Rum and the Colony of Sydney

Source - Governor King and the Illicit Distillers, 1800-1806 by DARREN HOPKINS - JOURNAL of the ROYAL AUSTRALIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 105 PART 2 Starting at Page 159 linked here. 

Governor King and the Illicit Distillers, 1800-1806 by DARREN HOPKINS

The history of spirit distillation in the colony of New South Wales, legal and illegal, has been noted by numerous scholars over the last 100 years or so but not much scholarly work has been devoted exclusively to this important social, economic and political history of colonial culture. 

The first record of illicit distillation emerged only five years after the founding of the colony (1) when agricultural stability allowed the first settlers to distil the produce of their farms, and from that point illicit distillation continued unabated throughout the colonial era, with extensive periods of activity recorded during the governorships of King and Macquarie, and during the times of economic depression in the 1840s and 1890s. 

This article will focus on the initial period of activity during the administration of Governor Philip Gidley King, notably the final years, 1805-1806. Illicit distillers in the colonial period generally used a pot still. This consisted of a copper or iron boiler, over which was placed a reducing or expansion hood, upon which was placed an alembic head, a conical or bulbous ellipsoid shaped element designed to collect the spirit vapours from the boiler. It tapered at the top to a smaller pipe which was attached to the outlet tube or vapour pipe which directed the vapours downward. 

At the end of this pipe was attached a cooling coil, commonly known as a worm. The cooling coil was submersed in a barrel of water so that the hot vapours did not expand and explode the pipe. The end of this coil poked out from the bottom of the barrel, under which a vessel was placed to collect the dripping spirits. This entire set-up was referred to as the apparatus. The manufacture of stills at this period varied greatly as all of the materials had to be imported. 

The first stills used in the colony appeared to have been copper pot- stills imported from England (most likely brandy stills), but more primitive stills were soon being manufactured from available materials, such as from iron pots used as a boiler, sometimes with another iron pot upended and sealed to the bottom pot as a makeshift alembic, with a hole cut out of its base to attach the outlet pipe. In some cases an iron or copper kettle was used as an alembic, its base cut for the purpose. In other cases a kettle served as both the boiler and the alembic, the rest of the apparatus being attached to the kettle spout. The worm was often constructed from gun barrels, creating a squared coil, the barrels presumably joined together with lead, pewter or tin.

The most commonly distilled items consisted of red wine to create brandy, fermented and malted grains made into beer to create whisky or poteen, peaches made into cider (sometimes mixed with grains or sugar) to make peach spirits, or sugar made into molasses to create rum. All of these ingredients had to be double distilled, and the first products of the distillation process were called singlings, which were then charged back into the still to produce a spirit, or distilled multiple times to produce a more potent spirit. 

The first record of Governor King’s concern with illicit distillation occurred several months prior to his assumption of governorship from his predecessor John Hunter (28 September 1800), and concerned the colony of Norfolk Island. In a letter dated 26 June, King informed the new Lieutenant-Governor, Major Joseph Foveaux, of the activities of the former Lieutenant-Governor, Captain Thomas Rowley, who had recently destroyed several stills at that settlement, ‘which has occasioned much illhealth among the inhabitants, caused by the poison they furnished’. (2) A later General Order of Governor King concerning the same settlement, on 18 January 1804, detailing his encouragement of some of the settlers’ desire to ‘manufacture the sugar-cane into sugar’ (the molasses of which is used for the distillation of rum). A warning was appended to his approval, that, ‘The Use of Stills, which only produce a very unwholesome Spirit well known to be productive of Dysentery, is from the best of motives forbidden.’ (3) Despite this early concern with illicit distillation at Norfolk Island, Governor King appears to have shown little official concern for distillers in the rest of the colony. 

It is a great irony that in only the fourth issue of the colony’s first newspaper, the Government-run Sydney Gazette, established by Governor King on 5 March 1803, that as part of an ongoing article concerning the ‘Method of Preparing a Piece of Land, For the Purpose of forming a Vineyard’, translated from the French by viticulturalist J. B. Laideau, there appeared a detailed paragraph on how ‘To Make Brandy’. (4) Governor King’s first General Order prohibiting illicit distillation in the colony was issued quite late in his governorship on 31 August 1805, (5) and was merely a re-enforcement and reprint of Governor Hunter’s General Order of 1799:

If those persons who shall presume to carry on this noxious work after this information do happen to be free people, every indulgence they may have hitherto received from the Government shall be immediately withdrawn, and they shall be ordered to quit this colony by the earliest opportunity. If a convict, they will receive such treatment for their disobedience as their conduct, in the opinion of a Court, may appear to merit. (6)

Governor King’s General Order (like that of Norfolk Island) was prompted by some ‘fatal Dysenteries’ from colonial distilled spirits, and by the discovery of ‘a Still and Utensils, with a quantity of bad Spirits’ which had been ‘found on the premises of a Settler at Prospect Hill, and it being known that many of these Engines of destruction are at work in different concealed parts of these Settlements’. Unstated in this General Order, but noted in his correspondence with the Home Office and the local magistracy, was that a more pressing reason at this time had been the rise in Irish distillers. 

A great concern for Governor King during his administration was the large influx of exiled Irish rebels involved in the Rebellion of the ‘United Irishmen’ in 1798, who had begun to arrive in the colony in 1800. Many brought with them their knowledge of distilling poteen (Irish whisky). In the aftermath of the Castle Hill convict insurrection of 4-5 March 1804 (which had been comprised mostly of exiled Irish rebels), the ‘United Irishmen’ were subjected to much closer scrutiny.

One of the manifestations of this increased surveillance was the seizure on 26 September 1805 of illicit stills and spirits made from grain and sugar on the properties of the ‘United Irishmen’ Michael Hayes, Matthew Sutton (Friendship, 1800), and Michael Byrne (Minerva, 1800) at Farm Cove. According to a letter from Governor King to the Home Office, 24 October 1805, knowledge of these distillers ‘was known some Weeks ago to myself and Magistrates but the detection was deferred until sufficient proof could be obtained’,(7) which was possibly provided by a ‘dealer on the Rocks’ who came forward with information (but who does not appear in the extant court transcripts). In a raid directed by the Chief of Police, John Harris, two or three Sydney constables first proceeded to the house of Michael Hayes at Farm Cove:

and on entering the premises found a still (of about 40 gallons) at work, attended by Michael Wallis, whom he sent in a prisoner; that Mr Harris came to the house, and upon examining found besides the still, which was near the door, 13 casks containing 1700 gallons of fermenting liquor, and 3 kegs with 45 gallons of singlings. Wallis candidly acknowledged his own criminality to the Magistrate, and declared himself a labourer employed by the owner of the premises, Hayes. Michael Byrne and Matthew Sutton were next charged with having in their possession implements for distilling spirits. The constables employed in the search stated that in obedience to their instructions they proceeded to the houses of the prisoners, which were adjacent to each other, and found in Sutton’s a keg of spirits, concealed within a trunk, and buried in his garden a 10 gallon sample of the same exact kind, all distilled in the colony. In Byrne’s house they found a very large still, and on searching the garden, the head, worm, and every other necessary apparatus, together with a keg containing 8 gallons of the same kind of spirits found next door. A dealer on the Rocks also came forward; and proved the purchase of spirits from Byrne at 32s. per gal. (8)

