Farm rioters banished, flogged and treadmilled

By Terry Walker | read time 4 minutes

In 1831, riots, hayrick burning and vandalism erupted in the English countryside. Impoverished law-breakers, like farm labourer William Acres, age 22, were hunted down, dragged from their families and transported by convict ships 12,000 miles to penal colonies in Australia and Tasmania. As convicts, they suffered floggings, days on treadmills, and chain gang labour. Life for agricultural workers was always a hard struggle, but now things got even worse.

Following a series of cold winters and poor harvests, farming was in the doldrums in Eastern Counties like Essex. Landowners and farmers had ended annual labour contracts. Labourers were employed daily or worked on a piecework basis. Their skills included ploughing, sowing seeds, reaping, and threshing. They could not work in bad weather and if they didn’t work, they didn’t earn a penny.

Traditional winter work for farm workers included threshing in the barns. However, the new machines had taken over the work traditionally performed by manpower. Farms in Essex were among the first to use threshing machines for harvesting. From 1830, they were widely used in the fields of North Essex. 

Due to the efficient threshing machines, there was little winter work available. Many workers were unable to earn enough to support their families and pay their bills. Public disorder and violent riots broke out. Many North Essex farm labourers like William Acres were arrested and convicted of ”feloniously breaking a threshing machine” on the farms. He, Robert Davey, 32, both also from Kirby le Soken and Peter Eade, 42, from nearby Little Holland, were sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) penal colony for seven or 14 years.

They were among the 112 prisoners aboard the convict ship Proteus when she set sail on April 12 1831, arriving in VDL on August 3 1831

Three brothers from Kirby Le Soken, who had been convicted of destroying a threshing machine on a nearby farm, had already been transported to VDL on the convict ship Eliza, arriving there on 29 May 1831. James Grant, age 31 and Thomas, age 28, were each sentenced to 14 years, while John, age 23, received seven years at the penal colony. The records show that despite the hardships, they all survived to complete their sentences.

The six-foot-tall William Acres had lived in the village of Kirby Le Soken with his parents, William and Elizabeth, and younger sisters, Susan and Martha. He settled into the harsh routine of the penal colony. He was forced to labour 12-14 hours a day, six days a week, to provide roads and buildings for the expanding British colony.

Repeated neglect of duties

By November 1831, William Acres was in deep trouble with the overseer. He had been found drunk and ordered to spend 10 days on the colony treadmill, which was used to grind grain and punish prisoners. Each grim day was spent treading for 40 minutes, with 20-minute rest periods in between. 

He survived the punishment but then went “absent without leave,” an offence that resulted in a further 10 days on the treadmill, ending on December 8. But William Acres’s behaviour deteriorated and the following month he was sentenced to a public flogging with a “cat o’nine tails for repeated neglect of duties. He received 50 lashes, witnessed by the convicts and staff. His wounds would have been rubbed with salt to minimise infection. 

Flogged men often became embittered, and the punishment brutalised both the victim and the fellow convict carrying it out. For William Acres, it became a turning point. It seems he became a model prisoner, being “peaceable, loyal, and industrious.” He earned a free pardon in February 1836. It is not known what happened next. Was he reunited with his family and friends in North Essex? Or, did he decide to remain in Tasmania or the more advanced Australia, a land of opportunity for an “industrious fellow”? 

UPDATE

Records for 1830-1831, compiled by the English Home Office and Australian authorities, indicate that 2,097 agricultural workers were tried, convicted, and transported to New South Wales or Van Diemen’s Land (renamed Tasmania in 1856). A few served their sentences in England, some died during the 13-16 week journeys or on arrival.

Court sentences were generally seven years or 14 years in a penal colony. From 1836, free pardons were granted for good behaviour and masny of the convicts stayed on to make a new life in the developing and prospering new British colony.

242 farm labourers were found guilty of breaking or destroying farm machinery, 159 of riotous conduct, and eight of making threats. There were 352 murderers transported in convict ships, but records do not indicate any directly related to the agricultural unrest. Surprisingly, 429 men and women were transported for stealing handkerchiefs.

Family history researchers who suspect an ancestor may have been a penal convict in Australia or Tasmania can make a quick, free check at the revised database at Claim a Convict. The website allows users to browse by surname or by convict ship. Users can contact other researchers investigating the same convict ancestor and share information. For North Essex checks on convict returnees, contact the Frinton Heritage Trust

Convict lists from Research Data Australia to share.

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