AN OLD LONDONER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2318, 4 August 1898, Page 49

AN OLD LONDONER.

Tn the course of my last visit to Australia, I had the pleasure, while sojourning in Sydney, of making the acquaintance of a venerable octogenarian colonist who has had a jraniu-kable a.nd eventful career — namely, the \Rev. Thomas Spencer Forsaith, old Loncloner, sailor, pioneer colonist, Congregationalist minister, and Premier of the Cleanshirt Ministry. It is possible that to many minds this latter phrase will convey no very definite or intelligible meaning. It will strike them as an amusing political conun.drum. . . . Mr Forsaith is now calmly spending the evening of his life in the midst , of the orange groves of Paramatta a few

miles outside the busy and bustling city of Sydney. So very few of us can ever hope lo become Prime Ministers, that to have been one for even 48 hours is a striking and noteworthy achievement. Mr Forsaith has other and perhaps stronger claims to notice and commemoration than hLs having been for a couple of tempestuous days at the head of the Government of the " Greater Britain of the South." . , .

i Mr Forsaith is one of the very few men now living who can recall the London of tLe second decade of our century. His father, Samuel Forsaith, was a native of Baintree. Essex, and for many years was the proprietor of a haberdasher and hosier's shop at iShoreditch. In the early years of the century the old-fashioned shop signs still lingered in some parts of London, and the Forsaith establishment was known as "'ihe Little Black Doll," from the effigy of en Ethiopian infant exhibited on its first elevation. The inclusion of the apparently unnecessary adjective " little " in the title was due to the fact that there was another establishment of larger dimensions close by in Norton Folgate called "The Black Doll." Mr Forsaith says that in his youth business in London was conducted in a quiet, regular, and leisurely fashion. The novelties and artifices of keen competition were almost unknown, and were only practised by an establishment here and there that was considered more ecceutric than reputable. Every Monday morning the " little black doll " was taken down and attired in a clean frock, which, to produce a striking effect, was always of some white material. "Ah, me!"' exclaims the octogenerian minister, "what changes in a few years ! How the London lieges would stare to s^ee such a sign suspended over a haberdasher's shop nowadays !" After having gone through the prescribed course of studies at the Key. Thomas Fancourt's j*cadenvy in Hoxton Square, young Thomas Spencer Forsaith was placed in the shop of a draper who was a friend of his father, where he acquired a practical knowledge of business! life. But after a while 1-e became dis.vatisfied with hi& position and prospects. He was a voracious reader with a remarkably retentive memory, and volume after volume of travels, vo^yages, diftcoverie-i, adventures, and romantic biographies he made his own. But he also took peculiar pleasure in perusing theological treatises and books on controversial divinity, and by the ! time he had attained his majority he was almost as deeply versed in systematic theology as most divinity students on leaving college. His general aspirations towards a seafaring I life became a particular determination on the return of an erstwhile brother apprentice ' from a first voyage. This adventurous youth came to see his old companions of the yardstick, and fired their imaginations with eloquent descriptions of his adventures and of the glorious life of a sailor. " Thank goodness," he exclaimed, with a sounding blow on the counter, " I am no longer a rag merchant and a counter-jumper." As a result of this incident young Forsaith ran awuy from home, and after a period of privation around the London docks —a street arab having seized his little bundle, daited up an alley and disappeared — was allowed to go c 11 board a brig lying off Shadwell dock, nikl was engaged in shovelling ballast, when a reverend friend of his father arrived and . escorted him back lo the parental roof. But as he continued resolved to go to sea, his parents permitted him to undertake an experimental voyage to Sunderland as cabin-boy on a collier. On returning to London he was asked, " Well, Tom, have you had enough of the sea?" His reply was : "I like the sea, but I do not wish to go again in a collier." His nautical tastes were then gratified by a voyage in a merchantman from Liverpool to Bombay, occupying four months and six days.

A second voyage from Liverpool to Bombay made young Forsaith a smart and promising sailor. He achieved the reputation of being the smartest helmsman on board j he made progress in the art of navigation, and assisted the captain in taking observabay he had the misfoitune to fall down Ihe hold, luckily escaping with a severelycrushed foot, which necessitated his detention in a hospital till the ship was starting on the return voyage lo Liverpool. A third trip to Bombay found this Indian port under the pall of a hideous epidemic. Every soul on board was attacked, and when the ship left, after a stay of 40 days, only the captain, an apprentice, and young Forsaith, who had to act as cook, were in a healthy condition.

Having served an apprenticeship to Ihe seafaring life, Mr Forsaith found himself mi July 18, 1834, his twentieth birthday, the duly appointed fourth mate of the Hobghly, a ship chartered by the Imperial Government to convey convicts to Sydney. Two hundred and sixty prisoners of various ages, and convicted of a variety of offences, under a military guard commanded by Lieutenantcolonel Woodhouse, were brought on board. Mr Forsaith was specially deputed to assist the Surgeon-superintendent, Dr Rutherford, and was almost confcinuouslx between decks

] amongst the convicts. They were brought on board at vSpilhead, and it became Mr Forsaith's duty to attach a number to each prisoner - in succession. One young prisoner looked keenly nt | him and coloured deeply. Nothing ] was said at the time, but next day ono of tha ! prisoners' boatswains approached Mr Forsaith, and, touching his cap, said : " Excuse mo, sir, but were you not educated at. the Roy. Mr Fancourt's, Hoxton Square?" '"Yes, but why do you ask?" " Because there is a young man here who says he recollects your face at school." Mr Forsaith sent for tho young prisoner, and recognised in him an old schoolmate, for whom he subsequently secured a good situation in Sydney. Another prisoner of high attainments and considerable erudition, who had been sentenced to transportation for life, was ■wont to pace the deck, grind his teeth, and rage in this manner: "I will not be chained up for life like a dog. Society in Xew South Wales shall know ere long that I am a man who might be useful if treated like a in.m, but who will stick at nothing rather than endure the degradation of perpetual bonds. 1 will bo free or die, and if I die I shall not

die alone." On Mr Forsaith reminding him that it had been declared on the highest of authorities that (he way of transgressors was haid, he rejoined: " I know it, and have proved it to be so. I have made my bed,

and am prepared to find it a hard one, but t

deny the right ot human authority to matte it iron." Mi Fursaith believes that this desperate man of education was afterwards iden-

tical with one of those outlawed and blood-

thirsty bushi angers who terrorised the in terior of New South Wales for several years,

The voyage of the convict ship was not without strange and exciting incidents, 'lie most prominent and painful of which was the insanity of Colonel Woodhouse, the commandant of the military guard. It was c\ Idently a case of religious mania. He rushed out of his cabin one afternoon, and ran forward to address the prisoners on the wrath to come. He then threatened to throw himself overboard if he were not allowed to ful'il his mission. With an open prayer-book in his hand he tried to harangue the prisoners, and had to be stopped by the sentiies. J''inally he jumped overboard, was rescued, and confined in his cabin for the rest of the voyage. Thus, by the irony of fate, the ofiif-er appointed to command the military guard over" the prisoners became a much more severely guarded prisoner himself than the bulk of the convicts. — Condensed from J F. Hooain'.s (M.1.) article "The Clean-shirt Ministry," in the Gentleman's Magazine for June.