George Vigors

Shoemaker, thief, bolter, murderer

Arrived 1828 on Florentia

As a young shoemaker of three years’ experience in Davenport, England, George Vigors probably had no idea of the treacherous path his life would take. After arriving in the colony with the minimum sentence of seven years, Vigors went on to notch up a long list of criminal convictions. Eventually, while staying at the Hyde Park Barracks, he committed murder, sparking public hysteria and heated debate about the evils breeding in the barracks.

One day, the 22-year-old Vigors was tempted to steal a watch and a pair of shoes, and so began his fall. Tried at a court in Exeter, his sentence of seven years’ transportation was minor compared with that of many convicts sent to New South Wales, but once in the colony, Vigors refused to stay on the straight and narrow.

Leaving Sheerness in the summer of 1827, the Florentia took just over four months to make the voyage to Sydney, arriving on 3 January 1828. With his shoemaking trade, Vigors was quickly snapped up into the service of Edward Smith, an ex-convict shoemaker in Parramatta. But Vigors ran away, and was then found out with a false pass. His real taste was for theft, however, and in 1829 he committed a robbery which lengthened his sentence to ten years.

In 1831, now wearing leg-irons as punishment, Vigors absconded from Iron Gang 3 twice, then from Road Gang 25, and then from Road Gang 36 in 1832. Apparently, Vigors intended to regain his liberty and quit the colony. In their ‘flash’ slang, the other convicts would have called him a pebble, a difficult convict, and a bolter, one who liked to escape. By 1840 he was at the Hyde Park Barracks, and he bolted again on 4 March 1840, but was captured a few weeks later. In May he bailed up some unsuspecting settler on the road and was sentenced to seven years on Norfolk Island. Back in Sydney after doing his time, he was re-convicted for dishonesty, and was banished again to the island.

By this time Vigors had endured 1100 lashes on the flogging triangle, done four stints labouring in leg-irons, two stretches on Norfolk Island, and had been convicted of 31 offences. In early 1844, aged 39, suffering chronic heart disease, Vigors was one of a group of invalids returned to Sydney. But he wasn’t too weak to unleash more of his evildoing. The Hyde Park Barracks had by now become known for its wayward inmates and lack of discipline. And Vigors, with his track record, did nothing to improve that reputation.

In the barracks wards, Vigors and fellow Norfolk Island invalids Thomas Burdett and James Martin were as thick as thieves. It was probably in some dark corner that they whispered their plans to conduct a robbery. Somehow, Vigors had saved a gold sovereign, which he passed to convict Robert Malcolm to buy two pistols, powder and shot, which he stashed away in the barracks wards one evening. Then one Sunday in late May, all was ready. When the convicts reached the door of St James’ Church for their compulsory service, Vigors, Martin and Burdett escaped. Throwing off their convict ‘slops’ to reveal plain clothes underneath, the men later knocked on the door of a James Noble in Clarence Street and attempted to rob him. In the struggle, Vigors stabbed Noble in the stomach, using his shoemaking knife. Noble later died. Vigors and Burdett were captured a week later and tried, both prisoners stating that it was the ‘rascality’ of the men in the Hyde Park Barracks that drove them to the crime. In August, both were executed at the gates of Darlinghurst Gaol.