Thomas Stacey, 1812-1864
Thomas
Stacey, a Londoner, gets his blunt at the best, as
he musters his bag of tools: a
centre-bit with brace,
gimlet, knife, chisel, phosphorous-box or phos,
crowbar to jemmy, five skeleton keys or false screws,
a
dark lantern with candle burning or glim-jack.
And reckons it's good upon the crack to break
into Jabez Woodhill’s jeweller's-crib for gems, sparklers
and rings to fake the cull while he’s out and do the trick.
Cracking
the chain containing the grate in Cannon Alley,
Thomas
lowers himself nimbly from ground floor to cellar.
But slour'd up against the stairs' landing stands the jigger.
Stacey tugs and shakes but wakes the staunch assistant,
John Smith, who rouses the snoozing slaveys in an instant.
Shop-lobber Guy Clarke is woken, peels his peepers,
witnesses Stacey heave out the cellar about to scarper.
'Watch! Watch!' cries Clarke. 'Shut your shop!' mutters.
Thomas. George Nichols, a fly watchman,
hears the cry,
comes bang up to the mark and spies a crack halter,
a cracksman intending to bang-slang it, collars
and floors him hard by the cellar door.
Bowled out at last, the lime-juicer is shopped,
hobbled and led shame-faced to the roundy-ken to cop
the verdict. 'Guilty!' declares the
beak. The sentence: death.
Thomas must pay lagging dues; indeed, must pay the earth:
confined
on the John then setting sail for New South Wales.
Cox’s River, 1833
It
lies along a dusty track, the Bathurst Road, this wooden
jug
just a blot or blur neath the boundless blue-domed horizon.
Quartered
in the stockade a gang of ironed lags in slops marked
with
broad arrow, surly scowls and salt-crusted backs scarred.
Scarce
two months pass afore Stacey takes to the bush, bolts
with
five renegades, two lairy lags and three crooked reds irate,
disarming
a sentry, seizing his musket, shot and bayonet.
These
bushrangers shake a settler’s house of needy grub,
but
are apprehended and charged with highway robbery.
Stacey
is pronounced prancer, dubbed crib-cracker, again
absconds,
is arrested and tickled fifty lashes for his pains.
The
cuffin-queer sentences the gang for life to Norfolk Isle.
In
the hulk’s cell they smuggle tools, undub their irons
and
by means of cutters sheer through the outer boards.
In the
waves below, a waiting boatswain clasping oars.
Norfolk Island, 1834-54
For twenty years the desperately reckless
cove suffers torment
on
the isle, a long reign for an old file in solitary confinement,
forced
to endure three hundred lashes for being absent!
Other
charges include possessing tobacco, disobedience,
refusing
to work, robbery, possessing cards, insolence,
absconding,
having bootlaces, fighting, dishonest conduct,
possessing
tea and coffee, obscene language, neglect . . .
And
fifty lashes for not answering the guard.at night!
Michael Small
June
30-July 8, 2014
Thomas Stacey was given his
ticket-of-leave in 1858 and a conditional pardon in 1860. He spent thirty-eight of his last forty-one
years behind bars.
