes in front of the gaol, for disorderly conduct, neglect of work and for being refractory. In the evening he was returned to the Battery, there to remain till further Orders’.
On Joseph Luker's tombstone this poem, with its pointed reference to Jehovah, was carved:
My midnight vigils are no more,
Cold Sleep and Peace succeed;
The pangs of Death are past and o'er,
My wounds no longer bleed.
But when murderers appear
Before Jehovah's Throne,
Mine will it be to vanquish thee
And theirs to endure alone.
Isaac ‘Simmonds’ was listed in the 1811 General Muster. He was transferred to the Newcastle Penal Station and on 8 December 1817 he petitioned Governor Macquarie for a remission of his sentence. The Rev. William Cowper testified with the usual phrase that he was ‘an industrious, honest and sober man’, and a pardon was issued on 31 January 1818. He was not listed in the 1828 Census. Simmons died on 13 October 1833 and was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery.
OBSP, 1796–97, case 160, p. 241, 1802, case 206, p. 155; Bench of Magistrates, County of Cumberland, Minutes of Procedures, 24 March 1800 to 29 November 1805, 1/299, 7 May 1803, 12/39, Deposition, 23 July 1803 12/42; Petition 299, 1817, 4/1852; HO 10/1/1819, listed as an emancipated Government labourer; G. F. J. Bergman, ‘Two Jewish Convicts’, AJJHS, vol. 5, no. 7 (1963), p. 320f; Sydney Gazette, 4 September 1801, 4 September 1803, 8 September 1803, 9 October 1803.
SIMMONS, Isaac
b. London, 1805–1872
1829; Free.
Married; Dealer; 12 children.
Isaac Simmons, the brother of James Simmons (q.v.), arrived in Sydney with his wife Matilda (q.v.) in 1829. That year, Isaac and Matilda Simmons had a son, born in Sydney, who was registered as ‘Hebrew’. The child was named James in honour of Isaac's brother, who had died in Sydney a few months previously. In 1832 Simmons asked for and received two assigned government servants. One of the convict servants was Lazarus Hart (q.v.).
Simmons opened the London General Warehouse at 60 George Street opposite the police station on 25 September 1832. By 25 May 1833 the store was called the London House and Simmons advertised dresses that had all been imported from England. The business prospered and in April 1834 he announced that he was moving from his London House to the Jerusalem Warehouse, which had been ‘lately occupied by his brother James Simmons’. On 23 May 1837 Isaac Simmons and Co. advertised it carried a ‘large stock of painting and engravings’. On that same day Simmons disposed of the Weatherboard Inn at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains at £155 to Benjamin Lee (q.v.).
Simmons announced that he was a ship's agent for the brig Alice sailing between Sydney, Port Phillip and South Australia. On 16 July 1839 the Sydney Gazette reported that Simmons had launched a new brig built for his South Australian trade and that he had named the ship the Jewess. This ship became a significant participant in Melbourne's early intercolonial trade. In July 1839 Isaac Simmons of Sydney spent some weeks in Melbourne conducting stock auctions of sheep and horses that had been brought overland from Sydney. The records of the Shipping Gazette testify that he easily survived the economic depression of the 1840s with cargoes being despatched to Auckland, London and Tahiti. In December 1842 Simmons opened new rooms in George Street, which were opposite the Barrack's Wall and became the City Auction Mart. In April 1844 his bid of £250 for the cutter Ranger was accepted by the colonial government. In September 1844 Simmons purchased the brig Caroline.
While honorary treasurer of the synagogue building appeal of 1839, Simmons donated £145 in his name and in the name of his wife and two sons James and Barnett. Isaac Simmons was intensely proud of his Jewish heritage and flaunted it. He served as president of the Sydney Synagogue in 1838–40. He was treasurer of the building committee and a trustee of the synagogue's land. In 1840 Simmons spent over £600 buying land in rural towns with a major purchase in Maitland. In September 1844 Simmons stood as an unsuccessful candidate for the Brisbane Ward in the municipal elections.
Matilda and Isaac Simmons had twelve children. They were James, born in Sydney (1829); Sarah (1831); David (5 March 1833, died on 20 May 1836 and was buried at the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery); Barnett (born 18 February 1835); Fanny (27 August 1836); Julia (10 April 1838); Solomon (20 October 1840); Morris (John) (1841); Joseph (1844); Samuel (1846); Moses (20 October 1847); and Henry (1848, died on 12 November 1852).
Simmons was a seat holder at the York Street Synagogue in 1845 and gave £25 to the building fund. The records of the synagogue in Hobart Town in 1845 show that he rented seat no. 75 in 1845 and his name was crossed off the list in the subsequent year. He was evidently ‘only visiting’.
Simmons died on 16 April 1872 on board the ship Strathdon, returning to Sydney from a visit to England. A memorial stone was later placed in the Rookwood Jewish Cemetery. Matilda Simmons died 15 October 1867 at the age of fifty-seven and was buried at Rookwood.
CS Miscellaneous Persons 4/3548, p. 156; CS, Letters Relating to Land, 2/7971, 22 July 1840, 10 October 1840; Port Phillip Patriot, 18 July 1839; Sydney Gazette, 25 September 1832, 29 November 1832, 25 May 1833, 17 April 1834, 23 May 1837, 5 January 1839, 16 July 1839; Shipping Gazette, 1 January 1844, 11 May 1844, 22 February 1845, 11 October 1845, 3 January 1846; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 January 1842, 4 February 1842, 12 December 1842, 29 April 1843, 31 August 1844, 17 September 1844.
SIMMONS, James (SIMONS)
b. London, 1795–1849
Marquis of Wellington, 1815; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1813.
Single; Calico glazier; Height: 160 cm; 7 children.
Dark ruddy complexion, light brown hair, dark hazel eyes. James Simmons was the young assistant of Joseph Richardson, an escaped convict. A group of at least four individuals broke into the home of the Dowager Marchioness of Downshire in Hanover Square and stole watches, silver and money to the value of £1500. On 2 June 1813 Simmons was sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation for life.
An accomplice, James Simons, aged fifty, was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years for his part in the robbery. The Old Bailey records described him as the father of the 16-year old boy (the boy being Simmons). Sarah Simons, Simmons' mother, and James Frankel, the father of Sarah, were found not guilty. Simons does not appear to have reached Australia.
James Simmons had five siblings. Elizabeth (who married Henry Cohen (q.v.), Samuel, Ann who married Henry Israel. Isaac Simmons (q.v.), (an auctioneer who came to Australia as a free migrant in 1829). Another brother, Joseph Simmons (q.v.), was also a free settler and well known Sydney actor, theatre manager and entrepeneur.
James Simmons was assigned as a servant to the architect Francis H. Greenway in 1816 and then assigned to Mr William Small in Richmond in 1819. He married Miss Agnes Thorley at St Peter's, Richmond, on 14 November 1821 and in 1822 Simmons received a beer licence for Richmond. In 1823, having sold his house and land in Richmond for £484 14s, he became the owner of the Emu Inn at Richmond. He was granted a conditional pardon on 17 August 1825. In 1827 he moved to George Street, Sydney, and opened a store named Emu House. In 1828 he opened an auction room and general business, which he boldly called the Jerusalem Warehouse.
The Sydney Gazette of 1 April 1830 reported:
It is not generally known that there is in Sydney a Jewish priest of the name of Sebbet who arrived here four months ago, a native of Germany. He came out under the auspices of the London High Priest. Mr Simmons has hospitably provided him with a home and has made a very liberal offer of a piece of ground for the erection of a synagogue. But we believe no decisive step has been taken by his brother Israelites for the accomplishment of this object. Mr Sebbet is said to be of most exemplary character and of eminent achievements as a scholar.
The ‘Jewish priest’ must have been Rabbi Aaron Levy (q.v.), who stayed in Sydney for almost half a year. Simmons became involved in a breakaway Jewish congregation in 1829–30 that consisted of emancipists and old colonists. He began to charter whole ships of cargo to bring from England to Australia and he visited England in 1833, 1838 and 1842. After his first journey, the Sydney Gazette of 11 September 1834 advertised: ‘James Simmons (late of the Jerusalem Warehouse) informs friends and the public that he has just returned from England and Adelaide—has rented stores in King Street and has a general assortment of merchandise’.
Simmons was granted an absolute pardon on 29 March 1833. In 1848 Simmons became the first Jewish alderman of the City of Sydney. He briefly participated in the affairs of the council from 1 November 1848 to 29 January 1849, when ill health intervened. He died on 2 May 1849.
The children of James and Agnes were: Sarah (subsequently Mrs David Hart), Joseph (born in England and married his first cousin Sarah Simmons); Sarah (1832–1890), who married David Hart (q.v.); Frances (see below), Agnes (married her cousin James Simmons), David (1833–1850) born at Tamworth; Isaac (1836–1857); Elizabeth (1835–1925) and Edward. His will specified that his children were to be disinherited if they married outside the Jewish faith and his estate was estimated at £150 000. After his death his eldest son Joseph (named in honour of his uncle) remained in Australia to look after his father's business while most of the family returned to England.
Frances ‘Fanny’ eloped and married Edmund Minto Gibbes and was therefore disinherited by her father. Edmund was the third son of Colonel John Gibbes MLC, the Collector of Customs. Frances subsequently inherited a fortune from her mother. Her first marriage ended tragically as she lost her two young children in infancy and her husband from TB. In 1854, in London, Frances married a second time to Roger Gadsen, a barrister, and had four children.
On 21 August 1857 the Dunbar was wrecked on South Head with the loss of 121 people. One of these was Isaac Simmons who was, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, returning to Australia ‘to take possession of his share of the property of his father’.
OBSP, 1813, case 574, p. 313f.; Ship Indent 4/4005, p. 34; CS Miscellaneous Persons, Out 4/3682, 14 November 1836; Monitor, 10 April 1830; Australian, 6 January 1842; Sydney Morning Herald, 25 September, 2 November 1848; Sydney Gazette, 9 January 1823, 30 January 1823, 18 December 1823, 23 April 1827, 3 February 1827, 9 July 1828, 5 September 1828, 13 October 1828, 1 April 1830, 30 June 1831, 26 January 1833, 18 September 1834; TL no. 241, see no. 27, in 4/1860, CS Letters Received 1819, Petitions for Mitigation of Sentence. Family information from Stephen Gibbes also Murray of Yarralumla by Gwendoline Wilson (OUP 1968) and A Colonial Woman by Patricia Clarke. (Allen & Unwin 1986).
SIMMONS, Joseph
b. London, 1810–1893
Arab, 1830; Free.
Married; Dealer, theatrical producer; 9 children.
Joseph Simmons was the son of Nathan and Sarah Simmons of London, and the younger brother of the emancipist James Simmons (q.v.) and the free settler Isaac Simmons (q.v.). Joseph Simmons first appeared on the stage in London when he was twelve years old and at the age of twenty he set sail for Sydney to join his emancipist brother. In June 1831 Simmons took out an auctioneer's licence and entered into a commercial partnership with his brother James at the Jerusalem Warehouse in George Street. On the voyage home he stopped in Van Diemen's Land and held popular pioneer theatrical evenings in both Hobart Town and Launceston. He returned to England in 1832 where he married Nancy Cohen (Simmons, q.v.), the daughter of the London broker Henry Simeon Cohen (q.v.) and his wife Elizabeth Cohen (q.v.).
Simmons packed up all the family and returned to New South Wales in 1833 together with his mother–in-law and her large family when Henry Cohen had been convicted of trading counterfeit bank cheques. The Sydney Gazette of 21 January 1834 announced: ‘Mr Joseph Simmons, lately arrived from England, has opened a new warehouse which he designated “The Paddington House” in Underwood's Building, George St’. He boasted that he was selling fancy and other goods unequalled in Sydney for variety, quality and cheapness. Simmons embarked upon a parallel theatrical career, working for Barnett Levey (q.v.) at the Theatre Royal as stage manager and actor. In 1835 a son, James, was born to Joseph and ‘Hannah’ Simmons in Sydney. In May 1843 a seven-week-old daughter Sarah was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery. In 1847 (a second) Sarah was born to Joseph and Nancy Simmons in Bathurst. The 15-year-old James married his first cousin Agnes in a Jewish ceremony in Sydney in 1850.
