A tale of Transportation: Jabez Copsey
Eric Drake has contacted me with this fascinating account and query. As always, if anyone can help him, please contact me and I will put you in touch with Eric.
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My mother’s mother was a Copsey and although she was born in south London earlier generations of her family, many of them, were in Glemsford. In tracing them I came across a reference to a Glemsford Copsey, first name Jabez, who was transported for life in 1844. I have been able to find a good deal of information about him but not how he fits into the Copsey family tree or what happened to him in the end. Can anyone help?
Eric Drake
Here is what I have established about Jabez Copsey. The starting point was two pieces from the Sudbury Post (helpfully made available on line at http://foxearth.org.uk/1836-1859SudburyPost.html). This is what they say:
January 31st 1844
`An incendiary is at work in Glemsford, a fire was discovered in the stackyard of Mr Charles Bigg of Churchgate farm at about 7 in the evening, engines from Melford and Hartest arrived and damage was confined to one stack.
`A fresh alert was given about 1 in the morning when fire broke out in the barn belonging to Mr Allen the wheelright, the barn was consumed with a lot of seasoned ash plank, there has now been 4 fires in the village in 2 months.
`We have now heard, a man named Copsey has been taken up.’
April 10th 1844
`Jabez Copsey and Stephen Boreham of Glemsford were charged with setting fire to Mr James Allen's barn in Glemsford. Walter Bullock said he saw the prisoners in the Cock Inn and they went off together.
`Charles Hartley said "prisoners left the Cock before me, later I saw them coming over the hedge from Allen's barn", Frederick Shadbolt said he was a prisoner in Bury gaol and he had asked Boreham if he did set fire to the barn and Boreham said he did, in answer to a question witness said he had also given evidence the day before on a similar charge saying a man named Barley had also admitted setting fire to a stack and he did not give evidence for a reward. Transportation for life. ‘
Most of the key players in this drama can be identified in 1841 census entries for Glemsford. There is Charles Bigg, farmer, age 50; and James Allen, age 40 and a carpenter rather than a wheelwright (but a carpenter seems more likely than a wheelwright to need `a lot of seasoned ash plank’). And there is Stephen Boreham, age 15, living with his 17-year old brother, Walter, agricultural labourer, and 13-year old sister, Emily. They seem to have been parentless although James and Martha Boreham (age 80 and 75) lived nearby and may have been grandparents. But as far as I can establish there was no Jabez Copsey recorded in Glemsford or anywhere else.
So I wondered whether the Sudbury Post had got the name wrong. But the County of Suffolk register of all persons charged with indictable offences at the assizes and sessions held within the county in the year 1844 records that at the County Assizes on 30 March 1844 Jabez Copsey, age 19, was charged with `Arson setting fire to a barn’, found guilty and given a life sentence. Stephen Boreham, 18, was found guilty of the same offence and received the same sentence. Three other men received life sentences for arson offences at the same assize: John Double, 21; William Gill, 31; and Leach Barley, 37 (the `man named Barley’ of the Sudbury Post piece). All of them except Barley are recorded as being transported to Australia on the same ship, the Agincourt.
The Agincourt was a 541 ton barque. She began loading at Woolwich on 21 May 1844, sailed on 8 July with 224 male convicts on board and arrived at Norfolk Island on 9 November. A contemporary Australian newspaper reported that she spent three days there unloading 220 convicts, four having died on the voyage and one escaped at the Cape of Good Hope.
Norfolk Island, 1000 kilometres out in the Pacific from Australia and with an area of 34 square kilometres (probably not much bigger than Glemsford parish), was then administered as part of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land – modern Tasmania. From 1843 convicts shipped to Van Diemen’s Land and sentenced to more than 15 years were first detained on Norfolk Island before being moved to Van Diemen’s Land itself. The regime on Norfolk Island was notoriously harsh: it was described by someone who visited around 1845 as `marked by utter incompetence and debased cruelties’.
The Archives Office of Tasmania holds an original register with detailed information about convicts who arrived on the Agincourt. It can be accessed online at: http://search.archives.tas.gov.au/default.aspx?detail=1&type=I&id=CON33/1/83. (Jabez Copsey is on page 57.)
The register confirms that he was transported for life for arson (`setting fire to some stacks tried with Stephen Boreham on board), which is said to be his second offence. The register includes a detailed physical description of each convict to be used in `wanted’ notices if they escaped. From this we know that Jabez was a kitchen gardener, height 5/51/2 , age 21 (two years older than the age given in the court records), complexion fresh, head and visage oval, hair and eyebrows dark, no whiskers, forehead, nose, mouth and chin all medium, eyes grey, no distinguishing marks.
