Post on 25-Jan-2023
IMPORTANT NOTE ON JOSEPH FORRESTER The story of Joseph Forrester was first published as a peer-reviewed article, ‘Finding
Forrester: The life and death of Joseph Forrester, convict silversmith’ in Tasmanian
Historical Studies in 2011. This article republished over two editions of History
Scotland in 2014. A subsequent shorter peer-reviewewd book chapter was
published in 2015 under the title “To end my days in my native land: The life and
death of Joseph Forrester, convict silversmith’ in Scots Under the Southern Cross
(Ballarat Heritage Studies 2015).
With each version of the story additional research has revealed new information
about the life of Joseph Forrester. Each version of the story is therefore more
extensive and more accurate than the preceding version.
Further research has continued to add detail to the story and to correct errors and
omissions in earlier versions.
A further peer-reviewed book chapter telling the life of Joseph Forrester is
scheduled for publication in late 2018 or 2019. This version will contain
significantly new material about the circumstances surrounding the conviction of
Joseph Forrester in London in 1829, and his subsequent life after his return to
Australia after 1856.
Douglas Wilkie August 2017
TO END MY DAYS IN MY NATIVE LAND: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOSEPH
FORRESTER, CONVICT SILVERSMITH
DOUGLAS WILKIE
Pre-Print Final Draft
Douglas Wilkie, ‘To end my days in my native land: The life and death of Joseph
Forrester, convict silversmith’, in Fred Cahir, Anne Beggs-Sunter, and Alison Inglis,
(Eds),Scots Under the Southern Cross: Scottish Impressions of Colonial Australia,
Ballarat, Ballarat Heritage Services 2015. ISBN 9781876478209
Scots Under the Southern Cross is a collection of essays from speakers at the
Scottish Symposium held in Ballarat 9-11 May 2014. The chapters reflect the many
styles, themes and formats embracing the Scottish Diaspora in Australia. This
publication complements the Art Gallery of Ballarat Exhibition For Auld Lang Syne:
Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation. The five interrelated
sections of Scots Under the Southern Cross are: 'Retrospect', 'The Scots in Aboriginal
Australia', 'Biographical Studies of Scottish Australians', 'Scottish Artists on
Australia' and 'Commemorating Scotland in Australia'. Essays tell the stories of
Scottish immigrants and their successful establishment of economic and cultural
networks in Australia. These chapters hopefully will form a basis for expansion into
research of the Scottish diaspora and the way the Scots and their descendants have
contributed to and adapted to Australian conditions.
1
TO END MY DAYS IN MY NATIVE LAND: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOSEPH
FORRESTER, CONVICT SILVERSMITH
DOUGLAS WILKIE In his 1972 book and television series, Ways of Seeing, John Berger presented a
painting by Vincent Van Gogh and described it as ‘a landscape of a cornfield with
birds flying out of it’. He then presented the same image with a new description
‘This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself’. As Berger
observed, in the first instance the sentence described the picture; in the second, the
picture illustrated the sentence, and the viewer’s perception was surely, if
indefinably, altered.1
The silverware of Joseph Forrester has been described in numerous Australian
exhibition catalogues and antiques journals, and it is not the intention of this essay
to do that, but the addition of a single descriptor to his name ‘convict’ changes
the way this early colonial craftsman is perceived. The knowledge that Van Gogh
killed himself after painting Wheatfield with Crows changes our perception of the
painting; and the knowledge that Forrester was a convict brings a diversity of
preconceptions to the way his work is understood. Just as we need to go further and
understand the circumstances of Van Gogh’s life and death, we also need to
understand the circumstances of Forrester’s life and death if we are to understand
the person who created these works.
