The Blandford Express

  From Dorset Gallows to Van Diemen’s Land is the unlikely but true story of political corruption, hangings and transportation in the small market town of Blandford in Southern England.  It is available as a paperback from  Amazon in the United Kingdom, Australia and the USA. The book uncovers the extraordinary tale of two ordinary men, George Long a shoemaker and Richard Bleathman a butcher. Driven by belief and dissatisfaction they are swept along by events. Sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol for their protests against political corruption they are instead, following clemency appeals,  transported to Van Diemen’s Land -  on the other side of the world. ‘A fascinatingly  good read.  This book entirely complements the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs - also transported to Australia.’ (Richard Holledge, newspaper editor, freelance journalist - London. As read in the Independent, New York Times & Financial Times. Author of   Voices of the M...

Twenty-four years old leather breeches maker, Tom Hill has the unusual distinction of being condemned to be transported to both America and Australia for his crimes. On 13 th March 1783, Tom had been sentenced in a Dorchester courtroom to be transported to America for stealing a silver watch valued at one pound. At the time, this sum was the equivalent of three weeks wages for a Dorset agricultural labourer. The decision was a particularly bizarre one as America was no longer a British colony after the British defeat in the American War of Independence. However, the British were surreptitiously trying to restart the American convict trade as its prisons were overfull. Prior to this war, which had halted the scheme, around 50,000 convicts had been sent to the American colonies despite its unpopularity with locals. British authorities hired a London merchant who did a deal with a Maryland merchant to receive convicts and sell them as indentured servants. Consistent with the furtiven...

William Whittle was a seaman with a lucrative sideline. He was a smuggler of foreign spirits.  The Dorset coastal village of Langton Herrimg was his place of birth and he was born there in 1810 on New Year’s Eve. His secondary trade of smuggling seems to have been a family affair as relative Thomas Whittle, a Langton Herring shoemaker, had been sent to prison for smuggling three years earlier. In 1835, William Whittle was charged with assaulting Lieutenant Rowe, a Customs Officer at Abbotsbury and of being the leader of a large smuggling gang. It was reported that a gang of around 600 men were helping with the landing of the liquor. Many were carrying bludgeons. One of the Customs Officers suffered three broken ribs and was unfit for work for seven weeks. Smuggling of wines, spirits and luxury goods from France was a local industry and the men of Abbotsbury and Langton Herring were much involved in the activity. At Dorchester Assizes in March 1835, William Whittle was found guilty ...

When 149 Dorset adults and children joined the vessel, the Emigrant at Plymouth on the 5 th March 1849 they were joining a vessel that was to become known as the ‘ Ship of Death’ . More than half were from the villages of Stourpaine & Durweston, about 30 were from Child Okeford and the remainder came from different villages around Blandford.  Durweston clergyman, Sydney Godolphin Osborne saw them all embark on board the 754 ton three-mast barque, whose master was William Henry Kemp. Also on board were the captain’s wife, Sarah and three-year old daughter, Fanny. The voyage had been organised by the Blandford Colonisation Society who had held its first meeting in January earlier that year. It could be said, however, that the real purpose of the Society was to export the problem of the district’s poor to the Antipodes. Living conditions at the time for ordinary folk were poor and often insanitary with the situation in the village of Stourpaine being particularly bad. For those ...

  West Bay, or Bridport Harbour as it was once called, is not now somewhere normally associated with shipbuilding. Yet, around two centuries ago it was an important shipbuilding centre with around 350 vessels being built there. Most of the workers were from Bridport while others came from Eype and Burton Bradstock. The clipper, Speedy  was the largest vessel ever built there. Some 200 feet in length, it took several attempts in 1853 to launch her. She sat firmly aground for two weeks, awaiting a higher tide to float her. The vessel was featured in a December 1853 edition of the Illustrated London News. It was said it was ‘very lofty between decks’ and the passenger cabins were ‘of the highest order.’ Like the Cutty Sark , which can still be viewed at Greenwich, the Speedy was constructed for the Australia run. She was constructed of teak and English oak and first arrived in Sydney on 22nd March 1854. This passage took 83 days with the Equator being crossed on the 20th day. Bui...

