How did Henry Potter manage to get to Australia?
QHow did my husband’s grandfather, Henry Walter Potter (born 1871), travel to Australia between 1895 and 1901? He had a history of petty crime, and was sentenced to hard labour in 1890. In 1902, Trooper Potter joined the 3rd Australian Commonwealth Horse Battalion and was posted to the Boer War. I can find no record of his passages to or from Australia – did he work as crew? He married in Nottingham in 1903.
Teresa Potter
AThere are many possible reasons why you can’t find his arrival. Crew lists were not always kept, and sometimes sailors were included in immigrant passenger lists. If this was the case then their names may be found in immigration indexes, although sometimes their given and middle name were abbreviated to initials. People often arrived in one colony then moved to another. For example, in the collection ‘Victoria Inward Passenger
Lists 1839–1923’ on findmypast.co.uk, a HW Potter arrived in Melbourne in 1897 on the Orizaba. He was 26, single, English and a “gent”. Findmypast has a corresponding list for the Orizaba in ‘Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890–1960’.
Luckily, the Boer War dossiers on the National Archives of Australia’s site naa.gov. au give the home address of Henry’s father in Nottingham. Henry enlisted in March 1902 in Sydney, and gave his address as the army sergeant’s mess, suggesting he lived as a soldier before enlisting.
There’s a possible reference to Henry in the Australian Star (Sydney) on 25 November 1901: “Henry Potter, a young Englishman, was anxious to see his brother countrymen play cricket on Friday, and under the influence of this laudable intention scaled the fence surrounding the ground. He was given in charge, and at the Water Police Court on Saturday he was fined 10s or four days’ imprisonment.”
I tried to locate more information, but without success. Henry probably paid the fine and avoided going to prison.
Shauna Hicks