#51 AUSTRALIAN NETTERFIELDS
THE
AUSTRALIAN NETTERFIELDS
While
Thomas Netterfield and his children, (my branch of the Netterfield family),
immigrated to Canada in 1847, two of his nephews sailed to Australia. Richard
Ravenscroft Netterfield (1834-1888) and Nathaniel Netterfield (1848-1928) were
first cousins but whether they emigrated together is unknown. (Richard was there
before 1857 and Nathaniel was there before 1869.) Various Australian
Netterfields became a sheep farmer and a jackaroo, a sugar-planter, a teacher, a clerk, an
engineer, a banker, a policeman.
After the loss of the Thirteen Colonies, Britain experienced overcrowding in its prisons and sought to ease the problem by transporting prisoners to Australia. The bulk of the convicts were transported for petty crimes like larceny, but also for embezzlement, forgery, arson, assault, fraud. Once emancipated (usually after seven years) most of these ex-convicts remained in Australia and joined the free settlers. Transportation of convicts to New South Wales ended in 1840 as they were seen as a bad moral influence . (Other Australian colonies continued to request this labour.) Free settlers were now encouraged and by the 1830s and 1840s, Australia was receiving more free settlers than convicts but even so, there still remained a labour shortage. People were needed to clear the land, plant crops, and care for animals; single women were needed to balance the gender ratio. (it was stressed, however that Australia had limited demand for "fancy women" like governesses, ladies’ maids, milliners or dressmakers!) To encourage migration the government paid the passage of those eligible. Assisted immigration continued for the rest of the 19th century; it is quite possible, but not certain that cousins Richard and Nathaniel were assisted in their immigration.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Canada was a treacherous sail but the 4 month voyage to Australia was much, much worse. Passengers in steerage (between the cargo hold and upper deck) were crowded into one room which was both a dormitory, dining room, common room. When the winds were strong, the hatches were battened down and passengers had no ventilation. Toilets—1 for every 100 passengers—were on the upper deck; in bad weather, a pail in steerage was used. There were rats, the overpowering smell of vomit and human waste, sea water seeping in, darkness. Water kept in wooden barrels became stale after a few months; rats and mice would fall into these open barrels and drown and algae would grow in the barrels. (the link between cholera and contaminated water was not discovered until 1848). Stores such as pickled meat, flour, sugar, and dried peas were kept on board in wooden barrels which were raided by the rats and mice who left their droppings; flour was often infested with weevils. Adulterated food and water caused dysentery.
By the 1850s, the quickest route to Australia was the “Great Circle Route” which meant passing far south of the Cape of Good Hope but this route involved enormous risks from drifting icebergs and wild seas generated by frequent storms, This route was faster than previous routes but so dangerous that the free settlers were less likely to survive than voyage than the earlier convicts.
SERGEANT
NATHANIEL NETTERFIELD
Nathaniel
Netterfield immigrated from Ireland likely in the early 1860s. He married
Rebecca Alcorn in Australia in 1875 and they had eight children.
Nathaniel became a police constable, later sergeant, in Port Macquarie and Kempsey, New South Wales. Port Macquarie was about 400 km north of Sydney on the Tasman Sea and was founded in 1821 as a penal settlement for irredeemable criminals. Its isolation, thick bush, tough terrain and local aboriginals keen to return escaping prisoners in return for tobacco and blankets, kept the convicts under control. Flogging was common: 100 lashes could be delivered for being in possession of letters or writing materials. Later disabled convicts were sent to Port Macquarie. One-armed men would be grouped together to break stones, men with wooden legs would become deliverymen and the blind would be given tasks at night. Port Macquarie was described as a “quaint, sleepy little place” and the dullest coastal town in New South Wales. Thus, it is not surprising that newspaper accounts note Constable/Sergeant Netterfield spending a lot of time dealing with local drunks and rowdiness. Police forces in the Victorian era were driven by a harsh and very rigid class structure which sought to maintain order at all costs and they would not tolerate deviants (sexual offenders), fools (con men), cads (bigamists), murderers, weaklings, sadists, exhibitionists.
Not surprisingly, Netterfield often arrested people for petty theft
including items like “a great coat, a black cloth pilot coat, a felt hat
and an old white blanket." This man was sentenced to 2 months prison and hard
labour. (1876) Another man was arrested for stealing a whip and then trying to
sell it; for this crime, he was sentenced to 6 months and hard labour.(1901)
Another was arrested for stealing an empty water keg; at the trial
Netterfield testified that “he was not aware there being anything peculiar
about the man’s mental condition, that he was more than ordinarily intelligent
and that he was not aware that he suffered from sunstroke. The man was
sentenced to 2 months with hard labour.(1881)
It seems
that Netterfield often had to deal with drunks and their stupid behaviour.