  Mary Lawrence was a Dorset born granny who sometimes carried a gun. A servant she was wrongly found guilty in 1813 of stealing a gold watch, valued at over two pounds,  from T Coorton Esq of Weymouth. Mary Lawrence was sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol. Yet according to her gravestone in Yass, Australia, Mary Lawrence lived to be 113 years old - leaving children to the fourth generation said to number 600. Instead of facing the gallows, Mary Lawrence was transported to Australia for a period of seven years leaving Dartford on the convict vessel Broxbournebury in February 1814. After Mary had served four years of her sentence, the news arrived in Australia that someone in Weymouth had admitted, on their death bed, to have stolen the gold watch. As a result, Mary Lawrence was granted a full pardon and awarded sixty acres of land at Yass by the Governor as compensation. She was said to be the first white woman in the ‘Outback’. Mary had married ex-convict George Davis o...

  A feature of some old Dorset bridges is a cast iron plate dating back to the late 1820s. In the name of the then County Clerk of the Peace, T Fooks, it warned anyone convicted of damaging the bridge would be liable to be transported for life. Under the Malicious Injuries to Properties Act of 1827, individuals could also be flogged while other offences carried the death sentence. Those found guilty, if male, could be flogged ‘once, twice or thrice.’ Transportation would mean being sent most likely to an Australian penal colony with little prospect of a return home. Alternatively, the individual could be sent to Bermuda. This was less appealing than it seems as the convict was put to work in terrible conditions building the Navy’s Bermuda Dockyard. As diseases were rife, the prospects for survival were not good. While waiting for a transport vessel, convicted individuals would be kept in convict hulks berthed opposite either Plymouth or Portsmouth Dockyard. There they would be pu...

What are the links between Child Okeford, this Australian lady and the gentleman in the picture? Lisa Davidson is an Australian descendant of this distinguished gentleman who was born in Child Okeford in 1811. In 1835, Samuel Arnold married Ann Savery in Hamoon and a year later the young married couple left England with their baby daughter, Sarah. The Arnolds were seeking a better life in the new Australian colony of New South Wales. They became what were known as ‘Bounty Immigrants’ which was a very early assisted passage emigration scheme to Australia. The scheme, incredibly progressive for the times, was set up by the Macarthur family who were among Australia’s earliest gentry. The ‘Bounty Immigrant’ families were mainly from North Dorset and Samuel Arnold was appointed as their leader. The journey by sailing vessel, the Brothers to the other side of the world was particularly hazardous. During a storm in the Bay of Biscay a prized stallion was thrown overboard and drowned. T...

There’s many a link between the county of Dorset and place names ‘ down under’ . On the Australian island of Tasmania, nicknamed ‘Tassie’, the Tolpuddle Vineyard can be found. Located in the Coal River Valley, some twenty minutes north-east of Hobart, it is reckoned to produce some of the country’s finest wines. It gained its name from the Tolpuddle Martyrs who were transported to Australia for forming an agricultural trade union. Leader of the Martyrs, George Loveless, served his sentence working on a property which is now the Tolpuddle Vineyard. A bottle of Tolpuddle’s finest can be bought at Fortnum & Mason in London for a modest £100 and a London restaurant can charge even more! While if your preference is for a beer there is a Dorset Lager produced in a brewery a few miles south of Bridport. Tasmania has its own Land District of Dorset  in the north-east of the island. Near the most north-easterly tip is Cape Portland , while some 50 miles to the west is the seasi...

Life in Dorset in the 1830s was pretty tough for ordinary folk. Agricultural wages were among the lowest in the country and farm mechanisation was reducing available work. At the time, there was also much social unrest with riots in Poole, Blandford, Handley & Sherborne. So it was no surprise that several Dorset families decided in 1836 to become ‘Bounty Immigrants’ and seek out a better life in Australia. This was an early assisted passage scheme sponsored by the new colony and the Australian land owning Macarthur family. For its time, the scheme was incredibly progressive. Each family was given a three year contract, a wage, a cottage rent free and a plot of land. Among the first Dorset Bounty Immigrants were the Arnold & Norris families from Child Okeford, two Butt families from Winterborne Stickland, the Coxs & Elliots from Farnham and the New, Thorn, Vincent & three Weeks families from Handley. They all arrived safely in New South Wales on 8 th April 1837 and mai...