On 10 March 1836 the Sydney Gazette reported that Simmons was considering going to Calcutta in order to take on the lease of the Dum Dum Theatre. He remained in Australia and later in 1836 it was reported that he had ‘abandoned all thoughts of theatrical glory and taken himself to the more lucrative employment of auctioneer. We will have a little peace and quietness in theatrical matters’. The report was overly optimistic. Simmons visited Van Diemen's Land in 1836 where he performed and sang ‘very successfully’ at several ‘At Homes’. In 1839 Mr Joseph Simmons pledged £20 to the Sydney Synagogue building appeal. In 1840 Simmons took over Sydney's Royal Victoria Theatre and produced a drama and comedy in three acts called The Duellist, which he said was ‘the first truly original drama ever produced in the Colony’. His evening ‘entertainments’ were regularly held. They consisted of a ‘choice collection of glees, duets, solos, serious and comic and a weekly budget of Extemporaneous drollery such as “George Street Courtship” or “The Strictest Propriety” presented by Mr Simmons’. On 31 June 1842 Simmons played Iago in Othello in the Royal City Theatre. On 1 July 1842 Joseph Simmons, ‘actor and manager’, filed a schedule for bankruptcy; he was discharged from insolvency on 12 February 1844. Simmons took over the Tavistock Hotel in September 1844 and, at his Simmons' Salon, held Concert Nights.
By 1848 Simmons had begun a new career in Bathurst as the owner of the Cheap General Stores. In 1849 he was active as a director in the Bathurst Copper Mining Co. He became the proprietor of Simmons Store at Bathurst and Carcoar. On 23 February 1850 Simmons moved back to Sydney, leaving his Bathurst Beehive to be managed by Raphael Tolano (q.v.), formerly of Canowindra, while his store at Carcoar was managed by Mr R. Copen. Simmons was very unlucky. Immediately after his move to Sydney the gold rush began. The Bathurst store was bought by S. Solomon and Co. and his Carcoar store by Raphael Tolano, both whom were among the first Australian gold buyers. In 1859 Simmons served as the president of the Sydney Synagogue.
Simmons settled in Melbourne, where he worked as an ‘elocutionist’. He died at the age of eighty-four on 9 August 1893 at 33 Upper William Street, Darlinghurst, at the hotel owned by his nephew George Cohen. His death certificate described him as an ‘elocutionist’ and he was buried at Rookwood. His estate was valued at £44.
Joseph Simmons had eight children: James (born 1835), Edward (1840), Isaac (1842), Sarah (1843), Walter (1844), Sophia (1845), Sarah (1847-1904), Jane (1851).
Sydney Gazette, 30 June 1831, 21 January 1834, 10 March 1836, 30 October 1836; Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1843, 31 June 1842, 1 July 1843, 12 February 1844, 24 April 1844, 4 September 1844, 14 September 1844; 4/2655 The Duellist; Bathurst Free Press, 9 February 1850; The Bee of Australia, 2 November 1844; CS (Mss of Plays) 4/2655; Miscellaneous Persons 4/3548; H. L. Oppenheim, ‘James Simmons’, in ADB, vol. 2, p. 445f.
SIMMONS, Joshua
b. Spitalfields, 1801
St Vincent (3), 1853; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Central Criminal Court, 1849.
Married; Dealer; Height: 160 cm.
Fair complexion, dark brown hair, light brown eyebrows, blue eyes, large nose. Jew. Can read and write. Joshua Simmons was transported for receiving stolen property. He had kept a second-hand clothes shop in Field Lane and was ‘well known’ to the police. The police noticed him carrying a bag along Holborn Hill. When questioned he claimed it contained trousering stuff bought from a stranger in Oxford Street. He then attempted to bribe the police officers and was promptly arrested. He broke free and was chased and, before being caught, managed to poke one of his pursuers in the eye with his umbrella. A Judah Solomons gave evidence in support of the prisoner, saying that he had been offered a piece of similar material. Fifteen witnesses gave evidence of good character but only one even knew where Simmons actually lived. On 20 August 1849 the jury took four and a half hours to come to its verdict of guilty. The police then testified that Simmons' house was ‘a den of thieves and criminals who had returned from transportation’.
Simmons was sent out on the last convict transport to Van Diemen's Land, and arrived on 26 May 1853. He was initially assigned to Louis Nathan (q.v.) in Murray Street, but was soon sent on to the penitentiary in Hobart Town and then to Port Arthur to serve a two-year sentence. The system treated him leniently and he was issued with a ticket of leave on 13 December 1853. On 23 March 1855 he was tried for assaulting a constable and was fined £1. A conditional pardon was issued on 28 August 1855.
CON 33/115; CON 14/47; CON 18/59; The Times, 24 August, 25 August 1849, and quoted in L. L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia, p. 227f.
SIMMONS, Lipman
b. London
Waterloo, 1849; Free.
Single.
‘I arrived in Sydney by the ship Waterloo in November 1849 and was welcomed by some of my relatives here. My cousin Mr J. G. Raphael [q.v.], who is a respected person here (Draper, George St) stated I shall always find a welcome home among his family. Please give my sincere love to my brother Joseph Simmons, now in your school [the Jews' Orphan Asylum in London] and inform him, if I do any good, he and my sister shall partake in it. Sydney 26 November 1849’.
Jewish Chronicle (London), 5 July 1850.
Matilda was the wife of Isaac Simmons (q.v.). James, her first child, was born in Sydney in 1829, and was followed by Sarah (born 1831), David (1833–1836), Barnett (1835), Fanny (1836), Julia (1838), Solomon (1840), Morris (John) (1841), Joseph (1844), Samuel (1846), Moses (1841), and Henry (1848–1852).
Matilda died on 26 October 1897 and was buried at Rookwood. She died at her home at 166 Alberto Terrace, Macleay Street, aged eighty-seven.
Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1867.
SIMMONS, Moore
b. Poland, 1817
Asia (5), 1840; Convict; Sentenced to 10 years, Edinburgh, 1840.
Single; Gentleman's servant; Height: 155 cm.
Dark complexion, dark brown hair and whiskers, dark hazel-coloured eyes, large nose. M. S. and a heart tattooed on his right arm. A Jew. Could read but not write. Moore Simmons was tried at the Edinburgh Court on 10 January 1840, and transported for theft. His general behaviour on board ship was ‘good’.
Simmons arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 6 August 1840. He received his ticket of leave on 6 September 1845 after having served his initial period of probation at Sandy Bay by the Derwent River near Hobart Town. A copy of a letter from the Superintendent Mr R. Hills certified ‘that he found this man, whilst employed in the capacity of a servant, of very good disposition, industrious, civil and obliging’. In 1846 Simmons was sentenced to three months hard labour for being found in bed with the wife of a man named Hull. A further three-month sentence was imposed in September 1846 at Deloraine when he ‘falsely accused a fellow prisoner of forging his name’. His ticket of leave was restored on 24 October 1847 and a conditional pardon was granted on 27 November 1849. A certificate of freedom was approved on 22 March 1850.
CON 32/2; CON 27/8.
SIMMONS, Samuel (JOHNSON)
b. Spitalfields, 1828
Ratcliffe, 1845; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Clerkenwell General Sessions, 1845.
Single; Labourer; Height: 142 cm.
Fresh complexion, blue eyes, long nose, large mouth and chin. A Jew. Could read and write. Samuel Simmons was seventeen at the time of his trial. He had stolen a coat. He had a previous three-month gaol sentence for stealing a gown.
Samuel Simmons was transported to Van Diemen's Land under his alias Samuel Johnson. His initial period of probation was for fifteen months and concluded on 12 April 1847. On 15 February 1848 and 19 July 1848 he was sentenced to imprisonment and hard labour for two separate charges of absconding. The first punishment was for twelve months and the second for six months.
On 16 July 1850 he gained his ticket of leave, and a certificate of freedom was granted on 28 January 1852.
CON 33/70.
SIMMONS, Sarah
Palambam, 1833; Free.
Married; 2 children.
Sarah Simmons arrived in New South Wales with her husband Henry Simmons (q.v.) and two children.
SIMONS, Asher (SIMON)
b. Hamburg, 1805
Isabella I (5), 1833; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Liverpool, 1833.
Hawker; Height: 172.5 cm.
Both Asher Simons and Morris Whyle (q.v.) were German Jews and hawkers. They were convicted of receiving three stolen watches at Liverpool on 7 January 1833.
Asher Simons arrived in Hobart Town on 14 November 1833.
Ship Indent, ML, A1059-7, p. 273; MM 33/2; CON 31/40; CON 27/6.
SIMONS, John
b. London, 1808
Royal Admiral (2), 1830; Convict; Sentenced to life, Bermuda Island—Court of Assize, 1830.
Single; Carter; Height: 158 cm.
Pale pock-pitted complexion, brown eyes and brown hair, blue spots tattooed forefinger and thumb on right hand. He could read and write. A Jew. John Simons had already served two and a half years of a seven-year sentence in Bermuda, having been sentenced on 4 May 1830. Simons was transported for assault with intent to murder.
John Simons arrived in New South Wales on 9 November 1830 and was assigned to Mr James Dunstand in Wilberforce.
Royal Admiral (2) Printed Indent, 1830, no. 30-2210, 4/4016, p. 53, and 4/4103, p. 52.
SIMONS, Samuel
b. 1774
Ganges, 1797; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1796.
Dealer.
Samuel Simons was a dealer in hardware and tobacco. He was dressed in black with no hat and appeared to be an immigrant priest. To complete the disguise he was wearing spectacles with no glass in them. Simons offered to mind a sailor's bags while the sailor called a coach. The sailor assumed that Simons was a shop owner, and Simons took the bags into a shop. The shopkeeper suspected that something was wrong and called a constable. Simons became confused and offered the sailor ten shillings and sixpence if he would drop the charge. Simons explained: ‘I am subject to fits. I fell in one and lost my hat. I put his portmanteau in the shop till he returned’. Simons was described as ‘a Jew’. He was condemned to death on 13 January 1796 and the sentence was later commuted to transportation for life.
Samuel Simons arrived in the colony on 2 June 1797. In the 1805 Muster of New South Wales and Norfolk Island, Samuel Simons was described as free by servitude and a ‘self employed labourer’. He does not appear in any subsequent official record.
Ship Indent 4/4004, p. 380.
SIMONS, Solomon (SYMONS)
b. Germany, 1794
Atlas III, 1816; Convict; Sentenced, Old Bailey, 1815.
Watchmaker, Hawker; Height: 153 cm.
Ruddy complexion, brown curly hair, grey to blue eyes, eyebrows meeting. Nose thick. Small raised scar below right side of underlip. On 23 April 1815 Solomon Simons and Thomas Smith were found guilty of stealing a watch valued at 30 shillings in ‘an assault on the King's Highway’. The two ambushed a passerby, who was stunned and fell to the ground. When he recovered his composure he returned to the scene of the attack and identified his assailants: ‘I knew his person immediately. He looks very much like a Jew’. Simons went by the nickname ‘Old Solly’. On 10 May 1815 Simons, aged twenty, and Smith, aged thirty-two, were sentenced to death.
The Atlas arrived in New South Wales on 22 July 1816. Simons received a ticket of leave in October 1837 for the district of Merton. A certificate of freedom was granted in 1839. The Sydney Gazette carried a report in 1831 that a Benjamin Simon, ‘a German Jew’, had been charged with committing a violent assault upon Charlotte Clarke and was committed for trial. In the dossier of Maria Benjamin (q.v.) it was noted that she was the sister of Solomon Simons (Symons) in Australia.
OBSP, 1815, case 594, p. 272; Ship Indent 4/4017, p. 67; TL 37/1372, in 4/4115; CF 39/150, in 4/4348; HO 10/8; Sydney Gazette, 28 May 1831.
SIMPSON, Solomon
b. London, 1801
Tottenham, 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1817.
Single; Butcher; Height: 173 cm.
Pale complexion, black hair, dark eyes. Solomon Simpson, a Jew, aged nineteen, snatched a shawl from a servant opposite Whitechapel Church at 11 o'clock at night.
