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Elizabeth Martha Clarke – Her Confession

Dec 25th, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
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It was the 9th of August 1856: the weather was sombre enveloping Dorchester in drizzle, perhaps anticipating, but unable to stop “several thousand” people of the town and thereabouts from congregating to witness the awful event to take place there that morning.

Christened Elizabeth Martha Clark the daughter of John and Elizabeth Clark at a simple ceremony in St.James’ church Allington on the 22nd of July 1802 at the end of which the rector John Blessed entered her name in the church registers to confirm her entry in to the Church. Who could possibly have foreseen the ordeal that her life was to be and the horrors she was to face at the end of it?

Her father John Clark was an agricultural labourer surviving on a meagre income. Elizabeth, would have quickly learnt to help her parents with the family chores. Childhood would have been short.

Martha’s confession made in Dorchester Prison 7 August 1856 before The Governor and the Prison Chaplain the Rev, Dacre Clemetson.

 “My husband, John Anthony Brown, came home on Sunday morning, the 6th of July at two o’clock, in liquor, and was sick. He had no hat on. I asked him what he had done with his hat. He abused me, and said “What is that to you? Damn you!” He then asked for some cold tea. I said I had none, but would make him some warm. His answer was “Drink it yourself and be damned.” I then said, “What makes you so cross? Have you been to Mary Davis’s?”

He then kicked out the bottom of the chair on which I had been sitting, and we continued quarrelling until 3 o’clock, when he struck me a severe blow on the side of the head, which confused me so much I was obliged to sit down.

He then said (supper being on the table at the time) “Eat it yourself and be damned,” and reached down from the mantelpiece a heavy hand whip, with a plaited head and struck me across the shoulders with it 3 times, and every time I screamed out I said “if you strike me again, I will cry murder” He replied “if you do I will knock your brains through the window,” and said hoped he should find me dead in the morning, and then kicked me on the left side, which caused me much pain.

He immediately stooped down to unbuckle his boots, and being much enraged, and in an ungovernable passion at being so abused and struck, I seized a hatchet that was lying close to where I sat, and which I had been making use of to break coal for keeping up the fire to keep his supper warm, and struck him several violent blows on the head – I could not say how many – and he fell at the first blow on his side, with his face to the fireplace and he never spoke or moved afterwards.

As soon as I had done it I would have given the world not to have done it. I had never struck him before after all his ill treatment, but when he hit me so hard at this time I was almost out of my senses, and hardly knew what I was doing!”

Martha’s journey from this world to the next took four to five minutes and this can be put down to the cruelty of her executioner: William Calcraft, the hangman who favoured the short drop technique and presided over her departure from this world. Calcraft’s successor later commented “Calcraft killed, I execute….” Today society would see Martha as a victim not a killer. We must hope a more sympathetic justice awaited her.

Elizabeth Martha Clarke: “a most kind and inoffensive woman..”

Dec 24th, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Saturday the 9th of August 1856 saw Dorchester enveloped in penetrating drizzle. This miserable weather did nothing to dissuade the people of the town from being on the streets early, joining many from towns and villages the length and breadth of the county who where already assembling to witness the awful event to take place early that morning. The local newspaper estimated four thousand were out in the town.

Elizabeth Martha Clarke was in Dorchester. She had snatched only two hours sleep that night and declined breakfast deciding instead to make do with a cup of tea, for in a little over an hour she too had to keep an appointment she could not break. Those with her had noticed a quiet determination to see the business through with dignity. However, it is likely her mind was elsewhere probably recalling other times and wondering at the events that had brought her to Dorchester.

She had spent her childhood and most of her early adult years in an area known as Marshwood Vale, a quiet rural part of West Dorset where her father worked as a farm labourer and occasional dairyman and where even today it is narrow winding lanes that pass for roads. Her mother and father John and Martha Clark were married at Burstock on the 18th of February 1800; her mother’s maiden name was Hussey. She was one of eleven children and soon became known simply as Martha.