Joseph Forrester’s death was mysterious and unexplained, and was almost
undiscovered and unannounced. For many years those who wrote about him could
never finish their story, and those who wrote usually restricted their discussion to
an evaluation of his silverwork, accompanied by a brief summary of what they could
find in his convict conduct record. What they told was the story of Forrester the
prisoner, not Forrester the man. This essay is an abbreviated version of a longer
study of Joseph Forrester’s life first published as ‘Finding Forrester: The life and
death of Joseph Forrester, convict silversmith’, in Tasmanian Historical Studies,
volume 17, December 2012.2
Between 1817 and 1820 William Forrester, born in 1801, and his brother, Joseph
born in 1805, both from Perth in Scotland, were apprenticed to their uncle, Robert
Keay senior, a silversmith of Perth. Their cousin, Robert Keay junior, was also an
apprentice. By 1825 William had moved to Clerkenwell, in London. Younger brother
Joseph, a troublesome and unsteady youth, did not complete his apprenticeship and
moved to London with William. Unable to find work, Joseph was supported by
William, who described him as ‘such a simpleton’ who ‘cannot keep his mouth shut’,
and could not be left in charge of the shop as ‘he is not a very good person to give
work to or look after men’.3 Nevertheless, Joseph’s trade skills improved, and
2
William wrote, ‘He can chase very well & has been very steady’, but unable to
manage finances, William gave him ‘only enough to pay his lodgings, washing &c and
an allowance for pocket money’. William appears to have been a caring and forgiving
older brother.
The late 1820s saw economic downturn in London and William needed financial
assistance from both uncle Keay and cousin Robert. To save money, he avoided
purchasing gold and concentrated on setting diamonds, employing only one
mounter, one setter, and Joseph. By the end of 1826 William was almost insolvent.
Joseph’s skills increased, but so did financial problems; then, in 1828, a fire
destroyed much of the property. The situation looked dire and, perhaps hoping to
raise much needed cash, in the evening of 15 January 1829, Joseph stole eleven
diamond pins and two brooches, valued at £35, from Charles Plumley’s jewellery
shop on Ludgate Hill.
In a scene straight from Dickens, Joseph was chased by an angry crowd into a cul-de-
sac. He was tried and found guilty of breaking and entering. It had taken him less
than a minute, but the prescribed sentence was Death — the shop was also the
jeweller’s home. Fortunately death sentences for property crimes were routinely
commuted to transportation for life. Two months later William was declared
bankrupt. The relatives in Scotland were unimpressed.
Joseph arrived at Hobart on board the Thames, on Friday 20 November 1829, and
listed his occupation as silversmith and jeweller.4 In October 1830 David Barclay, a
Scot from Montrose and of almost identical age to Forrester, arrived in Hobart,
opened a jewellery and watch making business, and sought whatever skilled
watchmakers, silversmiths and jewellers he could find. By 1832, Forrester was
assigned to work for Barclay, who was described as a ‘man of marked individuality,
of great mental vigour & of remarkable mechanical skill,’ but had a ‘caustic tongue
which he could use with effect on provocation’. He was also full of ‘sarcastic humour,
and shrewd wit’.5
It was a volatile combination. A caustic tongue and sarcastic humour would surely
have provoked Joseph as much as Forrester provoked Barclay. Before starting with
Barclay Forrester’s record was clear, but from July 1832 he was regularly punished
for misdemeanours and he was eventually sentenced to fifteen months breaking
rocks on the road gang. This was not good for Barclay — a silver presentation cup
and salver had been commissioned for Police Magistrate, James Simpson, and
Barclay had to explain that Forrester was ‘the only one in town capable of making
such plate so that unless a man arrives in the course of a few weeks you have no
chance of getting it done in the colony’.6 Simpson’s silver cup was eventually made in
London and presented to him in August 1834 two years after being ordered.
Joseph survived the chain gang and in 1835 returned to Barclay’s where he soon
made silver cups for presentation to George Augustus Robinson, J. H. Cawthorn and
S. & J. Austin. The demand for Joseph Forrester’s skills as a silversmith was steady
3
and spreading beyond Hobart. Alexander Dick, was short of workmen in Sydney, and
asked Barclay to make a gold and silver presentation snuff box.
The cycle of quiet times alternating with minor misdemeanours and severe
punishment continued for the next three years — the list is readily available in
Forrester’s Conduct Record. On 22 May 1839, after serving nearly ten years, Joseph
was granted a ticket of leave and could have started his own business, but being a
silversmith required equipment not available in Hobart, and it required capital.
Fortunately, Joseph was a minor beneficiary in the estate of Euphemia Boswall, heir
to the Blackadder estate, who died in 1829 leaving a fortune of £12,000. Joseph
would have been disinherited but for the efforts of his brother and cousin, and there
was £40 owing to him. When an uncle, James Forrester, died in 1840, he left £1,000
each to brother William and sister Christian, but nothing to Joseph.
