By Michaela Ann Cameron

Supported by a Create NSW Arts and Cultural Grant – Old Parramattans, Rogues, & Female Factory

A dual-publication with the Female Factory Online.

WARNING: This essay discusses alcoholism and domestic violence, which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

‘I have found out, by personal experience the evils of intemperance,’ a ‘gentleman’ named Mr. C. Windmill declared to the growing audience of men assembled in the Exchange Room, Brisbane, in mid-April 1857.[1] Twenty-two-year-old Joseph Cavillon, who would shortly address the same audience to express his advocacy for the cause of total abstinence, was familiar with those evils too.[2] He had seen them through stinging, hot tears, and heard them above the sobs of his five-year-old self: the countless bruises, the gushing blood, and the hideous cacophony of his father’s slurring, enraged voice, his mother’s tortured screams replicated by those of his baby sister, and the despairing cries of his elder sisters, as they realised the awful truth that they were powerless to stop any of it.

There is no telling exactly when the Cavillons’ domestic situation became so volatile; only that by late 1839 their rows were no longer fodder for local gossips exclusively, for they had become a matter of broader public interest.[3] It was on 5 November that a severely beaten Milbah Cavillon first turned up at the Parramatta Police Office and charged her husband Nicholas ‘with having brutally ill-used her.’[4] She was twenty-nine years old and ‘[t]he poor woman’s appearance fully bore out her complaint; for not a feature in her face was discernable [sic], and she stated her body was as bad; indeed, she was one of the greatest frights that ever came before this Bench,’ reported the Commercial Journal and Advertiser.[5] ‘The Bench justly reprobated [Nicholas’s] conduct, and directed that he should enter into security to keep the peace towards his wife—his own bail for one hundred pounds—and then that notices should be served upon all publicans and others, not to supply this unmanly fellow with liquors of any kind.’[6] None of these requirements were adhered to, evidently, because by the time the report was published over a week later, on 13 November, the newspaper’s Parramatta correspondent received word ‘that the ruffian has again nearly murdered his wife. If so, we hope the police will bring him to justice.’[7] To all appearances, the authorities failed to do so, because a mere three months later, Milbah and her children would endure an even more serious episode of domestic violence at Nicholas’s hands.

On 12 February 1840, Nicholas hit the bottle again and was soon also hitting Milbah.[8] This time, though, he was no longer satisfied with the damage his own two hands could do: he picked up a knife. Seconds later, Milbah’s ear was almost completely severed from her battered and bloodied head.[9] By the end of this shocking ordeal, the couple’s four helpless, young children had experienced the added horror of seeing their ‘brutish’ father forcing their broken and bloodied mother to sit still so he could sew her ear back on, probably without so much as a drop of whiskey to dull the pain of the procedure since it is hard to imagine Nicholas would have left her any.[10] How big and clunky those stitches must have been; for Nicholas was no surgeon but a baker by trade, and performed the operation under the influence of ‘intoxicating liquors,’ not to mention in a panicked spirit of self-preservation.[11] But, if he believed in his drunken stupor that this bit of emergency surgery would cover up the fact that his dangerous behaviour had escalated to the use of a sharp weapon and might, therefore, save him from a harsher punishment than the wrist-slapping he had previously received, it failed terrifically.

When thirty-nine-year-old Nicholas was tried at the Parramatta Quarter Sessions on 17 February 1840 he was convicted of ‘cutting with intent to harm’ and sentenced to three years imprisonment at Newcastle Gaol with every fourth week to be spent in solitary confinement.[12] There would be plenty of quiet time, then, for ‘sober’ reflection on the awful things to which he had subjected his wife and children, and the additional shame—that his eldest child, nine-year-old Mary Ann, had helped put him there by serving as a witness at his trial. Milbah and a Dr. Gordon Gwynn, who must have examined her following the horrific attack, had also testified.[13]

Even in a penal colony brimming with felons, the evidence of Nicholas’s violence, which was all over Milbah’s head and body, clearly retained the power to shock the authorities. Commentators, too, noted that his whole ‘demeanour bespoke a hardened villain.’[14] So it may be surprising to learn that the ‘brutish’ and ‘villainous’ Nicholas Cavillon was not one of the thousands who had arrived in the colony in chains.[15]

A Precarious Existence

Nicholas Cavillon was in the minority of people who arrived with their freedom in the penal colony of New South Wales.[16] But while he ‘came free’ he was certainly not born ‘free’ from the threat of poverty. Indeed, his early life is a prime example of the sheer precarity of working people’s lives in and around the early nineteenth century. For such folk, already living in humble circumstances, the loss of one key member of the household was often enough to reduce the survivors to desperate criminal acts and force them into the roughest and most degraded parts of their urban world: the brothel areas, a gaol cell in the diseased Newgate Prison, or the work room of the Coldbath Fields Prison ‘House of Correction’—all were just a street or two away.[17]

He was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, at the Cavillon residence on ‘Saffron Street’ (Saffron Hill), in the notoriously rough Cockney heartland of Farringdon, London, around 1801.[18] It seems his father, Nicholas Francis Anthony Cavillon, a farrier by trade, may have been among the thousands of French émigrés forced to flee their war-torn country during the French Revolution shortly before he married Mary Lyon at St. Martin-In-The-Fields, London, in early December 1792.[19] Nicholas junior was the third of five children born to the couple, with a sister, Mary, and a brother, Joseph, preceding him, and sisters Victoire and Jane born after him—Jane, the youngest, would not survive infancy, passing away in Turnmill Street, in April 1805.[20] It is conceivable that by then the family had already lost their breadwinner, be it through death, desertion or some form of incapacity, such as injury, illness, or even alcoholism, because Nicholas senior disappears from the records around the time his wife Mary may have first resorted to shoplifting a piece of print from a haberdashery in September 1804—no doubt to singlehandedly provide for her children, who were all then under the age of ten.[21] It is hard to say for sure if it was her in this instance, but this early crime was committed in Holborn, the same area her children were baptised; the name given by the prisoner was Mary’s maiden name, Mary Lyon, (she would prove to be rather fond of aliases); and the offence took place seven months before the death of the youngest Cavillon, Jane. Assuming for the moment that it was the same person, in light of her son’s later battle with the bottle it is also noteworthy that, just as the alias ‘Mary Lyon’ was not a complete lie, inasmuch as it was her maiden name, there may have been a grain of truth to the explanation she concocted at her trial, too: ‘Another woman gave [the stolen material] to me to take care of it for her, because her husband was a drunk, and she was afraid he would pawn it and spend the money.’[22] Admittedly, this is only the vaguest hint that Nicholas junior might have been born not only on the edge of poverty but also with a genetic predisposition for alcoholism and addiction that was passed on to him by his father Nicholas senior. Nevertheless, in light of what we do know of Nicholas junior’s life, it is worth bearing in mind. Even if Nicholas’s mother was not the shoplifter named ‘Mary Lyon’ who ‘did time’ over the winter of 1804–1805 at the Coldbath Fields Prison, Clerkenwell, she was definitely a convicted felon soon enough.[23]

Nicholas was only around eight or nine when his mother was sentenced to death for housebreaking in St. Giles in December 1810 under her real name ‘Mary Cavillon.’[24] Fortunately for Mary and her children, she received a pardon from the Prince Regent and, after serving a reduced sentence either in Newgate or Coldbath, ended up being freed eight months after her arrest.[25] Yet just two and a half years later, in April 1813, she was caught in the act of housebreaking and dealt a death sentence for a second time.[26] On this occasion, Mary’s death sentence was commuted to transportation for life to the Colony of New South Wales at His Majesty the Prince Regent’s pleasure; a comparatively positive outcome that undoubtedly owed much to the fact that she hid her earlier pardon for the identical capital offence by using another false identity: ‘Isabella Phillips alias Elizabeth.’[27]

