James Duffield
1798-1860
James Duffield,
the first child of John and Maria, was baptised at
Darlaston on 4th November, 1798. He was the eldest
of their seven children surviving at the time John Duffield was hanged in August 1819. In October of
that year his sister Nancy died and was buried in
Darlaston on 4th October, 1819. Soon after this,
James began a string of robberies, the first of
these on 7th November, 1819 being the theft of
eighteen fowls and two cocks, the property of Thomas
Green. It is possible that this was the same Thomas
Green, Maltster of Darlaston, who had been
instrumental in the conviction of his father. His
motivation may have been simply to support the
family after the death of John.
By the time James
was arrested on 29th January, 1820, the
Staffordshire Advertiser reports that he was
charged with a total of five burglaries, two common
felonies and one charge of stealing from a shop. The
Assizes Indictment Files give details of all these
offences, for which he was tried at the Stafford
Assizes on 11th March, 1820. He was found guilty of
one charge of burglary in the dwelling house of Job
Bridgwater, and stealing 15 pairs of shoes value £3.
He was sentenced to be hanged. The other charges
(including those against various other persons
charged as implicated with Duffield) were not
proceeded with. The Assizes were reported in the
Wolverhampton Chronicle and the Staffordshire
Advertiser. The Staffordshire Advertiser
reports on 18th March that “... All the other capital
convicts, 13 in number (among whom was James Duffield, son of the man who was executed at the
last summer assizes) were reprieved before the
Judges left town.”
The Staffordshire
Sheriff’s Payments show claims for the cost of
keeping Duffield in Stafford Gaol at a rate of
2s..6d per week for “dieting” from 13th March to
29th May, 1820. The Oxford Circuit, Lent Assizes
Papers include a letter from the Circuit Judges
listing those reprieved, with a recommendation that
in the case of Duffield it be a condition of his
reprieve that he should be “transported to parts
beyond the seas for and during the whole term of his
natural life”.
On
29th May, 1820 James Duffield left Stafford Gaol. The
Staffordshire Advertiser reported “On Monday last,
eighteen convicts, under sentence of transportation,
were removed from our county gaol for the hulks at
Portsmouth; viz. Joseph Chapman, Samuel Crouder, Richard
Hinton, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Green, Thomas Hutchinson,
Thomas Hackett, Thomas Turner, James Duffield, Charles
Bates, George Clarke, Edward Saunders, Thomas Lowe, Eli
Harrold, William Stanley, William Price, Thomas Burgess
and John Cook.” The Transportation Registers show that
fourteen of these convicts, including James Duffield,
left England on the convict ship Hebe on 7th July,
1820 for Australia. The Hebe arrived in New South
Wales on 31st December, 1820. On arrival James Duffield
was described as a Buckle Maker of Darlaston, height 5'
9".
Various Musters and Convict Censuses show that James
Duffield was employed on Government Works in N.S.W. for the
next nine years. This work would have consisted largely
of road making and other construction work. The 1828
Convict Census shows him aged 29 as a Government Servant
employed as a Sawyer at Field of Mars. In 1829 he was
granted a Ticket of Leave No.29/594. This recorded that
James Duffield had arrived on the ship Hebe,
Master Wetherall, in 1820. He was a native of
Staffordshire and was currently employed as a Sawyer. He
had been convicted at Stafford Assizes on 9th March,
1820 and sentenced to Life. He was shown as born in
1801, was 5' 9" tall with a ruddy complexion, dark brown
hair and blue eyes. His Ticket of Leave allowed him to
remain in the Parramatta District.
In
the early years of the New South Wales colony, most
convicts were married by banns. Convicts could only be
married by banns after they had first obtained official
permission to marry. The records of these permissions
show that on 27th July, 1835 James Duffield aged 36,
transported on the Hebe and holding a Ticket of
Leave applied to marry Ann Pincham aged 19 (actually
only 15), born in the Colony, with the marriage to be
conducted by C. Dickinson at Field of Mars. Permission
was granted on 4th August, 1835.