The 1830’s were the best years of her life. Probably through her father’s work she met Barnard Bearns a widower and a farmer of twice her years; they married on the 27th of December 1831. He came from the village of Askerswell and farmed land in the Powerstock area where he rented a prominent house ‘Meadways’ by the Maggerton River. Now no longer a farm labourer’s daughter, she was a farmer’s wife and content with her lot.

Barnard was for a while an Overseer to the Poor and well respected in the community.  They were happy with each other despite the difference in their ages. Their two sons both died in 1835, William was born in 1832 and Thomas in 1834. On the 4th of May 1840 the couple witnessed the marriage of Martha’s sister Ann to John Record at Whitechurch Canonicorum.

These were difficult times for anyone earning their living from the land. Records show that late in the decade Barnard had financial difficulties. He ceased to be an Overseer to the poor and had to surrender his holdings at Powerstock.

Her husband died leaving her the sum of £50. She found work as the housekeeper to two farming brothers John and Robert Symes who held Blackmanston Farm in the Purbeck hills, quite a distance from the Marshwood Vale. It is likely she knew them previously. Both brothers were born near Powerstock; John in1805 and Robert in 1811 and the brothers habitually returned to the Marshwood Vale to hire their labour. Martha was housekeeper to the Symes brothers for 14 years and John Symes described her as “a most kind and inoffensive woman.”

Also from the Marshwood Vale area was Robert Brown who was dairyman on the Symes’ farm and his son John was employed there as a shepherd. A relationship grew between Martha and John Brown. Despite the fact that she was twice his age the couple married at Wareham on the 24th of January 1852. Soon after their marriage they returned to the Marshwood Vale and the remote hamlet of Birdsmoorgate.

They lived in a house with a small shop from which Martha sold sweets and groceries. Her young husband acquired a horse and cart and set up in business as a Carter. John’s cousin lived in the hamlet along with just a dozen or so other souls including Mary Davis a young woman well known to Martha, who had the other shop in the village. But it wasn’t trade that connected the two women as rather a matter of the heart.

Perhaps it was inevitable in a such a small community that an attraction would blossom between John a young man married to a women twice his age, and Mary a young woman married to a man almost old enough to be her grandfather.

There is no doubt Martha was jealous of the attraction Mary held for her husband. John would come home late, often drunk, offering vague excuses about where he had been. Martha knew full well that he had been with Mary; she had spied on them often enough to be in no doubt.

John arrived home at 2 o’clock in the morning of  Sunday July 6th – he was drunk and vomiting. The couple argued about his supper and where he had been to such a late hour. As was often the case John was being physically and verbally abusive towards his wife when something within her snapped. She retaliated landing several blows to his head.  A moment later and John Brown lay lifeless on the floor. 

Thirty-four days had passed since Martha killed John Brown. In that short space of time there had been an inquest, Martha had been arrested, charged, tried and sentenced. The infamous Jeffreys who held court some two hundred years earlier was not alone in dispensing quick and rough justice at Dorchester.

Early on the morning of the 9th of August 1856 Mary Davis set off from Birdsmoorgate to see Martha Brown but the people of the village of Broadwindsor recognised her and insisted she turned back. There was little sympathy for Mary Davis because people knew that Brown would have been alive that day had she not encouraged his attentions.

Back in Dorchester that same morning Martha had decided to wear a black figure-hugging gown, which showed off her shapely figure. Mr Clementson and the Rev. Henry Moule were with her and gently reminded her it was time to leave: she decided, despite the drizzle, to walk rather than ride in the van.

She climbed the first flight of steps and at the top was met by William Calcraft – the public executioner. He bound her hands and she ascended the second flight of steps from where she could see the sea of faces surrounding the scaffold. She turned to Mr. Moule and thanked him for his kindness. Mr Clemetson had been overcome with emotion and sadness that his efforts to secure a reprieve had come to nought. He was unable to come to the top of the scaffold with her.

