William Henry Smith

  Noted events in his life were:

• fact. http://www.greengold.com.au/brien/chapter6.htm
He was a goldsmith and jeweller by trade, aged about 20, and, at night on 4th, April, 1813, in Central London, he was one of four young men who jostled another young fellow in the street. One of these men picked the gold watch from the pocket of this man, and they ran off with it, the thief handing the watch over to Smith. There was a cry of "Stop. Thief", and other young men gave chase. One saw Smith throw the watch through bars of a fence, and Smith was caught and the watch recovered. It was valued at 40/-, the chain at 2/- and the key at 6d.

Street robbery was a serious crime, and Smith was quickly put up for trial before a Judge and Jury in the Old Bailey in London on 7th April 1813, when he was found guilty of stealing, but not with violence, and he was ordered to be transported for life. He arrived in New South Wales by the convict transport "General Hewitt" on 7th. February, 1814. Eventually he was given a Ticket of Leave. We do not know much about him until he became a tenant of Daniel Brien in Seven Hills in 1824, but it seems that he had been living with a woman convict named Sarah Barrs and her son, Robert Barrs, and, when the 1828 Census was taken, he was still a neighbour of Daniel Brien at Seven Hills with convict woman Mary Copbuck as his housekeeper and young Robert Barrs was living with them. At that stage, he had neither land nor cattle and was a tenant farmer.
But Ann Brien, then aged 50, and Bill Smith, then aged 46, knew each other quite well and they were each looking for a suitable partner, and so they married. Smith might have considered her interest in all of those farms under her husband's Will. We know very little about their married life for the next 26 years, but the main events concerned the Brien children.
Daughter, Sarah Jane Brien, then aged 20, married Benjamin Warby, Junior, aged 20, at St. Bartholomew's Church of England at Prospect on 31st March, 1846. He was the son of Benjamin Warby, Senior, whose first wife, Elizabeth Hunt, had nine children, Benjamin, Junior being the only one to survive, the other eight being still-born.
In 1848, John Robert Brien, who was still single, formed an association with Mrs. James Pye who, as Sarah Best, the daughter of ex-convict George Best, was the wife of James Pye, the Mayor of Parramatta. Notwithstanding that, she had three children to John Brien - Harriet Brien in 1848, Catherine Grace Brien in 1849, and Peter Robert John Brien in 1851. After Sarah Pye or Bryan died in 1882, John Robert Brien married Mary Elizabeth Johnson later in that year. Her father, John Johnson of Seven Hills, was one of the seven jurors who took part in the Magisterial Inquiry into the death of Mary Anne Smith, which I will come to later. I hope that I am not confusing you.
Then, on 16th August, 1852, Eleanor Grace Brien, then 20, married Hiram Howard, aged 26, at St. Bartholomew's Church at Prospect. He was the son of ex-convict Thomas Howard, and they became the managers of Howlong Station for his brother-in-law, Matthew Woodward Pearce. William Henry Smith of the Seven Hills was one of the witnesses at this marriage.
Finally son James Brien, aged 27, who had inherited one of his father's farms at Seven Hills, married Elizabeth Ann Barrett, aged 19, at the Church of England Parsonage House, Albury. He was a blacksmith and wheelwright who had been in business in Albury, and they set up a business in Wangaratta after their marriage. She was the daughter of William Barrett, an ex- convict of Campbelltown.
We now come to a sad story about how our Grannie died after falling into the open fire in the lounge room of their home or whether she was pushed backwards into the fire by her husband, Bill Smith, during an argument.
It all happened on the evening of 12th July, 1865.
On that day, Mrs. Alice White, the wife of William White, a brickmaker, who lived with her at William Pearce's place at Rose Hill, came to the Smith house, and Smith took her off into Parramatta on a pub crawl, leaving Grannie at home on her own. They came back, just before dark, Smith being half boozed, and poor Alice collapsed on the sofa. She had had two glasses of ginger wine. There were three Court cases over it all, and it all happened like this. Smith and Grannie had an argument about Mrs. White. Grannie was standing with her back to the fire in the lounge and it seems that Smith pushed her back into the fire. All the clothes were burned off her back.. Smith just went off to bed without worrying at all about what had happened, and Grannie had to get the burnt clothes off her back by herself, and she struggled back to the spare bed in the skillion, where she lay all night in agony, wrapped in a blanket.
