CONVICT Newcastle must have been full of colourful characters.
Unfortunately, many of their stories from 1801-1823 have been lost over the years.
A sharp reminder of this lies in the fact that the brutal penal settlement of Coal River (or Newcastle) is often best publicly remembered today by the memory of one of its commandants, not a prisoner.
His name was Major James Morisset of his Majesty's 48th Regiment, and he ruled this place of secondary punishment for the colony's worst villains with an iron fist between 1819 and 1823.
A terror of the convicts and known by the nickname "King Lash", Morisset required inmates under his control to hew two and a half tons of coal daily in primitive, unsafe conditions.
Facially disfigured in the Napoleonic Wars, Morisset appears to us today through the pages of history as a leering ogre, but you have to question how much of this was propaganda (including by the man himself) to instil fear into his surly felons. A biographer once described his fearsome facial features as a "whistling mask of scar tissue", but he kept strict order in this "Siberia" for Sydney's worst convicts.
He's also well remembered today for convicts having to dig his (then small) private bath out of an ocean rock outcrop, known now as the popular Bogey Hole, in King Edward Park. In his era there were more than 1000 convicts at Coal River with its 13 government buildings, a harbour jetty at the foot of George Street (later Watt Street) and 71 whitewashed convict huts.
Today Major Morisset is also remembered by a Lake Macquarie suburb and an old plaque (since 1978) on a tree near the railway line where he's once said to have camped.
Morisset confirmed his Newcastle bush prison was no longer escape-proof or isolated, and perhaps should be moved soon, north to a new site at Port Macquarie. That happened in 1823 when the bulk of prisoners were shifted there.
As for Newcastle's most interesting lads, convict artist Joseph Lycett stands out, as do the 1804 Castle Hill Irish rebels from Sydney.
But another contemporary Irish convict demands more attention. Sentenced originally to death by hanging for kidnapping, the roguish Sir Henry Browne Hayes ended up being exiled to Australia instead. Ever troublesome, the wealthy Irish baronet was then sent to Coal River three times, the last time being in 1809. He even erected his own hut (a solid single-storey house, really) which he later sold to be converted into Newcastle township's first hospital.
The eccentric Hayes also built Sydney's prized colonial Vaucluse House in snake-infested land. Not deterred, he simply imported 500 tons of snake-repellent soil from Ireland where St Patrick had banished all the snakes.
Who said history has to be dull? Despite this, he's probably largely forgotten by most Novocastrians today.
Though, not as forgotten in our early penal history as a group of Englishmen labelled Britain's worst villains back in February 1820. Desperate and delusional might be a better term, as their cause was always hopeless.
The original 13 men arrested in a scheme to violently bring down the British government were called the Cato Street Conspirators. Incredibly, five of them were eventually transferred to Newcastle NSW as punishment. Does the name still not ring a bell?
That's surprising really as they were once notorious for their failed plot to murder the British prime minister and all the British government cabinet ministers together at dinner.
The group was holed up in a decaying London stable in Cato Street (hence the name). The event came after the Napoleonic Wars had ended. It was a time of widespread unrest and poverty among the weary, long-suffering public. Revolution was in the air. A savage assassination plot was hatched, but the plotters were set up by a police spy and trapped, rounded up by the Bow Street Runners (the forerunner of today's English police). And during the arrest of the conspirators, policeman Richard Smithers was killed.
Five conspirators were executed while another five were transported to Australia, then later banished with hard labour to distant Coal River, arriving late in 1820. The Newcastle-bound convicts of the foiled plot had got off very lightly indeed. The plot's five ringleaders after being tried were publicly hanged at London's Newgate Prison. To everyone's shock, and as a horrific warning to others, the dead men were then cut down and beheaded by axe. It was said to be the last time such a macabre medieval punishment for treason was carried out.
A book on the assassination plot was even published in 2022 by Vic Gatrell. In it, the Cato Street Conspiracy is seen as the culmination of unrest caused by unemployment, bad harvests, high prices and starvation following the exhausting wars raged against the nation's enemy Napoleon.
In the words of BBC History magazine reviewer last year, anyone who still thinks the Regency period following the Napoleonic Wars was a genteel, Jane Austen-infused era of elegance and romance should read this book.
As author Gatrell argues: "Inequality, exploitation, disfranchisement, enclosures, factories, slavery, war, hunger, hangings, transportation, floggings, bullets, sabres and government repression . . . were what guaranteed Regency order and enabled the privileged to cavort so stylishly."
Eleven conspirators were initially sentenced to death with five instead transported to Australia arriving in a prison ship in September 1820 after a voyage out of 139 days.
The five conspirators soon transferred to Coal River were listed as shoemakers, a carpenter, a baker and a tailor. Authorities were warned about them being potentially problem prisoners. According to writer Maxwell Goldstein, however, that fear proved false. The men at first were part of a gaol gang, taking part in hard labour with reduced rations, but thanks to good behaviour, within two months the conspirators were reassigned to lesser tasks.
But by 1822 the Coal River penal settlement was being dissolved with free settlers being urged to come instead. Most of the convicts were being pressed into colonial service elsewhere.
Goldstein reports that, by 1824, four of the Cato Street felons arrived at Bathurst, 200 kilometres north-west of Sydney. Here, one of them, James Wilson, even worked as a police constable during his stint. Later, he became a free man and a very fashionable tailor in the region.
Two others, John Harrison and John Shaw Strange, also became 'trustee' Bathurst police constables, even capturing members of the Storey bushranger gang. Shaw had earlier worked as the personal messenger of the Newcastle prison commandant in 1821.
Richard Bradburn, the fifth Cato Street member, however, had escaped Coal River that year and assumed the identity of a Sydney convict whose sentence was almost up. Bradburn soon surrendered though, and was taken instead to the new penal outpost of Port Macquarie.
Although all five eventually contributed to Australian society, they remained unrepentant about their roles in the conspiracy.
But let's return to former convict John Shaw Strange. Finally pardoned in 1832, this tannery manager, landowner, failed publican, farmer and father of 10 children died in Bathurst in January 1868. He was the last surviving Cato Street conspirator.
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