Croydon Betchleys

[kerryb]

Roy

Don't know whether you know but Hartfield records can be found on http://thesussexweald.org/

Kerry

[Valda]

http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/SSX/Hartfield/index.php

Regards

Valda

[forester]

Hello Roy,

I don't think you'll find any distinction between East and West Sussex as far as the Assizes go. At one time East Grinstead also held them as well. It was more a question of when the trial was held.

This link is pre-1800, but gives you an idea of how the circuit worked: http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/home.html

Horsham, I believe, was also considered the county gaol.

Sorry it's a bit vague Roy, but it's getting late. I'm sure there was a thread on the Sussex board some time ago, covering similar ground, but I can't find it.

Phil

[Determined]

Hello Roy G

Can't believe my luck: I too was confused by the two James Betchley's apparently born East Grinstead around 1796 - and I also wondered if it was one and the same!  The one who was sent to Tasmania makes interesting reading, but the one I am interested in is the Croydon connection. His daughter Ann was a direct ancestor of my husband. Have you managed to find out more yet?

[forester]

Roy,

Imberhorne lays just off the A22 on the north side of East Grinstead, almost on the Surrey border.

Brookwood doesn't ring any bells, but I found this entry on the St Swithuns burial register:

Buried 26 June 1814
Henry Betchley, age 8
Abode: Brook House

Phil

[Determined]

I have Brookhouse Farm, Balcombe, as the residence of James Betchley (b 1767) and his wife Mary (Isted).  In 1841 Census, their son Edward was farming there - James had died (c1824, Balcombe). Mary, the widow was with Edward. They had left the farm by 1851 and Edward eventually died in East Grinstead Workhouse. Some of Edward's siblings went to Croydon - the connection which interests me, personally.

[Roy G]

Hi everybody
Interested in 'Determined's' personal connection and thanking everyone for their imput.
Calling Brookhouse, 'Brookwood' was an error of my own and hopefully you are all understanding in this respect.

Now knowing that the Manor of Imberhorne and Brookhouse were to the west of East Grinstead and Hartfield was to the south east, I can see that the James Betchley who is recorded as 'taking and riding away' a horse, was not living at either of these two places.  I have therefore gone on a new tack following up a suggestion that there were two James Betchleys born at roughly the same time, one of whose baptism has been indexed on the IGI and the other whose baptism has not. 

It is known there were no Betchleys in E.G. or Hartfield before 1770, so the most likely parents of another James Betchley could only have been one of the Balcombe James & Elizabeth's children who arrived in that area after that date.  Of 3 sons of about the right age to produce a son and two daughters who may have produced an illegitimate child that carried their mother's maiden surname, there was only one couple who produced a son they called James.  This was James junior & Mary.  The records show that none of the other offspring of James & Elizabeth had a son they called James, neither did the name James ever reappear in the immediate ancestral pattern of Betchley family names.   

It is unusual for a grandfather's name not to reappear in the family format unless there was a certain stigma attached it.  I am therefore left to deduce (with no evidence to support that deduction) that someone else was transported in the place of James Betchley, whilst James himself, relocated in shame to Croydon where he quietly lived out the rest of his life.

Can anyone else can explain how a literate son of a moderately wealthy farmer can be sent to Tazmania to become just a gardener and how his behavior whilst on route and there is not that of someone with an education.  Then, when he marries in Tazmania, he just makes his mark rather than signing his name.  After his transportation, his parents are seen to loose much of their financial security and some of the family, including his mother, actually end up in the parish workhouse?

Roy G

Post script to 'Determined"
Send me a personal E-mail so that I can put you in touch with another contact from the Croydon line.
RG

[Valda]

Only about 49% of Sussex parish registers have coverage on the IGI pre 1812. Closeby Surrey is about 65% but Kent is only about 30%. It has been boosted more recently by some new additions to the IGI and the BVRI index but the figures still indicate just how hit and miss finding records on the IGI is. The 64 Betchleys indexed on the 1851 census all came from these three counties.

The court doccuments describe the convicted James Betchley as a labourer late of Hartfield.

though not necessarily where he was born and where his family lived and not necessarily a close relation to your line. Agricultural labourers were hired yearly an hiring fairs so the unmarried could move around quite a bit. This man was 28 not 23.

For the man who was convicted not to be a man called James Betchley but to be someone else tried for a crime you believe your ancestor committed, you would have to accept the whole area colluded against the criminal justice system and nobody came forward, including the people who were witnesses to the crime to say that is not the man, this is not James Betchley.

I am therefore left to deduce (with no evidence to support that deduction) that someone else was transported in the place of James Betchley, whilst James himself, relocated in shame to Croydon

And you must also accept that the innocent man at no point said I am not James Betchley and I have family and witnesses to prove it and that he continued on in the name James Betchley even after he was a freeman in Tasmania (though the records in Tasmania also give his surname as Beechley or Beachley). The 1851 census has a William Beechley born in Cuckfield circa 1804.

Dying in the workhouse Infirmary doesn't mean necessarily that you are a pauper but it does mean you are seriously ill. Affording a doctor to make house calls was expensive. The only alternative for serious illnesses was hospital and there were few of those, or the workhouse infirmary. A large proportion of NHS hospitals when the National Health system was founded were actually workhouse infirmaries. They also cared for the elderly with demetia, though when county asylums were built in the 1840s they were largely transfered to these.



Regards

Valda

[Roy G]

Thanks for your valued imput Valda which I am in full agreement with, even though it brings me back to realiity with a bit of a jolt. 

I have accepted that the James Betchley in Croydon was a relative, whilst the James Beachley of similar age and residential location, who was sent to Tazmania, was not.  However, the latter has now been so much an item of Betchley family folk lore, it will forever bug me and many others with ancestral ties if we cannot sort out this other man's origins. 

I have never seen actual copies of his convict record, his death certificate (Port Arthur Prison, Hobart 8th June 1840) or his Tazmanian marriage certificate when he married Sarah Walton in Newtown, Hobart on 16 June 1834, so would be curious to know whether any of these indicated who his parents were.  Perhaps obtaining a sight of that information would help to sort out this conumderum and place where he actually fits further back in the Betchley/Beachley family line.

Roy G