Joseph continued to work for Barclay, and continued to be punished for
misdemeanours. Early in 1840 the workshop made a gold snuff box for presentation
to Captain George King, and a silver salver for presentation to James Garrett,
Presbyterian Minister at Bothwell in 1841. Forrester’s style has been described as
‘naive’ when compared to work being done by London silversmiths, however, given
the scarcity of silversmiths in Australia he was the best that could be found.7
[Pic. 1 here - Garrett Salver]
In April 1841, Joseph married Mary Ann Sadler, a free emigrant. He was 36, she was
26. While the punishments handed out to Forrester could have hardened rather than
reformed him, the presence of Mary Ann in his life seems to have been positive and
he wrote lovingly of his wife to William. When he received a conditional pardon in
June 1842, the citation was that his conduct had been ‘exemplary’ for the previous
three years. Within a week of receiving his pardon Joseph opened his own business.
William shipped out the flatting mill Joseph required; sympathetic members of the
family sent finance; and cousin Robert sent silver plate and jewellery. Joseph
proudly advertised the newly arrived stock in December 1842 — and within a
month the shop was burgled of its entire contents. Most of the items were
fortunately recovered.
In 1843 Joseph wrote home with news that he was ‘pretty well established and have
got a good share of the work and thank God getting a comfortable living’. He was
‘manufacturing some Silver Plate for St. Georges Church ... and have got two or three
more good orders in the house and Plenty of Jobing [sic].’ He was proud of his wife
— ‘Mrs Forrester who is now sitting at the Fire side with me sends her love to Mrs
Keay and you ... She was very Proud of the hansome [sic] presents from you and
hopes that Some Day she will have it in her Power to thank you herself.’
Joseph missed his family and old friends — ‘I am most comfortable in my home but
often think of you and all my relations and should like to end my Days in my native
land’. He reminisced, ‘I often think of the happy days of my youth and when I used to
ride behind the Gig when we used to go fishing — those times are gone never to
return’. Memories of home were with him constantly, and when he lost a ‘silk-velvet
4
tartan bag’ containing some rings, anxious for its return, he offered a reward to the
finder. The letters written by Forrester suggest that, although he was enjoying both
his marriage and business success, he really wanted to return home.
[Pic 2 here – Tarleton Cigar Case]
Although jeweller William Cole advertised as a silversmith, it was Forrester who did
his work, and a silver cigar presentation case made for former Assistant Police
Magistrate, William Tarleton brought Joseph more good publicity early in 1846. But
an ongoing economic depression, and increasing competition, meant diversification
was in order, and Joseph opened a pawn broking shop. Nevertheless, prospects
looked better in Melbourne, and in November 1846 the Forresters joined a growing
exodus to Port Phillip. It was almost seventeen years to the day since Joseph had
arrived at Hobart.
Joseph lived in Flinders Lane but worked from Charles Brentani’s shop in Collins
Street, but on Saturday 10 June 1848, his wife Mary Ann was found dead in the Yarra
River. An inquest returned a verdict of ‘drowned, being in a state of insanity’, but a
correspondent to the Argus implied that the death was suspicious and that
Forrester’s tendency to bad temper and violence may have played a part.
In 1848, the publicans of Melbourne commissioned a silver snuff box from Charles
Brentani for presentation to Melbourne’s Chief Constable, William Sugden. Although
Forrester made the box, like Dick in Sydney, and Barclay in Hobart, the
commissioning jeweller took credit for the work. Brentani, had started learning the
trade of silversmith in his youth, but transportation interrupted his training and
Forrester was the only person in Australia with the skills to create such a box with
its intricate hinges. It seems likely that Forrester also made the Flemington Cup
commissioned from Brentani for presentation at the Flemington Races in January
1849. The cup is clearly more finely finished than Forrester’s cups of 1835, but then,
thirteen years’ practice can make a difference. Another cup commissioned for the
Plenty Races in October 1849 was also probably made by Forrester.
