Hello all descendants of Thomas Bowles!
I am writing a book on Great Yarmouth Borough Gaol and in particular on the work of the prison visitor Sarah Martin with inmates. A memoir of Sarah's life was published after her death and this contains extracts from her journals. One of these includes her account of a conversation with Thomas, following his release from gaol (pp. 130-2). You can read the account here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wmo4AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=sarah+martin+prison+visitor&hl=en&ei=ngzWTarfMJOxhQfCq_nVBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falseHere is an extract from a paper (not yet published) where I talk about Thomas. You will see that Sarah was very strict but she was trying hard to set Thomas on the straight and narrow!
Thomas Bowles was imprisoned in 1841, aged 14, for breaking a window with intent to steal. Martin judged him a “clever boy – and both diligent and obedient.” While regretting that he had a “bad father” and a mother “in want and distress,” she hoped that with “judicious guidance he might become a better character.” But the boy found Martin’s strict code of conduct hard to follow. His elder sister, married to a shipwright, took Bowles in while he tried to support himself by selling sticks. To enable him attend Sunday school, Martin ordered a twopenny loaf for the sabbath and directed him to a school, promising him a blue slop if he attended regularly. Bowles called on Martin to say he had work as a bricklayer’s laborer and had given four shillings to his sister for his lodgings, washing, food and clothes. He appeared to be taking Martin’s advice to heart, saying he had taken his cousin to Sunday school and declined an invitation to go fishing on the sabbath, advising a former cellmate to attend school too. However, when Martin called on Bowles, she found him playing marbles. This prompted a lecture. If he wished to play, he should drive a hoop or throw a ball; marbles was a form of gaming that would lead to worse. Despite his good intentions, Martin feared the boy’s bad temper which was “remarkably violent,” and his sister worried he would provoke her husband. The teacher was relieved to hear Bowles had won a berth on a fishing ship and, after he had proved himself honest, allowed him to choose a pair of canvas trousers. But he was imprisoned again for leaving his master and, in 1842, sentenced to transportation for seven years for housebreaking. Apparently, Bowles had failed to inculcate the virtue of familial reciprocity emphasized by Martin and his sister. As he told the convict authorities, he had been convicted of stealing £50 pounds from his uncle; at the time of the offence he was living with an uncle.
Helen