Solomon Simpson arrived in New South Wales on 14 October 1818. He received a ticket of leave on 23 September 1824. In the 1828 Census Simpson was listed as a ‘dealer’ living at the boarding house of Mrs Mary Larkins, Kent Street, Sydney. Simpson received his certificate of freedom on 27 November 1828. Mrs Larkins had six tenants, of whom four were Jews: Lewis Lyons (q.v.), Mordecai Abrahams (q.v.), Isaac Moses (q.v.) and Simpson.
OBSP, 1816–17, case 1275, p. 431; HO 10/1; Ship Indent 4/4005, p. 124; CF 28/0991.
SISE, William (William Kangaroo)
b. Dover, USA, 1813
Marquis of Huntley (1), 1835; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Worcester Quarter Sessions, 1834.
Single; Compositor; Height: 161 cm.
Dark complexion, brown hair, grey eyes, long face, large nose, scar on each eyebrow, small scar in centre of forehead and on chin. Powder marks on lid of right eye. Jew. Born Dover, New Hampshire. William Sise was transported for ‘demanding money’.
William Sise arrived on 5 July 1835. He was granted a ticket of leave in 1847. On 22 February 1847 he was in the District of Port Phillip, known as ‘Size’ (Seixas?). A certificate of freedom was issued to him in 1850.
Marquis of Huntley Printed Indent, p. 94, also Indent 4/4019, in Fiche 713, with details of Pardons; TL 47/254; CF 250, in Principal superintendent of Convicts, CF butts, 22 February 1850 to 5 May 1851, 4/4414.
SLOMAN, R. B.
1837; Free.
Dealer.
R. B. Sloman signed the petition for a Jewish burial ground in Yass on 20 December 1844. He was one of the first settlers in Port Phillip in 1837.
L. M. Goldman recounts the story of Sloman suing an auctioneer in Melbourne in the 1850s. Sloman had instructed the auctioneer in writing to sell straw hats at twelve shillings each. They were sold at twelve shillings a dozen and the auctioneer had to pay Sloman £50.
Petition 4/2650.4; L. M. Goldman, The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century, p. 118.
SMITH, John
b. London, 1806
Mangles (3), 1824; Convict; Sentenced to life, London, 1823.
Single; Porter; Height: 161 cm.
Freckled complexion, red hair, hazel eyes. Aged seventeen, ‘John Smith’ was sentenced to transportation for life on 10 September 1823. He was caught in company with another young thief as they picked a pocket, and was seized as he stole a handkerchief, valued at one shilling.
On 30 October 1824, immediately after his arrival in New South Wales, Smith was sent to work as an assigned convict servant in Windsor. In the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales he was listed as an assigned servant at the Lunatic Asylum in Liverpool. Smith received a ticket of leave for the Windsor District on 11 September 1838. He appeared in the 1841 Newcastle Gaol Entrance and Description Book and was described as ‘a Jewish labourer’. He was tried on 18 June 1841 at the Maitland District Quarter Sessions and placed in the stockade for two months. Smith was granted a certificate of freedom on 11 November 1843. A conditional pardon was confirmed on 8 November 1847.
OBSP, 1822–23, case 1018, p. 379; Ship Indent 4/4010, p. 26; CO 207/2; Newcastle Gaol Entrance and Description Book 1841–45, 2/2008, no. 255; CF 4/4387, 43/1936.
SMITH, William
b. London, 1810
Lady Kennaway (2), 1836; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Middlesex, 1835.
Single; Carter; Height: 157.5 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion and a little pock-pitted. Dark brown hair. Brown eyes. Lost two front upper teeth. No education. A Jew. William Smith was transported for picking pockets. He was tried at Westminster and sentenced at Middlesex on 20 August 1835. He had served a previous prison sentence of one month.
Smith arrived in New South Wales on 12 October 1836. He was listed in the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales, aged fifty-two (though he was twenty-seven!), working on Goat Island in Sydney Harbour. He received his ticket of leave in 1840, a certificate of freedom in 1843 and a conditional pardon in 1848.
Lady Kennaway Printed Indent, no. 36-2227; TL 40/2462; CF 4/4381, 43/404; CP 48/1250.
SMITH, William
b. London, 1817
Equestrian (1), 1844; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, 1843.
Single; Tailor; Height: 155 cm.
Ruddy, deeply pock-pitted complexion, brown hair, blue eyes, long nose, large chin. A Jew. ‘William Smith’ was sentenced for larceny. It was his second conviction. He had previously stolen a twist of wool at Oxford Street. His previous sentence was for three months. He could read Hebrew and had an imperfect reading knowledge of English.
William Smith arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 1 May 1844 and was given an initial period of probation of fifteen months at the convict station at Seven Mile Creek. This period of his punishment concluded on 1 August 1845. He received his ticket of leave on 16 November 1847 at Launceston after being housed in the Prisoners' Barracks. In August 1848 he was arrested for being drunk and out after hours in Hobart Town and was sentenced to fourteen days solitary confinement. In Launceston, on 23 October 1849, he was again found guilty of being out after hours and sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour. A similar offence occurred in Launceston on 28 December 1849 and brought him three weeks imprisonment and hard labour at the Prisoners' Barracks. On 1 January 1850 he received fourteen days solitary for ‘idleness’. His ticket of leave was restored on 18 March 1850 and a certificate of freedom was authorised on 22 November 1850.
CON 33/54, no. 12911.
SMITHERMAN, John (Thomas)
Sir William Bensley, 1817; Free.
Single; Cook.
John Smitherman was a ‘converted Jew’. His mother was named Sarah and his sister Betsy. A ‘Thomas Smitherman’ came to Van Diemen's Land on the Admiral Cockburn in 1819. The record in the Tasmanian Archives states that Smitherman was fifty-five years old ‘at time of offence’, presumably occurring in New South Wales.
CON 31/38, p. 57; CON 35/1, p. 507; CON 16/3, p. 492; CON 13/1, p. 338; CON 13/2, p. 535.
SOLOMON, Aaron
b. London, 1793–1872
Indefatigable (1), 1812; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1811.
Single; Labourer; Height: 157 cm; 9 children.
Fair complexion, brown hair, grey eyes. Jew. Aaron Solomon's father was Isaac Solomon and his mother was Hannah. With two other young men, Solomon held up and attempted to rob a stonemason's labourer in Brick Lane, Whitechapel. They were chased and Solomon was caught. He told the judge at the Old Bailey: ‘I am as innocent as a new born child. I was coming down the street. I went down that court. There was no thoroughfare. The watchman catched hold of me, and the prosecutor said that I was the man some yards before he came nigh to me’. Solomon was sentenced to death on 29 May 1811 and the sentence was later commuted to transportation for life.
Aaron Solomon arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 19 October 1812. He was sent to Sydney to give evidence in a trial concerning sheep stealing in 1818 and returned to Van Diemen's Land on 21 October 1819 by the Hibernia. He had been a witness in the case of the King versus Slater, and was sent back to Van Diemen's Land by the Prince Leopold. Evidently he was rewarded for his cooperative attitude with a ticket of leave. He appears to have been reincarcerated and on 21 February 1821 was sent back to Sydney and, on 4 March 1821, was sentenced to be despatched to the Newcastle Penal Settlement for three years on the Elizabeth Henrietta. The 1822 General Muster noted that he was a prisoner in ‘government employ’ in Newcastle.
Solomon was sentenced to fifty lashes in March 1825 for attempting to escape. On 27 February 1826 he appeared before the Bench of Magistrates in Newcastle for having been seen by the Chief Constable attempting to hide a stolen shirt that he had received. He was sentenced to three months in the chain gang. On 25 March 1826 he ‘threw his frock over a keg of spirits and attempted to steal it whilst at his usual work of wheeling coals’. Solomon was listed in the 1828 Census as a convict at the Prisoners' Barracks in Newcastle. His religion was not stated. A ticket of leave was granted in July 1834 for the district of Newcastle and altered for Parramatta in 1834. A conditional pardon was granted on 1 April 1841.
Aaron Solomon married Margaret Ewings in Parramatta in October 1835. The officiating minister was the Rev. Samuel Marsden. Ewings was said to be a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell and had been transported for embezzling £231 9s. The children of Aaron and Margaret Solomon were: Aaron (born 1836), Hannah (1838), Margaret (1840), Oliver (1843), Abraham (1845), Phoebe (1848), Louisa (1851), Maria (1854), and Alice (1857).
On December 1841 the Sydney Free Press and Commercial Journal mentioned that Solomon was ‘a general dealer’ with a shop in George Street. Aaron Solomon died in Sydney on 7 August 1872.
OBSP, 1810, case 464, p. 277; Ship Indent 4/4004, p. 418; CON 31/38, no. 51; CON 23/1, p. 347; 4/3500, p. 311; HO 10/53; Monthly Return of Corporal Punishments inflicted at Newcastle, Newcastle Police Court, ML, F 49, p. 34; 4/1718, p. 201. Pardons, Governors' Despatches, A1231, CP 42/104, p. 284; Permission to Marry Book, 4/4512, p. 190; Australian, 9 April 1842.
SOLOMON, Abraham
b. Frankfurt, 1811–1869
Lady Kennaway (2), 1836; Convict; Sentenced to life, Liverpool Quarter Sessions, 1836.
Single; Butcher; Height: 161 cm; 5 children.
Dark sallow freckled complexion, black hair, brown eyes. Scar on cheek. Could read and write. Abraham Solomon was transported for house breaking and sentenced at Liverpool on 18 January 1836.
Abraham Solomon arrived in New South Wales on 12 October 1836. The 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales reported that he was working as an assigned convict for Mr Alexander Smith at Blackwattle Swamp. In the Parramatta Gaol Register for 1839, ‘Irvin Solomon’ was said to have been born in Berlin and was a watchmaker. He was sent, with five others, in January 1839, to the Supreme Court in Sydney for a trial concerning a felony at Bathurst. Abraham Solomon was listed in the 1841 Census of New South Wales, living in Dapto in the District of Illawarra. He received his ticket of leave in 1844 and a conditional pardon in 1848. Solomon married the 17-year-old Mary Ann Munson in 1851 and had five children. Mary Ann died on 16 March 1861 and later that same year Abraham Solomon married a second time, to Eliza Jane Nancarrow. Abraham Solomon died on 12 December 1869 at Bundarra.
Lady Kennaway (2) Printed Indent, 1836, 2189-25 (X638-9); Parramatta Gaol Register for 1839, 4/6533, TL 44/678; CP 48/2250; family information from Maggie Wilde West.
Abraham Jacob Solomon was the grandson of the ‘world renowned matzah baker’ of London of the same name. On 4 July 1849 the 23-year-old Abraham Jacob Solomon of Cutler Street, Aldgate, married Julia Isaacs (Solomon, q.v.) of Harrow Alley, Aldgate, in the New Synagogue in London. Chief Rabbi Adler officiated. They arrived, travelling steerage, in Adelaide on the barque Constant on 23 December 1849. The small Adelaide congregation quickly appointed him as the Reader for a salary of £52 a year. Solomon conducted the consecration of the new synagogue building on 5 September 1850. An economic depression in South Australia brought the congregation's agreement to pay Solomon to an abrupt end. There were fewer than 150 Jews in South Australia, and Solomon offered to continue as synagogue reader in an honorary capacity.
In June 1852 Solomon was appointed Reader at the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation for six months, and then returned to Adelaide. On 27 October 1853 he wrote to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation: ‘Being compelled through unforeseen circumstances to leave for Melbourne Port Phillip I am obliged to forgo the position I hold in your congregation as officiating Minister. Believe me Gentlemen it grieves me much that I have to do so after receiving such kind treatment from you all since my return from Melbourne’.
Armed with a cheque for £10 for ‘past services’, Solomon, his wife and three children set sail for the Victorian goldfields at Carisbrook (near Maryborough). By 1855 Solomon, his wife and three young children had returned to Adelaide, where he became the lessee and manager of the Queen's Theatre in Gilles Arcade, which, in turn, was named the Theatre Inn. He was the licensed victualler on the premises in Hindley Street. He subsequently became a hotel ‘valuator and broker’ in the name of A. J. Solomon and Son, Licensed Valuator and Brokers in the Exchange Building, Pirie Street, Adelaide, and officiated at many of the services at the Adelaide synagogue.