(1899) Netterfield charged a man with drunkenness, disorderly conduct
and assaulting an officer and was handcuffing him when a large crowd assembled
and started to “roundly hoot, boo-hoo and make hideous noises at the officer”.
Feeling that it was the crowd that annoyed and incited the man to resist the
police, Netterfield declined to press further charges but said that he knew
some of those in the crowd who had hooted the police and he intended to “take
proceedings against them”.
(1899) Netterfield charged two men with “depositing filthy matter in a
bedroom” at a local hotel. Netterfield described the room as in a disgusting
and disgraceful state. The defendants had been refused more liquor at the bar,
so they went upstairs to their room, started step-dancing and woke up the sick
woman next door. They trashed their hotel room, and then early that morning both men took off without paying their bill. But the case was dropped when the
hotel owner withdrew the charges; he did not want to see the men flogged which
would have been their punishment.
1901 Netterfield charged 5 men with furious riding and riotous behavior.
“the young fellows were coming along the road, riding furiously and singing and
shouting; when they came in front of Netterfield, they swore and taunted him.
The men were fined 10 shillings for each offence (but they could have faced two
years imprisonment for the furious riding.)
(1904) Netterfield arrested a woman for manslaughter; the woman admitted
to being at the hotel for 2 or 3 hours and had a few drinks. The woman had a
bottle of schnapps, stopped at another hotel en route home after dark and
admitted to driving her spring-cart and horse pretty quickly. But there was no
real evidence that, even though she was quite intoxicated, that she was the person who had
hit and killed the victim.
(1906) Two locals were charged and fined 1 shilling for being drunk and
10 shillings or 7 days for using indecent language.
In 1889, Netterfield charged a man for assaulting his 15 year old servant boy. Netterfield testified that the boy had several bruises around his head and body and had been ill-used. The boy admitted to taking two melons from the garden without the master’s permission. The master caught the boy by the throat, pushed him down, kicked him on the head and ears and bloodied him. The boy ran away but was caught and the master made him catch hold of the stirrups and run the three miles home. The defendant claimed that the boy had threatened his wife with a stone so he took a switch and gave him “what he deserved”, “hit him about a dozen times, but not on his head” The boy “admitted to being a scoundrel” but the Bench said that whatever the character of the boy, he was not to be used as a brute beast. The Bench fined the master 60 shillings. The newspaper specifically congratulated Senior Constable Netterfield for the manner in which he conducted this case. “In this, as in all other cases which have come under his care, he displayed firmness with courteousness, whereby he had merited the respect of all with whom he has come in contact and secured for himself the reputation of being one of the most able officers.”
In 1903, he
charged a young man, newly arrived in the colony, with assaulting the up-river
mailman and with delaying the mail.
Until 1983,
it was an offence in Australia to commit, or attempt to commit, suicide. In
1876, Netterfield charged a man with attempting to commit suicide by poisoning
himself with strychnine. The prisoner said he was driven to this action by
drink and “a girl whose parents had forbade him from speaking to." In 1900,
Netterfield investigated a suicide where the victim had slashed his throat with
a razor; the victim had earlier been charged with showing signs of lunacy but
was discharged to his brother-in-law when the doctor felt he was better.
In 1905,
Sergeant Netterfield charged a man with neglecting to comply with an order for
maintenance of an illegitimate child.
In 1904
Netterfield gave evidence against a woman who was being paid to nurse a 3 month
old infant. The law clearly stated that a person taking in a child to nurse had
to register these particulars. The Child Protection Act was passed in 1902 to
counter the “evils arising from baby-farming.”
In 1900 Netterfield
investigated the theft and killing of a bay horse which was found with 2 axe
wounds to head. That same year he charged a man with unlawfully branding a
calf.
And while
Netterfield was provided accommodation, a lengthy 1901 newspaper article wrote
about the ugliness of the new Kempsey police offices which also had a residence
for Sergeant Netterfield. “The building
is more like a giant toadstool..low, ugly and squat. It occupies pretty well
the whole available space and has a “beautiful” (!) outlook at the back on to the goal wall. The
allotment is so small that water tanks are placed in front of the house (or is it
on the side?) and the yard space is 6ft by 2ft. How the occupants will perform
the ordinary domestic duties in anything approaching privacy is an unfathomable
mystery, and the Sergeant will have to rig up his clothesline on the roof and
haul up the washing by means of a block and tackle. The smallest and cheapest
cottage in town has yard space one hundred times as large and it is simply a
disgrace to even ask—much less compel-- a Government official to live in such a
place. …a good sized bandana pocket-handkerchief would cover the limited back
yard.”