On the day of the trial Governor King wrote to the magistrates reminding them of the necessity of his enforcement of Hunter’s General Order of 1799, particularly in the light of the ‘highly public spirited and disinterested Diligence’ expressed by one of the magistrates towards the order, and that he required them to ‘award such Punishment Penalties or otherwise both against the Parties offending according to their respective situations’. He openly expressed his distrust towards the ‘United Irishmen’ in general observing ‘that the Persons on whose Premises those Destructive Materials have been found and those who were detected in the Act of working the Stills are of that Description who have been sent from Ireland to this Colony for Rebellious and Seditious practices in that Country where the miserable and deluded State of the peasantry in that part of the United Kingdom is too much owing to the private Distillation of Spirits’.(9) The sentence passed by the Bench of Magistrates at Sydney was that the convict Michael Wallace (Britannia, 1797), servant to Michael Hayes, was ordered to receive 300 lashes, but who, ‘Upon Recommendation of the Magistrates, the Governor is pleased to remit the Sentence passed on M. Wallice, for his candid and proper behaviour, and from a conviction on the Governor’s mind that the delinquent was the deluded and deserted victim of his unprincipled Employer or Employer’s avarice.’ He was transferred to the Government Farm at Castle Hill, and in the 1806 Muster was recorded as Free by Servitude. (10) Sutton, Hayes, and Byrne were sentenced to ‘being sent out of the Colony’, and ‘ordered to find security not to be engaged in any clandestine distilling directly or indirectly, themselves in £50 and two sureties in £25 each and to be imprisoned until such security is found. All the Materials for distillation to be confiscated to such Constables as were employed in seizing them.’ (11) All three departed for Norfolk Island on the vessel Sydney on 4 October.

Despite the fact that the settlement of Norfolk Island was in a slow state of evacuation, all three prisoners served out their sentences on the island and returned to Sydney at some time just before and after the events of the ‘Rum Rebellion’. Governor King’s initial instructions to the Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, John Piper, was that these prisoners ‘sent under Sentence of the Magistrates from this Settlement for having persisted in Distilling Spirits contrary to Colonial Regulations ... may remove to any other Dependance on this Territory, but cannot be allowed to return here, Burne may leave the Colony altogether being a Free-man’. (2 ) 

On the same day as the conviction of the ‘United Irishmen’ two other cases of illicit distillation were tried before the same Bench of Magistrates. The first case was that of Isaac Douce and William Bidgood (Glatton, 1803), convicts assigned to the Government Farm at Castle Hill, (13) against whom the Sydney constable John Jones testified ‘that on going into the House of Isace Dous he found the head and worm of a still tied up in a Sougee bag, (14) and on a further search he found a Bottle of Spirits (now produced) in the chest of William Badgood who lives in the same house with Dous. On asking Badgood where he got it, he said at John Kings at the Brickfields (Surry Hills). (15) 

On asking him where the remainder of the still was he said he knew nothing about it. Isace Dous says that Patrick Sloane left it there at his house in a S(ou)gee Bag.’ The charge was ‘remanded for further examination’ until the ‘principal’ Sloane was taken into custody. (16) 

The second case involved John William Lancashire (Barwell, 1798), a ‘Draughtsman, And Ship, House, Sign, and Ornament Painter and Glazier’, who, at that time, owned a shop at 1 Back Row (Phillip Street), and had purchased a farm on the eastern side of Brickfield Hill that he named ‘Patulla Gardens’. (17) The Chief Constable of Sydney, John Redman (Surprize, 1790), testified ‘that on going into the House of Lancashire with Edw(ar)d Quin a Constable, and in looking about he saw a Kettle (now produced) and from observing some Clay about it he went to a pond of Water, and in raking the Pond he discovered the rim and top which exactly fitted it. J. W. Lancashire acknowledges that the Kettle, rim head, and worm were his property ... [that] he had them for the purpose of distilling Spirits from Peach Cyder, but on the Gov(erno)rs order prohibiting it being published, he gave up every idea of using it’. (18) The sentence passed upon Lancashire is not recorded, but it is possible that his contrition may have resulted in the dismissal of his case and the forfeiture of the kettle-still. (19) The ‘principal’ mentioned in the earlier case, Patrick Sloane (Atlas 2, 1802), was another ‘United Irishman’ who had been Captain Edward Abbott’s overseer at Parramatta, and who had received a conditional pardon for providing information of the Castle Hill convict insurrection of 1804. (20)

Sloane appeared before the Bench of Magistrates on 30 September, ‘on a Charge of having left a Sougee Bag in which was a Head and Worm and leaving it at the House of Will(ia)m Bedgood & Isace Douse and having sold a Bottle of Spirits to the former’. Both Bidgood and Douce were found not guilty and released from custody, it being apparent that the still had been planted by Sloane, who, ‘The selling the Spirits being fully proved’ was sentenced ‘to work for Government for two Years’. (21) Also on the same day as the conviction of the ‘United Irishmen’ the General Order prohibiting distillation was further amended to include the seizure of movable property used in transporting colonial distilled spirits, stipulating:

... any Carriage, Boat, Horse or other animal removing such spirits with or without a Permit, shall become the property of the person or persons who shall make seizure thereof, on conviction before a Bench of Magistrates. – And if any Licensed Person receives, sells, or barters any such Spirits, they will, on conviction before a Bench of Magistrates, forfeit their License and Securities, the penalties of which be levied upon conviction’ .(22)