Solomon was always ready to travel throughout rural South Australia and New South Wales to perform circumcisions. By 1876 his ‘Brit Book’ listed 176 babies he had named.
A. J. Solomon and his wife Julia had fourteen children, five of whom died as young children (one of these was Ellis, born in 1869). Abraham died on 10 January 1889 and was buried in Adelaide's West Terrace Jewish Cemetery. Julia Solomon died on 30 December 1895. Their nine surviving children were: Miriam (born 30 October 1850), Judah Abraham (1852), Sarah (1855), Rachel (1858), Henry (1861), Rebecca (1863), Sophia (1865), Leah (1866), and Julia Blanche (1870). Three daughters remained in Adelaide: Miriam married Joseph Solomon; Rachel married John Barnet Saunders; and Rebecca married James Slater. Those who moved to the eastern states were Judah Abraham, who married Martha Townsend, Sarah, who married Jacob Neustadt, Henry, who married Hannah Phillips, Sophia, who married John Elsner, and Julia Blanche, who married Manny Bloom.
Helen Tversky-Steiner, Abraham Jacob and Julia Solomon (née Isaacs), privately published, Adelaide, 2012.
SOLOMON, Ann (née JULIAN)
b. London, 1791–1877
Mermaid (1), 1828; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1827.
Married; Dressmaker; Height: 154 cm; 6 children.
Dark fresh coloured complexion, small head, dark brown hair, narrow oval-shaped face, dark arched eyebrows. Dark brown eyes, small mouth, sharp pointed chin. A Jewess. Aged thirty-five. Gaol report: ‘A notorious receiver of stolen goods’. Ann Solomon gave the Hobart Town officials a sanitised version of her offence and background: ‘Receiving stolen goods—a watch’. The prosecutor was a captain or master of a vessel. She had lived off Commercial Road (Bell Lane) in Spitalfields, and had two girls, Anne (Nancy) (q.v.), aged seven, and Sarah (q.v.), aged five, and two boys, David, aged nine, and Mark, three years old.‘My husband I believe has gone to America. I have two children gone to Sydney. John [q.v.], aged twenty-one, and Moses [q.v.], aged eighteen, as gentlemen to settle. My father is a coach master named Moses Julian who lives in Aldgate. My husband was a jeweller and lived in Bell Lane.’ Ann had been sentenced on 13 September 1827. In 1828 two of her nephews were sent to Australia. They were Moses Julion (q.v.), who arrived in Hobart Town on the Roslin Castle, and Jacob Julian (q.v.), who came out to New South Wales on the Hooghly (2).
Ann (Hannah) Solomon was married to the notorious Isaac (Ikey) Solomon (q.v.). She arrived in Hobart Town (with her four younger children) on 27 June 1828 and was assigned as a convict servant to police officer Newman. She was soon joined in Hobart Town by her two adult sons, John and Moses, and then by her husband. Her older sons had hoped to have their mother assigned to them but their petition was denied.
During Ikey's subsequent deportation and trial in England, Ann became estranged from him and formed a liaison with the emancipist George Madden. Ikey Solomon was returned to Van Diemen's Land to serve a sentence of imprisonment. On 20 July 1835 Ann was charged with ‘disorderly conduct in using opprobrious epithets to her husband and otherwise ill treating him. Disturbance having continued in the family ever since the warning given them on 3 July and appearing to arise from a combination between the mother and the children against the father’. Ann Solomon was returned to the Female Factory for the disposal of the Principal Superintendent J. Mason. Ann spent some months in prison before a ticket of leave was issued in September 1835 followed by a conditional pardon in 1840.
Ann Solomon was very much in the public eye. The Age in England published the following report, which was republished and ridiculed in the Hobart Town Courier of 3 May 1833:
New Jew Colony ‘our peoplesh’ are about to establish a Jewish colony in Van Diemen's Land under the patronage of Mrs Ikey Solomons. (This we presume will be news to Mrs Solomons herself, as well as all the rest of the Jewish ‘peoplesh’. The Age is very inventive in a small way.)
In 1877, ‘Hannah Solomon relict of Isaac Solomon of Hobart Town died aged eighty-seven’.
CON 40/9, no. 129; Hobart Town Courier, 5 June 1840, supplement, A 1059/1, p. 429; 40; CP (Government Notice) no. 2396, 27 May 1840; CON 18/24; CSO 1/295/7163; Launceston Examiner, 22 December 1877.
SOLOMON, Anne (Nancy)
b. London, 1820
Mermaid (1), 1828; Free.
Single.
The fourth child of Hannah (Ann Solomon, q.v.) and Isaac (Ikey) Solomon (q.v.), Anne was the sister of John (q.v.), Moses (q.v.), David (q.v.), Sarah (q.v.), and Mark (q.v.) Anne came to Australia with her younger siblings on the Mermaid, the ship on which her mother was transported as a convict.
Anne Solomon married John Shakespeare at Campbell Town (Van Diemen's Land) on 23 April 1847. The Marriage Register also lists an Anne Solomon who married John Wilson at Oatlands on 4 May 1840, and Ann Solomon, aged twenty-two, who married William Wilson, aged twenty-six, in Hobart Town on 22 November 1841.
SOLOMON, Barnett (alias Youner Barnett (q.v))
d. 1835
1823; Free.
Barnett Solomon was buried in the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery in Sydney on 18 February 1835. He had not been listed in the 1828 Census.
SOLOMON, Benjamin
1810–1851
Lonach, 1833; Free.
Married; 5 children.
Benjamin Solomon migrated to Australia, arriving on 25 October 1833 with his wife, Jane, and children, Sarah, Louisa, Esther, Henry and Jessie. A publican's licence was issued to a ‘Mr Solomon’ for the Roseneath Inn, Main Road, Austin's Ferry, in 1834. Solomon was listed as a steerage passenger on the Marian Watson from Hobart Town to Port Jackson, arriving in Sydney on 16 August 1838.
Benjamin Solomon was buried as a Jew on 30 March 1851. A few weeks later, on 20 May 1851, Louisa Solomon, aged seventeen, married Moses Abrahams ‘of full age’ at ‘the private residence’ of Mr (Simeon) Benjamin (q.v.), Liverpool Street, Hobart Town'. The bride was described as ‘living with her mother’. The Hobart synagogue records that a daughter of Louisa and Moses died 17 May 1854.
CUS 30, pp. 307, 65, AOT.
SOLOMON, Benjamin (Lewis Solomon)
b. London, 1810–1857
Vittoria, 1829; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1828.
Single; Errand boy; Height: 160 cm.
Dark ruddy complexion. Dark brown hair. Hazel eyes. ‘ZR’ tattooed on right side of left arm. A small scar under chin. No education. No previous convictions. Jew. Benjamin Solomon was transported for ‘picking pockets’ with another young accomplice. They were ‘caught in the act’ by a constable in Whitechapel. Solomon was sentenced on 21 April 1828.
Benjamin Solomon arrived in New South Wales on 17 January 1829 and was promptly assigned to Mr W. Macarthur's farm at Camden. In February 1832 he was listed as a ‘stable man’ who had absconded from Road Gang no. 25, and who was described as being 165 cm tall. In November 1842 Benjamin Solomons, ‘a prisoner’ attached to the bullock team working from the stockade at Maitland, was found to be absent from his post when his water carrier bullock team forced a valuable horse into the creek and drowned it. Solomon received fifty lashes and his sentence was extended by twelve months. Solomon received a ticket of leave in 1844 and a conditional pardon, dated 15 November 1848.
Benjamin Solomon married Sarah Chitty Rotton in East Maitland's Church of England on 29 June 1847. Benjamin Solomon died in 1857.
HO 10/20; Vittoria Indent 4/4014, p. 130; CS 4/2578, 2 November 1842, 42/8693; Petition 48/2251, dated 1848; 4/4267, 47/753.7; TL 44/939; CP 48/2251.
SOLOMON, Benjamin
b. Brisbane, 1844–1922
Benjamin Solomon was born in Brisbane in November 1844 and grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. He was the son of Judah Moss Solomon (q.v.) (who became Mayor of Adelaide), and brother of Vaiben Louis Solomon (briefly Premier of South Australia), and Moss Judah Solomon (q.v.), who was president of the South Australian Hebrew Congregation for thirty-five years. Benjamin began a general agency and auctioneering business and then joined the public service as an officer of the Adelaide Local Court. He joined the land tax department and became assessor and valuer for the probate department, and government auctioneer. He retired in 1915. He served as vice-president of the Civil Service Association, a founder of the Public Service Provident Fund and president of the Public Service Federal Council. In 1860 Benjamin Solomon had joined a Battery of the Adelaide Field Artillery and in 1878 became a captain. In 1897 he was appointed lieutenant colonel and retired in 1905 from the army with the rank of colonel. During World War I, he was appointed Chief Censor in South Australia.
Colonial Secretary, Copies of Letters sent within the Colony, 4/3505, 8 March 1822–28, June 1822.
SOLOMON, Caroline
d. 1842
Free.
Caroline Solomon was buried at the Devonshire Street Jewish Cemetery on 11 July 1842.
SOLOMON, Catherine
1804–1833
Elizabeth I (2), 1818; Convict.
Catherine Solomon arrived in New South Wales on 19 November 1818. She received official permission to marry at Parramatta on 7 July 1823. She died at Hobart Town on 25 September 1833.
Reel 6010, 4/3508, p. 642.
SOLOMON, Catherine Elizabeth
b. Bethnal Green, 1804–1877
Mermaid, 1828; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1828.
Single; Fruit hawker, Height: 160 cm.
Bloated, much pock-pitted complexion, dark brown hair, high and narrow forehead, eyes light grey, broad long nose, large mouth, lips full and projecting, sharp chin. Can neither read nor write. Jewess. Catherine Elizabeth Solomon stole calico prints from a shop in the Minories. When arrested she had 33 shillings in her possession. Her father was Jacob Solomon, a hawker. Her brother was Simon Solomon (Solomons, q.v.), who was already in Van Diemen's Land. Catherine claimed: ‘I used to hawk fruit in the city’. Her gaol report listed her as a ‘prostitute’. Surgeon: ‘Idle disposition but orderly’.
Catherine Solomon was an assigned servant in Hobart Town during the latter half of 1828 and 1829. On 3 February 1829 she was noted as having been absent from her master's house (T. Dixon) for two hours. She was reprimanded. On 13 May 1829 she was absent from her master's house under false pretences. She was sent to the House of Correction on 8 November 1829. For ‘general disorderly conduct in the service of Dr Ross’ she was returned to the House of Correction and, upon her release, was to be assigned to the Interior (6 December 1831). Catherine received a certificate of freedom on 10 January 1835, and was permitted to travel to New South Wales.
Catherine Elizabeth Solomon married Abraham Davis (q.v.) in Sydney on 22 July 1835. Her new husband was a pugilist and a butcher who had escaped from New South Wales, was arrested in London and returned to Hobart Town and afterwards sent to Norfolk Island before being released from servitude in Sydney. Six months after her marriage, on 26 December 1835, Catherine Davis was involved in an altercation in the public house belonging to Abraham Myers (q.v.). She was described as a ‘buxom lady possessing symmetry and muscle’, and ‘like a bullock’. Her complaint was dismissed on the grounds that in the brawl she had ‘got the best of it’.
Catherine died on 27 August 1877 and was buried in the Jewish section of Rookwood Cemetery in New South Wales.
CON 18/24; CON 40/9; Sydney Monitor, 31 December 1835.
SOLOMON, Charles
b. London, 1833–1915
Britomart, 1835; Free.
8 children.