Alice White left at dawn the next morning, after sleeping the night in her clothes on the sofa and not remembering anything about what had happened the night before. When John Brien called in to see his mother shortly after, he found her still in bed and badly burned. Smith was already up, and still boozed, and he told John that he did not know how his mother was burned. So John sent his son over to call his sister, Mary Pearce, to come over and to send the boy into Parramatta to call the doctor. The news soon got around, and Timothy Brien, Mary Ann Pearce, Daniel Brien and his son, Elizabeth Pearce and Elizabeth James all came to see the old lady. She was perfectly conscious all the time, and she told John Brien "Smith shoved me right into the fire". To Mary Pearce, she said, "He pushed me and I fell back into the fire". To Daniel Brien, she said, in Smith's presence, "You did it and you know it". But there was also a statement which Grannie made to Timothy Brien, "Smith shoved me into the fire, but whether he did it wilfully or not , I cannot say", and she also told Elizabeth Pearce, "I was scolding Mr. Smith, and he gave me a push."
But Doctor Rutter did not get there until the afternoon, and he found her labouring under most extensive and severe superficial wounds of the back and sides, and he gave her the usual remedies and stimulants. She was labouring under the shock to her nervous system. But no attempt was made to transfer her to the Hospital in Parramatta.
So she lingered on in her bed in the skillion until 3 a.m. the next morning, 14th July, when she passed away. She had been unconscious for about five hours then.
And then we have all the trouble. Should the Police be called and should the Coroner in Parramatta be told about it. They had a body there in the house, and what should be done? It seems that the men consulted Mr. C. M. McCrae, J.P. He was a Justice of the Peace who should know what they should do. When I was tracing the story of the school at Seven Hills. I found a letter written by the teacher, Mr. McCrae to Mr. Marsden on 31st January 1835, 30 years before. He would probably have been the best educated man in Seven Hills, and he had been appointed as a Justice of the Peace for that reason some time in later years.
But what should be done with the body ? There had to be an inquiry made whenever a subject of Her Majesty Queen Victoria died from anything but natural causes, and the Police and the Coroner would be asking questions. And she could not be buried without a doctor's certificate or an Order for Burial from the Coroner. Someone must have worked it out that, before a Coroner had been appointed under the Coroner's Act, the local Magistrates always held a Magisterial Inquiry, and that might be sufficient, although no such method had been used for years.
So, in the afternoon of the day on which Grannie had passed away, Mr. McCrae took it upon himself, .probably under the pressure of his mates at Seven Hills, and decided to call together a Jury of eight men who took the oath to come to a correct conclusion on who the lady was and how, when and where she came by her death and who, if anybody, was responsible. In that Jury, the name of David Howard appears, and he was the brother-in-law of Eleanor Grace Howard who was then living down on the Howlong Station, and John Johnson, whose daughter, Mary Elizabeth Johnson, married John Robert Brien in 1882.
They had John Brien, Matthew Pearce, Alice White, Timothy Brien, William Henry Smith and Doctor Robert Champley Rutter as witnesses before the Inquiry, and the Jury found "that Mary Jane Smith's death was accidental". They did not even get her name right. And so our Grannie was buried on 15th July, 1865 and her death was registered by Henry Simpson. I will be dealing with her grave later, and how we must look after it in St. John's Cemetery.
Her death was reported in the "Sydney Morning Herald" of 17th July, 1865 by the Parramatta correspondent.
"DEATH FROM BURNING - An inquest was held by the Coroner, Dr. Brown, on Friday evening, touching the death of an aged woman, resident at the Seven Hills, named Mary Ann Smith, who died on Friday morning , from injuries received from burning on the previous day. It appeared that while standing near the fire, her clothes caught the flames. A woman, named Alice White, and the deceased's husband were in the house, but were not in a condition to render any assistance. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death by burning".
The jury did not get it right either, nor did the reporter.
But Mr. McCrae, still kept the whole file of the Magisterial Inquiry. He could not: send it into the Coroner in Parramatta, or he might have Sgt. Kelly, of the Police there, asking questions. So he waited until October before he sent the whole file of depositions into the Crown Law Department in Sydney.

