Tracing my career criminal
QI hope that you may be able to help me find the final days/ years of James Keiller/keillor/keller, son of James Keiller and Alison Hope, my 3x great-grandparents. James Keiller (Jnr) claims to have been born in Leith, the port of Edinburgh, about 1810 but I have been unable to confirm this. James (Snr) was a soldier in the 90th Regiment of Foot so there is a possibility his son was born elsewhere and remembers his early years in Leith. The Discharge/statement of Service of 24 May 1816 for James (Snr) shows he served with the 90th Foot from 15 April 1794 to 12 October 1815, of which the period 1 May 1804 to 12 June 1810 was in the West Indies.
James (Jnr) appears to have been a career criminal, specialising in theft by housebreaking. He appears to have committed several previous thefts in Edinburgh, the County of Midlothian, the city of Perth and possibly the city of Dundee, having appeared in several local Sheriff courts, receiving custodial sentences, but finally he committed one offence too many. This time he was convicted at the High Court of Justiciary where he was sentenced to seven years transportation. Having unsuccessfully searched for James (Jnr) for over two years amongst convicts transported to Australia, I finally found him on the convict hulk Justitia, at Woolwich, courtesy of Ancestry online. The final column of his entry (‘How disposed of’) appears to read ‘Berm a 15 July 1840’. I interpret this to mean that James was destined to serve his sentence in Bermuda, despite having been told that all transported convicts at this time would have been sent to Australia.
I understand that some of the convicts on the hulks were transferred to prison in England, or possibly died due to the conditions in the hulks. Of those who survived the journey and landed in Bermuda, many died from disease. I believe that some of the convicts who had served their full sentence returned to the UK, but presumably very few. I would appreciate any help you can give me in tracing the final days of James Keiller (Jnr).
AAround 9,000 convicts were transported to Bermuda between 1823 and 1863; 2,000 (about 22%) of these died, mainly of yellow fever. Nor did everyone who was transported survive the passage. In November 1848 it was reported that 44 (about 6%) out of 704 shipped from Ireland had died. Some convicts were released on the island when their sentence was served but others were sent to Tasmania and some, certainly in the 1850s, were returned to the UK.
Bermuda background history
There had been prison hulks in Bermuda since at least 1813 but the early ones were used to accommodate American prisoners during the war of 1812-14. The principal reason for transportation was the need for labour to build a dockyard for the Royal Navy at Ireland Island. On arrival the transportees were also incarcerated in prison hulks, mostly former warships which were surplus to requirements after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. There was half a dozen there in the 1840s. By late 1840, when James would have arrived, much of the major work on the dockyard had been done but numerous smaller projects remained, and development continued for many years. The
John Power dockyard was closed in 1951 but the Royal Navy retained some residual facilities until the 1990s. The former dockyard is now a yachting centre and cruise ship berth.
How to further your research
A good starting point for further research is www.bermuda-online. org/ which will give you a lot of historical information about the island. The National Archives (TNA) has a number of records which may help you:
• ADM 102/91 contains muster lists of naval hospitals and hospital ships. These are mainly from the UK but there are some from Bermuda where there was a naval hospital. ADM 104/155 has a handwritten, and not always easily read, account of the yellow fever epidemics which struck Bermuda. It can be downloaded in PDF at no cost.
• The CO 37 series of over 400 files contains much about convicts in Bermuda but not always of the dates when James would have been there. For example, CO 37/121/3 has the convict establishment return for the period to 31 December 1847. CO 37/127/51 contains the medical report of the convict establishment covering all aspects of convict health in 1849.
• Elsewhere in CO 37 you will find that in April 1849 the establishment was 100 officer and 1,800 convicts; plans of the convict buildings on Boaz island; the shipping of 32 pardoned convicts to Deptford in 1852; and sick lists of ships taking convicts to Bermuda.
• Other series which might contain useful information are ADM 101/7/5 and HO 45. A census was taken in 1843.
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Archival access is necessary
With the exception of the paper on yellow fever none of this is available online and you will either have to visit TNA or get copies made. If you are planning to visit you can order documents in advance and they will be ready when you arrive. Alternatively, you can ask TNA to do a search on files of interest to see if James is mentioned. There is a charge for this and a further charge if you want the document copied. A search in ‘discovery’ on ‘Bermuda convict establishment’ will get you started.
Before planning any trip, do of course enquire with the archive, as to opening hours and access. Hopefully it will not be too long before you are able to undertake such a trip (or employ a professional researcher to do so on your behalf). DF