When Thomas Rose and his family arrived in New South Wales, Australia, in January 1793 with their four children, they were the first free and independent British settlers in the new colony. They had arrived from England on the sailing vessel, Bellona . Thomas Rose was born in Blandford in 1754 and baptized later that year in Sturminster Newton. In 1779, he had married Jane Topp also in Sturminster Newton. According to the Sydney Gazette , she would later become the Australian colony’s first great grandmother. Australian Governor, Arthur Phillip had made repeated requests to London for intelligent and experienced farmers. Rose fitted this description and it was noted that he was ‘ the most respectable of these people and apparently the best calculated for a bona fide settler.’ Previously, Britain had sent out convicts, accompanied by soldiers. The First Fleet brought out 730 convicts in eleven vessels arriving in January 1788. The Rose family eventually put down their roots in th...

After release from the prison convict hulk, Laurel in Portsmouth Harbour, John Weeks returned to his poaching trade in Handley. As a result of some further skirmishes with the law John became far more familiar with the Dorchester Courtroom than any of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. When John’s children married their prospects in Handley were pretty grim. Wages paid to agricultural labourers in Dorset were among the lowest in the country. So Benjamin, John & Jane seized the opportunity when a local clergyman, the Reverend John West of Chettle offered them the chance in 1836 to start a new life in Australia. This was under an early assisted passage scheme sponsored by the new colony and the Australian landowning Macarthur family. Their father John was desperate to travel out with them but had no chance. He was too old at 62 and he also had a criminal record. The only way the wayward father could get out to join his children was as a convict – as a ‘ prisoner of His Majesty’ . So John Weeks ...

John Weeks has the unusual distinction of being convicted twice in a Dorchester Courtroom to be transported to Australia. Born in Handley in 1775, John by trade was a poacher as at the time it was said were many of the Handley villagers. By 1815, the authorities had had enough of John Weeks. So, following an altercation with a gamekeeper, he was found guilty and sentenced in the Dorchester Courtroom to be transported to Australia for seven years. Prisoners at the time had to walk from Dorchester to Portsmouth or Gosport under armed guard to await transportation. First day’s walk from Dorchester was about 14 miles and it is said brought the prisoners to a red post between Bere Regis and Wimborne. It is reckoned the post was red so that it could be identified because most of the guards were illiterate. Close by was a brick barn where the prisoners spent the night chained to a large post. John Weeks never left these shores and spent the entire seven years in the convict prison ship ...

A human hand was discovered in the stomach of a shark near where George Legg had drowned during a Sydney Harbour fishing trip. His sailing boat had capsized in a storm and he was unable to stay afloat because of the heavy coat he was wearing. His widow, Ann had employed searchers to recover what remained of his body so that it could be interred at a place of burial. George Legg was a Dorset shoemaker and had been convicted on the 16 th March 1786, in a Dorchester courtroom, to be transported to Australia for seven years. His crime was stealing a gold watch and some other items valued at seven pounds. From Dorchester Jail he was despatched to Plymouth, where he spent time in the convict hulk, Dunkirk awaiting transportation. From this convict hulk, he was transferred onto a transport vessel, the Charlotte which then set sail in June 1787 with 108 convicts on board for Australia. The British authorities had decided to establish a new convict settlement in Australia. Vessels assemble...

With a combined age of 444 years, five unlikely Dorset lads became international celebrities back in the nineteen thirties. They became famous after appearing in two popular short Movietone films, titled the ‘ Lads of the Village .’ They were featured gossiping over beers in their local pub, the Rose & Crown in Bradford Abbas near the Dorset-Somerset border. This was a time when the average male life expectancy was just 58 and 62 for a woman. Also taking part in the film were Mrs Parsons (91) and her 65 year old daughter both filmed collecting their pensions at the village post office. This sprightly nonagenarian had brought up ten children on her husband’s weekly ten shillings (50p) wage. Their meagre income was supplemented by Mrs Parsons making gloves for which she was paid just one & a half old pennies (0.5p) per pair. For good health, she recommended a daily glass of stout but for strictly medicinal purposes only. Tom Coombes (91) never went to school and began work ...

