In January 1832, a young man called Edwin Orphan came before the magistrates. He had smashed windows in Guisborough parish church because, he explained, he needed a shelter. He had no money and nowhere to sleep and he begged the magistrates earnestly to find him work. They sentenced him under the Vagrancy Act to a month's imprisonment in the North Riding House of Correction – that is, Northallerton Gaol.
Edwin was aged 20, 5 feet 3 inches tall, with a ruddy complexion and brown hair and eyes. His sightless right eye was turned outward and his nose, too, turned a little to the right. He could read and write and had evidently received some education, and he came originally from Kent.
He must have presented a forlorn spectacle when he came out of gaol because Mr William Shepherd, the Governor of the House of Correction, gave him three shillings as he left. He couldn't find any work and that was all the money he had to live on. He said he had been on the road for two years, mostly begging.
These were eventful times of disruption and change.
Only two years earlier, riots had begun in Kent with the smashing of threshing machines. Destruction and burning had spread across the south and east as farm labourers rioted in furious protest against low wages, harsh conditions and the mechanisation that was taking the bread from their mouths. Letters threatening retribution for past wrongs or demanding money by menaces were sent to farmers, parsons and landowners; they were signed by "Captain Swing".
By the beginning of 1832, a pandemic of Asiatic Cholera had been spreading across the country for several months. This was a frightening new visitation. Some Cleveland parishes, like Guisborough, had followed government directives and quickly taken measures to clear away dung heaps and the filth that flowed from privies, pigsties and cesspools – the "nuisances" that were to be found beside houses and along the streets of any early 19th century town or village. Some villages – like Hutton Rudby – hadn't taken any action as yet.
Meanwhile, political and public ferment were in the air as Lord Grey's reforming Whig ministry pushed ahead with parliamentary reform and a young Charles Dickens would very soon begin work as a parliamentary reporter – The Pickwick Papers was only four years in the future.
Edwin found his way to Stokesley, where he found a bed in Mr Fortune's lodging house. The flax-spinning mill of Thomas Mease, the Methodist class leader and entrepreneur, was in full operation behind the High Street while work was underway on his New Mill beside the river, but Edwin turned his attention to Mr Fidler, whose house and water corn-mill stood on the eastern edge of the town.
Between 6 and 7 o'clock in the evening of 9 February, the miller left home to go into town. As he passed a barn, Thomas Fidler thought he saw a man he knew standing there, so he went up to him to have a word. He realised he was mistaken and didn't know the man at all so he remarked only that it was a fine night and went on his way. Not long afterwards he was told that the man actually had a letter for him. Meeting his servant Ann Garth in town, he sent her to find out. Edwin Orphan hadn't moved from the spot. She asked him if he had a letter for Mr Fidler? He said yes, and he handed it to her. Back at the mill, she gave it to Thomas Fidler junior. He and his sister read it and, alarmed, sent it on to their father, who was still in town. When Mr Fidler read it, he went to find the constables Mr Norton and Mr Hebden. This is what the letter said:
Thursday, 9th Feb 32
Sir – The writer, being in want of the common necessaries of life, is compelled to adopt the alternative of demanding a sum of money from you, according to your ability. Do not disregard this notice, for desperate extremity will be revenged upon society; and should you refuse your aid, your life may be taken, and your property destroyed bySWING
An answer is requested, directed, to A.B., Mr Fortune, Lodging-House, Stokesley, this day.
To Mr Thomas Fidler, miller, Stokesley
The constables immediately began to hunt for the man, searching every pub, beer shop and lodging house in Stokesley but could not find him. They went back three times to Fortune's lodging-house, but he hadn't returned there.
At about 7 o'clock the next morning, Edwin Orphan went up to Constable Hebden and asked him if they had been searching for him last night? Constable Hebden replied that they had been looking for the man who wrote the letter to Thomas Fidler and Edwin said, "I am the man who wrote the letter." He told them he was nearly starved to death and had nowhere to go – and that at one point in their search they had actually touched his feet.