Charles Solomon was a son of Samuel and Rebecca Solomon (qq.v.). He arrived with his mother, his five sisters and two brothers in Sydney on 1 February 1835. He was aged two. The family grew up at Jews' Flat where his father owned a hotel and a general store. As a very young man he rode ‘many a horse to victory’ in local horse races. He then became a cattle dealer and drover, being one of the first to take a mob of cattle south to Gippsland over uncharted mountains. In 1861 he came to live in Cooma and together with a fellow drover began a general business known as the Big Drum, in a stone building owned by Samuel Shannon (q.v.) at the corner of Sharp and Bombala streets. In 1862 he joined the gold rush at Kiandra. Together with David Moses, he had a store and hotel at Jindabyne and a store at Buckley's Crossing. In 1862 Solomon built the Cooma Hotel at the corner of Massie and Vale streets. Moses and Solomon established a general store in Cooma in 1865.
Charles Solomon married Selina Cohen. He was the first mayor of Cooma. He was president of the Monaro Jockey Club, a member of the school board, a foundation member of the Masonic Lodge, president of the School of Fine Arts and member of the Hospital Board.
He died at Cooma on 15 November 1915. His son, Lewis Samuel Solomon, carried on the business in Cooma and a second son, Henry Hyam Solomon, a solicitor, served as clerk of the Monaro Shire.
Felix F. Mitchell, Back to Cooma Celebrations (1926), quoted by G. F. J. Bergman in AJJHS, vol. 6, no. 8 (1970), p. 539f.
SOLOMON, Coleman (KALMAN)
Free.
Single.
Coleman Solomon married Catherine Leaton at Old St James (Anglican) Cathedral, Melbourne, in 1849.
Register no. 1215.
Brown hair, hazel eyes.‘Jew hawker’. David Solomon was ‘shabbily dressed’ and was well known to the police who arrested him on the basis of a description given by a victim whose watch he had snatched. He had no previous convictions. At his trial he said that his children were being looked after in Spitalfields, ‘with Solomon who keeps a clothes shop. I used to go about Mary le Bone and Oxford Street as an old clothes man’. He was sentenced on 20 February 1822.
David Solomon had no criminal record in Van Diemen's Land (apart from a fine of forty shillings for a breach of his license conditions). He first worked as a constable in Launceston. He was listed as a ‘Sheriff's Officer’ with a salary of £40 a year in 1829. On 19 December 1831 he requested a grant for an allotment of land in Launceston to build a weatherboard house. He had received a conditional pardon on 17 July 1830. He was already in possession of one allotment of land by purchase in Paterson Street. On his petition it is noted: ‘This applicant is a Conditional Emancipist. He has some property and a good house in Launceston. He was latterly a Sheriff's Officer’. On 27 April 1832 he received a grant of land on High Street and Windmill Street on condition that he built a house worth £500 within the next 18 months.
On 9 August 1833 Solomon received a further grant of thirty perches on Paterson Street in Launceston. In 1834 he ran the Blue Anchor Tavern at Campbell Town. The next year he took up the licence for the White Hart Inn of Antill Ponds, Oatlands, which he held until 1838, and he also received two convict servants to work his farm there. On 8 October 1835 Solomon wrote to the Colonial Secretary from Campbell Town claiming to have discovered, within a mile of the town, ‘limestone of good quality’. He asked the Colonial Secretary ‘to grant me for my children an allotment of ground on this township’. This petition was granted on 22 July 1837 and an acre of land was set aside. (On 1 November 1845 Solomon was warned that his grant would be cancelled if it was not paid for.)
‘David Solomon of Campbell Town, Licensed Victualler’, supported the memorial of Henry Davis (q.v.) of 24 October 1836 to use a block of land at Cataract Hill, Launceston, for a Jewish cemetery.
A free pardon was granted on 25 September 1837. Solomon died on 5 June 1839, having made his will one month before his death. His witnesses were Moses Phillips (q.v.) and Joshua Lyons (q.v.) Solomon had taken some time to marry the mother of his children. His marriage to Ann Anderson became official in Launceston on 26 October 1830. Elisa Solomon, daughter of David and Ann, died in Launceston on 3 January 1841. His other daughters were Esther Rebecca (q.v.) (1826) and Leah (q.v.).
On 13 October 1839 Ann Solomon was granted 100 acres in trust for her daughter Hester (Esther) Rebecca Solomon, for her ‘intrepid conduct when her father's house was attacked and plundered by a gang of armed bushrangers’. The incident had occurred in 1835, when: ‘most awful to relate, my daughter was alarmed by her father being put on his knees to lose his life, when my daughter from her innocence stepped forward and craved the life of her father, who is since dead never having overcome the shock leaving behind a widow and two orphan girls to deplore his loss’.
CON 31/38, no. 464; OBSP, 1821–22, case 441, p. 209; Ship Indent 2/8241; HO 11/4; Hobart Town Gazette, 13 October 1837; Hobart Town Courier, 9 July 1831, 16 February 1838, 12 October 1838; CSO 1/830/17607, 8 October 1835; CSO 5/16/278, 12 October 1838; Land Grant LSD, 1/82/501-2, and 1/76, p. 19; Launceston Examiner, 15 January 1848, 3 January 1849, 17 February 1849, 28 November 1849; Independent, 9 July 1831.
SOLOMON, David
b. London, 1819–1860
Mermaid, 1828; Free.
David Solomon was the third child of Ann and Isaac (Ikey) Solomon (qq.v.). His siblings were John (q.v.), Moses (q.v.), Anne (q.v.), Sarah (q.v.), and Mark (q.v.). David spent time in an orphanage in Hobart Town after arriving with his mother, who was a convict. On 19 October 1835 he took up the cudgels on behalf of his mother when his father attempted to assert his authority over her household in New Norfolk after his release from prison. The teenage David had taken over running the house and collecting the rent and saw his position usurped. David called his father ‘an old vagabond and a nasty stinking wretch’, and on 19 October 1835 wrote to his father from Hobart Town, ordering him to send his possessions to him:
Mr Solomon,
Unless you send me my things down by the fust coveyance I shall emediately go to Capt Forster about them. You have got a bed and being, a box of Tules a gun and rod, fiddle, dressing table and two Boxes of Closes and a box of Sunderies and dining table of Mying.
DSollomon
A neighbour in New Norfolk delivered the letter to the office of the Colonial Secretary in Hobart Town with a note: ‘The letter sent from the son to his father is a precious morceau, and I hope Mr Solomon's case is well looked into. He has been used ill’.
David Solomon married Sophia Christinia Raynor at New Norfolk on 7 October 1837. David Solomon, ‘of Longford’, died on 21 August 1860.
CSO 1/849/17494; CSO 1/820/17494; Mercury, 21 September 1860.
SOLOMON, David
b. Sheerness
Free.
David Solomon was the son of Joseph Solomon (q.v.) of Evandale and his first wife Harriet, who had remained in England. The first references to David Solomon occur in relation to New South Wales and Parramatta. A coach licence was granted to him on 13 November 1843, at which time his address was Parramatta Road. He was insolvent by 15 March 1844 and was confined to the Parramatta Gaol. In July 1844 he applied for a certificate of discharge from insolvency, which must have been granted. He then moved to Van Diemen's Land. The Hobart Town Courier reported that there was a letter waiting for him at the Launceston Post Office that carried insufficient postage and would require extra payment.
David Solomon (of Evandale) ran two coaches, the Hero and the Wonder. The Hero travelled from Launceston to Perth and the Wonder from Launceston to Evandale. David Solomon's coach was still running from Perth and Longford when the Wonder had disappeared. It does not seem to have belonged to Solomon in the first place. The Launceston Examiner then reported that Solomon's business had failed. Four major creditors were listed, and one was Godfrey Barnett Levy (George Levy, q.v.). On 28 November 1849 it was reported that David Solomon was the owner of the Longford Stage Coach, Teaser.
David Solomon was allowed bail on a charge of having, during his insolvency, concealed the ownership of a coach. The case failed. On 9 February 1850 the Examiner announced that ‘Solomon's Coach’ was running from Longford to Launceston.
Sydney Morning Herald, 14 July 1843, 13 November 1843, 18 March 1844, 30 April 1844, 4 May 1844, 23 July 1844; Hobart Town Courier, 17 May 1844; Launceston Examiner, 15 January 1848, 3 January 1849.
SOLOMON, Edward
Free.
Married; Dealer; 2 children.
Edward and Henrietta Solomon had two children registered with the Sydney Synagogue. They were Harriett, born 21 July 1842, and Francis Edward, born 18 March 1845. The Mutual Fire Insurance Company reported that Edward Solomon had insurance cover for £500 in October 1842. The Maitland Mercury of 9 December 1843 reported that Edward Solomon ‘of Maitland’, a wine and spirit merchant, had been declared insolvent and would pay seven shillings and sixpence in the pound.
SOLOMON, Elias
b. London, 1789–1863
1850; Free.
Married; Dealer; 12 children.
Elias Solomon and Fanny (née Simmons) were the parents of twelve children, six of whom remained in England. They evidently arrived in Sydney in time for the marriage of their daughter Eve to Lewis Marks (q.v.).
Their (adult) children who migrated to Australia were Saul (q.v.), Abraham, Priscilla, John, Eve and Mark. Elias Solomon died at Bathurst Street on 6 January 1863. Fanny died in Sydney on 31 January 1874.
Elias Solomon was born in London on 2 September 1839 and arrived in Adelaide with his parents, Moss (Moses) Solomon (q.v.) and Leah (née Myers), at the age of one. Moss was the older brother of Vaiben and Emanuel Solomon (qq.v.). The family arrived in Sydney on 19 January 1841. On 3 March 1841 the family set sail for Adelaide on the Dorset, a brig owned jointly by Emanuel and Vaiben Solomon.
South Australia was in the midst of a severe depression and the family returned to Sydney, where Moss died in 1849. His widow and family subsequently returned to Adelaide.
Solomon went to Western Australia in 1868 in the brig Eliza Blanche and commenced business with two of his nephews as an auctioneer at ‘E. Solomon & Co’ in Hindley Street. The business was short lived and he was employed to be a supervisor on the French barque Cora to make a substantial purchase of sugar in Mauritius for the Australian market. He joined Lionel Samson (q.v.) and, working closely with William Frederick Samson (q.v.), soon became the general manager of the business. Elias Solomon was Mayor of Fremantle for several terms in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He served in the State Parliament from 1892 to 1900. He became a member of the first Commonwealth Parliament, representing the Fremantle electorate. He was consular agent for Italy, a member of the Technical School Board, and chairman of the Fremantle Tramways Board. Elias married twice, first to Agnes Elizabeth Buckley and a second time, in 1887, to Elizabeth Stokes. He died on 23 May 1909 and was buried in the Jewish section of the Fremantle Cemetery.
Table Talk, 27 May 1909.
SOLOMON, Elizabeth
b. London
Brothers, 1833; Free.
Single; Servant.
Elizabeth Solomon arrived on 21 December 1833, travelling steerage. She came out as a child with the family of Elizabeth (Betsy) Cohen (q.v.) and her ten children. Elizabeth Solomon was their maid servant.
Elizabeth Solomon married Elias Watson at the Church of England in Castlereagh in 1839.
Ship Indent 4/5205.
Elizabeth Solomon was a child of Samuel and Rebecca Solomon (qq.v.). She arrived with her mother and her seven siblings on the Britomart in 1835. Her father had been sent out as a convict on the Mangles in 1833. Elizabeth married Colman Zadock (q.v.) in 1840. She died ‘at the residence of her father and mother, Elizabeth Street’, Sydney, on Monday, 16 October 1854, after ‘a severe and protracted illness. Mrs E. Zadock the eldest daughter of Mr Samuel Solomon deeply regretted by all who knew her’.
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1854.
SOLOMON, Elizabeth
b. London, 1821–1898
Enchantress, 1833; Free.
Single; 10 children.
The daughter of Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.) and his second wife Esther (née Davis) (q.v.), Elizabeth married Michael Cashmore (q.v.), a pioneer of the Melbourne Jewish community.
SOLOMON, Elizabeth
Free.
Elizabeth Solomon married Robert Watts in 1843 at the Presbyterian Church in Parramatta.
HO 18/191.
SOLOMON, Emanuel
b. Spitalfields, 1800–1873
Lady Castlereagh, 1818; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, County Durham, 1817.
Single; Lead pencil maker; Height: 164 cm; 9 children.