Calcraft placed her on the drop, put a cap over her head and adjusted the rope. The bolt was withdrawn and Elizabeth Martha Clarke left this world for a better place where we must all hope she was met with forgiveness and a more sympathetic justice.
 
Her lifeless body hung for the hour dictated by law, viewed by the thousands who had attended this awful event, most of them drawn there by a morbid curiosity. Amongst the crowd was a young man destined for literary greatness: the sight he witnessed that morning stayed with him for the rest of his life. Later the memory of that day was used to dramatic effect in one of his most powerful and popular novels, which is probably why the memory of this most kind and inoffensive woman lives on.

Tom Roberts – The Painter Who Captured a Continent

Dec 23rd, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
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He was born into the hurly-burly of early Victorian Dorchester but laid to rest in the colonial soil of Tasmania. He showed small promise of any artistic talent as a child, yet at the end of his days his works were better known throughout the largest island outpost of the British Empire than in the land of his birth. And no-one, least of all his parents, could have imagined that his future would lie in committing the raw primeval beauty of the antipodean outback to canvas.

Thomas William Roberts was born in Dorchester on March 9th, 1856, the son of a printer and reporter, Richard Roberts, then a sub-editor of the Dorset County Chronicle. Richard had married Tom’s mother, a Londoner named Matilda Agnes Cela Evans, in Shrewsbury early in 1851, and the census of that year showed that at that time he was still living with his parents, Thomas Roberts (50), described as a Brass Founder and his wife Hannah (48) both born in Shrewsbury. By 1861 however, Richard and Matilda had moved to Dorchester, having taken up residence in house in Fordington High Street. Their household consisted of Thomas, then 5, a one-year-old daughter, Alice Matilda, and an 11-year-old housemaid named Mary Wills.

Tom attended Dorchester Grammar School where he received a thorough grounding in the classics, learning quotations in Latin he was able to recall years later. During these schooldays his greatest accolade was winning a prize for scripture he later explained, “not by answering the question directly but by imaginatively writing on a related subject.”

On 30th December 1868, when Thomas was about 13 his father who was then editor of the Dorchester newspaper died aged only 41 at Wollaston Villas, All Saints Dorchester, leaving the family impoverished. His widow  then courageously resolved that she and her children should leave to seek a new life in the then developing colony of Australia. A married sister  had herself emigrated to there some years before, so that the sisters could be re-united. Tom Roberts’ first home in his adopted country was a modest one in Dight Street, Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne.

But the position Roberts was now in determined that he could not resume any schooling, but had to find some employment at once. He soon found a position as an assistant to a local commercial photographer, but the job entailed long hours for small pay. To supplement a meagre income his mother took on the job of making school satchels as an outworker under her brother-in-law, who ran a leather goods business. During this time Tom would help his mother in the evenings by cutting out the straps for the bags. He would later write that his mother “was the bravest woman I ever met.”

After a time, Thomas’ “bulldog” qualities helped him find better employment with Stewarts, the leading commercial photographers in Melbourne. Here he progressed rapidly and showed an early artistic bent when, for a commercial portrait, he hit on the idea of using a background of tea-tree boughs instead of the conventional classical one of mock pillars and curtains fashionable at the time.

The government had embarked on a programme of establishing design schools in the state capitals and Melbourne (Victoria) was no exception. By the time he was just 19 Tom had become Stewarts deputy manager yet he took a course to study design at a new state design school founded at Collingwood, where he won the annual prize in 1875.

From this school Roberts progressed to the National Gallery Art School, usually known by its pet-name of “The Tank.” Here his talent caught the attention of the drawing class overseer, Thomas Clarke, who advised him to go to study in Europe. The gallery had only an un-coordinated training and no life-class, the training consisting mainly of copying the gallery’s own mediocre pictures. Taking the school’s dissolute students under his own wing, Roberts broke away to set up on his own.

Stewart allowed Tom to attend a half-day-a-week painting class, where he exhibited his first major picture in the photographic studio. The sale of this picture, together with earnings from local newspaper reproductions and other monochrome drawings, paid Roberts his passage back to England in 1881.