With so little documentary evidence regarding the various members of the Cavillon family in this period, we can only speculate about who looked after the children while Mary was in and out of gaol over the years, and for the ten-month period she was incarcerated in Newgate Prison awaiting transportation to the colony. Was Nicholas senior still alive after all? Or did the eldest Cavillon child, Mary (II), who was then around sixteen or seventeen years old, take full responsibility for her younger siblings? Someone evidently took charge of them, as each one found a respectable place for themselves following their mother’s transportation: Mary (II) was married by May 1815, Joseph became a mariner, and Victoire was married by 1817 at age fifteen.[28] Only twelve-year-old Nicholas junior joined his mother aboard the convict ship Broxbornebury (1814), as one of her few free passengers, perhaps always with the intention of growing into the role of his mother’s guardian in the penal colony.[29] Some of the other free people aboard included the wife of convict architect Francis Greenway and their three sons, Francis, George and William. One wonders if young Nicholas befriended the Greenway boys who, like him, had a convict parent. Whether or not they all happily ran amok aboard the Broxbornebury or were bitter enemies, an as yet unthought-of, purpose-built Female Factory at North Parramatta would be a source of income for the Greenways’ father as well as for Nicholas one day, albeit in very different capacities. Before that eventuated, though, Nicholas’s mother Mary Cavillon saw the inside of the far less accommodating or suitable first Female Factory, and Nicholas might have, too.[30]

Children like Nicholas, who arrived free or were born here, were members of what contemporary commentators called ‘the rising generation.’[31] The ‘character’ of this generation was of great ‘interest’ to authorities, because while they believed it would determine ‘what the colonists and colony shall in future be,’ most were painfully aware that the majority of these children were of convict stock and in no better circumstances here than those that they and/or their convict parents had left behind.[32] Many were reportedly still ‘exposed to a contamination fatal to body and soul,’ and doomed to be ‘a constant disgrace, expense, and danger to their Governors…by continued vice, idleness, and disaffection.’[33] As the most vulnerable of this group in a penal colony where men significantly outnumbered women, destitute or orphaned females were prioritised as urgently needing to be provided for in terms of accommodation, education and training at the Female Orphan School in Cadi (Sydney), Cadigal Country.[34] Reverend Samuel Marsden, the Chief Cleric of the colony, was equally mindful that the free sons of convicts, like Nicholas, and other destitute or orphan boys also needed ‘care’ and the ‘right management,’ so that ‘by virtue, industry, and loyalty to gain a good name, easy circumstances, and [to] diminish the present great expense to the parent state,’ they would play their part in ensuring the colony as a whole would ‘become valuable to the mother country’ in the long term.[35] But in 1814, with no male orphan school yet established in the colony, Nicholas, an able-bodied boy of around twelve or thirteen years of age on arrival, would have been expected to live up to these ideals by entering the workforce to become a ‘useful and creditable’ free labourer in the colony.[36] In the likely event that an apprenticeship could not be found for Nicholas immediately upon disembarking from the Broxbornebury, as the child of a convict woman on board he was probably simply sent up river with her to the factory at Parramatta, Burramattagal Country, where he would become one of the 70 or so children tallied in the factory’s population a year later by Marsden himself.[37] The fact that Marsden reported over 30 convict men were also employed at the factory in 1815 is a strong indication that there would have been employment suitable for a lad of Nicholas’s age at the factory.[38] Indeed, it may have been that he began his apprenticeship as a baker there, baking bread for the factory workers and their dependents or, if not, then elsewhere in the town of Parramatta. The trouble is, far from Marsden’s hopes that employment would be young Nicholas’s saving grace, it is just as likely he learnt other things there that were far less beneficial to his ‘character.’

‘The Grand Source of all Moral Corruption’

For Reverend Marsden, the ‘Factory Above the Gaol’ on the present-day site of Prince Alfred Square, Parramatta, was ‘the grand source of all moral corruption, insubordination and disease.’[39] Like any historical informant, Marsden’s words are to be read for what they are: not the unadulterated ‘truth’ itself but his subjective view, which was filtered through his religious beliefs (among other things) and, even more consciously, shaped by his purpose for writing—namely, to persuade the authorities of the need for a more spacious, purpose-built factory and barracks for convict women. While we should therefore refrain from uncritically accepting that the factory women Marsden went on to describe as ‘the most infamous and abandoned characters’ actually were ‘the very dregs of the whole colony,’ it seems his notion of the factory as a toxic environment that created and nurtured social evils was a fair and accurate observation, not only for the immediate period to which he referred but well beyond it.[40]

The overcrowding of 150 women, 70 children, and 33 convict men in and around the factory each workday under the Factory Superintendent Francis Oakes in 1815 was bad enough, but it was when the sun went down that the inadequacy of the factory became most apparent.[41] Only a small fraction of those women and children could actually use the factory as accommodation each night, without any bed or bedding to speak of—the rest had to fend for themselves in the town.[42] If Nicholas was still ‘attached’ to the factory as a young apprentice while his mother worked there, then there is little doubt that mother and son were unleashed on Parramatta in the darkness and in all weather, and did whatever they could to secure the basic necessities of shelter and warmth. For most of the factory women, that meant resorting to prostitution, either by ‘cohabit[ing] with any poor wretched man who c[ould] give them shelter for the night,’ or charging male convicts for their ‘services’ and thereby obtaining the four shillings a week they needed ‘for their lodging and fire.’[43] Aside from the fact that the latter arrangement led to convict men ‘rob[bing] and plunder[ing]…Government’ and ‘private individuals, to supply the urgent wants of the females who [we]re devoted to their pleasures,’ there were other social evils associated with these relations.[44] Convict women who had little choice but to engage in these activities were at risk of contracting venereal diseases. And whether they had a single longstanding arrangement with one male convict or the briefest of arrangements with many, simply by being forced into intimate relationships and close quarters with male convicts, these women and any dependents they may have had in tow were exposed to men who, having led hard lives and suffered mistreatment at others’ hands, were if not inevitably disposed then at least more likely to commit acts of extreme cruelty and even sexual violence against comparatively vulnerable individuals in their midst. As Belcher writes:

Sexual exploitation of children was an … area causing worry within the establishment ranks. Boys were afforded no more protection than adults, and from all reports the incidence of “unnatural crime” involving boys seems to have been widespread. However, the number of cases of sexual molestation of boys is difficult to gauge. One guesses that a proportion of the cases reported as “too repugnant for the gentle reader” involved crime of this sort …

Michael Belcher, “The Child in New South Wales Society: 1820 to 1837,” p. 282

Given Nicholas and his mother’s circumstances, it is hard to imagine that Nicholas could have avoided all of this. Perhaps the young teen had even defended his mother against such men, and paid dearly for it.

‘Sober and Industrious’

Aged twenty-one, his apprenticeship as a baker concluded, in 1822 Nicholas was assigned a government servant: his own mother.[45] In the intervening years, Mary Cavillon had been in and out of the Female Factory (but mostly in it), and was now if not officially ‘free,’ (for she remained a convict and a ‘lifer’ at that), then at least ‘free’ from its ‘drear halls,’ mean rations, and the pressure of asserting and retaining one’s place in the pecking order of its female prison population.[46]

In stark contrast to the Nicholas of later years, the evidence dating to his early adulthood bespeaks a young man who was embracing his responsibilities and retaining the community respect that was his due as a person who arrived in the colony ‘free.’ Indeed, when Nicholas petitioned Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane on 29 August 1824 ‘for the Indulgence of a portion of Land for a Farm in Such Quantity as your Excellency’s Wisdom may deem meet’ on the basis that he had ‘arrived free’ and had ‘maintained himself with Honest Industry,’ Reverend Marsden endorsed the petition, describing Nicholas as ‘sober and industrious’ and emphasising that he ‘has his mother to maintain.’[47] The 1828 Census reveals Nicholas’s mother was still living with him as his government servant, and that Nicholas was doing well enough to be able to support a second servant: one Samuel Burr per Earl St. Vincent (2) (1820), another Londoner and ‘lifer’ who had been convicted of burglary.[48] In February 1829, we also find Nicholas’s name among those of Parramatta’s upper echelon, on lists of subscribers to the Female School of Industry (1829–1835), Macquarie Street, Parramatta (later renamed Linden House and relocated to the Lancer Barracks site). At both its Cadi (Sydney) and Parramatta locations, the Female School of Industry was a private institution in which female children who were neglected or were from single-parent homes (particularly where only the father survived), could develop literacy, numeracy and the ‘domestic arts’—an asylum, we recall, Nicholas himself had never had.[49]

