Every family has a rascal or two in the communal closet. My kids were delighted to find we had them on both sides.
Peter Dudley Hallam was my mother's great-great grandfather and he was responsible for the family's presence in Australia. There is nothing personal handed down from Peter - no photos, no treasures, no family stories. We can only catch glimpses of his life and personality from official records. But it turns out he shows up in official records rather a lot.
Born in Sheffield, England in 1818, by the time he was 18 he was living in Stafford and working as a shoemaker. He was employed as an "outworker" by a manufacturer: he picked up an order and materials at the factory gate, took them home to sew the shoes, and was paid when he returned the finished shoes to the factory. Apparently Peter discovered he could make more money by selling the shoes to an alternative buyer. In April of 1836 he was hauled before a judge and charged with stealing a pair of boots. He was sentenced to three months in jail. Undaunted by this experience, he tried it on again less than a year later. Operating on the ever-popular two strikes and you're out theory, this time the judge sentenced him to be transported to the penal colony in Australia where he would serve a term of seven years. He arrived at Port Jackson (on Sydney Harbor) in August of 1838. Very little record of his servitude survives. In 1843 he was given a Ticket of Leave from the Moreton Bay District (Brisbane) that allowed him some freedom of movement during the final year of his sentence.
Like most of the convicts transported from England's urban slums, Peter found that the Australian frontier offered more opportunity and healthier conditions than the factory towns back home (notwithstanding the plethora of aggressive and venomous wildlife). Sometimes opportunity came in the form of other people's possessions lying around unguarded. Peter shows up in court records from time to time involved in disputes over the ownership of horses and cattle, and several times over unpaid debts. He served at least one short sentence for disorderly conduct. The Constable's statement says, "Last Monday evening between 4 and 5 o'clock I saw Hallam furiously riding up and down William and Queen Street, Brisbane. I went and cautioned him - he said he do as he thought proper and ride as he thought proper and called me a damned grey-headed wretch, he continued doing so for 1/4 hour - he leaped over the corner of the church wall and the children were coming by from school, there safety was endangered - he wasn't sober." Ya think?
The next year he was in trouble again as a Mr. Cory accused him of stealing a bullock. This was a close call for Peter. He was declared guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. But a few days later, after Peter had been sent off to the jail in Sydney, a member of the jury stepped forward and said the jury hadn't meant to find him guilty. What they meant to say was that although there was evidence Peter had stolen the bullock, Mr. Cory hadn't proved that the bullock was his in the first place, so Peter was Not Guilty in Law. The judge allowed the rather irregular procedure of a jury retracting its recorded verdict and issued a pardon.
This trail of petty crime, unpaid debts, and occasionally spectacular drunken displays is all we have to form a picture of what Peter Hallam was like. At the same time all this was going on, he managed sire thirteen children, and his descendants are scattered all over eastern Australia. Some even made it to America and back to England.
And he was not the last of his line to make an appearance in the records of the Court.