The year after Thomas Sinclair arrived in Western Australia he got a job as an assistant warder at what was then called the Convict Establishment in Fremantle. After the convict era was over the establishment was utilised as a regular prison, the Fremantle Gaol.
Thomas’s work record has been preserved in the files of the old Convicts Department and recently summarised by David Barker in his Warders and Gaolers: A Dictionary of Western Australian Prison Officers’ 1829-1879 (Western Australian Genealogical Society, Perth). by David Barker. The entries are brief but we can use them to track Thomas’s career as a convict guard. The records have been digitised and are available online as well.
Thomas Sinclair started work in May 1864 as an Assistant Warder. He served for three months in Fremantle before being transferred to a work party on the Toodyay Road. His wife Mary joined him in December of the same year and presumably some form of accommodation was provided for them and their children. He must have found the work trying because in January 1865 he was considered to be unfit to work with road parties. He was transferred first to the Guildford Depot and then in the following month he was sent to the 4 Mile camp on the York Road. Here he fell out with another warder and the authorities had to separate them, sending Thomas to work at the foot of Greenmount on the York Road.
In September 1866 their youngest child Julia was killed in an accident. She had climbed onto a stool with a knife in her mouth, slipped and fell and the knife wounded her fatally in the neck. An inquest was held in Guildford.
Mary Sinclair was three months pregnant when her daughter died and at Greenmount on the 17th of March 1867 she gave birth to a son, whom they names George Thomas Sinclair.
The same month that baby George was born the Sinclair home was broken into and a quantity of food was stolen. There was speculation that this might have been the work of the bushranger, Moondyne Joe.
In March the following year Thomas was transferred to the 4 Mile Bridge and, reading between the lines, he objected to the transfer because he sent what was described as an impertinent letter to a senior warder. He was fined and considered for removal but he died shortly after that.
According to his death certificate the cause was diarrhoea, but that may have been a symptom for something else, perhaps an illness which would be treatable today. Thomas left a wife and six children when he died, the youngest just 12 months old and the oldest only 16.
The Convicts Department agreed to pay Mary 5 shillings a week from the Compassionate Fund with the Superintendent at Guildford declaring that ‘her circumstances will never be better till she exerts herself to earn a living.’
Thomas died five years after he arrived in Western Australia and was only 39 years old. He was buried with his baby daughter Julia in one of the Guildford Cemeteries. Just where they might be buried is the subject of a separate post.
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