On 10 March 1829, Nicholas married nineteen-year-old Milbah Harrex, the daughter of free woman Frances Sarah Harrex (née Taber) and a lamb-stealing ex-convict James Proctor Harrex per Ganges (1797) who had made good in the colony.[50] Sadly, Nicholas’s young bride had lost her mother exactly one month before their wedding, and may have suffered another major bereavement around the same time, since a son she had out of wedlock in September 1827 with Irish apothecary turned convict and farmer Robert Cusson per Mangles (2) (1822) disappears from the records after late 1828.[51]

Outwardly, at least, the Nicholas of this period appeared to be doing everything one would expect of a fine, upstanding citizen. On 6 January 1830, for instance, his name appeared alongside the most notable Parramattans on a formal address presented to Governor Ralph Darling at Government House, Parramatta, ‘by a Deputation consisting of John Palmer, William Lawson, and Archibald Clunes Innes, Esqrs, representing the Magistracy and Gentry; Messrs. William Shelly and James Hassall, representing the Native-Born; and the Rev. William Walker, and Messrs. Richard Rouse and James Elder, representing the Inhabitant Householders in general.’[52] In the Address, Nicholas and his fellow signatories expressed their ‘utmost indignation’ at having heard of ‘the daring insult which was on Sunday, the 20^th ultimo, offered’ to the governor on ‘leaving Divine Worship at St. James’s Church, Sydney.’[53] John Darby Shelly, a ‘poor, neglected, disappointed, broken down gentleman, stung by the memory of some wrongs,’ was contemplating suicide as a result of suffering ‘continual delays and evasions’ when petitioning the governor for some land, and had simply taken the opportunity to say to Governor Darling as he was leaving church: “You are a damned scoundrel, Sir…and so is old McLeay,” and to repeat the declaration as he was ‘collared’ and carted off.[54] Unfortunately, it was later found at the watch house that Shelly had said so whilst armed with a couple of loaded pistols and a carving knife—none of which he made any attempt to draw during the confrontation.[55] The Australian would call the incident and the subsequent four-hour examination at the Police Office ‘Much Ado About Nothing!’ and The Tasmanian would likewise state ‘how much more sensibly would General Darling have acted had he sent for [Shelly] to Government House, listened to his story himself, dispensed with all the intermediate stop-channels of Secretaries, and Land Boards, and Reports, and all the rest,—given the man a grant of land, and sent him about his business. There would have been no more pistolling nor carving knifeing [sic].’[56] To Nicholas and other gentlemen of the ‘small, but loyal town’ of Parramatta, however, it was a bona fide assassination attempt, which they deemed ‘so atrocious an act’ that they ‘deeply lament[ed] that any individual could be found in the Colony to be guilty of so premeditated an outrage.’[57] A decade hence, when Nicholas sat in his solitary cell at Newcastle Gaol for repeatedly beating and maiming his wife, he may have longed for the days when his delicacy could be so easily offended.

In 1830, though, Nicholas’s life was repeating aspects of his early, personal history in exclusively positive ways. For one thing, perhaps as a direct result of an association with the Female Factory in its early years above the gaol, his tenders to supply ‘Wheaten Bread’ and ‘Maize Bread…for Prisoners in and out of Barracks, and Female Factory,’ at its North Parramatta location were accepted by the government.[58] The same year, he also commenced replicating the family he and his mother had been forced to leave behind in England by naming each of the five children he and Milbah had together after the five original Cavillon children of London. This trend was set on 29 May 1830 when Nicholas and Milbah named the first of their children ‘Mary Ann,’ after Nicholas’s mother Mary Cavillon as well as Nicholas’s eldest sister.[59] When the couple welcomed their second child, another daughter, on 9 October 1832, she was given the name ‘Victoria’ (the Anglicised version of Nicholas’s sister ‘Victoire’).[60] Their third child, a son born on 26 August 1834, was given the name of Nicholas’s eldest brother, ‘Joseph.’[61] The fourth child born 9 September 1836, also a son, was named ‘Nicholas,’ but died just under a month later on 7 October.[62] The fifth and final child, ‘Frances Sarah Jane Cavillon,’ served as namesake to both Milbah’s departed mother Frances Sarah and Nicholas’s baby sister Jane who had died in infancy over three decades earlier on Turnmill Street, London.[63] Yet amidst all these new beginnings, another life came to an end. Nicholas’s own mother, Mary Cavillon, had passed away on 1 June 1832 when Milbah was around five months pregnant with Victoria.[64] He was thirty-one when he lost the mother whose life had been so deeply entwined with his own—she was the very reason he was even in the colony at all.

In the eyes of the public at least, Nicholas evidently continued to lead a respectable life with no sign of the violent alcoholism to come, because in June 1834 three Justices of the Peace deemed him a ‘fit person to keep a Public House,’ of all things.[65] His license enabled him to retail ‘Wines and Malt and Spirituous Liquors for the House known by the Sign of The Native Companion, at Smith Street, Parramatta.’[66] For a number of years, James Foulcher had run an establishment by this name very successfully at different locations in the town, including George Street and Phillip Street.[67] Indeed, one 1833 advertisement to let the ‘well-known established and respectable Licensed House’ boasted that Foulcher had ‘made a fortune in a few years’ with the business.[68] Notwithstanding its glowing record under Foulcher’s management and promise of riches for whoever took it on, or indeed Nicholas’s later penchant for alcohol, Nicholas did not seem to pursue this business beyond paying for the license, as he did not advertise the inn at all, and the license was never renewed.

Was Nicholas’s short-lived notion of being a publican a sign that things were already starting to go awry for the man who was once supposedly the very definition of ‘sober and industrious’? After all, it would only be a few short years later that publicans in Parramatta were officially warned to refrain from selling liquor to Nicholas under any circumstances. A couple of things may run counter to such a theory.

The Cavillons were obviously doing well enough to support not only their growing family throughout this period but also a number of convict servants. In the month before Mary Cavillon’s death, for example, they had been assigned a female convict as a house servant in the form of Irish dairymaid turned clothes thief Eliza Ledwick per Lady Rowena (1826).[69] Another two convicts were assigned to Nicholas to serve as a warehouseman and a stable boy in 1834, but in November 1836, with the family still grieving the loss of baby Nicholas one month earlier, their servant William Johnson per Marquis of Huntley (3) (1830) absconded, and was apprehended a week later.[70] We cannot read too much into Johnson’s flight—namely that the Cavillon household might have been a particularly unpleasant place to be—as convict runaways had plenty of reasons for absenting themselves from their assigned places of work.

We get an ever clearer understanding of just how well off the family were in the 1830s when we consider the estate Nicholas was building by purchasing a quantity of highly desirable, adjoining parcels of land in the Field of Mars during this time.[71] By October 1838, he was able to put up for sale by private contract an ‘estate or farm’ of no less than ‘one hundred and ten acres, twenty-five of which are at present in the highest state of cultivation,’ with an ‘Orchard consist[ing] of a great variety of choice Fruit Trees, namely—Orange, Nectarine, Apricot, Cherry, &c, &c.’[72] Aside from its prime location with ‘two good high roads leading to it, namely ‘one branching from the Kissing Point Road, and the other from the Pennant Hills Road,’ another selling point for this generous estate was ‘The Timber upon the remainder of the Ground,’ which was ‘of the most excellent quality, consisting of blue and black butted Gum; also, mahogany and other trees most suitable for shingle splitting.’[73] Nicholas had ‘no objection to divid[ing] the said Farm to meet the convenience of purchasers,’ but this eagerness to accommodate prospective buyers’ needs may have been driven by Nicholas’s own desperate need to sell.[74] Had he simply spread his financial resources too thin?