This amendment to the General Order prohibiting illicit distillation would remain in force throughout the early colonial period and was both a successful and corruptive temptation to constables and informers desirous of gaining profits from the sale of seized items. In the light of these recent seizures Governor King despatched a report to the Home Office, 31 December 1805, on the state of illicit distillation and the conviction of the ‘United Irishmen’, noting that the practice of ‘using private stills in different parts of the colony ... is much facilitated by the number of Irish we have will be sufficiently obvious to you, as well as the endless trouble in detecting and bringing the delinquent forward. The Orders established by my predecessor and myself to prevent that destructive practice have in a great measure been ineffectual, altho’ several stills have lately been seized and the workers, &c, sent to other settlements; yet if report is true there are many others at work, and so concealed that detection by the police is altogether impracticable.’ He proposed that ‘the excise laws, as far as respects the fines and penalties for using private stills, might be adopted here with good effect; but on consulting with the Judge-Advocate he thought the introduction of those laws would be a stretch of power’. (23) 

King further reported that requests had been made by settlers on behalf of representatives seeking permission to distil peach spirits, ‘that several of the settlers have upwards of three hundred bushels of peaches growing on their farms, requesting permission to distil the juice into a spirit, it being ascertained that cyder made from it will not keep; submitting that there could be no reason why a farmer should not make the best of his crop for his own use, provided he kept within the rules laid down for the good of the society he lives in ... With these reasons I should be very well satisfied to give that permission, but the great evil will be the probability of corn being malted for the purpose of distillation by those who may be licenced to distil their peaches, of which fruit there are an astonishing abundance’. (24) 

Peaches, which had been brought in the First Fleet, grew abundantly in the colony, specifically in the farming areas of the Parramatta and Hawkesbury districts, and over the next two years with bountiful crops of peaches available to the settlers in these areas they became one of the principal products used in distillation, colloquially referred to as ‘colonial brandy’. On 11 May 1806, Governor King issued a General Order offering a variety of rewards in stock or money ranging from £10 to £56 ‘to Accomplices, Labourers, and Detectors, on Conviction of the Offenders, viz’ providing information leading to the ‘concealed Stills’ worked in different parts of the colony, the reward varying depending on the status of the informant and on the status of those informed upon, with conditional emancipation and absolute pardons offered to convicts. (25) 

This General Order would turn out to be the only effective measure issued by King against distillation, presenting a strong temptation for convicts desirous to be free of their convictions, and remained in force during the interim government after the removal of Governor Bligh, and was re-enforced by Governor Macquarie up until 1821. Despite the eventual effectiveness of this General Order the final year of King’s governorship, 1806, was a profligate period of illicit distillation and there are numerous notices of illicit stills seized in all parts of the colony. Previous to this General Order, before a Bench of Magistrates at Parramatta on 7 May 1806, the Chief Constable, Francis Oakes, deposed that on the previous day ‘Richard Philip(s) informed him that he had met a man with a Copper and observed him take it towards James Maines House – he informed him also that he had tasted some Spirits there – Mr Oakes immediately went with Philips to the House of Maine with two Constables to see if he could find the Copper and the Kegs of Spirits Philips had mentioned but he could not find the above’ (they having been removed to the nearby Creek by a man named Higgins, not yet in custody) but ‘found four Casks containing about 350 Gallons of (peach) Cider in a State of Fermentation mixed with Sugar’.

The decision of the Bench was that ‘we are of opinion that the wort was intended for to make Spirits: but from none of the Parts of the Still being produced or discoverable we do not feel ourselves justifed in ordering the wash to be started, and therefore have ordered it to be kept in its present State until his Excellencys Pleasure is known thereon, or Higgins apprehended’. James Maine (Britannia, 1797), a labourer, (26) was a tenant on one of D’Arcy Wentworth’s farms, and was brought before the Bench on 11 May, and, at the recommendation of the governor was ordered ‘to give Sufficient Securities himself in £50 and two Sureties in £25 each not to convert that Wort or any other Preparation to distil Spirituous Liquors or to make use of any Still whatsoever’. (27) 

A short time before 16 May 1806, the Hawkesbury Constable, Thomas Green (Royal Admiral, 1800), had been ordered to search the houses of several Richmond Hill settlers ‘suspected of having a quantity of Gun Powder in them’, and when he arrived at the house of Paul Randall (Admiral Barrington, 1791) with his warrant his servant Michael Brannan (Atlas, 1802) raced into the house, shut the door and disappeared. The Constable tracked Brannan’s foot tracks to the river bank ‘where he found the Body of a Still’ which Brannan had attempted to conceal by covering it with his jacket. A search of Randall’s house uncovered about 120 gallons of wort made from malted grains. Randall and his servant were reported to have ‘invited Green to say nothing about the Business, and they would drive him a Pig Home any time, and make him some Spirits for his Wife’s Laying in’ (which he refused). At the trial before a Bench of Magistrates at Parramatta on 28 May, Randall declared that the copper found was his, ‘that he has had it in his Possession eleven years, and bought it originally from Captain Reed’, and ‘that the wort (discovered) was intended for Beer’. Upon being questioned Brannan denied ‘ever hiding the Still, and that it was in the Room where it used to stand till Green brought it out’. Green in his deposition stated his suspicion that Brannan ‘had thrown the remaining Parts of the Still into the River’. The verdict of the trial has not been preserved but without a full still apparatus and denial by Randall of any distillation he appears to have been released. His servant Brannan was sent to Sydney ‘for further examination before a full Bench of Magistrates’, and in a letter from the Parramatta Magistrate Samuel Marsden to Governor King on the day of the trial he informed him that ‘Brannan Randall’s Man will not give any Information – we have sent him down – neither he, nor his Brother (Luke) ought to be suffered to remain at Richmond Hill’,28 and with this recommendation both Brannans were transferred to the Government Farm at Castle Hill. (29) 

Two anonymous letters addressed to Governor King, written in a Kentish dialect by a resident of Richmond, are preserved from this period, one written on 17 May, wherein the author’s name has been deliberately erased with ink (presumably by the Governor himself), and the second letter written shortly after which is signed ‘B’. (30)  

Although anonymous, internal evidence in the letters allows for an identification of the author as James Blackman, who arrived in the colony from Kent on 14 December 1801 as a free settler aboard the Canada, who received a land grant on 31 March 1802 of 100 acres at Richmond Hill along the Hawkesbury River. (31)   

Blackman wrote to the Governor ‘in Consideration of the peach syder [cider] being about’ and ‘the Drinking companyes that are so frequent in this Neighborhood’ and described his neighbours as being ‘of two sects, the Distiller, and Drunkard’. 

