Stephen Burberry was born in around 1792 in Reigate, Surrey [1], the son of Thomas Burberry and Amy nee LUCKIN. No direct record of his actual birth or baptism have been found, but it is possible to draw conclusions from other evidence dealing with him to state the above with high certainty.
Stephen was living in Henfield in Sussex and working as a labourer when he was tried and convicted on 15 June 1830 for stealing a great coat which was the property of one Leonard Parsons. After his conviction he was incarcerated in Petworth Gaol. The actual sentence he received was transportation, but it appears that after serving 13 months of his sentence, he was released. Notwithstanding this, he appears to have escaped from gaol at one point. However, he was recaptured soon after, and at a further trial was sentenced to three month's imprisonment [2] [3].
Later on he appears to have got himself into even greater trouble, because at the Surrey Assizes in August 1840 he was convicted of stealing 50 fleeces of wool from a Mr Blundell. The convict indents and conduct lists that talk about Stephen's convict career in Van Diemen's Land are written in very close script that is almost impossible to read, but they also mention Stephen';s previous crime of stealing a coat for which Stephen was convicted in 1830 [1] [3].
Stephen was transported on the ship Lady Raffles in November 1840, and arrived in Hobart Town on 17 March 1841. His conduct during the voyage was described as "good" [1]. On arrival at the penal colony, the convicts were examined and fairly detailed descriptions of their features were noted down, basically so that they could be better identified if they ever absconded. Stephen's description is given thus:
| Description of Stephen Burberry | |||
| Trade: | Labourer | Height without shoes: | 5/5 inches |
| Age: | 48 years | Complexion: | Dark |
| Head: | Round | Hair: | Black to Grey |
| Whiskers: | do. | Visage: | Round |
| Forehead: | High | Eyebrows: | L Brown |
| Eyes: | Brown | Nose: | Sharp |
| Mouth: | Wide | Chin: | Double |
| Remarks: | Scar left cheek [4] | ||
The rest of his conduct record is difficult to read, but he appears to have been assigned to a work gang soon after his arrival, and he spent time at Richmond and also at Impression Bay on the Tasman Peninsula. The last entry in his unfortunate history tells us that he died in the New Norfolk Lunatic Asylum on 8 November 1853 [5]. The records do not tell us the nature of his illness, but it was not necessarily related to any mental infirmity, as the Lunatic Asylum was used as a general hospital for Government prisoners as well as for the mentally ill.
Note: References numbers for Stephen's convict documents in the Archives Office of Tasmania:
| Conduct record | CON 33/6 |
| Description | CON 18/17 |
| Appropriation | CON 27/8 |
| Indent | CON 14/8 |
The conduct record (CON 33/6) and indent (CON 14/8) state that Stephen's wife was Ann and that he had four sisters, Charlotte, Esther, Jane and Mary. They also give his age as 48 at the time of his conviction and transportation in 1840 [1], so this provides an approximate year of birth of 1792. From these clues it has been possible to deduce who Stephen's parents were.
The family in question is that of Thomas and Amy Burberry of Worth, members of the family that I call the Surrey Burberry family. The following family tree shows the known children that were born to this couple.
Most of the children were baptised in the parish of Burstow in Surrey [6], with the possible exception of Charlotte and Stephen himself. Burstow is near Horne, Horley, Reigate and Worth, all places which feature often in the story of this family. The baptisms for Charlotte and Stephen have not been located. This is despite the fact that my co-researcher Wendy Stott and I have looked at the parish registers for many of these parishes that cover the period in question.
Putting this particular problem aside for the moment, recall that Stephen mentioned that his siblings consisted of four sisters -- namely (and in the order that he gave them) Charlotte, Esther, Jane and Mary. If we examine the children of Thomas and Amy Burberry that were confirmed from the Burstow parish registers, we can see that five of of the children -- namely Hannah, Sarah, James and John -- died in infancy or at a young age.
This leaves the following children:
Locating all of the records for a family can be difficult, and so it is quite possible that some of the missing information is still to be found in the registers for a neighbouring parish. In any case, the matching of three of the four sisters is almost conclusive. Plus Stephen's estimated date of birth of 1792 fits nicely in between Jane (1789) and Thomas (1793). But there is one more piece of evidence that effectively settles the matter. This can be found again in the convict records for Stephen Burberry.