Intoxicated and Insolvent

It was eleven months after the advertisement of his Field of Mars estate that Milbah first fronted up to the Police Office in November 1839 battered beyond recognition.[75] It is probably no sheer coincidence that at the end of that same month a case was heard in the ‘Court of Claims’ in which some of Nicholas Cavillon’s land was ‘in dispute.’[76] This was a period of ‘land chaos’ in Parramatta and surrounds, kicked off in July 1839 when the heirs of Governor Bligh laid claim to an old 105-acre grant at North Parramatta and sought to evict the occupants, including the new Female Factory and Gaol, The King’s School, Roman Catholic chapel, and a number of private residential properties, such as Roseneath Cottage.[77] The Bligh heirs ultimately lost, but it was two years before the matter was sorted out. In Nicholas’s case, his allotment ‘was leased by Sir Thomas Brisbane for 21 years, from the 30^th June 1823, to William Parkes’ who was already deceased.[78] Nicholas and his fellow claimants alleged that ‘they are now possessed of [that allotment] in portions, and request a Deed of Grant, on the ground of having expended £1000 in building, as provided for by a clause in the lease.’[79] Nicholas was already incarcerated in Newcastle Gaol when another allotment he had purchased was under investigation in the Court of Claims, and was still in gaol in June 1841 when one of these disputed allotments was at last granted to him via his attorney, James Byrnes.[80]

Yet Nicholas was embroiled in further legal troubles when he was already behind bars. In June 1840, the following notice appeared in the Commercial Journal and Advertiser. It seems someone with whom Nicholas had business dealings (and was apparently indebted to), was unaware of his recent instalment in Newcastle Gaol:

It is unclear whether financial distress was the short-term trigger for his alcoholism and violence towards Milbah in 1839, or he was only ruined financially by his three-year stint in gaol. What is very much apparent, though, is that things did not improve financially or legally—nor did Nicholas’s ability to cope with these stressors.

Upon his release from gaol in early 1843, Nicholas was constantly in legal battles, trying to hold on to everything that he had accumulated over his adult life. For example, his claim on a town allotment, ‘a few yards from the Peacock Inn’ on Church Street, Parramatta, was in dispute in 1844.[81] The property contained a weatherboard house and was then occupied by John Shying, ‘the Chinese,’ who took steps to sell it in mid-1844 while Nicholas’s case for the property was pending in the Court of Claims.[82] Nicholas acted quickly, making a public announcement in the Sydney Morning Herald cautioning Shying and the general public against selling or purchasing his property.[83]

On 22 March 1849, the Chief Commission of Insolvent Estates, William H. Kerr, announced that ‘the Estate of Nicholas Cavillon, of Church Street, Parramatta, baker,…was…placed under sequestration by order of the Honourable Sir Alfred Stephen, Knight, Chief Justice.’[84] Nicholas’s debts and assets were published in the Sydney Morning Herald the next day:

The same day, the sheriff notified the public of his intention to sell ‘by public auction’ at the London Tavern, George Street, Cadi (Sydney), ‘all the right, title, interest, and estate of [Nicholas Cavillon], in and to the equity of redemption, of and in all that piece of parcel of land, situate, lying, and being in Church Street, on the Windsor Road, in the Town of Parramatta, containing by estimation forty roods, more or less; bounded on the west side by the Windsor Road, aforesaid; on the south side by Fennell street; on the north by Samuel Howe’s land; and in the rear by property belonging to one Mary Gotham together with the Cottage and Bakehouse thereon erected.’[85] If things had been unbearably bad before, a baker without a bakehouse would have had even less prospect of paying any outstanding debts and turning his life around. The sale must not have gone ahead, because his debts apparently continued to outweigh his assets and he was still residing there a couple of years later.

From 3 April 1849, there would be ‘special meetings’ of Nicholas’s creditors at the Insolvency Court at the Supreme Court, Cadi (Sydney).[86] As was typical, though, these proceedings were excruciatingly drawn out. Over a year later, for example, one of those meetings was summed up by the discouraging note of ‘nothing done,’ but three days later, a notice was placed in the New South Wales Government Gazette, informing his creditors that on 27 June 1850 he intended to apply for a certificate of insolvency to be granted to him.[87] Even this was not a straightforward process, with a number of adjourned meetings taking place before the certificate application was granted on 8 August 1850.[88] Almost two years elapsed before the Chief Commissioner confirmed on 24 March 1852 that the certificate was allowed and the court, finding ‘no opposition, made the necessary order.’[89]

Full Circle

Nicholas Cavillon’s life was always eventful, because just ten days or so prior to his insolvency certificate being confirmed, the baker whose mother had been a convicted housebreaker, and who had memorably spent three years in gaol for drunken assault himself, was the target of an alcohol-fuelled, violent home invasion.

Two men, very much in liquor, attempted to unlawfully enter Nicholas’s dwelling-house on the corner of Church and Fennell streets, Parramatta, on 11 March 1852. A Mr. Stowe, innkeeper, who lived opposite Nicholas, ‘witnessed the greater part of the transaction, and did his utmost to prevent mischief; but they persisted, and a second time burst open the front door…’[90] ‘Cavilion [sic],’ however, was quick to react and, ‘being a stout fellow, a desperate fight ensued.’[91] One of the intruders, thirty-two-year-old Norman Smith, a tattooed Scottish fisherman by trade who had arrived per Susan (2) (1836) as a convict, was also a ‘stout’ man of ‘five feet, six-and-a-half inches,’ so he was probably quite a match for the fifty-one-year-old ‘hardened villain’ Nicholas.[92] The second intruder, William Bavister, was probably less so, being a ‘slight’ twenty-two-year-old of five feet, four-and-a-half inches, who hailed from Harlington, Bedfordshire and had not been put through the mill of the convict system, since he arrived as a single, assisted immigrant labourer per Mary Bannatyne (1849).[93] Nevertheless, the intruders had the element of surprise, numbers, and comparative youth in their favour. Still, it was Nicholas who ‘at length obtained the mastery’ and ‘recovered possession.’[94] According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a ‘considerable quantity of blood had been shed,’ with the stronger and taller opponent Smith ‘getting the worst of it.’[95]

Taking into account the timing of the home invasion so soon before Nicholas’s certificate of insolvency was confirmed, and how determined the two men had been to enter Nicholas’s premises specifically, one wonders if Smith and Bavister might have been ‘heavies’ hired by one of Nicholas’s disgruntled creditors; if so, nothing of the sort surfaced when the case was heard at Parramatta a couple of days later.[96] They were, however, found guilty. In stark contrast to the death sentences Nicholas’s mother faced and the life sentence she actually served for her bloodless housebreaking offences in England, Smith and Bavister were merely fined £2 and £1 respectively, which they paid and went about their business.[97]

Nicholas had gained mastery over violent intruders, both in his own home and in the Police Court, yet the media coverage of the incident reveals there was one thing he could not gain mastery over: himself. As the Sydney Morning Herald observed: ‘The prosecutor was not sober, and although but two days after, could not tell whether the occurrence took place on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.’[98]

His only surviving son, Joseph, swore off alcohol but followed in Nicholas’s line of work, becoming a ‘bread and biscuit baker and confectioner’ in the 1850s, first in Fortitude Valley, Mianjin (Brisbane), then Cadi (Sydney) and Goulburn in Gandangara Country.[99] Joseph took after his father in other ways: he, too, became insolvent in the 1860s before returning to the ‘Field of Mars’ Wallumettagal Country and switching to a career as a railway porter; he also demonstrated the same unconditional devotion to a less-than-perfect parent that Nicholas had once shown to his own mother.[100] Despite the horrific things Joseph had witnessed, he evidently hated intemperance rather than the man, for not only did Joseph and wife Ann name their fifth and final child (born May 1869) after the intemperate baker, they had also taken him into their home at the Field of Mars: Nicholas was residing with them around August the same year when he fell gravely ill.[101] He passed away there, with Joseph by his side, on 9 September, aged sixty-eight, having haemorrhaged from his lungs.[102] At two o’clock in the afternoon, the day after his death, Nicholas Cavillon’s funeral moved from Joseph’s residence to St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta, where Nicholas was reunited with the mother for whom he had crossed the seas, fifty-five years before.[103]

For much of his life, he had been his mother’s keeper; though still just a boy himself, he had accompanied her to the penal colony and, no doubt, endured many hardships beside her and maybe even in defence of her. Then, as soon as he was able, he lived up to his responsibilities by taking his mother out of the factory, ‘maintained her’ in the eleven years that followed, and honoured her memory with a stone memorial bearing her real name ‘Mary Cavillon.’[104] But did part of him ever resent or even punish her for anything he might have experienced in the process? There is no evidence that Mary Cavillon ever suffered abuse at the hands of her son, or that she ever even had to witness it in the early years of his marriage to Milbah. However, some deep-seated, unresolved anger towards his mother may partially account for why Nicholas ultimately saw the other significant female in his life, his wife Milbah, as a fitting object of rage, though it does not account for the level of violence that was so extreme as to garner the once ‘sober and industrious’ man a reputation as ‘a hardened villain.’ So, what made him thus?

