On the 9th December, being sentenced to death, he was taken back to Holloway, there receiving sentence of six months imprisonment.
From September 6th to March 6th will be six months and as it is, I feel doubtful if he will ever be so strong as before. Now he is eager to leave England as soon as possible. We trust soon to settle our affairs and make a fresh start in Australia.
Although managers of public places of amusement have offered him large sums of money to induce him to exhibit himself, he has refused. The publicity and misery of the tragedy have been too painful almost for human endurance.
I beg to enclose letters for private perusals. Permit me to sign myself, Sir, I am your obedient and grateful servant. Philippa Dudley.
A Home Office official noted on the file containing the letters from Ellis Lever and Philippa: ‘It is said that he will go with his wife to Australia as soon as he is released. His wife’s letter giving an account of her anxieties etc. is very pathetic.’
Harcourt’s view remained unaltered. ‘Nil. This is a melancholy case but the sentence is a light one and cannot be altered.’
Stephens, in poor physical and mental health, had written no less than twenty-three petitions to the home secretary. The last read:
In consideration of his past troubles and the recommendations accorded him at Exeter both by the Judge and jury, he hopes he may still meet with further favour and that some portion of his unexpired sentence may be remitted.
Your petitioner prays that during the remainder of his imprisonment, he may be allowed to write and receive letters and visits from his family at more frequent intervals than are prescribed in the ordinary prison regulations. Your petitioner will ever pray…
The unsigned petition ended abruptly at that point.
Harcourt noted, ‘Granted the same privileges as regards letters and visits. Nil as to the rest of the petition.’
After the failure of their petitions, Philippa wrote to thank Ellis Lever for his efforts.
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your favour and learn from it that all your kindly efforts on our behalf have not succeeded. I feel confident had it been possible you would have so accomplished it.
It has of course been a disappointment. I learned Mr Bates [a reprieved murderer] had been set at liberty and thought that perhaps that of Tom and his companion might follow. At any rate, his term will expire on the anniversary of the voyage that has cost him twelve months’ loss and suffering.
Under favour, I may mention that I have not been at all well but am thankful to say I am better. Again thanking you and your family for your many kindnesses which have made me more hopeful. I am, dear Sir, your obedient and grateful servant. Philippa Dudley.
Chapter 23
Prisoners 5331 and 5332 were eventually released from Holloway on 20 May 1885, a year and a day after the Mignonette had sailed from Southampton on its final voyage.
Still bitter at his treatment, Tom left England for ever, sailing for Australia with his wife, children and one of Philippa’s sisters, on the steamer Austral. It left Gravesend on 19 August 1885 and passed the Royal Portsmouth regatta the next day, where the yacht Marguerite, with Daniel Parker restored as a crewman, was competing.
To Philippa’s relief, the Austral only retraced the Mignonette’s course as far as the Bay of Biscay, before taking the usual steamer route through the Mediterranean. It passed through the Suez Canal, and took on coals at Aden before steaming across the Indian Ocean to reach Sydney on 5 October 1885.
Tom joined his wife’s aunt in business and prospered as T. R. Dudley and Company, oilskin, sail, tent, tarpaulin and flag-makers, yacht and boat outfitters and riggers, carrying on business firstly at Clarence Street and later at 47, 49 and 51 Sussex Street, near the junction with Erskine Street. He also had a slipway to the Parramatta river in the grounds of his house in Cambridge Street, Drummoyne. By 1900 he was employing over forty people and was well known in Sydney yachting circles as a large-scale sail and tarpaulin contractor.
Philippa had given birth to three more children and though one of them, a boy, died in infancy, two more girls — Elizabeth and Charlotte — survived.
However, the family’s happiness and prosperity was to be brief. A pandemic of bubonic plague erupted in Hong Kong in 1894 and, carried by shipborne rats, it spread to every country in the world, killing thirteen million people. It reached Sydney early in 1900. The first signs were hundreds of dying rats around the wharves of the Union Shipping Company and the slums and crumbling wharves of Darling Harbour.
The means by which the plague was spread were still barely understood, but Dr Ashburton Thompson, president of the Sydney Board of Health, was an authority on the disease.
Symptoms of the plague are shivering, rise of temperature, aching in the head, back and limbs, and a sickness. Great weakness succeeds with mental disturbance leading to coma or delirium. Death often occurs, however, before any characteristic symptoms are developed.
At an early stage dark spots or patches often appear on the skin produced by subcutaneous haemorrhage, and bleeding may also take place from the various mucous membranes. Bleeding from the lungs, though rare in recent epidemics, was regarded as a characteristic symptom of Black Death in its most virulent form.
By the second or third day the most distinctive features develop: one or more glandular swellings usually in the neck, armpits or groin. These generally break and lead to prolonged suppuration. In a few cases, carbuncles develop at a later stage of the disease.
There can be no doubt the disease can be conveyed from one person to another but it is exceedingly doubtful if contagion can be thus conveyed directly without some intermediary. The general opinion now is that rats are an essential intermediary for carrying the disease.
The plague may be conveyed from rats to humans by the intermediary agents of fleas sucking the blood of the rodents and afterwards inoculating the individual. If any dead rats are found about the premises, boiling water should be first thrown over the carcase to kill any fleas and then the rats can be destroyed without danger.
Such measures as white-washing houses and cleansing gutters and sewers are not really of the slightest effect in allaying the spread of the plague. As a precautionary measure it is advisable to use disinfectants freely in order to get rid of fleas and such like vermin. Cleansing a neighbourhood, however, may have the ultimate effect of driving rats into another district, so distributing the infected rodents over a wider area.
There must be no half-measures. If we want to get rid of the plague we must kill the rats. Material for disinfectant is a weak solution of oil of vitriol — sulphuric acid — in water, say a five per cent solution. Within houses other things are more suitable and necessary. Out of doors sulphuric acid will be all that is necessary and it is very cheap.
At Dr Thompson’s urgings, the city authorities began an extermination campaign, concentrating first on the wharves and stores alongside the harbour. All the people employed were inoculated against the plague and paid well above the normal rates. Floors were pulled up to remove dead rats, streets were cleaned of refuse and 179 loads ‘above the normal scavenging of the city’ were taken to the tip.