John Dore

Story

My great great grandfather, John Dore was born in the village of Barton Stacey, Hampshire, England in 1810. He worked as a ploughman and was one of many rural workers from southern England known as Machine Breakers. He was sentenced to death at Winchester in 1832 for his part in burning down the barns of Sir Henry Wright Wilson at Barton Stacey in 1830. At this time the arson attacks and riots were a protest at the introduction of threshing machines which meant that rural labourers were no longer required for the task of threshing the grains that had been harvested and the level of rural poverty were reaching intolerable levels. John\’s sentence was commuted to transportation for life but unfortunately his two co-accused, Thomas Berriman and Henry Hunt, were executed in 1832. By the time all the rioters were tried in Winchester over 19 men were executed, over 600 were imprisoned and 500 were transported to Australia for either life, 7 or 14 years. These disturbances are also called the Swing Riots because letters were sent to farmers threatening to destroy their property unless they removed the machines or raised the wages and these letters were signed by the mythical Captain Swing. The Machine Breakers of southern England were the rural equivalent of the Luddites who destroyed machines in factories during the Industrial revolution in northern England.

In 1997 a plaque was unveiled in the village of Sutton Scotney near Barton Stacey to commemorate a petition sent to the king after a meeting at The White Swan Inn Sutton Scotney in September 1830 and to commemorate the men of the area who were punished as a result of the ‘Swing Riots\’. The story of John Dore and these agricultural riots is detailed in the book Hampshire Machine Breakers: the story of the 1830 riots by Jill Chambers published by Jill Chambers, Letchworth, Herts in 1990.

John spent time on the Leviathian hulk in Portsmouth harbour before being sent to Plymouth where he set sail for Van Dieman\’s Land (now Tasmania) on the convict ship the York on 1st September 1832 arriving in Van Dieman\’s Land on 29th December 1832. His convict records state that he was ‘useful and well behaved’ according to the Surgeon on board the York, James McTeran.

When he arrived in Tasmania he was assigned to John Montague Esq. Captain John Montague was Clerk of the Legislative Council and later Colonial secretary of Van Diemen\’s Land and married to a niece of the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen\’s Land George Arthur. Machine Breakers as a group were looked on as a better class of convict than the general convict population and as most of those transported were rural labourers their skills were very useful in the fledgling colony.

Although John had married Amelia Gandy before he was transported to Australia and applied for her to join him in Van Dieman\’s Land this did not eventuate and John later married fellow convict Mary Ann Axford in 1841. Mary Ann Axford was from Bath, England and arrived in Van Dieman\’s Land on 23rd January 1838 on the convict ship the Atwick. When John and Mary Ann were married in Hobart they were unable to sign their names and both marked the marriage certificate with an X. John was granted a Ticket of Leave on 5th January 1841. A Ticket of Leave was given to a convict who had served most of his sentence and had a record of good behaviour. It made him free to find his own employment and lodging provided he reported occasionally to a magistrate. John was recommended to the Queen for a Conditional pardon no 484 on 14th February 1844 and this was approved in March 1845.

The eldest of John and Mary\’s five children, a son also called John Dore, was born in 1844. The family moved from Tasmania to the Port Phillip district (now Victoria) in 1850. Their eldest son John married in Daylesford, Victoria in 1868 and he and his wife Annie Thomas had sixteen children. Six of the children died as babies while ten lived to an old age. John worked as a timber cutter in the Daylesford area and later in Gippsland where he died in 1940 at the age of 95.

John Dore and Mary Ann Axford now have hundreds of descendents in all parts of Australia and as one of those many descendants I am in awe of the harsh conditions that they endured in England before they were convicted and transported to Australia, on the convict ships during their journeys to Australia and the conditions they endured in the new colonies of Van Dieman\’s Land and Port Phillip.

< Back to the Stories