Sometimes the convicts who were transported used aliases, for any number of reasons, and these aliases are often recorded in the documentation that was generated for each convict. Stephen Burberry also used an alias, and this alias is recorded on both his conduct record and his indent [1] [3]. Up until now I have been unable to decipher the script used and so I was unsure of exactly what this alias was. It looked something like "Smallking" on the conduct record and "Linking" on the indent. However, in light of the evidence of Stephen's sisters given above, it is clear that whatever the spelling of the alias on the original documents, it is meant to represent LUCKIN, which was the maiden name of Amy, mother of the children in the above tree [7]. In other words, Stephen Burberry used his mother's maiden name as his alias.
So on the basis of this evidence -- the matching of the daughters' names and the use of LUCKIN as an alias -- it is my conclusion that Stephen Burberry the convict was the son of Thomas and Amy Burberry of Worth.
Stephen and his wife Ann had several children of their own, although with Stephen in and out of gaol and eventually transported while the children were still at a young age, it must have been a difficult and unsettled life for them.
All eight of the children were baptised in the parish of Worth, Sussex. For the first two baptisms, the parish registers state that Stephen was a "Traveller", which can mean a gypsy, although because Stephen's pedigree is known it may simply mean that he was an itinerant labourer. In the baptisms for the rest of the children his occupation is given as "labourer". The last child George was baptised in 1842, suggesting that he was born very close to the time when his father was being incarcerated or transported [8].
Stephen and Ann had five sons: Stephen (b. 1825), James (b. 1832), Thomas (b. 1836), Ambrose (b. 1839) and George (b. 1842) [8]. Nothing definite is known about most of these sons, and they might have grown up and had families of their own. However, the fourth son Thomas did marry an Ann, and they had at least 10 children who were baptised between the years of 1859 and 1878. The first four of these baptisms (for Julia Eliza [1859], Sarah Ann Amy [1861], James [1863] and Ambrose [1864]) took place in the parish of Burstow in Surrey [6], the next four (Frances Ellen [1866], Thomas [1868], Annie [1870] and Mary Ann [1873]) took place in Worth in Sussex [8], and the last two (Alice [1876] and Charles Henry [1878]) were back in Burstow [6]. The father Thomas was listed as an agricultural labourer in the 1881 census [9], and so probably he travelled back and forth between the two districts during his life chasing work.
The 1901 census indicates that two of Thomas and Ann's sons -- James and Thomas -- married and had sizeable families of their own [10] [11]. I have been in touch with two modern-day descendants of James: a Kevin Burberry and a Vance Burberry, both of whom are decended from James' son Alfred Charles Burberry [12] [13].
Another one of Stephen and Ann's sons turns up in a somewhat unexpected place. The name of an Ambrose Burbury [sic] appears in an index of immigrants to Tasmania for 1872 [14]. After checking the microfilm reference, I found his name on a list of immigrants dispatched to Launceston via Port Philip on the ship Essex on 22 October 1872. The Victorian Index to Inward Passenger Lists, British and Foreign Ports 1852--1879 indicates that the Essex sailed from Gravesend on 2 November 1872, and that Ambrose was one of several navvies who boarded the vessel for this voyage [15].
A check of Assessment Rolls for Launceston for the years 1872 to 1874 failed to turn up his name, indicating that he was probably not living in Launceston itself at this time. It is possible that he simply passed through Launceston on his way to somewhere else in the colony.
His age was given as 31, which would put his birth at about 1841. There is no listing for an Ambrose Burbury in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints' IGI file that matches this date, but because the date is an approximation based on his age, it seems certain that he was the son of Stephen and Ann who was baptised on 30 June 1839 in Worth [8]. I presume that Ambrose came out to Tasmania to find out what had become of his father Stephen.
Unfortunately, after this one brief appearance on a passenger list for a ship bound for Launceston, Tasmania, Ambrose disappears again and nothing on his subsequent movements has yet been found.
Although Ambrose can be identified with some certainty, ther is another, more elusive reference that might or might not have something to do with Stephen Burberry and his family. This reference is to an Ann BURBURY [sic] who suddenly appears in an assessment roll for Hobart Town, Tasmania in 1866 [16]. The question that remains unanswered is, who was she? The tantalising possibility is that she was Stephen's wife Ann who had come out to find out about her husband.
Click here to read what is known of this "unknown" Ann Burbury
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