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There is currently one researcher who has claimed Thomas Featherstone
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Thomas Featherstone, Pittwater Publican
Outrageous and intoxicated at the Bluebell Inn
The Colonial Times reported on the destructive vice of drunkenness which had resulted in the deaths of no less than four inhabitants of Sorell in a single month In April 1848. One of these was 36 years old, Elizabeth Featherstone, at The Bluebell Inn. The inquest reported that Elizabeth
... became excessively intoxicated and outrageous, and was then and there seized of a convulsive fit, and that of said drinking and intoxication the said Elizabeth Featherstone did then and there die.
Elizabeth Featherstone’s husband, Thomas, was at the time, the licensee of the Bluebell Inn. Presumably his wife had ready access to the inn’s supplies. The fine stone building which still stands on the corner of Walker and Somerville Streets was not however, their business premises. The inn was one of several Sorell licensed houses operating from small wooden buildings of early colonial design.
Elizabeth Crouch, alias Burke, was typical of many servant class convict women arriving from London in the 1830s. At age 21 she had been ‘on the town’ for 5 years before being convicted of stealing boots and shoes and transported ‘beyond the seas’ for 7 years.
In the colony she did not become as submissive as Arthur’s system required and from 1833 until her sentence expired in 1840, was punished by being assigned to the interior, put in solitary on bread and water, and hard labour at the washtub, for offences ranging from ‘displaying a bad temper in her service’ to being ‘out all night without leave’ as well, of course, several times for drunkenness and insolence.
It is likely that Elizabeth was the woman the convict constable, Thomas Featherstone, was charged of having ‘decoyed from his premises’ by the Reverend James Norman. A supporter of the Reverend Norman in an anonymous letter to The Colonial Times claimed that although Featherstone was sentenced to six months on a road party, that punishment was insufficient, since he was allowed to retire from the police, fined only one pound and despite this ‘serious’ offence, was still given his ticket of leave by a lenient Magistrate, who was working up a case against the Reverend Norman and using Featherstone as an informer. It probably irked this complaining correspondent that these two convicts were granted permission to marry in 1837.
After serving her sentence, Elizabeth was able to travel freely and she could make the trip by cart and ferry from Sorell to Hobart Town. This meant staying overnight in shared accommodation. People of limited means often shared beds in lodgings in much the same way as they had in London. In 1838 the new Mrs Featherstone claimed one of her two bed mates, Bridget Brown, had stolen her white dimity pocket which contained a sovereign, a one pound note, and a pound in silver. Elizabeth must have been disappointed that her strong claims did not convince the magistrate.
Once again in court, this time as a witness giving evidence in the case against William Currie, another Sorell innkeeper, for the murder of his de facto wife, Ann Podmore in 1840, the first Mrs. Featherstone was described as doing so in ‘a pert and bouncible manner’.
Settling in to the Turps Trade
After the pert, bouncy Elizabeth’s death eight years later, Thomas lost no time in remarrying. In September, just five months after the death of his first wife, the forty year old married the freckle-faced, blue-eyed, twenty-six year old Sarah Brown, another English convict woman from Reddington.
At this stage Thomas had been in the colony for twenty years and, for most of the time, stayed on the right side of the authorities. He had been sentenced to death, later commuted to life, for the unusual crime of sacrilege. His trial at the Old Bailey suggests that it was more a case of burglary. Unfortunately the items: two brass chandeliers, value twenty pounds; three brass rods, value ten shillings, and two
Submitted by Researcher (2136) on 17 July 2023
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There are currently no research notes attached to this convict. Sources
- The National Archives (TNA) : HO 11/6, p.250
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