Ruffy Ridley and the Australian gold rush

News of the Australian gold rush did not escape the Chartist movement. Stories of prodigious finds and the enormous wealth to be had reached England soon after gold was discovered in Victoria in July 1851, and within a matter of months fresh discoveries at Ballarat and Castlemaine had begun to draw in thousands of prospectors.

Former Chartists And Chartist ideas would later figure large in histories of the gold miners’ rising at the Eureka Stockade and in the early days of Australian democracy. But right at the start, it was the London Chartist Ruffy Ridley who brought the story of the gold rush to England’s declining Chartist movement.

On the Chartist Ancestors website: Whatever happened to Ruffy Ridley? 

Star of Freedom,
22 May 1852.

In May 1852, the Star of Freedom (as the Northern Star had become) carried an extract from a letter received from Melbourne and dated 17 January (NS, 22 May 1852, p6). It told of the apparently ‘inexhaustible’ reserves of gold to be found around Mount Alexander, claiming, ‘I saw four men lifting a seamen’s chest into a dray half an hour ago almost too heavy for their united strength. The chest contained the product of six weeks’ labour, and contained 250lb of gold.’

Whatever happened to Ruffy Ridley?

 Ruffy Ridley is one of those mid-ranking Chartist activists who seem to appear in the movement out of nowhere and to disappear comprehensively as it fades. He led the procession taking the 1842 petition to Parliament, and could always be relied upon when meetings needed a speaker or London Chartists were looking for a convention delegate. But that seemed to be the extent of it.

However, thanks to a chance mention in the Northern Star that he sometimes went under the name Daniel Ruffy (picked up but not probed further by historians with bigger fish to fry), I have been able with the help of a little research on Ancestry and in contemporary newspapers to uncover his origins as the descendent of Huguenot refugees, add more colour to his life story, and trace his final days in Australia. There is even a portrait of him.

None of this will be new to Ruffy’s descendants, who have assiduously researched his life on Ancestry and elsewhere; but I think it is new to those of us with an interest in Chartism.

I must admit I have no idea why Ruffy switched identities. Possibly he hoped to separate Ruffy Ridley, the outspoken advocate not just of Chartism but of socialism, from Daniel Ridley the rising man of business. But if so, he did a pretty poor job of maintaining the dividing line. As often when I begin investigating Chartist lives, Ruffy’s story is far more interesting than I might have anticipated.

Read the full story of Daniel Ruffy Ridley on the Chartist Ancestors website.

In the Tasmanian footsteps of William Cuffay

William Cuffay

The following blog post was written after a visit to Hobart in March 2020.

Twenty-first century Hobart is a magnet for cruise ships. Tourists have only to step ashore to enjoy the vibrant outdoor market at Salamanca Place, while the historic convict sites and natural wonders of Tasmania attract vast numbers of visitors.

But 170 years ago, when Tasmania was still Van Diemen’s Land, the deep natural harbour that now makes it possible for ocean liners to dock was equally attractive to those operating a rather different type of passenger shipping.

John Frost and a lifelong commitment to the Chartism of 1839

John Frost was the first of the Chartist martyrs. As leader of the Newport rising of 1839, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a traitors death before wiser counsel saw him reprieved and banished instead to penal servitude in Tasmania.

But what happened to Frost and to the other leaders of the abortive attempt to seize the town after their arrest, and what did Frost have to say of his experience when he finally returned to his homeland in 1856?

William Cuffay's poetic gift from the Chartists

By October 1849, the London Chartist William Cuffay was already on board the convict ship the Adelaide, heading for Australia, where he would spend the rest of his life.

Cuffay had been arrested in the wake of the Orange Tree conspiracy of August 1848, found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of “treason felony” and sentenced to 14 years in exile. In fact, he would never return to England. But his comrades in the Chartist movement did not forget him.

William Cuffay - the life and times of a Chartist leader

There can be few working men who died in the Victorian workhouse, thousands of miles from the country of their birth, yet who merited newspaper obituaries. One such was William Cuffay, the descendent of slaves, working tailor, Chartist orator and victim of repressive laws which saw him imprisoned and transported at the age of 60 half way round the world.

More than 20 years passed between Cuffay’s arrest and incarceration in the wake of the Orange Tree conspiracy of 1848, in which he was implicated, and his death in Tasmania. But even in his 80s he had been politically active, and his obituary in the local press recorded the “Death of a Chartist celebrity”. The news was even picked up and reported in the provincial press back in England.

The missing Ashton Chartists

Ashton under Lyne must have been a pretty wild place in the 1840s. What had been a small weaving hamlet of around 3,000 people at the turn of the century had swollen to more than 40,000 by the 1841 census. Yet there were few effective civic bodies, and in 1840 the town had just three police officers.

In the early Chartist period, the town was also home to two of the most radical Chartist leaders, Joseph Rayner Stephens and Peter Murray M’Douall, and the town was left with a legacy of working class radicalism that endured for decades.

The events of 14 August, 1848, however, overshadow all study of Ashton Chartism, for they resulted in a confrontation between the Chartist “National Guard” and James Bright, a police officer who lived locally, who died that night from a gunshot wound.

The resulting trial saw six Chartists transported to Australia. But they were not alone, for the authorities also resettled a number of those who had given evidence for the prosecution, sending them out in what would have been little greater comfort than if they too had been transported.

Some flavour of their experience can be found in the Chartist Ancestors account of these events thanks to Phil Gregory, a descendent of Thomas Winterbottom, one of those placed in the New South Wales immigration scheme.

Just recently, Neville Bray, a descendent of Joseph Armitage, a special constable and another of those to be resettled, got in touch to pass on details of his ancestor’s part in the trial and to draw attention to the reports of the trial in the Manchester Guardian of 16 and 20 December 1848. It is well worth getting hold of these if you have any connection to these events.

Neville makes the point that

“There must be quite a large number of descendants in Australia who can trace back to this event considering a total of 33 people were sent out on the Mary Bannatyne on the side of those who gave evidence. And also from the 5 convicts that arrived plus any families that the convicts sent for later.”

He is right, and I have had contact with a number of these descendents over the past few years, but there must be many more. Perhaps they should organise some sort of gathering in Australia this summer to mark the 160^th anniversary.

Neville also makes the point that Jonathon Walker and John Sefton, both of whom were sentenced to seven years’ transportation, were not on the Adelaide, the ship that took the others to Australia. So what did happen to them? Can anyone shed any light on their fate?