How much prison time did you get for chucking a sickie in 1850? The Australian convict Daniel Sullivan found out. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

Sullivan was one of 297 convicts transported on the ship Bangalore (pictured above), who arrived in Moreton Bay on the 30th of April 1850. Sullivan had been sentenced to ten years for pick pocketing in London and came direct to the Moreton Bay district as an ‘exile’ after convict transportation had actually officially ended.

That’s because the colony needed cheap convict labour and so the British government transported more convicts direct to Moreton Bay on the basis that they received their ticket-of-leave as soon as they arrived.

One of these exiles was a man by the name of John Hutton who after he arrived was convicted of two charges of indecent assault, with the evidence being so bad that it was considered totally unfit for publication even back then. Before Hutton finished his sentence, he volunteered to be Moreton Bay’s and therefore Queensland’s first ever public executioner.

One of the military pensioner guards onboard the Bangalore was the eccentric Michael Turley. Turley later rode through Ipswich with his long white hair flowing in the wind on his way to murdering the station manager at Mitchell Downs. At seventy-years-old he became the oldest person ever sentenced to death in Australia, then the oldest to have his death sentence commuted, and at eighty-years-of-age the oldest to be murdered in prison.

Now back to Daniel Sullivan, even after arriving in 1850 and getting his ticket-of-leave to be in Ipswich, he could not stay on the straight and narrow.

In 1851 he lost his ticket-of-leave after committing a violent assault there.

In 1852 he was illegally at large after absconding from the survey road party of Captain Samuel Perry of the Royal Navy. Captain Perry had been the private secretary and colonial aide-de-camp to the governor of Dominica in the West Indies. In New South Wales he was for a time the acting governor of the colony and the deputy surveyor general. He was responsible for surveying much of Sydney as well as Queensland, and it while surveying around Ipswich that Sullivan absconded.

In 1853 Sullivan again had his ticket-of-leave cancelled for illegally leaving the district. In 1857 he got his ticket-of-leave back to remain in Ipswich. In 1858, he lost it again for illegally leaving the district. In 1863 while living in the centre of Ipswich, Sullivan was implicated in the theft of two gold watches.

But it’s what he did in 1850 just weeks after first arriving that’s of particular interest. That’s when Sullivan appeared in court before Ipswich’s first magistrate Doctor William Dorsey who was one of the very first free settlers in Queensland. This same year 1850, Dr Dorsey was charged in his own court of stealing two ducks, which resulted in the greatest human stack in Ipswich history.

Appearing before Dr Dorsey in this instance, the convict Sullivan was facing charges brought against him by his assigned master Mr John Harris who was the Ipswich bricklayer. Harris’s family was living at Basin Pocket while in town Harris and his work crew, including Sullivan, were building the original part of the North Australian Hotel. The hotel was demolished in the 1980s and today the site at 1 Nicholas Street is part of the Ipswich City Mall.

But back in 1850, Sullivan complained of feeling sick and so walked off the job. He returned fuelled-up with false bravado. After being mildly castigated, Sullivan responded by threatening to kill sundry members of the Harris family. To get started he hit a visitor with everything he had. A constable was called and that’s how Sullivan ended up in court in front of Dr Dorsey charged with falsely calling in sick.

The good doctor, as punishment for the sickie pulled in 1850, sentenced Sullivan to seven days solitary confinement in the Ipswich cells.

So that’s what you got for chucking a sickie 175 years ago, seven days solitary. I’m not sure what the penalty is today.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
Scrimshaw whale tooth of the Bangalore convict ship, arrived Moreton Bay 1850, length 11cm – Carters Price Guide to Antiques.
Samuel Augustus Perry – State Library of New South Wales.
William McTaggart Dorsey – Nuneaton and Bedworth Local and Family History Forum.
North Australian Hotel, Nicholas Street, Ipswich, 1890s – Picture Ipswich.