It was Blackman who had informed against his close neighbour Paul Randall, and others, ‘for having in thire posession great quant(it)yes of gun powder’, and which inadvertently resulted in the seizure of his illicit still. He expressed his regret ‘that they have seazed Paul Randall(’s) aparatus, it has caused the rest to put them aside, for a w(h)ile’ and entreated the Governor to delay ‘aney procecution (prosecution) to take place against Paul Randall at this time as it will tend to injure the Obtaining the Others’, who, with the Government price of spirits set at the high price of 20 shillings per bottle, would likely be induced to begin distilling again by the end of the month.   Governor King may have taken this advice, as the distiller Randall appears to have been shown some degree of leniency, although few Hawkesbury distillers appear to have been detected as a result. 

Blackman continued: ‘I am informed that the distillers have some corespondants in Sydney thay suply with spirits and that itt is conveyd in Chests in jinerall (general)’, and names some of the prominent distillers he believes to be practising in the Richmond district, many of whom also operated illicit public houses.   He believed that there were stills at work at Jimmings’ (Jennings) at Yellow Monday’s Lagoon (Yallamundi), as well as at the property of William Cummings, a former marine lieutenant of the New South Wales Corps, ‘from syder in ginerall, he has the still by him’, and at James Badgery’s ‘Exeter Farm’ with a 20-30 gallon still.   Badgery was a free settler who arrived on the Walker, 1799, in service to Colonel William Paterson, and received a grant of 100 acres in 1803, and 39 acres in 1804, in the district of Evan at the Nepean River junction. (32)   

Badgery had been granted a permit to retail spirits and to this the informer stated ‘that spirits that he distills is sold under that same pirmit if ever detected’, and further informs that the principal still in the district ‘has been maid (made) from a lang (long) Copper of Badgeryes & is removed from one farm to the Other & I believe is now at yallow Mondays’. He also makes mention that ‘Hamilton (is) still C[on]ny on the making of the stills, I was passing by his place where he lives, and I saw A very large Copper Cittle (kettle) that I had every reason to believe was for that purpose’. Jacob Hamilton (Ganges, 1797) was a blacksmith and tinker by trade (33) who lived around the Windsor/South Creek area, and was convicted in 1799 for illicit distillation, along with three other convicts, and was sentenced to work for a year ‘in the Blacksmiths public Shop’. (34)  

Some time in May the convicted distiller Patrick Sloane, still under sentence, appears to have made an agreement to distil spirits with the Richmond Hill settler Thomas Gordon, who arrived free aboard the ship Experiment, 1804, and received a grant of 100 acres on 16 July 1804. (35)  

Probably as a result of the recent seizure of Randall’s still, Gordon directed his servant John Day (Hillsborough, 1799) to remove his still and worm ‘down the River to Robinsons Farm formerly Binghams’, where Sloane rented 20 acres. (36)  

When Gordon enquired of the location of the still two days later – presumably with the intention to use it –Day informed his friend the Hawkesbury settler Joseph Welstead (Salamander, 1791) ‘where the Still and worm were, and desired him to remove it into the Rocks, with an Intention of taking it up to Mr Arndell’, the Hawkesbury magistrate. On about 2 June, Day went to the magistrate and informed him of Gordon’s still and Constable Thomas Green was sent to retrieve it, and ‘Welstead shewed him where it was planted’. Gordon, claiming that ‘he had been unwell, and was not able to travel’ was granted a bail bond to appear before a Bench of Magistrates at Parramatta, which did not occur until 26 June, whereat,  Mr Gordon being called upon to answer for the Still, says that he had the Still, and it was brought from Richmond Hill and further that it was made under the sole directions of Pat(rick) Sloan – that Pat. after applied to him to allow him to make Spirits; but he never made any – and that Pat. wanted to purchase all the Peaches from (William) Bowman to make Spirits. It appears that Pat. Sloan has been the Principal in this Business; and has artfully drawn his Master into it – we have given Pat. Sloan fourteen days to make some us(e)ful discoveries respecting the Stills, when he is to appear again to answer the above Complaint; and we have taken Gordon’s Security for his appearance at the same time. (37)  

Sloane’s final appearance before the Magistrates is not recorded, but in the 1806 Muster (12-20 August 1806) he is registered as ‘P(risoner) Fined’ and employed as ‘Servant Thomas Green Constable’, while continuing to serve out his sentence ‘With Gov(ernmen)t Ground’, and also still farming his rented acres on John Robinson’s property. (38)  

On the night of 1 June, ‘about half an hour after sun set’, a working still owned by Joseph Holt (Minerva, 1800), another ‘United Irishman’, was seized in a cave at the North Rocks. Two privates of the New South Wales Corps, James Martin and John Hinder, had received information on where to find a still, but ‘thinking they would not be sufficiently strong should any opposition be made. Hinder ask(’d) John Milton (Perseus, 1802) a constable to go with them’. They first seized Holt’s servants Richard Doyle (Tellicherry, 1806) and Edward Drum (Minerva, 1800) in the act of distilling, Holt’s son Joshua having effected his escape, and later seized Holt and another servant John Haley (Atlas 2, 1802) on their way to the North Rocks distillery.  According to Holt’s memoirs, in February 1806 on his 110-acre property called ‘Barrington’s Old Farm’ near the North Rocks, he converted his plantation of peaches into about 500 gallons of peach cider, which could be sold at 9 pence a quart, but distilling the cider into peach spirits would produce 50 gallons of over- proof spirits, which could be sold at a much greater profit, and so, despite the General Order prohibiting distillation Holt decided to distil his peach cider into spirits, initially producing 20 gallons of spirits which sold for £50. Holt declared that the still he used was once the property of the Magistrate William Balmain, writing that ‘I had Doctor Balmain’s Distill by me ever since I had bought his farm and stock for Mr Cox’. (39)  

As a magistrate in 1799 Balmain had insisted on the return of the distillation apparatus (minus the worm) owned by Owen McManimy (Marquis Cornwallis, 1796) used to make spirits for Henry Kable (Friendship, 1788), Chief Constable of the Gaol, who had been dismissed by the court with a reprimand, Kable having claimed (despite Governor Hunter’s General Order of that year) ‘that he did not conceive at the time that he was altogether acting contrary to the Governor’s order, to this supposing that an order of so long standing had been in some Reports suspended from certain Circumstances’. (40) 

