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« on: Friday 28 July 23 22:31 BST (UK) »
Hello everyone,
Greetings from the other side of the vast pond.
I'm hoping someone might be able to help; I've been tracing a rather sad story of a young man named David Simkin b.1825 in Birmingham, Warwickshire. He was convicted for stealing a pair of bellows aged 18 when he had already been sentenced for stealing pigeons. At 5"2 and 6st11lbs he was quite a wisp of a thing.
He was transported on the Sir George Seymour out to Van Dieman's Land on the first ship from Pentonville prison in the 1840s and eventually ended up on the dreaded Norfolk Island as part of his 7 year sentence. He gained his freedom in 1851 and I'm not sure what he did in the interim but in 1895 he is arrested aged 70 for vagrancy in Marulan, taken to Goulburn Prison where he is remanded for a week before being assessed by Dr McKillop at the lunatic asylum (I'm assuming Kenmore, but no name given) who determines that he is suffering from 'senile decay'.
I don't think David ever married but I would like to know where he is buried or at least when he died and I'm not coming up trumps.
Any advice or ideas gratefully received.