The following year found the now fully professional, dedicated 25-year-old artist studying hard at the Royal Academy. His drawings were in demand from ‘The Graphic’ and other periodicals. But then another person entered his life who was to have a marked influence upon him: painter Bastien Lepage, a protégé of the French impressionists under who’s spell Roberts himself was to fall. Studying their work, Roberts then eschewed the conventional academic school for a broader horizon.

The flourishing painter’s next move was to undertake a tour of Spain in the company of Dr. William Maloney, the artist John Russell and Sydney Russell, an architect. At one time the four nearly became embroiled in Spain’s political upheavals as partisans, but an encounter with Barrau and Casas, two first-rate pupils of Gerome was to have an outstanding impact on Roberts and his Australian contemporaries in turn. They taught him that in painting he should first seek ‘the general impression of colour.’ On his return from Spain Robert’s sketches of the country made a deep impression on Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor, two fellow artists with whom he was soon to share a close professional relationship.

However for a time Roberts fell in with an artist called McCubbin, with whom he set up a painting camp at Box Hill, Melbourne. Here they were joined by Louis Abrahams though Roberts, not content with mere landscapes, sought to record the active life of the bush. After a time Roberts and McCubbin rented a coastal shack at Mentone near Melbourne, where the former first encountered Streeton, a talented lithographer, and invited him to make a trio at Mentone. Visiting Sydney, Roberts then fell in with Charles Condor, who extended the specialist school to a quartet.

In 1887 Streeton realised that a derelict 8-roomed timber house he had come across on a hill above Heidelburg would be the ideal homebase for a painting school. The building commanded a spectacular view over the Yarra basin to the Blue Hills, and Streeton was soon joined by Roberts and Conder. It was here, between 1889 and 1891 that Roberts painted two of what are considered his finest canvases: “The Breakaway” and “Shearing the Rams.” In 1895 he began another great impressionistic bush ranging picture “Bailed Up,” but then put it aside for another 30 years before finishing it.

Conder later left the school to work in Paris, but not before the group staged an exhibition of 9×5 inch “cigar-box lid” impressionistic paintings in Melbourne. By then Australia was in the grip of a recession, though Roberts was largely unaffected and in 1896 became engaged to and married a local woman, Elizabeth Williamson. Their only child, a son Caleb, was born in 1898.

In 1901 Tom Roberts was again preparing to return to England when he held, at the Society of Artists rooms in Pitt Street, Sydney, an exhibition of paintings for sale at between two and seventy guineas. But then the landing of a prestigious commission forced the artist to abandon his travel plans. It was federation year, the event marking the historic unification of the seven colonial states into the Commonwealth of Australia. To mark the occasion the Australian Art Society commissioned a Melbourne artist for an 18×12 foot canvas for the opening of the Parliament building by the Duke of York. When this painter had to withdraw due to illness Roberts was offered the commission instead.

The artist then embarked on a tour of the country, sketching all the political figures and scenes to be featured. Although the fee was 1000 guineas, Roberts would come to regret his decision to accept the mammoth project, which would take him two years to complete. The picture is now mounted in St. James’ Palace, London.

By now Roberts was back in England with his family in hopeful expectation of further portrait commissions. Troubled by the notion that his technical skill was falling below his earlier high standard, he seriously considered painting ‘pot-boilers’ for the London market. The dark clouds passed however, after friends prevailed upon him to exhibit at the Walkers Gallery in New Bond Street.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Tom Roberts and his friends rushed to enlist in the volunteers. Tom was posted to carry out menial tasks at Wandsworth Military Hospital, giving up painting entirely for he was never offered an official artist position. Demobbed as a Sergeant in the RAMC, he returned alone to Australia in 1919 for a one-year extended vacation, retreating to the Dandenong Ranges to seek solitude and inspiration for more landscapes. The following March he held a one-man exhibition, returning yet again to England at the end of 1920 to rejoin Elizabeth and Caleb.