Having distilled the remainder of his stores of peach cider, and with the profits from that venture, Holt purchased a large quantity of sugar to distil rum, which was a far more popular and profitable spirit within the colony. According to Holt’s memoirs, knowledge of his bush distillery was passed onto the authorities by two fellow Irishmen. The first mentioned informer was William Cummings, who, as already noted by James Blackman, had a distillery set up on his property ‘Tipperary Farm’ near the Hawkesbury area leading to Parramatta and was also a host to the ‘Drinking companys’ held in the area. He invited Holt into his house ‘and showed me his fixtures’ where he was distilling rum, and to whom Holt had disclosed the location of his own distillery, whereupon he provided information to his fellow marines, presumably to eliminate Holt as a competitor. The other supposed informer was Hugh ‘Vesty’ Byrne (Tellicherry, 1806), (41) another ‘United Irishman’. Upon this information:  a search was ordered to be made on and about a farm known by the name of Barrington’s old Farm, at the North Rocks. The persons dispatched on this duty perceived a fire; and cautiously approaching, beheld two white men sitting by it, and a third procuring fuel at a short distance. Upon a nearer view they were satisfied that a still was then actually at work; and while consulting upon the most proper steps to be pursued for surprising and apprehending the workmen, J. Holt and a man named Healey coming accidently upon them, were instantly secured; the party levelling their pistols at the others, compelled two to surrender themselves, the third effecting his escape. The still, which was then actually at work, was knocked to pieces, and the head and worm taken into Parramatta with the prisoners. (42)  

Brought before the Parramatta Magistrates Samuel Marsden and Edward Abbott on 2 and 4 June, Holt was ‘ordered to find Security in £200 himself and two Sureties in £100 each ... Haley and Doyle Holts Man [men] are sentenced each to receive a Corporal Punishment and to be sent to Castle Hill – Drum who says he is a free Man; and who was found with Holts Still is ordered to find Security in £50 and two Sureties in £25 each – and to be confined till the Sureties are given’. (43)  

Despite Governor King’s recommendation that Holt be subject to the full sentence prescribed by the General Orders and ought ‘to have been sent from the Settlement’, he received leniency from the magistrates, having ‘given us other Information useful to the public’, and was in consequence not sent from the Colony as the General Order dictated.   On 2 June Holt gave information to the Magistrate Abbott ‘where there are several others [stills], and this night promised to put me in possession of one which he thinks is now at work’. (44)   

The information provided by Holt resulted in the marine Richard Partridge being directed by Abbott to the farm of John Love, an ex-marine of the New South Wales Corps who had arrived in the colony on the Matilda, 1791, and who received a 30- acre land grant at The Ponds (Rydalmere) in 1794 and later received another grant of 90 acres at North Brush in the district of the Field of Mars (Eastwood) in 1795.45 Partridge deposed at the trial that he uncovered nothing at the house of Love but in a hut on the property where William Harvey (Ganges, 1797) lived he ‘found a kettle and a cover which might contain about twenty gallons, and believes it is the body of a Still (but can’t swear to it)’. On the same day Love appeared before the Parramatta Magistrates and was ‘ordered to find Security in £50 – and two Sureties in £25 each – The Ticket of Leave man found in Love’s Farm William Harvey we have ordered to Castle Hill’,46 although the 1806 Muster (12-20 August 1806) records him as employed by the ex-marine and free settler Alexander McDonald (Friendship, 1788) at Parramatta. (47)   

A new proclamation prohibiting distillation, issued by Governor King on 14 June 1806, declared that ‘notwithstanding the repeated Orders and the conviction of several persons employed in distilling a pernicious spirit, and the present exigence for want of grain, yet it has appeared before a Bench of Magistrates that a quantity of maize, wheat, and other grain has been malted for the purpose of distilling’, and imposed a new conviction before a Bench of Magistrates of £400 and six months imprisonment, and ‘Any person under sentence of the law offending herein will suffer such punishment as the magistrates may award’. (48) 

In a letter to the Judge Advocate and magistrates Governor King expressed his reasons for the new proclamation, stating that ‘the daring and general use of Stills since that period, scarce a Week having past since the existing great Rewards have been offered for their detection that Stills and Delinquents have not been brought forward, which has established the certainty that Grain has been used in great abundance for that purpose at this time of alarming scarcity’. (49)   

At some time in mid-May the settler Thomas Hackett (Barwell, 1798), who rented 120 acres at D’Arcy Wentworth’s ‘Brush Farm’ (Eastwood), and ‘had a quantity of peaches of which he made some cyder’, was approached by Thomas Henderson, (or Anderson, Sugar Cane, 1793), a settler at the North Rocks, who ‘offered to distil it for him, but finding afterwards, that he was likely to be tricked’, decided to go to the authorities and inform on Anderson.   

As a result of this information Sergeant James Champion was ordered by Magistrate Abbott on 10 June, ‘to take a party and search for stills, or other materials for that purpose’ and ‘went to the Brush farm and spoke to Hackett’, who directed them to the spot where he thought the wort to be, but it was not until two days later that they discovered ‘several hundred gallons of fermenting liquid ... composed of peach cyder, with wheat and maize intermixed’, but could not locate the still intended to distil the wort. Hackett deposed that he ‘saw the Still within a few rods of his (Anderson’s) door, and at that time McManamy an(d) Anderson, were working it’, and a neighbour of Hackett’s, Edward MacGuire (Britannia, 1797), also testified ‘that he has frequently seen McManamy going into the Brush where the casks were found, and has also seen a smoke there’.   McManamy was Owen McManimy, who had previously been charged with illicit distillation in 1799, with materials supplied by Henry Kable, but the case had been discharged by the magistrates, with a final addendum to the minutes of the proceedings noting that, ‘A Bottle of Liquor (was) produced the Quality of which was declared to be good.’ (50)   

Anderson appeared before a Bench of Magistrates at Parramatta on 14 June and was imprisoned ‘upon strong presumptive evidence of his having a still in his possession’, the location of which he eventually disclosed on 21 June. On 24 June Owen McManimy was ordered by Governor King ‘into our Jail Gang where he shall remain’. (51)   

Unfortunately for Anderson his particular case was used by the Judge Advocate and County of Cumberland magistrates to express their concerns about enforcing the old 1799 General Order endorsed by Governor King, (52) and which a year earlier had seen the banishment of the ‘United Irishmen’ Michael Hayes, Matthew Sutton, and Michael Byrne to Norfolk Island. With the exception of the banishment of these ‘United Irishmen’ the magistrates had previously ignored this General Order and had seen fit to impose only monetary securities and sureties upon convicted distillers as guarantees that they would not continue to distil in the future.   

On 24 June the Governor sent a letter to the Parramatta magistrates Marsden and Abbott commenting that ‘it appears that Anderson is convicted of the Still belonging to him but it does not appear that any punishment is awarded to him agre(e)able to the General Orders’. Their reply on 26 June stated that Anderson’s still had been sent down to Sydney the previous day, that ‘he still remains in Gaol. We would wish to be informed of your Excellencys Pleasure respecting him’, to which Marsden added that ‘we do not conceive that we have Authority to do more than take Anderson’s Security for his future good Behav(i)our, that it does not come within the Provence of the Magistrates to send any Person out of the Colony’. 