In July 1849 Major Alexander Davidson refused to pay the price asked by Brentani
for setting a valuable diamond into a ‘massive gold ring’. Legal proceedings followed,
during which Justice Redmond Barry was told by former Launceston watchmaker
James Robe that Forrester’s work was of inferior quality. Furious at the slur on his
workmanship, Forrester pointed out that Robe was merely a watchmaker, not a
jeweller, and challenged Robe, ‘for £50 a-side, to manufacture any article whatever,
in either silver or gold, from a diamond pin to a silver tea-urn’. Aware of his
reputation for bad temper and violence, Forrester added, ‘I have carefully avoided
either exaggeration or harsh language, and leave the public to form their own
judgment without my adding one word of comment’. The challenge was not taken
up.
5
By early 1850 Forrester had a watchmaking business in Elizabeth Street, and after
marrying widow Ann Willis in January 1851, soon acquired her Bourke Street pawn
broking store. After the gold rushes of mid-1851, the business of jewellers,
silversmiths and goldsmiths took a turn for the better. However, Forrester and
Brentani seem to have fallen out following an unsuccessful court case in September
1851 where Brentani accused a former employee of pawning stolen watches at
Forrester’s shop. In March 1852 Brentani advertised for a working jeweller who
would be paid wages of £6 per week. Forrester was available, but Brentani clearly
wanted somebody else.
Not only did Forrester fall out with Brentani, but early in 1852 Forrester’s fiery
temper got the better of him and he was charged with assaulting tinsmith John
Hughes. Five months later his shop was broken into and ‘completely stripped of all
the valuables ... to the value of £2000’. As if that was not enough, his second wife,
Ann Willis, died on 30 March 1853.
Forrester continued the pawn broking business, as well as Forrester & Co.
Watchmakers and Jewellers. It is unclear who else formed the company, but by early
1854 he was in partnership with Edward Hodgson, as Forrester and Hodgson,
watchmakers and jewellers. It appears that Forrester had not received any major
commissions since 1849, but in November 1854 the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows ordered a presentation medal made of ‘colonial gold’ which turned out to be
‘a most creditable specimen of colonial art’. The partnership between Forrester and
Hodgson could have been a turning point in Forrester’s career, but events back in
Scotland were to determine otherwise.
Joseph Forrester’s maternal grandfather, William Young, died in 1810 leaving an
estate benefiting his descendants. The conditions meant the distribution did not
occur until after the death of his daughter Euphan in 1852, when cousin Robert Keay
became administrator of the estate. Joseph’s share was £774 13s 10d, but before
matters were finalized, brother William died in London in August 1854, News of
William’s death prompted Joseph to disobey the conditions of his conditional pardon
and return to Scotland. He dissolved the partnership with Edward Hodgson and, in
January 1855, left Melbourne for London on board the Anglesey. He was now fifty
and it was twenty-six years since he left England.
Joseph Forrester imagined that his family wanted to see him as much as he longed to
be with them again, and as soon as he arrived in London he wrote to his sister
Christian in Perth. She was shocked that her convict brother had returned and,
fearing the malicious gossip that might ensue, urged him to stay away. Joseph’s
reaction was one of dismay, of betrayal, and of defiance. Perhaps, like the returning
convict, John Edmunds, in Pickwick Papers, Joseph discovered that ‘in the distant
land of his bondage … he had thought of his native place as he had left it, not as it
would be when he returned. The sad reality struck coldly at his heart, and his spirit
sank within him’.
6
Despite his sister’s advice, Joseph defiantly wrote to cousin Robert on 5 June 1855 to
say that he would visit Scotland anyway.
it is nearly thirty years since or more since I saw her [Christian] or any of my
relatives. I actually think she is much too severe in fact Dear Robert I feel it
worse than when I left my home. I am extremely sorry that there is such a
change in Family concerns and that differences should exist between Friends ...
had I come to England a Beggar man or a disgrace it would have been different
– But I do not see why I might not come to Perth or some place handay [sic] to
see you as it might be the last time that I will have a chance altho thank God I
am as well and strong as ever I was, and when I settle my business in London I
am going back to Melbourne to sell off all there and come back eithr to Scotland
or London for good.
Cousin Robert persuaded Joseph to change his mind, but Joseph was bitter.