We can never really know precisely what activated the maladaptive behaviours Nicholas Cavillon eventually displayed in adulthood. However, were we to go in search of the ‘grand source’ of his personal ‘moral corruption,’ like Reverend Marsden we might be hard pressed to find a better candidate than Parramatta’s first Female Factory, because even with a bad start in London amid the rougher sorts, frequent separation from his mother due to prison stints, and a potentially alcoholic and/or absent father, it was in Parramatta that Nicholas junior spent his early adolescence; a time when he would have been all the more impressionable to those who served as his relationship ‘models.’ Whether or not Nicholas himself spent much (or any) time in the Factory itself, simply being in Parramatta in this period with his own mother attached to the institution meant he was immersed in the world of the Factory women and the convict men who took advantage of their impoverished situation. We may infer that he witnessed all manner of horrors associated with that environment, because, rather like his son Joseph at the temperance meeting in the 1850s, in adulthood Nicholas made a concerted effort to rise above his early experiences by financially supporting the Female School of Industry’s aim to provide a safe haven and education for young, destitute girls. The same man who showed such understanding and sympathy for the plight of defenceless girls would later subject his wife and children, including three daughters, to physical and psychological trauma—but, of course, he would not be the first or the last to eventually become the very thing he despised most.

Thus, for all the stories of people arriving chains and going on to achieve great personal success after securing their freedom, here is one where it appears the opposite was true: for Nicholas Cavillon arrived free, only to have the penal colony make a hardened convict of him.

If this essay has raised any personal issues for you please contact: Lifeline 13 11 14 for Australian residents, or a mental health service near you.

CITE THIS

Michaela Ann Cameron, “Nicholas Cavillon: A Hardened Villain,” St. John’s Online, (2021), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/nicholas-cavillon, accessed [insert current date]

Further Reading

Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Cavillon: Homemaker, Housebreaker,” St. John’s Online, (2021).

References

• Caitlin Adams, “Lives Left Behind: The Forsaken Families of First Fleeters,” St. John’s Online, (2019), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/james-ogden, accessed 3 November 2019.
• British Newspaper Archive (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/). 
• Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Cavillon: Homemaker, Housebreaker,” St. John’s Online, (2021), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-cavillon, accessed 9 March 2021.
• Joy Damousi, “‘Wretchedness and Vice’: The ‘Orphan’ and the Colonial Imagination,” in Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Judith Dunn, The Parramatta Cemeteries: St. John’s, (Parramatta: Parramatta and District Historical Society, 1991).
• Carol Liston, “Convict Women in the Female Factories of New South Wales,” in Gay Hendriksen, Trudy Cowley, and Carol Liston, Women Transported: Life in Australia’s Convict Female Factories, (Parramatta, N.S.W: Parramatta City Council Heritage Centre, 2008).
• Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83.
• New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/), (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2019), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 3 November 2019
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0).
• Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
• Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
• Parish Marriage Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
• Olivia Solon, “Acoustic reach of Bow Bells has shrunk dramatically due to ambient noise,” Wired, (25 June 2012), https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bow-bells-cockney, accessed 3 November 2019.
• Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/)
• Elizabeth Windschuttle, “Discipline, Domestic Training and Social Control: The Female School of Industry, Sydney, 1826–1847,” Labour History, No. 39 (Nov., 1980): 1–14.

NOTES

[1] “Teetotalism,” The Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Saturday 18 April 1857, p. 2.

[2] “Teetotalism,” The Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Saturday 18 April 1857, p. 2.

[3] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[4] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[5] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[6] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[7] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[8] “Nicholas Cavillon, 12 February 1840; Offence: Cutting with intent to harm; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace: Registers of Criminal Cases Tried at Country Quarter Sessions: Parramatta: 1839–1876, Windsor 1839–1843; Series Number: 848; Reel: 2757, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[9] “Parramatta Police,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 26 February 1840, p. 2.

[10] “Parramatta Police,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 26 February 1840, p. 2.

[11] “Nicholas Cavillon, 12 February 1840; Offence: Cutting with intent to harm; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; Witnesses: Milbah Cavillon, Mary Ann Cavillon, Dr. Gwynne Esq.; Jury: Civil,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace: Registers of Criminal Cases Tried at Country Quarter Sessions: Parramatta: 1839–1876, Windsor 1839–1843; Series Number: 848; Reel: 2757, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia); “Nicholas Cavillon, Trial Date: 17 February 1840; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace, Index to Quarter Sessions, Criminal Cases, 1839–1888; Series: NRS 846; Reel: 2728, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[12] “Nicholas Cavillon, 12 February 1840; Offence: Cutting with intent to harm; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; Witnesses: Milbah Cavillon, Mary Ann Cavillon, Dr. Gwynne Esq.; Jury: Civil,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace: Registers of Criminal Cases Tried at Country Quarter Sessions: Parramatta: 1839–1876, Windsor 1839–1843; Series Number: 848; Reel: 2757, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia); “Nicholas Cavillon, Trial Date: 17 February 1840; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace, Index to Quarter Sessions, Criminal Cases, 1839–1888; Series: NRS 846; Reel: 2728, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[13] “Nicholas Cavillon, 12 February 1840; Offence: Cutting with intent to harm; Court Place: Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; Witnesses: Milbah Cavillon, Mary Ann Cavillon, Dr. Gwynne Esq.; Jury: Civil,” New South Wales Government, Clerk of the Peace: Registers of Criminal Cases Tried at Country Quarter Sessions: Parramatta: 1839–1876, Windsor 1839–1843; Series Number: 848; Reel: 2757, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[14] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[15] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3. Note: Milbah Cavillon is erroneously recorded as “Mrs. Amelia Cavillon” in this newspaper article.

[16] “Nicholas Cavillon, Came Free per Broxbornebury (1814), Memorial to the Governor, 29 August 1824,” New South Wales Government, Memorials to the Governor, 1810–25, Series: 899; Fiche: 3001–3162; Number 177; Page” 817, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[17] For more on the impact of losing a male breadwinner see Caitlin Adams, “Lives Left Behind: The Forsaken Families of First Fleeters,” St. John’s Online, (2019), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/james-ogden, accessed 3 November 2019.

[18] Olivia Solon, “Acoustic reach of Bow Bells has shrunk dramatically due to ambient noise,” Wired, (25 June 2012), https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bow-bells-cockney, accessed 3 November 2019; Steve Gosling, “Bow Bells and the London Cockney,” 24 Acoustics, http://www.24acoustics.co.uk/bow-bells-and-the-london-cockney/, accessed 3 November 2019; “Cockney Sound Map,” (22 August 2018), https://mapoftheweek.blogspot.com/2018/08/cockney-sound-map.html, accessed 3 November 2019. Strangely, there is no baptism record for Nicholas, even though there are such records for all of his siblings. The residence, Saffron Street, therefore, is an educated guess based on the fact that the siblings born immediately before and after him were born at that location. See “Christening of JOSEPH FRANCIS CAVILLON, St Andrew, Holborn, Camden, London, England, 25 December 1800,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P82/AND/A/001/MS06667/014, (London Metropolitan Archives; London, England). Full transcript: “Christenings in December 1800, Joseph Francis Son of Nicholas Francis Anthony Cavillon & Mary, Saffron Street, 25 [December 1800]” and “Christening of VICTOIRE CAVILLON, St Andrew, Holborn, Camden, London, England, 25 December 1802,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P82/AND/A/001/MS06667/014, (London Metropolitan Archives; London, England). Full transcript: “Christenings in December 1802, Victoire, Daugtr of Nicholas & Victoire Cavillon, Saffron Street, 25 [December 1802].” Nicholas’s approximate year of birth is from colonial sources including the 1828 New South Wales Census and his death certificate. New South Wales Government, 1828 Census: Householders’ Returns [Population and Statistics, Musters and Census Records, Census, Colonial Secretary], Series: NRS 1273; Reel: 2507, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). Information from Nicholas’s death certificate was sourced from Marilyn Rowan, “NICHOLAS CAVILLON NSW Death Registration Transcription,” NSW Births Deaths and Marriages, (transcriptions.com.au, 12 June 2010), Ref No: 1509066. See also New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/); Burial of NICHOLAS CAVILLON, Parramatta, New South Wales, 1869, Registration No. 5447/1869, (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2020), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 3 November 2019.

