Wise man Sam kept away from trouble...

ONLY three months before his death, the Perth Mirror interviewed Speed at his old folk’s home.

The paper reported: “Now in the Old Men’s Home, Samuel Speed is the last survivor of the men who were transported to the Swan River Colony as convicts.

“He landed at Fremantle in 1866 aboard the troopship Belgravia under sentence of seven years for arson.

“He was then 25 – his indent is incorrect – and three years later he was released as a bondsman. And in 1871, having served his sentence, he became an expiree. That was 12 months after the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.

“Lost in the mists of years that have passed since Samuel Speed first heard a warder’s harsh command, listened to the heavy beat of the hob-nailed boots of the chain gang men, is a story that would startle the world. But, intelligent as he is today, old Sam’s memory is clouded with time, and there is none to stir it for him.

“He was never a member of a chain gang; carries no lash marks on his back as other unfortunates did; remembers Garden Island when it was known as Sulphur Town; helped build the old Fremantle bridge; has never smoked in his life – ‘Never cared for it,’ said Sam to a ‘Mirror’ representative.

“He was born in Birmingham in 1841. Still a young fellow when he received his sentence of transportation, Samuel Speed left behind him a brother and sister, neither of whom he has heard of since.

“From the day he landed at Fremantle he has never had a black mark against his name and so exemplary was his conduct that, after three years, he was released as a bondsman.

“In those grim old days, a convict whom the governor regarded as trustworthy was released to work for a private person. It was cheap labour for employers, and one way of easing the congestion in the prisons.

“A bondsman received no wages, but was clothed and fed. If his employer reported any misbehaviour on his part he was liable for 100 lashes at the triangle and work in the chain gang. A wise man was Samuel Speed.

“He kept free of the trouble many of the hot-heads ran into and the authorities were quick to recognise his sense of responsibility. So Sam escaped the monotony and rigours of the chain gang.

“Among those unfortunates transported, he recalls, were men in every walk of life; doctors, lawyers, shirt-soiled gentlemen and social outcasts tipped together in the hothouse of humanity that was the Swan River Colony.

“Vividly, Sam Speed recalls the trip out on the Belgravia. The waiting on the hulks at Chatham was an awful time.

“‘Whatever stories you hear,’ he said, ‘the officers were pretty good to us. We had plenty of food, and my back bears no lash marks today’.

“On his release as a bondsman, Sam Speed went to work for Manning of ‘Manning’s Folly’ fame. Later he was with the Batemans, the Gallops of Dalkeith, and the Samsons. ‘Mrs. Willie Samson will remember me well,’ he said. Many a bolt he drove building the old Fremantle bridge and he grinned as he added, ‘And now they’re telling me it’s being pulled down for a new one. Let’s hope they make as good a job of it as we did in those days’.

“‘Did you ever marry, Sam?’ we asked the old-timer. ‘Marry? Me, marry? Not on your life, not with all the girls chasing me like they used to. I was a regular ‘nineteener’.

“Sam recalls well the dramatic escape of the Fenians, and the occasion on which a number of convicts broke prison, escaped to Sulphur Town and burned down the shops. ‘Those were the days when you had to walk wherever you wanted to go — unless you had the fare for a coach ride. None of your motor cars or trains. We didn’t mind hoofing it — I think the young people aren’t so tough these days’.

“Tucked up in his bed during the week with the mercury dropping quickly, Old Sam was as cheerful as ever. ‘He’s as lively as a two-year-old,’ said one of the attendants. ‘We just prepare his bath and he jumps in and out as nimbly as though he was getting ready to go courting again.’”