This statement was reiterated by Marsden in a following letter, 28 June, in which he added that with respect to the sentence of banishment passed upon the ‘United Irishmen’ the year previous, ‘I am persuaded the Bench did not pass Sentence of Banishment upon them’ (that final decision being the sole authority of the Governor), and that this ‘was not only my opinion, but the Opinion of the whole Bench’.   

On 30 June the Governor addressed a long letter to the Judge Advocate and all the magistrates declaring that, in contrast to Marsden’s statement, the banishment of the ‘United Irishmen’ was in full conformity with the decision of the Judge Advocate and the magistrates. He then asked whether they considered Hunter’s ‘Order of February 28th 1799 and my consequent Orders, as unadvised, improper or illegal, Or whether you of the Bench do or do not consider yourselves authorized as Magistrates to give those Regulations a clear Support by pronouncing in your Decisions whether the Delinquents do or do not come under the penalty prescribed by the above and other colonial Regulations’. He advised them ‘On receiving that resolution I shall consider of the propriety and most advisable method of continuing and enforcing obedience on the part of the Inhabitants thereto, or cancelling the Colonial Regulations as formed by my Predecessor continued and added to by me as circumstances and events have rendered necessary’ concluding that, ‘if just and necessary local regulations are not supported by the Magistracy when clear conviction follows accusation the Executive Authority must be effectually weakened’.   

The distiller Anderson had remained in jail for the entire period of this dispute and was finally brought before a Bench of Magistrates at Parramatta on 1 July, and found guilty of having and using a still. On this day a response to Governor King’s previous letter was sent by the Judge Advocate Richard Atkins and signed by the full Bench of Magistrates, Major George Johnston, the Reverend Samuel Marsden, Thomas Jamison, John Harris, John Houstoun and Edward Abbott, all of whom supported the previous statements made by the Parramatta magistrates, that ‘they do not think themselves vested with sufficient authority to send any free person out of the Colony for any disobedience of a Colonial order, which they conceive would be enfringing on the power of the Governor’, and ‘That the power of the Magistrates extend no further than finding the Culprit generally guilty of a Breach of Governor Hunters order of the 28th Feby 1799 and Your Excellencys subsequent order of the 29th Septr 1805, leaving it to the Governor to inflict the prescribed penalties.’   

Anderson had been found guilty of the breach of General Orders, which was ‘clearly proved and that he has incurred the penaltys prescribed by said orders’. By order of the Governor, Anderson was sentenced ‘to quit the Colony by the first opportunity’. (53)   

Despite this order the magistrates did not send Anderson from the colony. Governor King handed over his governorship not long after this trial to Governor Bligh on 13 August 1806, and in the 1806 Muster (12 or 16 August) Anderson, under the name Thomas Henderson, is recorded as Free By Servitude and renting 50 acres on one of D’Arcy Wentworth’s properties in the Field of Mars district. (54)

On 11 June the convict James Craig (Glatton, 1803) was sent by his master to the farm of Robert Crumby for a bushel of maize and there accidentally witnessed this settler in the act of distilling.   Crumby was an ex-marine who had arrived in the armed vessel Porpoise in 1803, and was one of 28 marines who had voluntarily chosen to be discharged from service and join the New South Wales Corps or receive government assistance to become settlers.   

On 11 August 1804, he received a grant of 100 acres in the district of Mulgrave Place (South Creek) in the Hawkesbury. (55) 

Whilst at Crumby’s property on that day Craig ‘observed a Smoke at a distance opposite the door of the House – and immediately went towards the Place, where he saw Rob(er)t Crumby putting out the fire that was under the Still – Crumby seemed very much alarmed – this dep(onen)t asked Crumby what game he was at – Crumby replied he was making Beer. This dep(onen)t saw something dripping which he took to be Spirits, out of a Tub into an Iron Pot’. Craig further reported that Crumby was in the custom of bringing spirits to Green Hills and Parramatta for sale. Upon Craig’s information Crumby was brought before a Bench of Magistrates at Hawkesbury on 19 June, whereat ‘the Magistrates insisted upon him giving up his Still, which after some Reluctance he consented to do – Crumby being ignorant of the Proclamation till this day – The Bench have taken that into Consideration, and have ordered him to find Security for his good Behav(i)our’ of £50 and two sureties of £25 each. (56)   

At the same trial the deposition of James Craig also implicated several other South Creek settlers of illicit distillation, who stated ‘that he has had frequent Conversation with John Smith Settler on the South Creek, about distilling Spirits, and then told him that he had a Still himself but he had lent it to Antony Rope (Alexander, 1788) and that Alexander Hewitt (Glatton, 1803) made the Still for him’.   Hewitt was servant to Peter Hibbs, another ex-marine from the Porpoise turned settler who had also received a 100-acre grant at Mulgrave Place (‘Down the River’) on 11 August 1804. (57) 

The still, made from a copper kettle stolen from Magistrate Thomas Arndell, had been fashioned for John Smith who deposed that he lent it to Rope about five weeks earlier ‘and has never had it since’. John Smith was yet another ex-marine from the Porpoise turned settler who had also received a 100-acre grant at South Creek on 30 August 1803. (58)   In a letter to the Governor the magistrate Samuel Marsden admitted that ‘Rope we are convinced has got Mr Arndell’s Copper, and has made use of it as a Still but we have no Proof’. (59) 

Rope at that time was leasing (or had purchased) 48 acres from James Badgery’s property on the Nepean River (60) (who, as previously noted by James Blackman, was also a Hawkesbury distiller). The manufacture of this still also brought to trial the convicts John Brown (Hercules, 1802), servant to Samuel Marsden, and William Lindsay (Barwell, 1798), servant and shepherd to Magistrate Arndell. 

According to the settler John Smith he had been approached by Brown, who wanted him to take him into his service and off the Government Stores and said that if he ‘would take him off the Store, he understood making W(h)iskey’, to which Smith replied that ‘it was a Business he did not understand’, and so Brown promised that ‘he would find the Materials to make it with, and would see and set a Kettle – in about one week afterwards Brown came to the (Richmond) Hills and said he would get a Kettle on the following Sunday’ which he had concealed in the bush near a stump. 