[19] Nicholas senior’s occupation of ‘farrier’ is sourced from Nicholas junior’s colonial death certificate. See New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/), (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2019), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 3 November 2019 and Marilyn Rowan, “NICHOLAS CAVILLON NSW Death Registration Transcription,” NSW Births Deaths and Marriages, (transcriptions.com.au, 12 June 2010), Ref No: 1509066. For the marriage details of Mary Lyon and Nicholas Cavillon see “Marriage of MARY LYON and NICHOLAS FRANCIS ANTHONY CAVILLON, 2 December 1792, St. Martin-In-The-Fields, London, Westminster, England,” Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, Reference: STJ/PR/6/14, City of Westminster Archives Centre; London, England. For more on Nicholas’s parents, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Cavillon: Homemaker, Housebreaker” St. John’s Online, (2021), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-cavillon, accessed 3 November 2019.

[20] “Christening of MARY CAVILLON, St Andrew, Holborn, Camden, London, England, 14 June 1795,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P82/AND/A/001/MS06667/014, (London Metropolitan Archives; London, England). Full transcript: “Christenings of June 1795, Mary Daugtr of Nicholas & Mary Cavillon Summer Street, 14 [June 1795]”; “Christening of JOSEPH FRANCIS CAVILLON, St Andrew, Holborn, Camden, London, England, 25 December 1800,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P82/AND/A/001/MS06667/014, (London Metropolitan Archives; London, England). Full transcript: “Christenings in December 1800, Joseph Francis Son of Nicholas Francis Anthony Cavillon & Mary, Saffron Street, 25 [December 1800]”; “Christening of VICTOIRE CAVILLON, St Andrew, Holborn, Camden, London, England, 25 December 1802,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P82/AND/A/001/MS06667/014, (London Metropolitan Archives; London, England). Full transcript: “Christenings in December 1802, Victoire, Daugtr of Nicholas & Victoire Cavillon, Saffron Street, 25 [December 1802]”; “Burial of JANE COVILLON [sic], 24 April 1805, Turnmill Street, St. James, Clerkenwell, Islington,” Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1812, Reference Number: P76/JS1/067, London, England: London Metropolitan Archives.

[21] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 24 October 1804, trial of MARY LYON (t18041024-12), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18041024-12, accessed 3 November 2019.

[22] Italics are mine. Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 24 October 1804, trial of MARY LYON (t18041024-12), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18041024-12, accessed 3 November 2019.

[23] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Cavillon: Homemaker, Housebreaker,” St. John’s Online, (2021), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-cavillon, accessed 3 November 2019.

[24] Kentish Gazette, 18 December 1810, p. 2; Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales; Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies, Class: HO 26; Piece: 16; Page: 20, (The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England). Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 5 December 1810, trial of MARY CAVILLON (t18101205-33), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18101205-33, accessed 3 November 2019.

[25] The National Archives, HO 77: Newgate Prison Calendar; Piece Number: 18, (The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England); “The Prince Regent’s Court,” The Globe, 1 March 1811, p. 3; The word ‘pardoned’ is written in ink beside Mary’s name, although the details of her reduced sentence were not logged: see, The National Archives, HO 77: Newgate Prison Calendar; Piece Number: 18, (The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England); The Digital Panopticon (www.digitalpanopticon.org, version 1.2.1), MARY CAVILLON Life Archive (ID: obpt18101205-33-defend335), https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpt18101205-33-defend335, accessed 3 November 2019; Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Cavillon: Homemaker, Housebreaker,” St. John’s Online, (2021), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-cavillon, accessed 3 November 2019.

[26] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 2 June 1813, trial of ISABELLA, alias ELIZABETH PHILLIPS (t18130602-100), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18130602-100, accessed 3 November 2019.

[27] Star (London), 24 July 1813, p. 4; Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 2 June 1813, trial of ISABELLA, alias ELIZABETH PHILLIPS (t18130602-100), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18130602-100, accessed 3 November 2019.

[28] “Marriage of MARY CAVILLON and JOHN HAWKER TREBLE, 8 May 1815, St. James, Piccadilly, St. James, Westminster, London, Westminster, England,” Westminster, Anglican Parish Registers, Reference Number: STG/PR/7/86, City of Westminster Archives, Westminster, London, England; “JOSEPH CAVILLON, 4 August 1821, Entry Books of Certificates: 1840 May – 1841 Feb,” UK Naval Officer and Rating Service Records. Admiralty: Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Coastguard and related services: Officers’ and Ratings’ Service Records (Series II), Class: ADM 29; Piece Number: 26, (The National Archives, Kew, England); “JOSEPH CAVILLON, Age 50; Admission Date: 22 November 1845; Admission Place: London, England,” Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital Admission Registers, Reference Number: DSH/9, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England; “JOSEPH CAVILLON, Age 54; Greenwich Hospital, Kent, England, Pensioner, Boarder, 1851,” Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, Class: HO107; Piece: 1587; Folio: 452; Page: 25; GSU Roll: 174824, (The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Surrey, England); Regarding his membership in the Freemasons as well as further evidence of his occupation: “JOSEPH CAVILLON, Initiation Date: 28; Profession: Mariner; Year Range: 1813–1836; Lodge: Lodge of Friendship; Lodge Location: Plymouth Dock,” Membership Registers 1751–1921 from the collection of the United Grand Lodge of England held by the Museum of Freemasonry, Folio Number: 90; A Lodge Number: 339A; B Lodge Number: 238B, (Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, England). For Joseph’s burial see “JOSEPH CAVILLION [sic], Death Age: 53; Burial Date: 4 March 1853; Burial Place: Greenwich, Kent, England; Denomination: Anglican,” General Register Office: Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths surrendered to the Non-Parochial Registers Commissions of 1837 and 1857, Records of the General Register Office, Government Social Survey Department, and Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Registrar General (RG) 4, Class Number: RG 4; Piece Number: 1675, (The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England); “Marriage of VICTORIA CAVILLON and HENRY RICHARD HALLAM, Marriage Date: 15 December 1817; Marriage Place: St. Martin-In-The-Fields, London, Westminster, England,” Westminster, Anglican Parish Registers, Reference Number: STG/PR/7/86, City of Westminster Archives, Westminster, London, England.

[29] New South Wales Government, 1828 Census: Householders’ Returns [Population and Statistics, Musters and Census Records, Census, Colonial Secretary], Series: NRS 1273; Reel: 2507, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[30] There is no direct evidence that confirms Nicholas was an inmate of the first Parramatta Female Factory, as records for the institution from this early period are thin and dispersed; even so, much points to this having been the case. At the time, the “Factory Above the Gaol” was the drop-off point for newly arrived convict women who were not yet assigned or married off to an eligible settler, and women who had a child with them were even more likely to end up there, which accounts for the seventy or so children Marsden recorded at the factory in 1815. We know Nicholas’s mother Mary alias Isabella Phillips was at the factory, because she was repeatedly recorded as an inmate over a number of years, and it is very likely that Nicholas was with her (at least initially), despite the fact that he was already as old as thirteen. Marsden supplied Factory statistics for 1815 in Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), p. 82; Carol Liston, “Convict Women in the Female Factories of New South Wales,” in Gay Hendriksen, Trudy Cowley, and Carol Liston, Women Transported: Life in Australia’s Convict Female Factories, (Parramatta, N.S.W: Parramatta City Council Heritage Centre, 2008); Michaela Ann Cameron, “The Factory Above the Gaol: Australia’s First Female Factory,” Female Factory Online (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/about/history/the-factory-above-the-gaol/, accessed 3 November 2019.

[31] Samuel Marsden, “The Rev. Samuel Marsden to Under-Secretary Cooke, Norfolk-street, Strand, 21 November 1807,” in F. M Bladen, Alexander Britton, & James Cook (eds.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. VI.—King and Bligh, 1806, 1807, 1808, (Sydney: Applegate Gullick, 1892), p. 381.