They did not mess around. The file was endorsed:
"This is a most irregular proceeding. The Justice had no power to swear a Jury. None but a Coroner has that power, and it is strange that the Coroner of the District did not hold an Inquest."
And Grannie had been buried for months, and the Coroner would have to dig up the body to start again.
"Let the Justice be requested to report on the cause of the delay."
He was in more strife than Mrs. Kelly's son Edward, was here in Victoria 15 years later.
The whole file was sent up the Magistrates at Parramatta, with advice to issue a warrant for Smith on a charge of murder. So Sgt. John Kelly took action, and Smith was interviewed and arrested, and the Bench of Justices at Parramatta held another proceeding on 11th November, 1865 at which John Kelly, John Brien, Mary Ann Pearce, Timothy Brien, Daniel Brien, Junior, Daniel Brien, Senior, Eliza Pearce, Elizabeth James, Elizabeth Howard, Dr. Robert Champley Rutter and Alice White gave evidence. Smith could not give evidence himself in those days. He could only make an unsworn statement. So Smith was directed to be tried at the Central Criminal Court at Darlinghurst on 11th December, 1865. The Justices did not give bail to murderers.
Then Smith's mates went to the Supreme Court with a writ of Habeas Corpus to bring him before that court to have him granted bail, and bail was granted, Smith himself in £500, and two sureties by other people, each in £500, and his mates, James Gallaway and David Howard, who was on Mr. McCrae's Jury, put up those £500 bonds, and so he was released from the Darlinghurst Gaol to appear before his trial on 11th December.
At the trial, Dr. Rutter, Timothy Brien, Sgt. John Kelly, John Brien, Mary Ann Pearce, Daniel Brien, Junior, Daniel Brien, Senior, Eliza Pearce, Elizabeth James, Elizabeth Howard, and Alice White all gave evidence for the prosecution, and, for the defence, the Court heard Samuel Critchley, John Brown, Daniel Howard, James Galloway and Eleanor Grace Howard, who all spoke very kindly of William Henry Smith.
And so the Judge must have told the Jury, the twelve good men and true, "This is the question, boys. Did she fall or was she pushed ?", and, after a short deliberation, they let him go..
We now come to the grave of Ann Smith, formerly Brien, née Parker in St. John's cemetery, and some explanation is necessary here. In earliest times in New South Wales, bodies could be buried anywhere. And a large area of O'Connell Street, Parramatta was left as a place for a cemetery in the earliest surveys. This cemetery was used by everybody, although there were private cemeteries elsewhere. We have them in our family. Mary Ann Pearce was buried in the Pearce family cemetery on Seven Hills Road at Baulkham Hills, and Clara Pearson was buried in the Best Family cemetery down at Wagga Wagga.
When the Cemeteries Act came into force in the 1870s, cemeteries were gazetted and they were placed under the control of trustees. People began to use them or to bury their relatives in churchyards, like that at St. Paul's at Castle Hill. But St. John's cemetery at Parramatta was really deserted. No maintenance had been done for about thirty years, and graves were overgrown by blackberries, or covered with rubbish, part of the surrounding wall had collapsed, and it became a dumping ground, and many memorials were smashed by vandals. In the 1960s the Canberra Government gave a grant for the restoration of the cemetery. It was at this time that action was taken to restore the grave of Ann Smith. Originally it hade been an upright sandstone headstone and a footstone. Vandals had broken off the headstone at its base, and it lay there on the ground. In the restoration, it was cemented horizontally on her grave.
William Henry Smith lasted for another eight years. He died from pneumonia on 7th May, 1873 at the age of 80 years in the Government Asylum at Parramatta, and he was also buried in St. John's Cemetery.

William married Mary Ann Parker (Alias Wilcox), daughter of Edward Wilcox and Ann Parker, on 8 Oct 1839 in St Johns C of E, Parramatta, Sydney, NSW Australia. (Mary Ann Parker (Alias Wilcox) was born on 10 Apr 1789 in Bow, Devonshire England, christened on 10 Apr 1791 in Devon England, died on 13 Jul 1865 in Seven Hills, Sydney, NSW Australia and was buried on 15 Jul 1865 in St Johns C of E Cemetery, Parramatta, Sydney NSW Australia.)