John Spinks

John Spinks and Ann Carne

John Spinks was sentenced to death for burglary at the Suffolk Assizes on 24 March 1813.1 His sentence was commuted to transportation for life and he left England for Australia on 26 August 1813 with 299 other convicts on the General Hewitt. Only 266 arrived in Sydney on 7 February 1814. Most of the deaths were due to dysentery with generally poor conditions on board leaving many men in very debilitated. A medical court of inquiry into the mortality of the convicts on the General Hewitt was held in Sydney on 16 March 1814.2 In the space of a year John Spinks had dodged death by hanging and ship full of disease.

John started a relationship with a fellow convict Ann Riley (nee Carne) within a few years of his arrival. In August 1808 Ann had been sentenced to seven years transportation for larceny and arrived in 1810 per Canada(2).3  It is likely that she was the same Ann Riley imprisoned for larceny by the same court in 1806 and 1807.4 Ann, the daughter of John Carne and Martha Trew, was baptised on 9 March 1784 at Stoke Dameral, Devon.5 In 1805 she married seaman John Riley, both signed the register with ‘x’ marks.

John Spinks and Ann Riley had six children between 1817 and 1827, probably all born at Airds. James and Edward, the two eldest children of John Spinks and Ann Riley of Airds were baptised on Tuesday 13 April 1819 at St Luke’s Liverpool.6  They married in 1824 at St Peter’s Church of England, Campbelltown. In 1819 John received a ticket of leave and in the 1822 Muster is listed as residing at Liverpool.7  When John petitioned the governor in 1822 for the mitigation of his sentence he stated that he had been employed by John Warby of Airds since his arrival.8 By the time of the 1828 Census the family was residing in the Illawarra, John Spinks is listed as a tenant farmer on 19 acres with four acres cleared and cultivated.9. Ann died at Fairy Meadow in 1836. It is not certain when John and three of his sons (James, Edward and either Robert or John) moved permanently to Jamberoo but they were settled there by March 1841 when the census was taken.

At the time of the 1841 Census John Spinks is living at Stony Creek, Jamberoo and is a tenant on a property owned by ? Watts of Sydney. The house is wooden and completed and there are six residents. John Spinks is the male 45-60, single and the proprietor. There are two married males born in the colony aged 21-45, and two married females who arrived free aged 14-21. The married couples were almost certainly John Spinks’s sons James and his wife Louisa Clark Fredericks,10 and Edward and his wife Agnes Henry. The sixth person, a single male 14-21 would have been one of John’s younger sons, Robert or John.11 

Family of John and Ann Spinks

  • James Spinks

James Spinks married 13 year old Louisa Clarke Fredericks on 28 February 1841 in Wollongong.[12] They had 13 children and remained in Jamberoo for the rest of their lives, firstly as clearing leaseholders on ‘Waughope’, and then as owners of the ‘Woodgrove’ estate.[13]  They seem to have had less interaction with James’s siblings and were respected members of the Jamberoo community.

  • Edward Spinks
  • Robert Spinks
  • John Spinks
  • Sarah Spinks

1. ↑ Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales; Class: HO 27; Piece: 9; Page: 289

2. ↑ Historical records of Australia. Series I. Governors’ despatches to and from England. Volume VIII, July, 1813—December, 1815 / [edited by Frederick Watson], pp.244-48.

3. ↑ State Archives NSW; Series: NRS 12188; Item: [4/4004]; Microfiche: 633

4. ↑ Home Office: Convict Transportation Registers; (The National Archives Microfilm Publication HO11); The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England. Class: HO 11; Piece: 2; Class: HO 27; Piece: 4; Page: 37; Class: HO 27; Piece: 3; Page: 36

5. ↑ “England, Devon, Parish Registers, 1538-1912,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KC93-Z44 : 19 February 2021), Ann Carne, 1784, Baptism.

6. ↑ Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney; Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Baptism, Burial, Confirmation, Marriage and composite registers in the Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney Archives.  Also baptised that day were the four youngest children of Jonathon Brooker and Mary Wade of Airds  – John, Elizabeth, Mary and James.

7. ↑ State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Population musters, Dependent settlements; Series: NRS 1264; Reel: 1253

8. ↑ Memorials to the Governor, 1810-25. Series 899, Fiche 3001-3162. State Records Authority of New South Wales. Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia. Series: NRS 900; Reel or Fiche Numbers: Fiche 3163-3253

9. ↑ State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; 1828 Census: Alphabetical Return; Series Number: NRS 1272; Reel: 2555

10. ↑ Fourteen year old Louisa Clark Fredericks is not listed on the census return of her mother Hannah (Anne) Fredericks.

11. ↑ 1841 Census: Householders’ returns and affidavit forms. CGS 1281, Reels 2508-2509. State Records Authority of New South Wales. Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia. Illawarra, Fairy Meadow, John Spinks return 526.

12. ↑ James and Louisa married in the Catholic Church, Wollongong. Louisa was 13 years and 10 months old.

13. ↑ Alexander, Kerrie, Pioneer Origins: a family history, 1977, pp.163-65.

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