[32] Samuel Marsden, “The Rev. Samuel Marsden to Under-Secretary Cooke, Norfolk-street, Strand, 21 November 1807,” in F. M Bladen, Alexander Britton, & James Cook (eds.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. VI.—King and Bligh, 1806, 1807, 1808, (Sydney: Applegate Gullick, 1892), p. 381; Joy Damousi, “‘Wretchedness and Vice’: The ‘Orphan’ and the Colonial Imagination,” in Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),p. 128.

[33] Samuel Marsden, “The Rev. Samuel Marsden to Under-Secretary Cooke, Norfolk-street, Strand, 21 November 1807,” in F. M Bladen, Alexander Britton, & James Cook (eds.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. VI.—King and Bligh, 1806, 1807, 1808, (Sydney: Applegate Gullick, 1892), p. 381; Joy Damousi, “‘Wretchedness and Vice’: The ‘Orphan’ and the Colonial Imagination,” in Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),p. 128.

[34] Joy Damousi, “‘Wretchedness and Vice’: The ‘Orphan’ and the Colonial Imagination,” in Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 128.

[35] Samuel Marsden, “The Rev. Samuel Marsden to Under-Secretary Cooke, Norfolk-street, Strand, 21 November 1807,” in F. M Bladen, Alexander Britton, & James Cook (eds.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. VI.—King and Bligh, 1806, 1807, 1808, (Sydney: Applegate Gullick, 1892), pp. 381–2.

[36] Robert Stewart, “Viscount Castlereagh to Governor Bligh, Downing-street, 31 December 1807,” in F. M Bladen, Alexander Britton, & James Cook (eds.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. VI.—King and Bligh, 1806, 1807, 1808, (Sydney: Applegate Gullick, 1892).

[37] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), p. 82.

[38] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), p. 82.

[39] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), p. 82.

[40] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83.

[41] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83.

[42] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83.

[43] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83.

[44] Samuel Marsden, Letter to his Excellency, 15 July 1815, ‘Minutes of Evidence taken before SELECT’; House of Commons, “Report from the Select Committee on the State of Gaols &c.” (12 July 1819) in House of Commons, Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons 51: Prisons (House of Commons, 1836), pp. 79–83. Michael Belcher, [PhD Diss.], “The Child in New South Wales Society: 1820 to 1837,” (Armidale: University of New England, 1982), p. 282.

[45] See the 1822 General Muster, “ISABELLA PHILLIPS, Broxbornebury,” Home Office: Settlers and Convicts, New South Wales and Tasmania, Class: HO10, Piece: 36, (The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England).

[46] For the description of the factory’s “drear halls” see “Police Incidents,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Saturday 26 August 1826, p. 3.

[47] “Memorial of NICHOLAS CAVILLION [sic] of Parramatta, 29 August 1824,” New South Wales Government, Memorials to the Governor, 1810–25, Series: 899; Fiche: 3001–3162; Number 177; Page: 817, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[48] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), 15 September 1819, trial of SAMUEL BURR (t18190915-78), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18190915-78, accessed 3 November 2019.

[49] The list containing Nicholas’s name: “School of Industry,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Tuesday 17 February 1829, p. 3. Another list that bears the names of Macarthur and Anderson etc: “Parramatta School of Industry,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Saturday 15 August 1829, p. 2. For more on the Female School of Industry, and especially the role of Governor Ralph Darling’s wife Eliza in the charitable institution, see Anita Selzer, Governors’ Wives in Colonial Australia, (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2002), pp. 89–92. Elizabeth Windschuttle, “Discipline, Domestic Training and Social Control: The Female School of Industry, Sydney, 1826–1847,” Labour History, No. 39 (Nov., 1980): 1–14, esp. 3, 5. Regarding the relocation of the Female School of Industry building to the Lancer Barracks site see New South Wales Government, “Lancer Barracks Group,” New South Wales State Heritage Register, https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2240492, accessed 3 November 2019.

[50] “Marriage of NICHOLAS CAVILLION [sic] and MILBAH HARRAX [sic], 10 March 1829,” Parish Marriage Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; see also Milbah’s mother’s burial record, “Burial of FRANCES SARAH HARRAX [sic], 13 February 1829,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[51] Cusson aka Cussion, Cousin, Cussans. Robert Cusson himself was still alive and well in 1835 when he received a Ticket of Leave. The information about his trade or calling as an apothecary comes from the same source: “Ticket of Leave ROBERT CUSSAN per Mangles (2) (1822); Ticket Date” 28 March 1835,” in New South Wales Government, Ticket of Leave Butts, 31 Mar 1827–20 Aug 1867, Series: 12202; Reels: 909–965, 2688A; Item: [4/4097], (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). For the baby’s baptism record see “Baptism of ROBERT JAMES son of ROBERT CUSSION and MILBER HARRAX [sic] of Parramatta a farmer; Born: 13 September 1827; Baptised: 5 October 1828,” Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. For the last record of the baby, see “MILBAH HARREX 19 years, and ROBERT JAMES HARREX, 1 year,” in New South Wales Government, 1828 Census: Householders’ Returns [Population and Statistics, Musters and Census Records, Census, Colonial Secretary], Series: NRS 1273; Reel: 2507, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[52] “No title,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Saturday 9 January 1830, p. 2.

[53] “No title,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Saturday 9 January 1830, p. 2.

[54] “Sydney,” The Tasmanian (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1827 – 1839), Friday 22 January 1830, p. 7.

[55] “Sydney,” The Tasmanian (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1827 – 1839), Friday 22 January 1830, p. 7.

[56] “Much Ado About Nothing!” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Wednesday 23 December 1829, p. 3; “Sydney,” The Tasmanian (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1827 – 1839), Friday 22 January 1830, p. 7. See also these follow up articles: “Mr. Shelly,” The Sydney Monitor (NSW : 1828 – 1838), Saturday 16 February 1833, p. 4; “Latest English News. We observe by the Times of 13^th of August…,” The Sydney Herald (NSW : 1831 – 1842), Monday 19 December 1836, p. 1; “Miscellaneous,” Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 – 1919), Saturday 16 November 1889, p. 10; “Anglo-Colonial Gossip. John Darby Shelly, who has just died in a lunatic asylum…,” South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 – 1900), Saturday 9 November 1889, p. 6; Steve Poole, The Politics of Regicide in England, 1760–1850: Troublesome Subjects, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 51–2.

[57] “No title,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Saturday 9 January 1830, p. 2.

[58] “Commissariat Department,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Tuesday 28 December 1830, p. 1.

[59] “Baptism of MARY ANN CAVILLON; Born: 29 May 1830; Baptised: 17 October 1830,” Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia

[60] “Baptism of VICTORIA CAVELION [sic]; Born: 9 October 1832; Baptised: 4 November 1832,” Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[61] “Baptism of JOSEPH CAVILLON; Born: 26 August 1834; Baptised: 5 October 1834,” Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[62] “Baptism of NICHOLAS CAVILLON; Born: 9 September 1836; Baptised: 2 October 1836,” Parish Baptism Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; “Burial of NICHOLAS CAVILLON; Burial: 7 October 1836; Age: One month,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[63] New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/), “Baptism of FRANCES SARAH JANE CAVILLON; Born: 1 July 1837; Baptised: 7 September 1850: Where ceremony performed: Parish of St. Lawrence, Sydney, County of Cumberland, N.S.W,” Vol. 35 / Number 1331, (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2020), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 3 November 2019.

[64] “Burial of MARY CAVILLON, 3 June 1832,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[65] “Publican’s Licence, NICHOLAS CAVILLON, The Native Companion, Smith Street, Parramatta, 24 July 1834” Butts of Publicans’ Licences, 1830–1849, Series: NRS 14401; Item: [4/65–66]; Reel: 5052, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[66] “Publican’s Licence, NICHOLAS CAVILLON, The Native Companion, Smith Street, Parramatta, 24 July 1834” Butts of Publicans’ Licences, 1830–1849, Series: NRS 14401; Item: [4/65–66]; Reel: 5052, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[67] James Foulger [sic], “Advertisements. Eight Dollars Reward,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Monday 29 January 1827, p. 4; James Foulcher, “£5 Reward,” The Sydney Monitor (NSW : 1828 – 1838), Wednesday 24 July 1833, p. 4.

[68] “To Be Let,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Friday 1 November 1833, p. 1.