He spent three years on Norfolk Island. While there, in January and April 1846, he was punished for offences of insolence and `misconduct in leaving the fields before being mustered’ and for the second offence was given `hard labour in chains the month’. By 1849 he had been moved to Van Diemen’s Land and between then and 1852 is recorded as being in three different locations, all in the south-east of the island. The last entry in the register reads `Abscd Gaz 4/5/52’ which I think means he had absconded and that a wanted notice about him was posted in the Hobart Town Gazette of 4 May 1852.
And that is the last definite record I have been able to find. But there is one further intriguing entry in the Tasmanian archives. The colonial authorities were careful about recording ships coming and going and who was on them. On 9 March 1853 a ship called the Sarah Ann sailed from Launceston in the north of Van Diemen’s Land to London with a crew member called James Copsey. Just coincidence, or perhaps Jabez making good his escape?
And a final footnote. In 1876 James and Eliza Copsey of Glemsford chose Jabez as the name for their 7th child. Again, just coincidence, or did they know of an earlier Jabez in the family?
Most of the key players in this drama can be identified in 1841 census entries for Glemsford. There is Charles Bigg, farmer, age 50; and James Allen, age 40 and a carpenter rather than a wheelwright (but a carpenter seems more likely than a wheelwright to need `a lot of seasoned ash plank’). And there is Stephen Boreham, age 15, living with his 17-year old brother, Walter, agricultural labourer, and 13-year old sister, Emily. They seem to have been parentless although James and Martha Boreham (age 80 and 75) lived nearby and may have been grandparents. But as far as I can establish there was no Jabez Copsey recorded in Glemsford or anywhere else.
So I wondered whether the Sudbury Post had got the name wrong. But the County of Suffolk register of all persons charged with indictable offences at the assizes and sessions held within the county in the year 1844 records that at the County Assizes on 30 March 1844 Jabez Copsey, age 19, was charged with `Arson setting fire to a barn’, found guilty and given a life sentence. Stephen Boreham, 18, was found guilty of the same offence and received the same sentence. Three other men received life sentences for arson offences at the same assize: John Double, 21; William Gill, 31; and Leach Barley, 37 (the `man named Barley’ of the Sudbury Post piece). All of them except Barley are recorded as being transported to Australia on the same ship, the Agincourt.
The Agincourt was a 541 ton barque. She began loading at Woolwich on 21 May 1844, sailed on 8 July with 224 male convicts on board and arrived at Norfolk Island on 9 November. A contemporary Australian newspaper reported that she spent three days there unloading 220 convicts, four having died on the voyage and one escaped at the Cape of Good Hope.
Norfolk Island, 1000 kilometres out in the Pacific from Australia and with an area of 34 square kilometres (probably not much bigger than Glemsford parish), was then administered as part of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land – modern Tasmania. From 1843 convicts shipped to Van Diemen’s Land and sentenced to more than 15 years were first detained on Norfolk Island before being moved to Van Diemen’s Land itself. The regime on Norfolk Island was notoriously harsh: it was described by someone who visited around 1845 as `marked by utter incompetence and debased cruelties’.
The Archives Office of Tasmania holds an original register with detailed information about convicts who arrived on the Agincourt. It can be accessed online at: http://search.archives.tas.gov.au/default.aspx?detail=1&type=I&id=CON33/1/83. (Jabez Copsey is on page 57.)
The register confirms that he was transported for life for arson (`setting fire to some stacks tried with Stephen Boreham on board), which is said to be his second offence. The register includes a detailed physical description of each convict to be used in `wanted’ notices if they escaped. From this we know that Jabez was a kitchen gardener, height 5/51/2 , age 21 (two years older than the age given in the court records), complexion fresh, head and visage oval, hair and eyebrows dark, no whiskers, forehead, nose, mouth and chin all medium, eyes grey, no distinguishing marks.
He spent three years on Norfolk Island. While there, in January and April 1846, he was punished for offences of insolence and `misconduct in leaving the fields before being mustered’ and for the second offence was given `hard labour in chains the month’. By 1849 he had been moved to Van Diemen’s Land and between then and 1852 is recorded as being in three different locations, all in the south-east of the island. The last entry in the register reads `Abscd Gaz 4/5/52’ which I think means he had absconded and that a wanted notice about him was posted in the Hobart Town Gazette of 4 May 1852.
And that is the last definite record I have been able to find. But there is one further intriguing entry in the Tasmanian archives. The colonial authorities were careful about recording ships coming and going and who was on them. On 9 March 1853 a ship called the Sarah Ann sailed from Launceston in the north of Van Diemen’s Land to London with a crew member called James Copsey. Just coincidence, or perhaps Jabez making good his escape?
And a final footnote. In 1876 James and Eliza Copsey of Glemsford chose Jabez as the name for their 7th child. Again, just coincidence, or did they know of an earlier Jabez in the family?
posted by Steve Clarke at 10:07 am
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