On Thursday 5 April 1832 he came up before the North Riding Sessions at the Court House in Northallerton. He was charged with having written and sent a letter to Mr Thomas Fidler, demanding money of him with menaces and without any reasonable or probable cause. It was a serious charge, a felony charge.
After the case for the prosecution had been heard and the evidence of the Fidlers, Ann Garth and Constable Hebden had been given, Edwin Orphan was called to make his defence.
How startled the court must have been at his response – so striking a response that the newspapers, including several beyond Yorkshire, quoted it in their reports:
Before the minister of justice strikes the blow he is about to hurl at my liberty, I would say a few words, yet such an awe pervades my mind at addressing you, in the midst of such a concourse of people, that I fear lest I should give utterance to any expression offensive to your better cultivated minds. I hope to guard against it, but should I fall into the error, condescend to pardon it, and impute the fault rather to my ignorance than my wish to be irreverent.
This is the second time I have been confined within the walls of a prison. Some of you, gentlemen, are acquainted with the nature of my first offence; you know the motive that actuated me to commit that offence, and my wish, entreaty, and prayer, during that confinement; but either I was deemed unworthy of the boon I sought after, or no plan could be devised, whereby you might rescue the wretched object before you from that condition which compelled him to commit actions, which, under other and happier circumstances, his heart would abhor – his soul revolt at.
However, the expiration of my confinement arrived. Mr Shepherd, whose kindness I shall long remember, gave me three shillings; with that solitary exception, I had but this prospect before me, either to beg my bread from door to door, as I have oft before done, or to throw myself at once upon the laws and justice of my country, for protection and support. I well know the misery and privations that attend a vagrant's life; and I resolved, in preference, to take those steps which have led me to your tribunal.
Gentlemen, from my earliest recollection down to the present moment, I have been the victim of treachery, deceit, and fraud. Man, base man! has laid the foundation of my utter ruin. 'Twas man's villainy that robbed me of a parent's care – that deprived me of that situation in life in which Providence was pleased to place me.
To detail all the events of my life would be too tedious for you to bear with me, too painful for me to relate; let it suffice to say, that I am indebted to mendicants for all the miseries I have undergone, and have yet to suffer. Yes, gentlemen, it was mendicants that robbed me of a parent's care. I left them at an early age, and went to London, where I was without a friend, and fell among a lot of swindlers, whose dupe I became, and was educated by them, and made an instrument of their villainy. They dragged me through all those scenes of life which the imagination of man could conceive, or wickedness devise.
But when the Almighty imparted reason and understanding, whereby I might discern between good and evil, I forsook the path of the wicked, and resolutely determined to follow that which was good. I left my companions, and for two years have I travelled about the country, crying out of wrong, but no man regarded, – no eye spared – no heart pitied – no hand would rescue me from my forlorn condition, and place me in any honest calling, where I might live in humble credit to myself, and no disgrace to the community. No, I was spurned and persecuted from town to town, as a vagrant and scamp; while misery, affliction, and privation, followed hard after me, and pursued me to the gates of the grave.
At length desperation seized me, infuriated madness took possession of my soul, and forced me into the commission of offences, for one of which I have suffered punishment; for the other I await your decision.
And for what are you going to punish? Not for a propensity to vice – not for a depraved disposition, but because I am poor, wretched, and forlorn. Methinks this is strange humanity – hard-hearted charity. But I will not endeavour to extenuate the offence I have committed, nor will I plead in mitigation of the punishment you may think I deserve.
All I fear is, that you will not punish me in a way that will deter me from committing similar, or worse offences in future. What will it avail me, should you confine me a second time in your jail, and then turn me out as a dog, and worse than a dog? Believe me, it will do no good; it will harden my heart against the laws of my country, which I would fain respect and love. It will render me callous to the vicissitudes of fate, and when again liberated, I fear I should become a confirmed Ishmaelite, – my hand would be raised against society, and every honest man's hand against me. Then in the name of society and justice, on behalf of my wretched self, – yea, I would ask you in the name of Almighty God, that you will either find me a settlement, or send me out of the country.
