James Hardy Vaux is the author of A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language (4.17 avg rating, 6 ratings, 1 review, published 2008), Memoir.
English-born convict transported to Australia on three separate occasions.Wikipedia
- William Buckley (convict)
English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, and was given up for dead while he lived in an Aboriginal community for many years. Born in Marton, Cheshire, England, to Eliza Buckley.Wikipedia
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The last convict ship to transport convicts to Australia. Constructed at Moulmein, Burma in 1852.Wikipedia
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Especially long career transporting convicts to Australia. In 11 voyages, the most of any convict transport, she brought 2,177 convicts, male and female, and so became one of the best-known of the vessels that visited Australia.Wikipedia
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English convict transported to the Australian penal colony of Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania). Served, he gained notoriety as a hangman in Hobart, and is believed to have hanged over 200 people in the course of a long career spanning from 1837 to 1887.Wikipedia
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English landowner, farmer, and convict. Born as Mary Jones in Ludlow, Shropshire, England, and stayed there throughout her childhood and early adulthood, marrying William Morgan on 25 June 1785 and having two children with him.Wikipedia
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The relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.Wikipedia
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Hand-written newspaper created in late 1867 by Fenian prisoners aboard Hougoumont, the last ship to transport convicts to Australia. Seven issues of the newspaper were produced, each issue carefully laid out and decorated by hand.Wikipedia
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Body established to oppose penal transportation to Australia. Beginning in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the late 1840s, it had branches in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Canterbury (New Zealand).Wikipedia
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Prison in Millbank, Westminster, London, originally constructed as the National Penitentiary, and which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia. Opened in 1816 and closed in 1890.Wikipedia
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Town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania, Australia. Located approximately 97 km southeast of the state capital, Hobart.Wikipedia
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Convict penal settlement on Maria Island, Tasmania , from 1825 to 1832, then later a convict probation station during the last phase of convict management in eastern Australia (1842–1850). A number of the buildings and structures have survived from this earlier era relatively intact and in good condition, and of the 78 convict probation stations once built in Tasmania, the buildings and structures at Maria Island are regarded as 'the most outstanding representative example', of such cultural significance they've been formally inscribed onto the Australian National Heritage List and UNESCO's World Heritage list as amongst:Wikipedia
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Convict era building and tourist attraction in Richmond, Tasmania, and is the oldest intact gaol in Australia. Building of the gaol commenced in 1825, and predates the establishment of the penal colony at Port Arthur in 1833.Wikipedia
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Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that established a regulated, bonded system to transport criminals to colonies in North America for indentured service, as a punishment for those convicted or attained in Great Britain, excluding Scotland. The act, (4 Geo.Wikipedia
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Heritage-listed former convict agricultural station, Australian Aboriginal mission and cemetery located at Curtis Street, Wellington in the Dubbo Regional Council local government area in New South Wales, Australia. Built between 1823 and 1844.Wikipedia
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See also Conviction. A convict is 'a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court' or 'a person serving a sentence in prison'.Wikipedia
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Early Australian painter and engraver. Born in Coventry, Warwickshire in England.Wikipedia
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British passenger ship which became involved in an controversial transportation of thousands of (falsely accused) 'enemy aliens' to Australia. The British India Steam Navigation Company had operated a previous SS Dunera, which served as a troopship during the Second Boer War.Wikipedia
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English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society, believed to have introduced Christianity to New Zealand. Prominent figure in early New South Wales and Australian history, partly through his ecclesiastical offices as the colony's senior Church of England cleric and as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry, but also for his employment of convicts for farming and his actions as a magistrate at Parramatta, both of which attracted contemporary criticism.Wikipedia
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Individual has been convicted of breaking the law through the Australian criminal justice system. Australia uses prisons, as well as community corrections (various non-custodial punishments such as parole, probation, community service etc).Wikipedia
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Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police murderer. Known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.Wikipedia
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Skilled stonemason who, with co-convict James Colbeck, oversaw the building of the Ross Bridge and embellished it with interesting carvings. His father had been a corporal in the army; Daniel worked as a stonemason and signboard writer.Wikipedia
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North-eastern state of Australia and has land borders with three other Australian states and territories: New South Wales , South Australia (to the south-west) and Northern Territory (to the west). Torres Strait separating the Australian mainland from Papua New Guinea.Wikipedia
- Scott Morrison
Australian politician who is the 30th and current Prime Minister of Australia. He took office in August 2018 upon his election as leader of the Liberal Party, and subsequently led the Coalition to victory at the 2019 federal election.Wikipedia
- Henry Parkes
Colonial Australian politician and longest non-consecutive Premier of the Colony of New South Wales, the present-day state of New South Wales in the Commonwealth of Australia. Early critic of British convict transportation and as a proponent for the expansion of the Australian continental rail network.Wikipedia
- Ann Dinham
Keeping an inn in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire in 1851 with her husband, William, when she was convicted of inciting a burglary and sentenced to be transported to Tasmania for ten years. In Tasmania, she married John Foster, a wealthy businessman, magistrate and member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council.Wikipedia
- The Australian (1824 newspaper)
English language newspaper published in Sydney, Australia. The second newspaper to be printed on mainland Australia after The Sydney Gazette .Wikipedia
- Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney
Heritage-listed former barracks, hospital, convict accommodation, mint and courthouse and now museum and cafe located at Macquarie Street in the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. Designed by convict architect Francis Greenway.Wikipedia
- William Buelow Gould
English and Van Diemonian (Tasmanian) painter. Transported to Australia as a convict in 1827, after which he would become one of the most important early artists in the colony, despite never really separating himself from his life of crime.Wikipedia
- James Hardy Vaux THE MEMOIRS OF AN ENGLISH RASCAL By PAUL HASLUCK. The world seems to have something of a taste for rascals nowa days rather than for dull and respectable heroes (though, to be sure, Captain Macheath has always been more attractive than any of the citizens he robbed) and James Hardy Vaux was an unmitigated rascal.