At first,
police in New South Wales were unarmed; that changed in 1894. Thus, in 1908, Netterfield
did possess a revolver. His thirty-year-old daughter, Winnie, was housecleaning
when she came across her father’s revolver in a back room where it had been inadvertently
left. She picked up and dusted the revolver and was returning it to her
father’s room when she accidently tripped over a doorstop. The gun was loaded
and went off, Winnie was injured but recovered.
When he retired in 1908, after 40 years’ service, Sergeant Netterfield was described as an “energetic and careful officer, painstaking and conscientious” “As a man and brother officer, you have been kind and considerate to those connected with you whilst your kind and general disposition rendered you popular in all classes of the community and obtained for you a host of friends. As a police officer you have done your duty in such a manner as to satisfy your superior officers and the public generally without creating a single enemy”. Nathaniel was presented with a massive 8 day mantel clock in black and gold and best wishes for a long, healthy and well-earned retirement. Nathaniel, aged 80, passed away on May 5, 1928 in Sydney just three months after his wife Rebecca.
NATHANIEL EDGAR NETTERFIELD, JR
Nathaniel was the eldest of the eight children of Nathaniel and Rebecca Netterfield. Rather than following his father into law enforcement, he became a public school teacher. In 1891 at age 14, he began as a probationary teacher. In 1898, he was eligible for employment as a teacher of a small school
In 1900, Nathaniel was severely censured for caning a pupil for his inability to learn; not only was this an excessive and unwarranted punishment, but he failed to report it. He also closed the school without authority and was warned that with any more complaints, he would be dealt with severely.
In 1903, Nathaniel was appointed to the school in Baw Baw, a town about 200 kilometers south-west of Sydney. In consideration, Netterfield was given a government-owned six-room house adjacent to the school.
At about 9 am on Saturday, February 8 1908, Netterfield and his wife left home in their sulky for a neighbouring town. When they returned at 1 pm, they found the back part of their home in flames, smoke was coming out of all the chimneys, the kitchen door could not be opened and the house was full of smoke. They saved a few possessions, but the house was completely destroyed. Their furniture, clothing and jewellery, but not the stone and weatherboard home, were insured.
An inquiry into the fire revealed an interesting back story. Two weeks previously, the Netterfields procured 13 year old Katie Pritchard, a “State Girl” from Ormond House in Sydney. Ormond House was a receiving home and shelter for children of all ages—children who were state wards, abandoned, whose parents were “dissolute characters”, or were moving through the court system. At Ormond House, the children were issued a set of clothing and then were boarded out (i.e. placed with foster guardians). Catherine Netterfield found Katie to be a “real good little girl”, felt she could be trusted and said that Katie was “very good, but a bit stubborn and she did not seem to be too obedient, but nonetheless was apparently anxious to do what ever had to be done.” The Netterfields felt all was well when they left that Saturday morning. Katie cleared the table and washed up. She then went looking for a sixpence that she had dropped near the sewing machine; the coin had dropped into a dark corner so Katie got a box of matches, lit one and when it burned down a bit, she tossed it over her shoulder and lit another match. She found her coin and went outside for half an hour. She took the slop pail into her room, saw some smoke but took no notice as she thought it was from the kitchen stove. But when she went into Mrs. Netterfield’s room, all the curtains and clothing were burning; she put her hat on, took her apron off, got a stick to hit the curtains, but they only burned more. So she shut the windows and left the home for town. She told no one along the way about the fire.
Witnesses dispute Katie’s testimony and said that as the curtains were at least four inches off the floor, it would have been impossible for a match to ignite them. Witnesses also claimed that Katie had been told by other State girls that if they were sent to a place they did not like, they should either kill something about the place or set fire to it so as to get away. Katie admitted that she had run away from previous placements and had been warned by the Matron of Ormond House that this was her last chance. Katie also claimed that a fire at her previous placement had been caused by the children, not her. While the coroner said that the case was surrounded with suspicion, he could not say that Katie had willfully set fire to the home so thus he found that the fire was an accident.
Nathaniel was in charge of the school at Baw Baw for 10 years before he was transferred to Tallong where he taught for 15 years. He retired from the classroom in 1928, and from the Department of Public Instruction in March 1941.
Nathaniel died on Aug 30, 1950 in Wentworthville, New South Wales, aged 74. He was predeceased by his first wife, Catherine Dorrough and survived by his second wife, Mabel Fairchild.
NATHANIEL EDGAR NETTERFIELD b. Sept 2, 1876 in Patricks, Plain, New South Wales m. 1. Catherine Anne Dorrough (1863-1933) in 1899 in Linsmore, New South Wales m 2. Mabel Elizabeth Fairchild (-1963) in 1933 in Linsmore, New South Wales d. Aug 30, 1950 in Wentworthville, New South Wales
Very interesting reading.
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