[69] “No. 825: Leadwick Eliza, Lady Rowena, house servant, to N. Cavillon, Parramatta,” in “List of Female Convicts Assigned during the Month of May 1832,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 24 October 1832, p. 360. Eliza Ledwick aka Eliza Leadwick and Eliza Ledwich per Lady Rowena (1826) was an Irish dairymaid by trade, but with two prior convictions to her name she had been transported for seven years when she was tried in Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin), Éire (Ireland), for stealing clothes in 1825. For more see her Irish convict profile: “ELIZA LEDWICK,” in Peter Mayberry, Irish Convicts to New South Wales, 1788–1849, (2011), http://members.pcug.org.au/~ppmay/cgi-bin/irish/irish.cgi?requestType=Search2&id=16808, accessed 3 November 2019.

[70] “Cavillon Nicholas, [Parramatta], a warehouseman and a stable boy,” in “List of Assignments of Male Convicts made in the Month of February last,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 23 April 1834 [Issue No. 112], p. 238. For sources relating to William Johnson absconding from Cavillon’s service see: John Ryan Brennan, “Principal Superintendent of Convicts’ Office, November 29, 1836. The undermentioned Prisoners having absconded…,” in The Sydney Monitor (NSW : 1828 – 1838), Friday 2 December 1836, p. 2; “Johnson, William, Marquis Huntly, N. Cavillon, Parramatta,” in Thomas Ryan, “List of Runaways Apprehended During the Last Week,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 7 December 1836 [Issue NO. 252], p. 956.

[71] “Sale of Land. 27. Cumberland, Field of Mars,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 14 May 1834 [Issue No. 115], p. 294.

[72] “For Sale by Private Contract,” The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser (NSW : 1838 – 1841), Wednesday 24 October 1838, p. 1.

[73] “For Sale by Private Contract,” The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser (NSW : 1838 – 1841), Wednesday 24 October 1838, p. 1.

[74] “For Sale by Private Contract,” The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser (NSW : 1838 – 1841), Wednesday 24 October 1838, p. 1.

[75] “Parramatta. Police Office.—Tuesday, Nov. 5,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 13 November 1839, p. 3.

[76] “Court of Claims. Notice of Hearings. No. 350,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 6 November 1839 [Issue No. 464], p. 1241; “Court of Claims. Case No. 570,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 4 December 1839 [Issue No. 472], p. 1377.

[77] See Terry Kass, Carol Liston, and John McClymont, Parramatta: A Past Revealed, (Parramatta: Parramatta City Council, 1996), pp. 139–43, especially 139 and 140. See also Michaela Ann Cameron, “Roseneath Cottage,” Dictionary of Sydney (2015), accessed 3 November 2019.

[78] “Court of Claims. Case No. 570,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 4 December 1839 [Issue No. 472], p. 1377.

[79] “Court of Claims. Case No. 570,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 4 December 1839 [Issue No. 472], p. 1377.

[80] “Court of Claims. Case No. 849,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Wednesday 16 December 1840 [Issue No. 82], p. 1362; “Court of Claims. Case No. 849,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Thursday 24 December 1840, p. 4; “Title Deeds. Town Allotments, Deed No. 26, Case No. 919, 22 May 1841,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Tuesday 21 September 1841 [Issue No. 78], p. 1279.

[81] Nicholas Cavillon, “Public Notice,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 9 March 1844, p. 3.

[82] “Local Intelligence. Sale of Town Property,” Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 – 1845), Saturday 16 March 1844, p. 2; Nicholas Cavillon, “Public Notice,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 9 March 1844, p. 3. For the reference to John Shying as ‘the Chinese’ see “Court of Claims. Case No. 849,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Thursday 24 December 1840, p. 4.

[83] Nicholas Cavillon, “Public Notice,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 9 March 1844, p. 3.

[84] “In the Insolvent Estate of Nicholas Cavillon, of Church Street, Parramatta, baker,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Tuesday 27 March 1849 [Issue No. 42], p. 491.

[85] Cornelius Prout, “Sheriff’s Office, Sydney, 15^th February, 1849, In the Supreme Court. Macpherson and others, v. Cavillon,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Thursday 22 March 1849, p. 4.

[86] “Domestic Intelligence. Insolvent Court. Meetings of Creditors,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Monday 2 April 1849, p. 2.

[87] “Domestic Intelligence, Insolvent Court,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 18 May 1850, p. 2; “In the Insolvent Estate of Nicholas Cavillon, of Church-street, Parramatta, baker, Notice to Creditors,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Tuesday 21 May 1850 [Issue No. 64], p. 802.

[88] “Domestic Intelligence, Insolvent Court,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Friday 9 August 1850, p. 3.

[89] “Law Intelligence,” Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1875), Thursday 25 March 1852, p. 2.

[90] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[91] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[92] “Norman Smith per Susan (1836); Date of Admission: 1852; Gaol: Parramatta,” New South Wales Government, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818–1930; Item: 4/6557; Roll: 181, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia); “Norman Smith per Susan (1836),” New South Wales Government, Butts of Certificates of Freedom, Series: NRS 12210; Reel: 1027, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales).

[93] “William Bavister per Mary Bannatyne (1849); Date of Admission: 1852; Gaol: Parramatta,” New South Wales Government, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818–1930; Item: 4/6557; Roll: 181, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia); and “Single Males. Bavister, William, 19, Labourer, per Mary Bannatyne (1849),” in New South Wales Government, Persons on Bounty Ships to Sydney, Newcastle, and Moreton Bay (Board’s Immigrant Lists). Series: 5317, Reel: 2459; Item: [4/4911], (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales).

[94] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[95] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[96] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[97] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[98] “Parramatta. Assault and Housebreaking,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Saturday 13 March 1852, p. 5.

[99] “J. Cavillon, Bread and Biscuit Baker and Confectioner,” The Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Saturday 12 December 1857, p. 3; “Local and Provincial,” Goulburn Herald (NSW : 1860 – 1864), Wednesday 31 October 1860, p. 2; “Furner Brothers,” Goulburn Herald (NSW : 1860 – 1864), Wednesday 30 January 1861, p. 3.

[100] “Insolvency, Joseph Cavillon, late of Parramatta, now of Goulburn, baker,” Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1932), Saturday 4 October 1862, p. 6; Archibald Campbell, “In the Insolvent Estate of Joseph Cavillon, now of Goulburn, baker, lately at Parramatta,” New South Wales Government Gazette (Sydney, NSW : 1832 – 1900), Tuesday 7 October 1862 [Issue No. 179], p. 1940; “Fatal Railway Accident,” Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 – 1919), Saturday 6 May 1876, p. 28.

[101] While there is no direct evidence to indicate that Milbah and Nicholas ever lived together again after his time in gaol, especially considering that he never conquered his alcoholism and, thus, would have remained a risk to her personal safety, it may be that Nicholas had continued to act on Milbah’s behalf regarding ‘matters of lease and rents’ for her ‘several farms, situated…at Freeman’s Reach, on the Hawkesbury River, at the Menangle, in the county of Cook, and on the Pennant Hills Road, near Parramatta, in the country of Cumberland.’ See Milbah Cavillon, “In the Matter of the Late Nicholas Cavillon, of Parramatta, deceased,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Wednesday 15 September 1869, p. 1.

[102] Information from Nicholas’s death certificate was sourced from Marilyn Rowan, “NICHOLAS CAVILLON NSW Death Registration Transcription,” NSW Births Deaths and Marriages, (transcriptions.com.au, 12 June 2010), Ref No: 1509066. See also New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/); Burial of NICHOLAS CAVILLON, Parramatta, New South Wales, 1869, Registration No. 5447/1869, (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2020), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 3 November 2019.

[103] “Deaths,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Friday 10 September 1869, p. 1; “Funerals,” The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), Friday 10 September 1869, p. 8; “Deaths,” Sydney Mail (NSW : 1860 – 1871), Saturday 11 September 1869, p. 13; “Burial of NICHOLAS CAVILLON, 10 September 1869,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, Parish of St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia; “NICHOLAS CAVILLON, Left Section, Row 30, Memorial O (L.30.O), St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta.”

[104] “MARY CAVILLON, Left Section, Row 30, Memorial O (L.30.O), St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta.”

© Copyright 2019 Michaela Ann Cameron