Dark complexion, black hair, dark eyes. Emanuel Solomon was the son of Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.) and Betsy (Moses) of Wentworth Street, Spitalfields, pencil-maker. He was charged on 4 August 1817 with his older brother, Vaiben Solomon (q.v.), with breaking into the farmhouse of Thomas Prest in Heighington and stealing coats and other clothes. The brothers were imprisoned in the Durham Gaol for ten months until being sentenced on 5 August 1817. They were sentenced to death for being in possession of stolen goods (and found not guilty of housebreaking). The boys invoked an ancient Benefit of Clergy ruling allowing people who were able to read Psalm 81 to have their death sentences commuted.
Emanuel and Vaiben Solomon arrived in Port Jackson on the Lady Castlereagh on 30 April 1818 and were immediately sent on to Hobart Town. On 9 October 1818 Emanuel Solomon was sentenced to work for the government in his own time for fourteen days and to be confined at night for ‘neglect of duty’. On 8 January 1820 he absconded from George Town and was found going out in the woods, for which he received fifty lashes and six months in the gaol gang. On 9 March 1820, for ‘repeated irregularities neglect of duty and disobedience of orders’, he was sentenced to twenty-five lashes. On 17 August 1820 he was found to have been absent from the muster at church, for which he was sentenced to three days work for the government and three nights in gaol. On 7 October 1820 he was found to have an iron pick in his possession, the property of the Crown, for which he received fifty lashes. On 17 January 1821 he was suspected of robbery in the house of Mr Newby. The trial was aborted when Mr Newby failed to prosecute. On 3 March 1821 Vaiben and Emanuel were found guilty of stealing the wearing apparel of Mr William Copperwheat and both brothers were sentenced to three years servitude at the Prison Settlement in Newcastle, New South Wales.
The harsh conditions at Newcastle seem to have made a profound impact on both young men. After Newcastle they were free by servitude and avoided the penal system. Both must be numbered among Australia's most successful emancipists. Emanuel Solomon was granted a certificate of freedom on 5 August 1824.
Emanuel married Mary Ann Wilson on 6 November 1826 at St Philip's in Sydney. Mary had been transported to Australia on the Midas in 1825 with a life sentence. She was described as having a brown complexion, and dark brown eyes. Mary Ann Solomon (whom Emanuel named ‘Rachel’) appears to have died around 1830. The Solomon brothers opened the Cheap Wholesale and Retail Warehouse at 74 George Street in 1829 sewing ready-made clothes. In 1831, after having left the fraternal business, Emanuel attempted to claim that he was insolvent: ‘The applicant stated that he had been in partnership with his brother, as general dealers, in George Street, but that some time back, he withdrew from the firm, receiving a bonus of £1250 for his share in the concern, with which he set up in business, but had been unsuccessful in his ordinary calling, as well as a speculative trip to Van Diemen's Land’. The court's assessors refused to believe Emanuel was insolvent and he escaped from the court pursued by the bailiffs.
In 1838 Emanuel moved from Sydney to Adelaide. With Emanuel was Celia Smith, a native of Ireland who became his second wife. Emanuel and Vaiben Solomon built up a flourishing intercolonial trade based on their ownership of the Dorset. A Business Letter Book is preserved in the State Library of South Australia. A descendant of Emanuel Solomon, Trevor Cohen of Melbourne, quotes the South Australian Archivist: ‘In his letters Solomon unwittingly paints his own portrait, and though one recoils from a certain ruthless and choleric vindictiveness towards his rivals, it is clear that he possessed in good measure the experience, vigour and decision necessary for success’. His business, reinforced by a liquor licence, flourished. On 11 July 1841 he opened Australia's first purpose-built theatre on mainland Australia, the Queen's Theatre. The structure of that theatre still stands. It cost £10 000 and was closed the following year due to the economic depression. It reopened in 1850 with a new facade and was renamed the Old Victoria Theatre with 180 seats. The complex included the Gilles Arcade and a tavern and associated shops.
Emanuel Solomon had married Celia Smith at Scots Church in Sydney on 12 April 1844 because, to his chagrin as noted in the Sydney Synagogue Minutes of 28 February 1844, his application to be married ‘agreeable to Jewish rites’ was refused. Their children were Elizabeth Dorsetta (1839–1914), Samuel (born 23 March 1841–1856), Rosetta (1842-1901, Julia (1844-1881), Joseph Samuel 1846-1940) and Catherine Leah (15 June 1848-1897).
Emanuel Solomon worked as an auctioneer in Adelaide from 1843 to 1847. The two brothers dissolved their partnership in 1844. In 1863 he was elected the Member for West Adelaide in the Legislative Assembly and became a Member of the Legislative Council in 1867.
Celia Solomon died in 1852, and four months later Emanuel married Catherine Abrahams (born in Portsmouth) in Adelaide in 1852; the children of their marriage were Abigail (18 January 1853 to 15 April 1854), Vaiben Joel (27 November 1854 to 27 January 1936), and Judah Moss (8 October 1857 to 27 February 1925). Judah changed his surname to ‘Senior’.
Emanuel Solomon won his place in the history of the Australian Catholic Church when he took Sister Mary Helen McKillop under his protective wing. (Perhaps she reminded him of his Irish-born wife Celia.) When Sister Mary was excommunicated by the Catholic Bishop of Adelaide in September 1871, Emanuel Solomon set aside two of his houses in Flinders Street to accommodate the twenty homeless nuns who had followed their inspired and irrepressible leader into temporary exile.
Emanuel Solomon died on 3 October 1873 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Adelaide. Solomon had made provision in his will for land in Port Pirie to be made available ‘to the first religious body which might desire a church there on’. The Bible Christians ‘took advantage’ of the offer.
HO 10/1; HO 11/2; CON 31/38, no. 92; Ship Indent 4/4006, p. 34; CF 4423; E. S. Richards, ‘The Fall and Rise of the Solomon Brothers’, AJJHS, vol. 8, no. 2 (1975); Sydney Monitor, 10 July 1830; Convicts to Newcastle, 4 August 1817, in 4/3504; Sydney Gazette, 1 August 1831, 4 August 1831, 6 August 1831, 23 June 1832, 18 October 1832, 23 April 1833, 27 August 1833, 27 November 1838, 6 August 1839; South Australian Gazette, 14 December 1839, 10 March 1847; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 10 January 1845, 6 February 1847, 25 July 1849, 28 July 1849; South Australian Almanack, 1843; Australian, 22 June 1830, 25 March 1831, 10 January 1834, 12 September 1834, 9 January 1835, 5 June 1835, 23 June 1835, 25 October 1836; Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 1844, 29 April 1844, 21 May 1844, 4 June 1844; Rodney Cockburn, Nomenclature of South Australia (1908); Family history from John David Johnston of Blackheath, NSW. AG, pp. 127, 128, 153, 177, 184, 272, 273, 309, 313; Trevor Cohen, ‘Emanuel Solomon and Mary McKillop’, AJJHS, vol. 18, part 2, p. 1608 (2006).
Emma Solomon arrived in New South Wales at the age of eleven with her mother Rebecca (q.v.) and her eight siblings. Her father, Samuel Solomon (q.v.), had been sent to Australia as a convict. Emma Solomon married Henry (Hyam) Robert Reuben (q.v.) in 1838.
SOLOMON, Esther (née DAVIS)
b. Hammersmith, 1775–1875
Enchantress, 1833; Free.
Married; 2 children.
Born in Hammersmith (London) on 1 January 1775, Esther was the daughter of Isaac Davis. She was the second wife of Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.), her first cousin, who is credited with the invention of a method of mass producing lead pencils. Her stepchildren included Vaiben and Emanuel Solomon (qq.v.), and her children were Isaac Solomon (q.v.) and Elizabeth (Betsy) Solomon (q.v.). Esther came out to Australia with her husband, bringing her son Isaac, and her stepgrandson Judah Moss Solomon (q.v.). Samuel Moss died in Sydney in 1842. Esther moved to Adelaide where her stepson Emanuel and her son Isaac lived. She died in Adelaide on 13 July 1875, aged 100 years and six months.
Observer, 9 January 1875, 17 July 1875.
SOLOMON, Esther (RUSSELL née LEVY)
b. Sheerness, 1775–1861
Palambam, 1832; Free.
Married; 8 children.
Esther (née Levy, renamed Russell), widow of the son of Abraham Abrahams, and mother of Hannah (born 1802), married Judah Solomon (q.v.) in London on 6 January 1805. She was the aunt of the Russell brothers (q.v.) and Elizabeth Davis (q.v.). Judah and Esther had seven children in England: Rachel (born 1811 died 2 December 1869), Louisa (Davis, q.v.) (born 1812 died 8 December 1885), Lydia (Benjamin, q.v.) (born 1813 died 21 January 1880), Isaac (q.v.) (1814 died 7 September 1897), Michael (q.v.) (born 1815 died 30 December 1899), Rebecca (q.v.) (born 1818 died 24 March 1875), and Sarah (q.v.) (born 1819 died 20 March 1881).
The Palambam arrived in Hobart Town on 12 December 1832. Esther was accompanied by her two single daughters, Rebecca and Sarah, and her married daughter Lydia Benjamin, who was travelling with her husband, Henry Samuel Benjamin (q.v.), and their two children, Henry and Esther.
Among the passengers on the Palambam is Mrs (Esther) Solomon, the wife of Mr Judah Solomon, merchant of this town. We understand that this lady has proceeded to the Colony to join her husband, after many years separation, with her two lovely daughters. Report states that her arrival has produced some little embarrass of a delicate nature.
Judah, her convict husband, had taken a common-law wife, and refused to return to Esther. He vacated Temple House, which he had built in Argyle Street. Esther fought long and hard to prevent Judah gaining his emancipation while he ‘lived in sin’. On 27 January 1845 Esther wrote to the Lieutenant Governor:
Although my husband was one of the highest in the colony as regards mere wealth he was and is one of the very lowest in morals. He has openly for many years and lives up to this moment in the same state with his Paramour and her spurious offspring within a few yards of His Excellency's residence. He left me with ten young children the youngest then unborn. To ameliorate their condition in a foreign land a subscription was necessary made amongst their brethren (in Sheerness) which subscription formed the basis of their present wealth.
The battle between Judah and his wife was painful and apparently endless. In March 1835 she complained to the Colonial Secretary that her husband had ‘threatened to dash her brains out’. On 21 June 1837 Judah wrote to the authorities imaginatively alleging that Esther had been living ‘a most abandoned life’ and, referring to his Argyle Street house, claiming that ‘she has made away with property valued at £1700’. On 29 January 1845 Judah presented a petition for an absolute pardon that had been signed by twelve Justices of the Peace. Esther blocked its acceptance. On 28 May 1846 she asked for information regarding Judah Solomon's free pardon, adding ‘address your answer at my daughter's Mrs Abrahams in Liverpool St’. She was told that a free pardon could not be granted.
Esther Solomon, ‘relict of the late Judah’, died on 24 September 1861, aged eighty-six, at her residence, New Town, ‘Deeply respected by a large circle of friends’. The official death certificate mistakenly recorded that she was ninety years old. She was buried in Hobart's Jewish cemetery at Harrington Street.
CSO 20/30/710; Colonial Times, 18 December 1832, p. 2; CSO 20. 30/710; Hobart Town Gazette, 30 September 1861.
SOLOMON, Esther
Deveron, 1829; Free.
Single.
Esther Solomon married David Benjamin (q.v.) in Hobart Town on 15 December 1840. Esther was the second daughter of Henry Solomon (q.v.).
Hobart Town Courier, 15 December 1840.
Esther Solomon married Richard James Edwards, tobacconist, in Hobart Town.
SOLOMON, Esther Rebecca
b. 1826 Free. Single.
On 13 October 1839 Esther Rebecca Solomon of Antill Ponds, received a grant of 100 acres for having saved the life of her father. She had asked for a grant of 1000 acres of land. The land was granted due to her bravery when the family home was attacked, and her father, David Solomon (q.v.), had his life threatened. It would have been held in trust by her mother, Ann Solomon (q.v.), until Esther either married or turned twenty-one. Esther Rebecca Solomon, aged seventeen, married Benjamin Dowling, aged twenty-one, at Avoca on 29 April 1843.
CSO 8/5/104; LSD 1/23/380–385.
SOLOMON, Eva Sarah
d. 1901
1848; Free.