On
8th October, 1835 James Duffield married the 15 year old
Ann Pincham, the fourth of five children of William
Pincham and Ann Patfield, at Field of Mars, Marsfield,
Ryde, N.S.W. Her mother, Ann Patfield, was the daughter of
Mary Bryan who had been sentenced to 7 years
transportation in 1791 at Exeter for stealing goods and
had arrived in Sydney Cove on the Bellona in
January 1793. Mary Bryan married George Patfield at St.
John’s Parramatta on 19th May, 1793. George Patfield was a
“Second Fleeter” after being sentenced to 7 years
transportation at Taunton, and as such has been
extensively researched. He had survived the horrific
conditions on the Neptune, where 147 of the
original 424 male convicts who had embarked died on the
voyage, and arrived in Sydney in June 1790. George and
Mary settled at Kissing Point and had eight children.
George Patfield obtained two 30 acre grants of land in
April 1798 and by 1800 had 19 acres sown in wheat and
maize and owned 3 pigs and 3 sheep as well as having one
of the largest orchards in the Kissing Point district.
On 11th October, 1809 George Patfield hanged himself
with a silk scarf tied to a small oak tree, and an
Inquest was held on 13th October. His wife Mary lived
until 1853.
Ann Patfield was the second child of George and Mary,
born 28th March, 1796 and baptised at St. Philips,
Sydney Cove on 2nd July, 1796. She married William
Pincham in 1812 at St. John’s, Parramatta when she would
have been about 16. William Pincham, a Wool Comber, had
arrived in the Colony as a convict on the Duke of
Portland in 1807 after receiving a sentence of
Transportation for Life at Plymouth in 1806 and would
have been about 48 at the time of their marriage.
In
December 1835 Duffield is reported as an intended victim
of a party of Bushrangers operating in the area of Lane
Cove. One of the Bushrangers was Samuel Holloway who had
in 1829 married Mary Pincham, the sister of Duffield’s
wife. It was reported that, on the very day that the
bushrangers were captured, they planned to carry out a
series of robberies that would have included the
premises of Duffield, presumably as Holloway was
familiar with them. The Sydney Herald of 4th
January, 1836 has a graphic description of the pursuit
and capture of the bushrangers. Samuel Holloway was
found guilty of aiding and abetting a highway robbery
and after a period on board the Hulk Phoenix was
on 26th July, 1836 sent to Norfolk Island on the
Carnarvon. Samuel Holloway was accidentally killed
on Norfolk Island and buried there on 11th February,
1838 aged 42 years.
In
1836 James Duffield’s father-in-law William Pincham died
aged 74. About this time James and Ann must have moved
to South Colah as the 1837 Return of Convicts shows
James Duffield, 34, Hebe 1821, South Colah, a
Ticket of Leave man. On 26th July, 1839 a Convict Pardon
for James Duffield was approved by the Secretary of
State.
The index to the 1841 NSW Census shows James Duffield at
Colo (an alternative spelling of Colah), Cook County,
Windsor District. Their first child was not born until
1847 and it has been suggested by their descendants that
Ann perhaps had a problem carrying children to full
term. Their first child James W. Duffield, son of James
and Ann, was born on 24th February, 1847 and baptised at St.
John’s, Parramatta. About 1852 John Henry Duffield was
born at Lane Cove, followed by Eliza J Duffield at
Gordon in 1853 and George at St. Leonards in 1856.
In
1860 in the Parramatta District, the death of James Duffield, son of James (actually John) and Maria was
registered and on 2nd June, 1860, his death was recorded
in the Burial Registers of All Saints Church, Parramatta.
His wife Ann lived for almost another 50 years. She died
on 30th April, 1910 and the Death Certificate shows that
at the time of her death she had three children living:
John aged 59, Eliza aged 57 and George aged 55, with one
male child (James who had died in 1896) deceased.
The children of James Duffield and Ann Pincham all
married and left many descendants in Australia. One
branch still bears the Duffield name. |