Ria and Bill Bleathman are descendants of Richard Bleathman who, with George Long, were condemned to death by Judge Stephen Gaselee in Dorchester for their involvement in the 1831 Blandford riots. Bill Bleathman is the retired Director of Tasmania’s Museum and Art Gallery while Ria is a management consultant and company director. Both Bleathman and Long were found guilty of damaging the property of Blandford lawyer, George Moore following the declaration of the result of a Dorset by-election. Many old Blandford records were lost in the disturbance and others that were recovered were found stained with horse manure. Moore was a political agent of the successful candidate, Lord Ashley who was strongly opposed to extending the right to vote beyond a small number of eligible property owners. Bleathman and Long believed that Moore had used confidential client information to prevent political opponents from voting in the by-election which Ashley narrowly won.  Following protests from bot...

Blandford, Massachusetts is in the USA and was first settled by Scots and named ‘ New Glasgow.’ However, the locals had misspelled the name as ’Glascow!’ William Shirley was the newly appointed Governor of Massachusetts and had just arrived from England. He decided to change the settlement’s name to Blandford after the vessel that had brought him across the Atlantic. However, the new town was to pay a price for this. The people of Glasgow, Scotland had promised settlers the gift of a bell if they named the new settlement after their city. With the town now called Blandford, the bell was never sent. The White Church in Blandford Massachusetts was built in 1822 and in September 2022 the New England town celebrates the Church’s bicentenary. This historic building is owned by the Blandford Historical Society and is maintained by volunteers. Originally, the pulpit was near the entrance so that late arrivals could be seen by the congregation. However, in later modifications it was moved. B...

John West is an almost completely forgotten cleric who was the Rector of Chettle from 1828 to 1845. In fact, he is far better known in Canada for his pioneering missionary work than he is remembered in his home country. In the Canadian Calendar of Holy Persons, 31 December each year is John West Commemoration Day. Yet in the 1830s, he helped many poverty trapped families from the Blandford villages secure a far better life in New South Wales, Australia. Families helped included agricultural labourer, George Butt and his wife, Charlotte and their six children from Winterborne Stickland. Emigrating with them were his brother, Stephen and his wife, Martha from the same village. There were also Samuel and Ann Arnold from Child Okeford and their baby daughter, Sarah Ann. Samuel was a wheelwright by trade and became a successful businessman. His inn which he founded, the Plough & Harrow just outside Sydney is still open for business today. John West had worked with the Australian landown...

  Politics can stir powerfully strong emotions yet nothing since in Blandford has matched the town’s riots of 1831. Back then only those with property could vote so most ordinary men and women were disenfranchised. In North Dorset discontent was heightened by low wages and widespread unemployment among the agricultural labouring poor. Most of the Dorset landowners were against reform although locally Mr Portman at Bryanston was more sympathetic. Matters rose to a head in October 1831 when following the suicide of the sitting MP, John Calcroft a Dorset by-election was called. Candidate Willian Ponsonby was in favour of reform to which the second candidate, Lord Ashley was opposed. With strong feelings and vested interests on both sides, the battle lines were drawn up. Richard Bleathman, George Long, William Kent and Thomas Jackson were among a crowd of around 100 waiting in the Market Place for the arrival of the mail coach from Dorchester. This would bring news of the by-electi...

  Politics can stir powerful feelings and nothing since, not even Brexit, has quite matched the raw emotion and riots in Blandford after the declaration of the 1831 Dorset by-election result. Blandford born George Long, aged 23 and unmarried, was judged to be the rioter leader. There were two candidates in the by-election, the Lord Ashley and William Ponsonby. George Long was a supporter of the latter. At the time the parliamentary system was quite corrupt. Lord Ashley’s expenses show he paid for accommodation and drinks in twelve Dorchester public houses in addition to the King’s Arms where he was staying. No doubt William Ponsonby offered similar hospitality to his supporters. Entitlement to vote was mainly limited to the landed gentry and the clergy. While, for example, Shaftesbury had two MPs the large city of Birmingham had none. Ponsonby wanted parliamentary reform while Ashley’s desire was to preserve the status quo. George Long was among a crowd of about one hundred who...