Married; 12 children.
Eva was the wife of Nathaniel Solomon (q.v.).
SOLOMON, Frances (vide: Frances Cottrell)
b. London, 1814–1860
1834; Free.
Single.
SOLOMON, Francis (Frederick)
b. London, d. 1806
Fortune (1), 1806; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, Old Bailey, 1805.
Single.
Solomon stole fifty pounds weight of lead from the house of a butcher in Spitalfields. Solomon claimed that it was sold to him by a man in the street who asked him: ‘“Jew, do you know where to sell any lead?” I told him I did not know where to sell it. I came from Bristol where I had lived twenty-one years. I have got an old father and mother in London. They are very old. My father is ninety-two and my mother is seventy-two’. He was convicted on 24 April 1805.
Francis Solomon arrived in Sydney on 20 August 1806 and died shortly after arrival.
OBSP, 1804–05, case 243, p. 220; HO 11/1; Ship Indent 4/4004, p. 231; 2/8257, p. 295.
Frederick Solomon was listed in the 1820 General Muster of New South Wales as a ‘government labourer’.
HO 10/13.
SOLOMON, Goodman
b. Whitechapel, 1807
Lady East, 1825; Convict; Sentenced to 7 years, London, 1822.
Single; A tailor's lad; Height: 157.5 cm.
Dark complexion, dark hair, scar on nose. Lost front tooth in upper jaw. A mermaid and the letters ‘G.S’ tattooed on right arm. Goodman Solomon, aged fifteen, and John Bailey, aged ten, went into a shop to buy a penny Jews' harp and stole a piece of a brass crimping machine. They were caught when they tried to sell it to a nearby ironmonger. Solomon was sentenced at the Old Bailey on 23 October 1822. Solomon had been in custody before and his gaol report was ‘a bad lad’. Perhaps he learned from that experience because his hulk report was ‘a good boy. This lad is a Jew. His general conduct on this ship have been attentive to his trade’. He was on the list of eighteen boy convicts discharged from the Hulk Belleaphoron at Sheerness for New South Wales on 21 October 1824.
Solomon arrived in Van Diemen's Land on 9 April 1825. He had been considered too young to send to Australia following his trial and remained in custody for three years before his transportation at the end of 1824. He was assigned to John James, a tailor. On 20 September 1826 and on 3 March 1827 he was reprimanded for absence from the muster and from church while working as an assigned servant to Mr John James. On 29 September 1827 he was returned to the government for having ‘connived at immoral practices with Catherine, wife of Mark Solomon [q.v.] who has absconded and is illegally at large’. (Catherine was working as a prostitute.) On 4 February 1829 he was sentenced at Hobart Town to two months with the chain gang for having absconded from a work party at the Ross Bridge.
Unable to survive alone he had finally surrendered himself at the Prisoners' Barracks at Hobart Town. On 3 October 1829 he was sent to the chain gang at St Peter's Pass for insolence to the overseer of his work party. Twelve days later, for ‘insolence and indolence’, while attached to the chain gang at Oatlands, he was confined to the chain gang for the remainder of his sentence. A certificate of freedom was issued on 26 October 1829.
OBSP, 1821–22, case 1500, p. 570; CON 31/38, no. 661; VDL Papers, ML, A1059-1, p. 136; HO 11/5; Hobart Town Courier, 31 October 1829; CF 29/266.
SOLOMON, Hannah
b. London, 1818–1852
Enchantress, 1833; Free.
Single.
Hannah Solomon arrived with her father, Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.), and stepmother Esther Solomon (q.v.) in April 1833. Hannah married Benjamin Samuel Cohen.
The daughter of Mark Solomon (q.v.) and Catherine Flanagen (sic.) Born 15 July 1803. Hannah Solomon married Aaron Aarons (John Henry Anderson, q.v.). Hannah had at least six children of whom three died in infancy. Catherine died at the age of 30 in 1833 at her home in Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town and Mark died in 1837.
Hobart Town Gazette, 5 October 1838, 11 October 1839.
SOLOMON, Henry
b. Sheerness, 1801–1843
Deveron, 1829; Free.
Married; Jeweller; 3 children.
Henry Solomon was a brother of Judah (q.v.), Joseph (q.v.), and Samuel Solomon (q.v.). His wife was Elizabeth. He arrived as a free settler in Hobart Town on 23 December 1829. He was listed as a cabin class passenger on the Prince Regent that arrived in Port Jackson 20 June 1830. He was said to have been born in England. He was a resident of Hobart Town and a dealer. The Colonial Times reported on 15 July 1834 that he had a shop and was a jeweller and silversmith at 14 Argyle Street in Hobart Town. By 1836 he had moved to 39 Elizabeth Street. The 1842 census showed that he was a tenant in a stone building and had three children below the age of fourteen. Henry Solomon, ‘jeweller of Elizabeth St’, stood surety for the notorious Isaac (Ikey) Solomon (q.v.) (who was probably a cousin) when he needed bail after Judah Solomon had been forced to withdraw his support.
Henry's daughter Sarah, ‘a minor’, married her cousin Michael Solomon (q.v.) at the home of her parents in Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town, on 6 June 1840. Louis Nathan (q.v.) and David Hecksher (q.v.) signed the official marriage certificate to the first Jewish marriage in Van Diemen's Land.
At Michael's insolvency hearing in August 1842 at the Supreme Court in Melbourne, the court was told of ‘a person named Henry Solomon of Van Diemen's Land who was said to have accepted 700 sheep, a horse and a dray in place of a “large debt”’. The veracity of the story of the arrangement was dismissed by the judge.
Henry Solomon ‘of Victoria House’ in Elizabeth Street in Hobart Town died on 30 March 1843 and left an estate worth £200. In November 1845 his widow Elizabeth asked permission from the synagogue to marry Mr Simeon Benjamin (q.v.). The congregation decided to give her permission to do so providing she settled £1000 from her late husband's estate on her children. A further £25 was also demanded because she had not previously supported the congregation as a member. The couple refused to comply (and judging from the size of the estate could not comply) and on 8 January 1846 the congregation informed the registrar that the proposed marriage would not take place. On 21 January 1846 Mrs Solomon paid the congregation £18 7s 3d and the marriage was performed. Esther (q.v.), the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Solomon, married David Benjamin (q.v.) at her parents' house 15 December 1840. On 20 May 1851 Louisa Solomon, aged seventeen, married Moses Abrahams, a draper, at her stepfather's house in Liverpool Street.
Hobart Town Courier, 23 December 1829, 15 December 1840, 10 March 1843; Prince Regent Indent 4/5201; CSO 5/13/3131, 10 July 1838; Port Phillip Herald, 23 August 1842, 17 November 1845; Hobart Synagogue meeting, 21 January 1846; Colonial Times, 15 July 1834.
SOLOMON, Henry (PALMER)
b. London, 1808–1854
Charles Kerr, 1837; Convict; Sentenced to life, Old Bailey, 1836.
Single; Servant.
In his trial at the Old Bailey Henry Solomon, alias Palmer, was described as a servant who used to be a baker and had done odd jobs such as cleaning windows. He was accused of stealing £80 from a fellow servant whose dying father had given her the money. He got drunk after the theft and gave himself away. He was sentenced on 19 September 1836.
Henry Solomon was listed in the 1837 General Return of Convicts in New South Wales, working as an assigned servant for Mr John Ginger in Sydney. Solomon received a ticket of leave for the district of Sydney in 1845. On 10 June 1848 Bell's Life reported that Henry Solomon had been sentenced to six months hard labour in Sydney for stealing a £1 note. He received a second ticket of leave on 31 December 1849 and a conditional pardon in 1851. Henry Solomon married Mary Mason at Scots Church in 1848.
The Colonial Secretary asked on 30 March 1850 why ‘certain enquiries’ had been made about Henry Solomon, which had caused ‘unceasing trouble’.
Solomon died on 30 September 1854 but was not listed on the York Street Burial Register. It is possible, therefore, that, despite his name and given the choice of his place of marriage, Henry Solomon was not Jewish.
OBSP 1836, case 2055, p. 789f.; TL 45/2079; CS 50/3217, 30 March 1850.
SOLOMON, Henry (Harry)
b. London, 1816–1881
Free.
Single; Dealer.
Henry was the younger brother of Samuel Solomon (q.v.) who and had arrived in Australia on the Mangles in 1833, and his mother Rebecca (q.v.) followed, with eight of the children, in 1835. Henry stayed behind in England and migrated later.
Within ten years the fortunes of the Solomon family had improved and Samuel Solomon had established a general store at Reed's (Jews') Flat, five miles from Cooma. Harry Solomon managed the general store on behalf of the family. He married Caroline Magnusson who died 7 May 1857 in Bombala and was originally interred in the Devonshire Street cemetery. Authority for her re-interment was by her daughter Deborah Solomon who was the only child of the marriage.
Henry Solomon of Eden died on 1 May 1881 and was buried at the Rookwood Jewish Cemetery three days later. He was said to be sixty-six years old and was described in the Hebrew inscription as ‘a good and honest man’.
Family information Dinah Harvey.
SOLOMON, Isaac (Ikey)
b. Houndsditch, 1783–1850
William Glen Anderson, 1831; Convict; Sentenced to 14 years, Old Bailey, 1830.
Married; Dealer; Height: 175 cm; 6 children.
Dark complexion, black hair, black whiskers, long narrow face, high forehead, brown thin eyebrows, hazel eyes, roman nose, projecting short chin. Isaac Solomon was transported for receiving stolen goods. Isaac Solomon's father Henry was sentenced at the Old Bailey in 1827 to a mere six months gaol, ‘on account of his great age’, for receiving stolen jewellery.
Ikey Solomon may well have been the model for Fagin in Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. Dickens, a court reporter at the time, almost certainly used a play on the Yiddish/Hebrew word ganef to personify ‘the Jew’ who was London's most infamous fence. It should, however, be noted that a London magistrate, Fagin, whom Dickens despised, may also have provided the novelist with the name of his villain.
On 17 April 1810, together with Joel Moses Joseph (q.v.), the 21-year-old Isaac Solomon was convicted for stealing a purse containing £40 and a warrant for £56 from a man attending a political meeting at New Palace Yard in front of Westminster Hall. Both men were sentenced to be transported for the term of their natural life and sent to the convict hulk Zealand, anchored off Sheerness. Joseph was sent to New South Wales on the Admiral Gambier. In an episode that suggests that Solomon was protected by the Solomon family in Sheerness or Chatham, Ikey remained on board the hulk where he prospered, being supplied with clothes and trinkets from the shore. In 1816 he escaped from custody and, four weeks later, wisely surrendered to the authorities. In exchange for this virtuous act, on 26 October 1816 the magistrates granted him a free pardon and Isaac began to work for an uncle who lived in nearby Chatham.
Some ten years earlier, Ikey had married the 14-year-old Ann Solomon (née Julian) (q.v.), and together they established a network of organised crime throughout the metropolis of London. Presumably, with the help of friends in high places, he became a Navy Agent and was therefore able to ship stolen goods overseas. By 1825 it was said that he had established a chain of brothels in London. In May 1826 a series of brazen London robberies caused such an outcry that the police were forced to act, and a warrant was issued to search the Solomons' premises in Bell Lane, near Petticoat Lane, in Spitalfields. Ikey escaped the police raid and remained at large for almost a year. On 23 April 1827 he was brought before the Lambeth Police Court charged with the possession of five stolen watches, and on 3 May was charged with possessing stolen goods worth more than £1400. Solomon was sent to Newgate Gaol and a writ of habeas corpus caused him to be taken to the King's Bench at Westminster. Mysteriously, Ann's father managed to take the role of the coach driver, and, even more dramatically, in the course of the brief journey across London the accused man escaped and found himself ensconced on a ship bound for Denmark. From Denmark, Ikey travelled to New York, while, in London, his wife, together with anyone who bore the surname Solomon, was confronted by the police. Ann Solomon faced trial at the Old Bailey in September 1827 and was duly sentenced to fourteen years transportation. She was sent to Van Diemen's Land, with permission to take her four youngest children with her.