I say, transport me from my native land, if nothing else can be done for me; for in it I am a misery and burden to myself – a pest and a nuisance wherever I approach. If indeed you will do this for me, if you will hearken to my petition, and grant my request, in conclusion I will promise you this, – when the law of England is wreaking its vengeance on extreme misery, when the justice of my country is sporting with the pangs of the afflicted, then, even then, will I pour forth my fervent supplication to a throne of grace, that blessings may descend upon each individual of my country, far different to any I ever enjoyed: and that none of your posterity may suffer similar sorrows to those experienced by the unfortunate, afflicted, and friendless Orphan.
The sentence was a foregone conclusion and Edwin Orphan was found guilty. But the Chairman of the Jury, after commenting upon the enormity of the offence, sentenced him to be transported, not for a term of years, but for life. On hearing the sentence, Edwin collapsed in the dock – "evidently exhausted", one newspaper wrote, "completely overpowered" wrote another.
If Edwin's impassioned speech sounds as though it was inspired by the stage, that isn't surprising – the authorities in New South Wales recorded Edwin's occupation as "Strolling Player" and it can only have been Edwin who gave them the information.
Edwin's story is rather mysterious and leaves a lot of gaps. Who were his parents? What was the "situation in life" into which he had been born? When he says "mendicants" does he really mean beggars or is he referring obliquely to a travelling theatre company? Did he run away from home to go on the stage? Or was he born into a theatre company and learn his eloquence, not through reading, but through acting?
Dickens knew very well the world that Edwin described and perhaps Edwin's sad story comes to life for us, nearly 190 years later, because it reminds us of Dickens' novels. When Edwin speaks of the swindlers who used him as their dupe, we can't help but think of 'Oliver Twist', which Dickens began to write in 1836. Edwin's dramatic speech seems to belong to 'Nicholas Nickleby' (1838) and the world of Vincent Crummles' theatre company. But there was no kind author to give Edwin a happy ending. No wonder the Nottingham Review, when it picked up the story, called it a "Singular Case of Misery and Misfortune".
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| Convict ships in the East India Docks in 1851 |
In 1841 he applied for a Ticket of Leave, which would allow him to work for himself on certain conditions – he would have to stay in a specified area, report regularly to local authorities and, if at all possible, go to church on Sundays. He was unsuccessful but he tried again seven years later and on 1 June 1848, after 16 years in the colony, his Ticket of Leave was granted. And after that point I can find no more about him.
......
Back in Cleveland, Mr Thomas Fidler and his family continued at the mill for many more decades. Fidler's Mill itself was demolished in 1983 in spite of strenuous efforts by the Stokesley Society. They saved the mill wheel however, and that can be seen in the carpark near the bridge.
Mr William Shepherd had followed his father Thomas Shepherd in the post of governor at Northallerton. Being a governor was a family occupation. William had two brothers, James and Thomas. In 1832 James was Governor of the Castle of York and Thomas was governor at Wakefield, having succeeded James to the post. Thomas died of cholera not long after the Parmelia took Edwin Orphan from England.
When James retired because of ill health in 1840, the post of Governor of the Castle fell vacant. The men who put themselves forward for election were: William Shepherd; Edward Shepherd, who was either William's son or his nephew; and the under-gaoler at the Castle, John Noble, who was married to William's sister. John Noble was elected. In 1842, when William's mother old Mrs Shepherd died, the notice inserted in the newspapers by the family proudly stated that her son-in-law was Governor of the Castle, her son William was governor at Northallerton and her grandsons were governors at Wakefield and Beverley.
William stayed at Northallerton for the rest of his career. He had been kind to Edwin Orphan in giving him three shillings, but the prison under William Shepherd did not have a good reputation at all. The 'Northallerton Hell' was the name given to it by the Chartists (see The Treadmills of Northallerton)
William retired to Whitby where he died at home at Normanby Terrace in 1867, aged 80.
Notes
For more on the cholera pandemic 1832, see Chapter 11. 1832: The year of the Cholera
Hard labour & transportation to Tasmania: Northallerton, April 1841
William Orton, forger of Hutton Rudby