John Brown deposed stated that he had received the copper kettle from William Lindsay. The decision of the Bench of Magistrates at Hawkesbury on 19 June was ‘that the above Copper was stolen from Mr Arndell by Linsay; and given to Brown by him – and that John Brown gave the same Copper to John Smith with an intention to convert it into a Still – we do therefore sentence the said John Brown, and Mr Linsay to receive fifty Lashes each – and to be sent to Castle Hill’. (61) 

The convict James Craig, for the information he had provided about these numerous acts of illicit distillation, had been recommended by the Hawkesbury Magistrates as ‘entitled to the Reward published in the General Orders’, and as such he received a conditional pardon on 8 August 1806. (62) 

A delayed consequence of this most prolific year of illicit distillation under Governor King was the purchase at that time of two stills from England, one by John Macarthur, a still of 60 gallon capacity, and one by the Parramatta Magistrate Edward Abbott, a still of 40 gallon capacity, and they arrived at Sydney during the administration of Governor Bligh on 8 March 1807, aboard the trading vessel the Dart (of which John Macarthur was part owner). They were confiscated by Governor Bligh and ordered to be sent back to England at the first opportunity. The legal proceedings relating to these imported stills were one of the incidents that brought about the so-called ‘Rum Rebellion’ on 26 January 1808. (63)

1 David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol 1, A. H. & A. W. Reed, Sydney, 1975, (first pub. London, 1798), pp 274-5: ‘(Dec 1793) Webb, the settler near Parramatta, having procured a small still from England, found it more advantageous to draw an ardent diabolical spirit from his wheat, than to send it to the store and receive ten shillings per bushel from the commissary. From one bushel of wheat he obtained nearly five quarts of spirit, which he sold or paid in exchange for labour at five and six shillings per quart,’ referring to one of the First Fleet mariners and brothers Robert Webb or Thomas Webb (Sirius). Robert Webb received a 60-acre grant on 16 March 1791 on the creek leading to Parramatta, and Thomas Webb, who returned from England with the still aboard the Bellona (16 January 1793), received an 80-acre grant on 28 May at Liberty Plains.

2 Historical Records of New South Wales (hereafter HRNSW) vol 4, p 108; Historical Records of Australia, Series I (hereafter HRA), vol 2, p 522.

3 Sydney Gazette (hereafter SG), 22 January 1804, p 1.

4 SG, 26 March 1803, p 3. This translation had originally been sent in a despatch to the Governor of New South Wales by the Duke of Portland, 22 April 1800 (translated 8 April), to assist the two French prisoners of war François de Riveau and Antoine Landrien who had been employed ‘to cultivate a vineyard for the Crown of such an extent as to allow ... the cultivation of the vine and the making of wine throughout the settlement at large’; HRA, vol 2, pp 493-7 (copy of translation used for SG article: Colonial Secretary Correspondence, NSW State Archives and Records Authority (hereafter NSWSA), 4/1719, pp 14-23 (reel 6041).

5 SG, 1 September 1805, p 1. 

6 HRNSW, vol 3, pp 638-9; HRA, vol 2, pp 364-5. 

7 HRA, vol 5, p 571. 

8 SG, 29 September 1805, p 2. 

9 King Family Papers, 28 September 1805, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (hereafter ML), A1980/2, pp 300-2 (CY reel 906). 

10 Carol J. Baxter (ed), Musters of New South Wales and Norfolk Island, 1805-1806, Australian Biographical and Genealogical Record, Sydney, 1989 (hereafter 1806 Muster), entry A4739. 

11 King Family Papers, 28 September 1805, ML, A1980/2, pp 305-9 (CY reel 906); SG, 29 September 1805, pp 1-2, supp. 2. 

12 King to Piper, 30 September 1805, NSW Colonial Secretary’s Correspondence, 1803-1810, ML Safe 1/51, p 43. 

13 1806 Muster, entries A0460, A1288. 

14 A soogee bag (Hindi sūgī), was a bag that originally contained imported Indian wheat. 

15 John King (Scarborough, 1788) was overseer of the brickmakers at the Brickfields. 

16 King Family Papers, 28 September 1805, ML, A1980/2, pp 304-5, 308 (CY reel 906); SG, 29 September 1805, p 2, printed a garbled account of the names of the prisoners charged that day ‘I. W. Lancashire, Isaat Dose, and William Bedgood’. 

17 SG, 11 September 1803, p 4, 25 December 1803, p 4; 23 March 1806, p 4. 

18 King Family Papers, 28 September 1805, ML, A1980/2, p 305 (CY reel 906). 

19 In the historical sources (SG, 29 September 1805, p 2; King Family Papers, ML A1980/2, p 308) Lancashire’s case is incorrectly conflated with the case of Douce and Bidgood, but was unrelated. 

20 HRNSW, vol 5, pp 357-8; Register of Conditional Pardons, NSWSA, 4/4430, p31, (4 June 1804), (reel 774). 

21 Bench of Magistrates, 30 September 1805, NSWSA, SZ768, p 615 (reel 656). 

22 SG, 29 September 1805, p 1. 

23 HRNSW, vol 5, pp 743-4; HRA, vol 5, p 633. Richard Atkins to Governor King, 30 August 1805: ‘With respect to private Stills ... it is a matter for Your Excellency’s consideration how far Excise Laws ... can be enforced in this Colony & I submit it whether the crime of working a private Still can be taken up in any other point of view than a dissobedience [sic] of Colonial regulation’; King Family Papers, ML, A1980-2, p 298 (CY reel 906). 

24 HRNSW, vol 5, p 744; HRA, vol 5, pp 633-4.This statement is reiterated in the anonymous Letter to the Right Honourable The Viscount Castlereagh (London, 1808): 23 ‘[1805] frequent discussions took place between the Governor and many gentlemen in the Colony, on the propriety of permitting the distillation of spirits under certain restrictions ... it appeared to be peculiarly desirable in New South Wales, where a large annual production of peaches presented the means of procuring from that source a constant supply of wholesome spirit, whenever distillation from grain should be ineligible’. 

25 HRNSW, vol 6, pp 72-3; SG, 11 May 1806, p 1. 

26 1806 Muster, entry A3018. 

27 King Family Papers, 7 May 1806, ML, A1980/3, pp 15-18 (CY reel 906); SG, 11 May 1806, p 3.

28 King Family Papers, 16, 28 May 1806, ML, A1980/3, pp 19, 24-9-18 (CY reel 906); SG, 1 June 1806, p 4. 

29 1806 Muster, entries A0465, A0467. 

