William Blinco 1804 Bicester

William Blinco (c.1804 – ): The Bicester Convict and the Mudgee Shepherd

A Life in Two Worlds: William born into the quiet but the very poor market town of Bicester, his life was destined to be defined by desperate acts to feed his family, and in 1834 this culminated in his deportation from both family and country. From the courtrooms of Oxford to the sprawling sheep runs of colonial New South Wales, his journey is a classic tale of crime, punishment, and the search for a new beginning on the Australian frontier.

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Origins in Bicester

William Blinco was born around 1804 in Bicester, Oxfordshire to Joseph Blencowe 1768-1846 and Elizabeth Westbury 1771-1846. He was one of eleven children and was baptised on March 18, 1804, in the local parish church. Little is known of his early years, though he would eventually marry and father two children in England—a fact that would later come back to haunt his attempts at a new life in the colonies.  In 1826 at age 25 William married Hannah Parker in Bicester and that year a first child Eliza was born.  A year later his younger brother James married Elizabeth Parker, sister to his wife Hannah.

Desperate Times: William and his family were part of Bicester’s chronic poor.

In the spring of 1828 Hannah gave birth to Sarah but this child died within three months underling the terrible conditions they were living in.

One in five were paupers in Bicester in t¹he 1820s, and it was desperately difficult for labourers such as William to look after his family. The cost of bread had risen dramatically since the Napoleonic Wars and in such a desperate situation, the Bicester Parish was forced to support wages to buy bread (called the Speenhamland system). William may well have been unemployed and dependent on the Poorhouse lodging for him and Hannah in this time.

The situation of the Poor got so much worse that the Parish set up an Emigration Committee and borrowed 1,000 pounds to send the poor men, women and children of the town to the United States. The two brother and sister Blencowe families were accepted in 1830, for a paid emigration fare.  Local town preparations had been made for 111 of the Bicester Poor to travel to the port at Liverpool for the voyage to New York, but the records show only 105 departed². The six no-shows were identified as James Blencowe aged 23, Elizabeth Blencowe 22, George Blencowe 3, William Blencowe 26, Hannah Blencowe 23, Eliza Blencowe 3. The names and ages exactly corresponding to the two families. Why they didn’t go we may never know, but it was unfortunate for William and Hannah in light of later events.

Crimes of Desperation and Despair

It seems his brother James was also in a similar predicament and at the Epiphany Quarter Sessions Oxford, in January 1828, both James & William were fined 20 shillings each, 2 shillings damages, 6 shillings 6 pence in costs, for stealing wood. If they were not already in the Poorhouse, this financial penalty would have sent them there.

William was charged with a second crime of breaking into a house and stealing a quantity of bacon in February 1832 in Bicester, Oxfordshire. Only the newspaper report of this charge has been seen, but it appears likely to be William Blinco. Court records may confirm. He was sentenced to three months imprisonment for larceny. At the end of his sentence tragedy struck, Hannah died of cholera in Jul 1832 at the age of 26 in Bicester, Oxfordshire.15 She was buried on 4 Jul 1832 at St Edburg’s Churchyard in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

The Memorial stone in the grounds of St Edbergs Church lists the 64 cholera victims. Worn and very hard to read they are the subject an effort tp transcribe them all by a local man.

William’s situation could have hardly got worse a widow with two children but it did.

A Final English Conviction

On March 1, 1834, William Blinco, Shepherd and Labourer, stood before a judge in Oxford. He had been charged along with John Parker (possibly a relative of his wife) of stealing a greatcoat from Thomas Cripps of Bicester. John Parker was acquitted. This third minor crime was seen in the light of his other offences and at the age of 30, and with a wife and two children, William was sentenced to 14 years of transportation.

The Voyage of the Henry Tanner

On June 27, 1834, William was one of 220 convicts who boarded the Henry Tanner, a brand-new barque built at Sunderland. The voyage lasted nearly four months. Conditions aboard convict ships were notoriously cramped, yet the Henry Tanner arrived in Port Jackson, New South Wales, on October 26, 1834. For William, the sight of Sydney Cove marked the beginning of his 14-year term of forced labor.³

The Parramatta Years & A Marriage Denied

12 December 1842, William had served eight years of his sentence and was requested to be granted a Ticket of Leave but the ticket was revoked for drunkenness and he was sent back to the work gang for 11 months.

But it was granted in late 1843. This allowed him to work for himself, provided he remained in the district. It was during this period that William attempted to put down roots. In 1843 he applied for permission to marry Susannah Clarke, but his past in England proved to be his undoing. The application was refused after authorities claimed that William was already married with two children in Oxfordshire. This was incorrect—he had been a widower at the time of his transportation.

How this misinformation arose remains unclear. Was the error introduced during his transportation paperwork? Did someone in England provide the wrong details? And why did William not correct the record—did he choose not to, or was he even aware of what had been reported? The whole episode is something of a mystery. One cannot help wondering whether the information may even have come from William himself, perhaps if he had developed cold feet about marrying again.

Life on the Frontier: The Mudgee Shepherd

William eventually moved further inland to the Mudgee district, where he found employment as a shepherd for Nicholas Paget Bayly⁴. Bayly was one of the most significant figures in Australian pastoral history, a renowned breeder of Merino sheep who established the famous “Havilah” station. Life as a shepherd for such a prominent man would have been solitary but stable, spent roaming the gullies and hills of the Cudgegong River region.

William dissapears , but another family member crosses the Pacific

After 9, January, 1851, when William finally gained his full freedom, we lose him and no records of him past 1852 found at this point, however just one year later his son William now 22 yrs, arrive from Plymouth on the Lady Montague on into Hobart, Tasmania on 9 December 1852 a convicted and transported .

Link to William Blinco 1830-1859

References

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This biography was compiled using the previous research of Anne Burton a Blencowe Family Researcher and Editor and convict records, the NSW Marriage Applications index, and local Mudgee histories. If you have further information regarding William’s later years or his family in Bicester, please contact the site administrator.