When the American newspapers reported the extraordinary saga of the Solomon family's deportation, Isaac Solomon set sail for Van Diemen's Land, arriving in Hobart Town on 15 February 1829. Not surprisingly, as one of London's most notable criminals, he was immediately recognised. However, to the acute embarrassment of the authorities, he could not be arrested until his identity and his alleged crimes could be officially identified.
On 1 December 1829, Lieutenant Governor Arthur wrote to Under Secretary Twiss:
he has been brought before the Court under a Writ of Habeas Corpus, and there is much apprehension that the Judge will discharge him, but his honour has not yet decided. If he gets off, however, I am prepared immediately to issue another Warrant, and I shall give it all the formality of proceeding from the Governor in Council—it appears to me monstrous that an offender of such notoriety should escape the hands of Justice.
After complicated legal manoeuvres Solomon was sent back to England to stand trial. Strangely, he was not tried for escaping from custody but for the original charge of receiving stolen goods.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey in July 1830. It was hardly surprising to discover the evidence had vanished, because the Solomons could not have flourished without the connivance of the Metropolitan Police. Ikey therefore escaped execution. He was sentenced to fourteen years transportation and sent back to Hobart Town! When he arrived there he attempted to exploit the system of the colonial classification of prisoners. Ikey declared that in 1810, under the alias of Moses Joseph, he had been sent out to Australia for having stolen a pocket book. He claimed to have been pardoned and that within three or four years he had been able to return to England. This information was duly entered at the top of his convict dossier.
In 1832–33, Solomon was at Richmond Gaol where he became a javelin man. It is said that this privileged form of punishment was a reward for having warned the crew of the transport ship that his fellow convicts were planning a mutiny. During his time in Richmond he was convicted twice for abusive language and tendering false and malicious charges against the administrators of the gaol. In January 1835 he was granted a ticket of leave on condition that he live at least twenty miles from Hobart Town.
His family no longer wished to live with him. On 18 February 1835 he was ‘severely reprimanded for using obscene language in an argument with Reuben Joseph [q.v.] in the presence of many respectable females’. On 3 July 1835 he received a warning about ‘drunkenness and abusive behaviour towards his family—equal blame existing on the part of Solomon and his family’. Solomon remained at New Norfolk until 1838, when he moved to New Town. He received a conditional pardon in May 1840 and a certificate of freedom in 1844. His youngest daughter, Sarah (q.v.), married Godfrey B. Levy (George Levy, q.v.) under the marriage canopy on 27 January 1847 at his home on the New Town Road. Solomon became a member of the Hobart Town Synagogue and owned a small tobacconist shop in Hobart Town. Ikey Solomon died, aged sixty-six, on 3 September 1850. His was the eighth Jewish funeral to be conducted in Hobart Town. His Hebrew name was Isaac the son of Tzvi.
The children of Isaac and Ann Solomon were John (born 1807) (q.v.), Moses (1809) (q.v.), David (1819) (q.v.), Anne (Nancy) (1820), Sarah (1823), and Mark (1825) (q.v.).
OBSP, 1830, case 107, p. 57; CON 14/2; CON 18/21, no. 1407; CON 31/39.S, 1407; CON 14/2; Letter from George Arthur to the Bishop of London, 17 October 1828, Aa 75/3, at ML, OD, vol. 4, p. 661f.; Launceston Independent, 22 December 1832; Launceston Advertiser, 16 November 1829; Colonial Times, 8 January 1830; Hobart Town Courier, 30 August 1828, 28 November 1829, 20 November 1830, 25 September 1840, 19 March 1841, 26 March 1841; J. J. Tobias, Prince of Fences; AG, ch. 7, p. 217f.; Judith Sackville-O'Donnell, The First Fagin.
SOLOMON, Isaac
b. London, 1814–1897
1833; Free.
Married; 18 children.
Isaac Solomon was the fourth child and first son of Judah Solomon (q.v.) and Esther Solomon (q.v.) (née Levy, Russell). His first marriage was to Elizabeth Solomon (born 1817 and the daughter of Samuel Solomon) in London. Isaac and Elizabeth Solomon arrived in Van Diemen's Land in March 1833. It may have been a de facto relationship, because it was recorded that Isaac Solomon married Elizabeth Solomon in Launceston on 3 July 1834 in what was obviously a Christian marriage ceremony. Solomon was granted a licence to run the Hope and Anchor Tavern in Launceston in 1834.
On 21 December 1833 Elizabeth Solomon and a servant visited Sydney on the Brothers. Solomon held the licence for the Perth Inn between 1835 and 1837. Isaac Solomon became a member of the Hobart Town Synagogue in 1842 and served on its committee that year. In the 1842 census of Van Diemen's Land he was listed as a shopkeeper living in Collins Street with four children under the age of seven and two assigned convict servants. He rented seat no. 1 in the Synagogue and gave the congregation £50 in 1843 and a further £50 in 1845.
On 17 January 1845, in the Hobart Town Advertiser, Solomon announced that he had imported 400 000 ‘Segars’. They could be purchased at his shops in Elizabeth Street and Murray Street opposite the Post Office and at his store in Collins Street.
On 13 December 1846 the minutes of the synagogue tell of a confrontation between Mrs Isaac Solomon and the wife of Louis Nathan (q.v.). It was a matter of ‘outrageous conduct and violent language used by Mrs Isaac Solomon towards Mrs Nathan. Mr Isaac Solomon admitted his wife had ‘done wrong’. It was resolved to ‘remove’ Mrs Solomon from her assigned seat no. 7 in the synagogue. On 2 December 1847 the committee of the Hobart Synagogue accepted a letter of resignation from Solomon as he wrote that he would be ‘shortly returning to England’. He must have changed his mind.
All twelve children were born in Hobart Town. Isaac and his half-brother Joseph Solomon (q.v.) worked as partners as wine and spirit merchants at Temple House from 1854. When Judah Solomon died in 1856, Isaac inherited the mansion, with Joseph managing the business in Hobart and Isaac in Launceston. Isaac had left Tasmania for New Zealand by the end of 1863 and the mansion was put on the market. Isaac and Elizabeth Solomon joined in the gold rush to the South Island of New Zealand, taking their large family with them. None of their children appear to have married Jews.
The children were: Samuel (born 19 May 1835, in Hobart Town), Judah (10 October 1836), Rachel (16 May 1838), Esther (17 January 1840), Sarah (8 March 1842), Hannah (22 December 1843), Michael (24 September 1845), Joseph (22 January 1848), Rebecca (1 October 1849), Dinah (10 September 1851), Miriam (13 February 1856), and Catherine (19 November 1857).
Elizabeth died in Dunedin on 1 February 1877. Samuel lived with Mary Jane Stephenson in Dunedin and they had six children. They were: Mary Hetherington (born 31 August 1883), Daisy (3 May 1885), Matthew Harold (12 February 1887), Violetta (7 December 1888), Lilian Jane (7 December 1889), and Herbert Ormond (3 September 1891).
Isaac Solomon died on 7 September 1897 at Dunedin.
Hobart Town Gazette, 9 October 1834, 8 October 1835; LSD 1/76, p. 29; Hobart Town Advertiser, 7 January 1845.
SOLOMON, Isaac
b. London, 1818–1901
Enchantress, 1833; Free.
Single; Dealer; 12 children.
Isaac Solomon, born on 5 April 1818, arrived in Sydney with his parents on the Enchantress. He was a son of Samuel Moss Solomon and Esther Solomon (qq.v.), a half-brother of Emanuel and Vaiben Solomon (qq.v.), and eight other siblings and a step-uncle of Judah Moss Solomon (q.v.). Isaac Solomon returned to London in 1837 and then came back to Australia in order to marry his 22-year-old step-niece, Isabella Solomon (q.v.), at the Sydney Synagogue on 15 June 1842.
Isaac then began business with his half-brother Emanuel Solomon. He became Queensland's first land auctioneer, conducting the first land sales on behalf of the New South Wales Government. During the years 1843–45 Isaac, with Judah M. Solomon, and alone, bought land in Brisbane, South Brisbane and Ipswich. Solomon settled in Adelaide and ‘Isaac Solomon of Adelaide’ gave £10 to the Sydney Synagogue building appeal in 1839. He was listed as the innkeeper of the Shakespeare Tavern in May 1841 and was active selling tickets for Emanuel Solomon's new theatre in Adelaide. In 1846 Solomon returned to Sydney and developed extensive trade links with the South Pacific. By mid-1848 Isaac Solomon was listed as the innkeeper of the Crooked Billet in Sydney. Solomon returned to Adelaide to work as an auctioneer in the new province, working together with Mark Salom (q.v.). Salom married Solomon's stepsister Elizabeth Solomon and the partnership Solomon and Salom was formed. The first meeting to form a Jewish congregation was held in their Temple Tavern in Weymouth Street, near the Court House, on 10 September 1848. The setting was far from salubrious.
On 14 March 1849 a hearing was held to investigate the granting of a ‘Tap’ to be kept at the inn by Abraham Lazar, the son of John Lazar (q.v.). The magistrate, Mr Green, observed: ‘We hear of bad accommodation in your house!’ Mr Edward Stephens, a second magistrate, said: ‘The tap is also complained of. It is very noisy. I wish you would sweep around it. People cannot attend the court with clean boots while it is covered with all kinds of nastiness’. Appropriate promises were made and the licence for the public bar was granted.
Isabella died in Adelaide on 1 December 1863 at the age of forty-three. Isaac died in Melbourne at the home of his daughter, Mrs Josiah Marks (née Julia Solomon), on 27 July 1901.
Isaac and Isabella Solomon's children were: Samuel (1843) and Moss (1844), both born in Sydney, Judah Moss (18 September 1846) born in Adelaide (and later known as Judan Moss Solomon Jnr), Saul (20 June 1848), Joseph (21 August 1849, who died at the age of three months), Elizabeth (24 January 1851, who married the Rev. Abraham Tobias Boas, the 27-year-old minister of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, on 15 May 1873), Esther (18 April 1852), Morris (3 February 1854, who died at the age of seven weeks), Emanuel (7 October 1855), Leah (24 June 1857, who died on 4 February 1858), Julia (14 December 1858), and Kate (4 November 1862).
British Sovereign Indent, arrived Port Jackson, 22 May 1838; Land Purchases 2/7974, 18 February 1845; Shipping Gazette, 13 June 1846; Sydney Chronicle, 6 May 1848; Australian, 4 April 1837, 29 June 1838; Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April 1844, 15 November 1844; South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 8 May 1841, 18 February 1847, 10 September 1848, 14 March 1849.
SOLOMON, Isabella
b. London, 1820–1863
Free.
Single.
The eldest daughter of Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.) and Betsy (née Myers), Isabella was born on 17 September 1820. On 15 June 1842, at the age of twenty-two, Isabella married her uncle, Isaac Solomon (q.v.), son of Samuel Moss Solomon (q.v.). Isabella died on 1 December 1863 at her home in Norwood, South Australia, and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at West Terrace.
Her twelve children are listed in the previous entry.
SOLOMON, Israel
b. London, 1809
Ann, 1833; Free.
Married; Book binder; 8 children.
The Ann arrived in Sydney on 13 November 1833 with the free emigrant Israel Solomon, twenty-four years of age. With him were his wife Sarah (q.v.), aged twenty-one, his father John Solomon (q.v.), and his mother, Sarah (q.v.).
Israel and Sarah Solomon had a daughter, Georgiana, born on 8 October 1833 during the journey to Sydney. Israel was listed as the exporter of 80 bales of wool to England in May 1842. Israel Solomon served on the synagogue committee in 1839 and 1842. He was a seat holder in the Sydney Synagogue and gave £30 to its building appeal in 1845. In 1847 he bought 10 acres of land at Bongodong on the Murrumbidgee River (near Gundagai). According to the Shipping Gazette of 7 April 1845, he was importing small quantities of goods from London for resale.
A second daughter, Rebecca (6 October 1835), was born in Sydney, followed by Sarah (1838), Mary (1840), Leah (1842), Rosetta (1844), Eve (1846), and Rachael (1849).
Ship Indent 4/5205; Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 1842, 30 September 1843, 7 April 1845; Land Correspondence 2/7974, July 1847; Shipping Gazette, 14 December 1844, 29 January 1846.