30 King Family Papers, 7 May 1806, ML, A1980/3, pp 20-3, 78-81 (CY reel 906); SG, 17 May 1806 et postea. 

31 A request is made in the letters (p 79) ‘that your Excellence would Opoint him to the present vacant situation (of district constable)’: this appointment was given by the Governor to James Blackman on 6 July 1806 (SG, 6 July 1806: 4; his name misprinted as ‘John Blackman’); the author also requests that the Government servant (p 79) ‘Stephen Parker Bellonging to Castle Hill now at Broken Bay thrashing’ be assigned to him: in the 1806 Muster of 12-20 August Stephen Parker (Coromandel 2, 1804) is recorded as assigned to James Blackman. A critical edition of these unpublished letters, a study of the Kentish dialect, and a biography of James Blackman is currently under submission by the author with the Kentish journal Archaeologia Cantiana. 

32 R. J. Ryan (ed), Land Grants 1788-1809, Australian Documents Library, Sydney, 1974, repr. 1981, pp 157-8, 166; 1806 Muster, entries A0255, B0583. 

33 ‘King’s List’ in Carol J. Baxter (ed), Musters and Lists New South Wales and Norfolk Island, 1800-1802, Australian Biographical and Genealogical Record, Sydney, 1988, entry BG221 Jacob Hamilton, Blacksmith; 1806 Muster, entry A1968 Jacob Hamilton, Tinker; SG, 8 December 1805, p 2 ‘(Green Hills) Hamilton the Tinker’, SG, 4 December 1808, p 2, ‘J(acob) Hamilton, an itenirant [itinerant] brazier and tinman’. 

34 Bench of Magistrates, 9 March 1799, NSWSA, SZ767, pp 56-7 (reel 655). 

35 Ryan (ed), Land Grants, p 168. 

36 1806 Muster, entries A3957, B0321. 

37 King Family Papers, 5-26 June 1806, ML, A1980/3, pp 36-8, 42, 59-62, 78-81 (CY reel 906); SG, 15 June 1806, p 1. 

38 1806 Muster, entries A3957, B0321. 

39 Peter O’Shaughnessy (ed), A Rum Story: the adventures of Joseph Holt thirteen years in New South Wales (1800-12), Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst NSW, 1988, p 102. 

40 Bench of Magistrates, 19, 23 March 1799, 11 April 1799, NSWSA, SZ767, pp 58, 60, 61, 69 (reel 655). 

41 O’Shaughnessy (ed), A Rum Story, p 104, ‘Cummings was informer and Hugh Byrne the other ... by nickname Hugh Vesty’. Hugh Byrne, along with four other ‘United Irishmen’, arrived in the colony on 15 February 1806, having ‘requested to be allowed to banish themselves for life to New South Wales to avoid being brought to Trial’ (HRA, vol 5, p 551). Byrne and the other Tellicherry rebels received land grants at Cabramatta Creek, adjacent to Holt’s son Joshua Holt (whereat Joseph Holt eventually relocated to) and they were inhospitable neighbours, but the memoir statement that Byrne informed on Holt is more likely mendacious slander: the fact that military personnel (not the constabulary) were initially informed of the distillery, along with the deposition of private James Martin ‘that he had an information given him last Sunday where he should find a still’ would suggest that the former marine lieutenant Cummings was the only informer. 

42 SG, 8 June 1806, p 2. 

43 O’Shaughnessy (ed), A Rum Story, pp 102-104, 166; King Family Papers, 2-4 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 30-35 (CY reel 906); HRNSW, vol 6, pp 84-6; SG, 8 June 1806, p 2. 

44 HRNSW, vol 6, p 85. 

45 Ryan (ed), Land Grants, pp 19, 

47; ‘Settlers’ Muster Book’ in Carol J. Baxter (ed), Musters and Lists New South Wales and Norfolk Island, 1800-1802, Australian Biographical and Genealogical Record, Sydney, 1988, entry AG146 records Love as possessing only 50 acres, the remaining acres being presumably sold or forfeited. 46 King Family Papers, 2-4 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 30-2 (CY reel 906); SG, 8 June 1806, the name misprinted ‘R. Love’. 

47 1806 Muster, entry A2059. 

48 HRNSW, vol 6, p 93; SG, 15 June 1806, p 1. 

49 King Family Papers, 30 June 1806, ML A1980/3, p 72 (CY reel 906). 

50 Bench of Magistrates, 23 March 1799, NSWSA, SZ767, p 60 (reel 655). 

51 1806 Muster, entry A2955, Owen McManimy, Gaol Gang Sydney. 

52 King Family Papers, 26-30 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 57-9, 63-8, 71-3 (CY reel 906): King Family Papers, 1 July 1806, ML A1976, pp 118-19 (CY reel 904). 

53 King Family Papers, 16-28 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 43-6, 52, 55-9, 63-5, 67-8 (CY reel 906); King Family Papers, 1 July 1806, ML A1976, p 119 (CY reel 904); SG, 22 June 1806, p 2, 29 June 1806, p 3, 6 July 1806, p 3, 13 July 1806, p 2. 

54 1806 Muster, entry A1915, Thomas Henderson, (ship) Sugar Cane, F(ree) B(y) S(ervitude), Rents 50 ac Warkworth [Wentworth] Field of Mars; entry B0357 Thomas Henderson, 50 acres, Rents Wentworth Field of Mars. 

55 HRNSW, vol 5, p 386; Ryan (ed), Land Grants, pp 171-2. 

56 King Family Papers, 19-20 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 47-9, 51 (CY reel 906). 

57 HRNSW, vol 5, p 386; Ryan (ed), Land Grants, p 173; 1806 Muster, entries: A1919, A1963, B0432. 

58 HRNSW, vol 5, p 386; Ryan (ed), Land Grants, p 163; 1806 Muster, entries A3962, B0475. 

59 King Family Papers, 19-20 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 47-9, (CY reel 906). 

60 1806 Muster, entries A3683, B0347. 

61 King Family Papers, 19 June 1806, ML A1980/3, pp 49-51, (CY reel 906); 1806 Muster, entries A0459, A2683. 

62 King Family Papers, 20 June 1806, ML A1980/3, p 47 (CY reel 906); Register of Conditional Pardons, NSWSA, 4/4430, p 37 (8 Aug 1806) (reel 774). 

63 Herbert Vere Evatt, Rum Rebellion: a study of the overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1939, pp 151-62.

Source - Governor King and the Illicit Distillers, 1800-1806 by DARREN HOPKINS - JOURNAL of the ROYAL AUSTRALIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 105 PART 2

Starting at Page 159 linked here 

See how we grow over 11 generations since 1799 - See the Sharpe Family Tree here