I duly received yours of 22nd June when you state that you were surprised at my
returning to England. The reason is simple after so many years absence that I
would naturally have a wish to see my native place again and the Friends of my
youth. I certainly will not visit Perth. I will take my sisters & your advice. I was
not aware of the gossiping tendencies it would create and would be extremely
sorry to do any thing that would be painful to any of my relations in any
manner . Dear Robert that was the chief cause of my returning to england & I
did not mean, nor do not to rem’n in England, I have got enough to keep me and
to spare in Melbourne & think of embarking again in about 14 days so might be
by the Queen of the Seas which sails on the 15th of next month. I am very
anxious to get away...
Joseph again expressed regret that he was being rejected and concluded,
the alterations in life and circumstances are great, the many that I knew in
London are all most of them dead. Give my respt and Love to Aunt Keay, Your
dear wife & family. Please to answer this as you might not hear from me again
until I write you from Melbourne. I Remn My Dear Robert Your Old Friend.
As Robert Hughes noted, convicts transported to Australia ‘could succeed, but they
could hardly, in the real sense, return’.8 On 7 August 1855 Forrester left Gravesend
on board the Queen of the Seas, arriving back at Port Phillip eleven months after he
had set out. Not only had he lost his family in Scotland, but years earlier his wives
and only son had died, and upon returning to Melbourne he appears to have lost his
friends as well. Six months later his lifelong friend, cousin Robert Keay, died. The
inheritance from his grandfather’s estate would not be finalised for years.
When Forrester returned to Melbourne the people he previously worked for were
no longer there. His old employer Brentani was dead. His former partner, Hodgson,
thought Forrester would not be returning and sold the Bourke Street business.
Joseph decided to go north to Beechworth in the Ovens District.
By 1860 the matter of the inheritance had finally been settled — Joseph’s share was
just over £700 — but it would be many months more before he finally received
anything.9 But then the news broke — ‘A working jeweller, residing at the Ovens, has
7
inherited a fortune of about £70,000 by the recent death of a female relative in
England’. The news spread — the town was identified as Beechworth, but none
named the ‘Lucky Fellow’. Joseph’s inheritance been inflated from £700 to £70,000.
Eighteen sixty-one was the tenth anniversary of the Crystal Palace Exhibition and in
preparation for the London International Exhibition of 1862 local exhibitions were
organised. An exhibition at Beechworth October 1861 attracted 1,991 visitors, and
the Bendigo Advertiser observed, ‘We presume there was something worth seeing at
Beechworth.’ It might have been the case of ‘Colonial Jewellery and Gems’ put
together by rival jeweller, William Turner, and this may have prompted Forrester to
place a challenge in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser. Claiming to be a ‘Member of
the Goldsmiths’ Corporation, London’ and ‘Embosser and Chaser from Green’s
Terrace Islington’, Joseph Forrester ‘Challenges Victoria, from a Diamond Pin to a
Gold Tea Urn, for 100 Guineas!!! Go Ahead Beechworth.’ It seems that nobody
responded.
Forrester’s enjoyment of his newly acquired fortune was short-lived. He was
unhappy and had taken to drinking heavily. One day in mid July 1863, following an
altercation with hotel keeper, Charles Duchatel, Forrester told his housemate James
Barfoot that if Duchatel ‘summoned him’ he would leave the district.
A few days later Forrester left his house and walked off towards the Chiltern Road.
When he did not return, Barfoot reported him missing to the Police. A search was
carried out and enquiries were made, but without success. Eventually it was
assumed he had carried out his threat to go to Melbourne.
Five months later, on the morning of Sunday 6 December 1863, Charles Falcke took
his dog for a walk into the bush behind his house. The dog ran off and discovered the
remains of a body lying beneath a pine tree. The body was dressed, but had been
reduced to a skeleton. Falcke identified the clothes as those of Joseph Forrester. An
inquest was told there was no evidence of violence or poison, and the Chief
Commissioner of Police noted that ‘There does not appear to be any reason to
suspect anything criminal in this matter’. However, an inquest said nothing about
the possibility of suicide.
