Letters from Botany Bay

Over two hundred years after the Pentrich Revolution, we know the facts, but it is rare to hear the words of these ordinary people.

Yet some do exist, like the six letters written by Josiah Godber to his wife Rebecca, which have miraculously survived. Godber had been sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to 14 years’ transportation to Australia.

He was older than most of the men, in his mid-fifties, literate and thoughtful, although a labourer. His first letter was from a hulk, or prison ship. In it he assures his wife that he is well, and asks her to send clothes, money, scissors, razors, needles and his pocket knife. He hopes she will be able to “cross the ocean to follow me and if I can attain this, I shall be the happiest man in the world.”

His second letter was from the transport ship “Tottenham”. “Don’t neglect writing”, he says, but his next letter is dated 18 months later, from Sydney. He has been allocated a job in a steam-engine powered mill run by a Mr Dickson, and counts himself lucky: “I am quite at home, only for the loss of you.”

He thanks the gentlemen at home who had signed his “character”, a testimonial partly responsible for the commutation of his sentence. He also gives news of some of the other local men, and complains about the price of clothes, “as there are so few manufactories.”

In later letters he describes Sydney, and complains of the quality of the beer.

Finally, after over four years, a letter arrives for Rebecca from his friend, George Brassington: Josiah died of dysentery in July 1823. George describes burying him, and even the wake he and the other Ripley men held for him, adding: “Oh, what I would give to be once more at Ripley.”

More on the Revolution, including the letters, can be found at: https://pentrichrevolution.org.uk/