This last furlough in his mother country lasted three years until 1923, whereupon Roberts returned with his family to his beloved Dandenongs, this time for good. He built a cottage home “Talisman” in the village of Kallista, and resumed his painting, seemingly amid a whirl or renewed creative energy and discernment. In 1927, when Roberts was 72, Elizabeth died, yet the aging painter could not remain inactive, and the following year he visited Apollo Bay, the Goulburn Valley and Tasmania.

Jean Boyes, for sometime a friend of Tom, became the widower’s second wife in August 1928, the couple making a new home for themselves in Tasmania. In 1930 they returned to Kallista, and it was here, on September 14th, 1931 that Thomas Roberts died, aged 75. In accordance with his will his body was taken back to Tasmania and buried in the quiet churchyard of the village of Illawarra.

Truly, Thomas Roberts was ahead of his time as a pioneer global commuter in an age when many country people would never travel more than a few miles from their place of birth. His is a legacy Dorset can be proud of in having given birth to him.

Hiring Fairday

Dec 23rd, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Imagine a bright rather cold morning in February with the promise of a fine day ahead. We are in Dorchester during the 1870’s on Candlemas or Hiring Fairday; shops are open early and full of goods and novelties including all the latest fashions displayed to best advantage.

Farmers, craftsmen, and men seeking employment, are in town along with the recruiting Sergeants for Her Majesty’s Army. Women and girls are here from villages for many miles round and with them are the prospects of shop sales reaching levels not seen since Christmas. Shopkeepers will be looking to serve the ladies with full purses and good credit, while the young girls with little to spend will stretch out the day enjoyably window shopping.

As dawn breaks, booths are set up outside of The Corn Exchange and St. Peter’s Church; from these souvenirs are sold including cakes made to represent Kings, Queens and Horses, all lavishly decorated with gold or silver tinsel.

The town is alive to the sound of men and horses as farmers’ dog-carts and farm wagons laden with produce roll into Dorchester from towns and villages all over the County. Barking sheep dogs, bleating sheep, and squealing pigs are accompanied in the lower registers by the lowing of cattle and percussion, provided by the rattling and ringing of the brasses and bells on the horses, which completes the cacophony ensuring the residents wake early.

Horses with manes and tails plaited are lined up on the north side of High East Street and sold in the street, occasionally they are raced up and down the street to show off their paces accompanied by much whip cracking and shouting. Some of the pigs are in pens outside The Phoenix Tavern and sold from the pavement. Cattle and sheep are on the fairground (nowadays the town gardens.) Farmers inspect the latest agricultural implements on display by the Town Pump.

North Square hosts a huge display of dairy produce including mountains of cheese including Blue Vinny and lots of real Dorset butter, which is slightly salted and sold in large earthen-ware pots. A quack doctor or two are about the town offering miracle cures and there are itinerant Ballard singers selling songs. In the Corn Exchange farmers and corn merchants haggle over deals for wheat, barley and oats.

Men seeking employment wear a wisp of straw in their hats; a signal to farmers that they are for hire but the Army Enlisting Sergeants will seek out the fittest and will be quick to tell them “nothing could be better than to serve Queen and Country, and at the same time see the world.”

As for the young men seeking employment it goes well enough and they are quickly offered contracts to start with their new masters on Lady Day – April 6th; they can enjoy the rest of the day. Not all of the older men will find employment even though they will tell you there is plenty of work left in them.  They trudge back to their villages in despair and for some the workhouse beckons.

As the day wears on farmers and visitors from the outlying towns and villages hurry to complete their business in time to call at The King’s Arms Hotel or The Antelope for refreshments before setting-off home.

By early evening all the shops are closed up and the traders are busy making up their books and counting the takings before putting on a warm overcoat and retiring to their favourite inn to discuss the day’s business with friends. As for those several young men who took the Queen’s shilling and exchanged a wisp of straw for a red, white and blue ribbon, they will be wondering what adventures lay in store for them.

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