Forrester’s death was registered at Beechworth on Tuesday 8 December 1863 — the
cause of death was unknown and the date was sometime around July 1863. Other
details were minimal — a jeweller; believed to have been married but his wife was
dead; thought to have been in Victoria for about twenty years and in New South
Wales for fifteen years; thought to have been born either in Perth in Scotland, or in
London; aged about sixty-four. No mention of time in Van Diemen’s Land. Forrester
was buried at Beechworth on 9 December 1863 with only the Reverend W C Howard
and James Barfoot being present. A death notice was placed in the local newspaper
two weeks later: Forrester — Mr. J. Forrester, aged 65 years. That summed up his life.
The Ovens and Murray Advertiser carried a report of the inquest on 8 December
1863. The same report was copied to the Melbourne Age a week later. The
Tasmanian newspapers did not carry the news at all, and none connected the lonely
8
death of Joseph Forrester of Beechworth with the person who had worked as a
silversmith, jeweller, watchmaker and pawnbroker in Melbourne for about sixteen
years. As for the relatives back in Scotland — his cousin was dead, his brother was
dead, and his sister, Christian — she was still alive, but would she be interested? It
would appear that Forrester left no Will and it is not known what might have
happened to the £700 inheritance he received a few years earlier.
For a brief number of years Joseph Forrester had been the most competent
silversmith in Hobart and Melbourne, and was in great demand, but this was due
more to an accident of history than to his superior skills and business sense. As the
gold rushes brought more talented gold and silversmiths to Melbourne Forrester
moved to the country and was forgotten. If we ignore the fact that his work sells for
hundreds of thousands of dollars today and look beyond the silverware and antique
collectors, we find a man who enjoyed, and suffered all the emotions of any human
being, and perhaps suffered them more than most. Was he one of Manning Clark’s
‘permanent outcasts of society’; serving out ‘the term of his natural life’ in more
ways than the sentencing judge might have intended.10
If he was an outcast it was
only partly because he was an ex-convict and more because of whom he was and
how others saw him. Because of his comfortable family connections in Scotland, he
was, perhaps, outcast more than most.
Vincent Van Gogh went to the distant countryside of France where he found the
wheat fields to be an expression of the ‘sadness and extreme loneliness’ he had
experienced for much of his life, but at least he died in the arms of his brother; and
was remembered. The sadness and extreme loneliness of Forrester’s death was
known only to himself. Many people are quickly and easily forgotten and Joseph
Forrester became one of Port Phillip’s forgotten people. But perhaps Forrester’s
tragedy is that those he cared about the most were also those who most wanted to
forget him.
1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1972, pp. 27-28. 2 Douglas Wilkie, ‘Finding Forrester: The life and death of Joseph Forrester, convict
silversmith’, Tasmanian Historical Studies, vol. 17, 2012, pp. 45-71, and in two parts in
History Scotland, vol. 14, no. 4, July/August 2014, pp.22-29 and History Scotland, vol. 14,
no. 5, September/October 2014. A full listing of primary sources not cited here can be
found in the 2012 Tasmanian Historical Studies article. 3 All letters between William Forrester, Joseph Forrester and Robert Keay, senior and junior,
are in the Perth & Kinross County Archive (PKCA), Scotland, ‘Robert Keay, elder and
younger, papers 1790-1872’, MS24. 4 Details of Forrester’s time as a convict can be found in the Tasmanian Archives and Heritage
Office, CON18-1-21; CON31-1-13; CON27-1-4
5 James Backhouse Walker, ‘Reminiscences of life in Hobart 1840s to 1860s ’,
(1890), University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection, np, online
at http://eprints.utas.edu.au/1865/ accessed 8 July 2010. 6 David Barclay to John Leake, 19 March 1833, University of Tasmania Library, Rare
Collections, Archived Documents, L1-F184.
9
7 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Decorative Arts, Joseph Forrester,
http://static.tmag.tas.gov.au/decorativeart/objects/metalware/P708/index.html 8 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, Collins Harvill, London, 1987, p 586. 9 Details of the inheritance are found at Perth & Kinross County Archive, ‘Papers relating to
the settling of the estates of William Young, late supervisor of excise, Perth and of his
daughters Maria Young or Menzies and Euphan Young’, MS24. 10 Manning Clark, ‘The origins of the convicts transported to eastern Australia, 1787-1852’,
Australian Historical Studies, vol. 7, no. 26, 1956, pp. 124-125.