- Convict clerk James Hardy Vaux came up with a useful idea: a dictionary of slang and other terms used by convicts. And so, in 1812, he compiled what was to be Australia’s first published dictionar In the early 1800s magistrates in the Australian colonies were often frustrated by the language used by reoffending convicts to disguise their.
Sentences forJames Hardy Vaux
- Besides Gatrell's book, Cornwell refers to James Hardy Vaux's Dictionary of the Flash Language, a translation book of the slang used by the London criminal sector during this time.Gallows Thief-Wikipedia
- James Hardy Vaux, a convict in Australia, used the term for similar purposes in his memoirs written in 1812 and published in 1819.Swagman-Wikipedia
- In 1808 he was presiding magistrate in the case of James Hardy Vaux following the latter's arrest for the theft of a silver snuff box, and a vivid account of the courtroom examination is preserved in Vaux's memoirs.Joseph Moser-Wikipedia
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Vaux, James Hardy (1782–1841)
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
James Hardy Vaux (b.1782), convict and author, was baptized on 20 May 1782 at East Clandon, Surrey, England, the son of Hardy Vaux, butler and house steward to George Holme Sumner, M.P., and his wife Sophia, daughter of James Lowe, an attorney who was clerk of papers and deputy-warden of the Fleet prison. After moving with his parents to London, where Hardy Vaux set up as a hatter in Great Turnstile, Holborn, James Vaux apparently attended a boarding school in Stockwell, but spent most of his childhood with his maternal grandparents in Shifnal, Shropshire. At 14, according to his own account, he persuaded his grandfather to apprentice him to a linen draper in Liverpool and it was here that he began the loose living which led to his downfall. Dismissed by his employer, he induced his grandfather to let him go to London, where he became a copying clerk in a legal firm in Lincoln's Inn but again lost his job owing to dissipation. Other intervals of employment followed including a spell in the navy: he volunteered in December 1798 and served in the frigate Astraea in the North Sea, according to the muster as an ordinary seaman, but originally as a midshipman by his own account. He deserted at Yarmouth next August and returned to his old life in London. After working for an attorney in Bury St Edmunds and for a Covent Garden clothing firm he was arrested in April 1800 for pilfering from the latter. He was acquitted but was by this time a professional thief, and in September he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to transportation for seven years for stealing a handkerchief, valued by the jury at elevenpence so that the accused might escape a capital sentence.
Vaux reached Sydney in the Minorca in December 1801 and worked as a clerk at the Hawkesbury, in Sydney and in Parramatta. Despite a term in the road-gang after he forged Governor Philip Gidley King's initials to commissariat orders he succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Parramatta chaplain and magistrate, Samuel Marsden, and with the governor, who agreed to take him home in the Buffalo in 1807. Vaux was employed on board in writing King's log and in teaching his and Marsden's children, but when his sentence expired he became insubordinate and was compelled to enlist as a seaman. When the ship reached Portsmouth Vaux deserted and resumed his old activities in London. On 21 July at St Paul's, Covent Garden, he married Mary Ann Thomas, a prostitute, in the hope that, if he were again transported she might be allowed as his wife to join him in New South Wales. In December he narrowly escaped a further conviction, this time for stealing a snuffbox, but in February 1809 he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey under the alias James Lowe for stealing from a jeweller's shop in Piccadilly. This sentence was commuted to transportation for life and after a period in the hulk Retribution he sailed in the Indian and reached Sydney in December 1810. Assigned to a Hawkesbury settler and then appointed deputy-overseer of the town gang in Sydney, he was sentenced in 1811 to twelve months hard labour for receiving property stolen from the judge-advocate, Ellis Bent, and soon afterwards was sent to the Newcastle penal settlement. In January 1814, after returning to Sydney, he was caught while trying to escape in the Earl Spencer, flogged and returned to Newcastle.
During his previous spell there Vaux had compiled a slang dictionary for the use of magistrates, and he was now encouraged to write the famous Memoirs of the First Thirty-Two Years of The Life of James Hardy Vaux, A Swindler and Pickpocket; Now Transported for the Second Time, and For Life, to New South Wales. He implied that he wrote at the bidding of Captain Thompson, the commandant, and promised in his dedication that his future conduct would justify this patronage. The manuscript came into the hands of Barron Field who arranged for its publication in London by John Murray, along with the slang dictionary, but Murray's imprint does not appear on most extant copies. Vaux received £33 18s. 8d. in royalties. The Memoirs were republished by John Hunt in 1827 and reprinted in 1829 and 1830. As the first full-length autobiography written in Australia the book provides a fascinating picture of criminal life in London and the penal system, while the Vocabulary of the Flash Language, probably the first dictionary compiled in Australia, gives a valuable glossary of London slang. In 1827 the London Magazine described the work as 'one of the most singular that ever issued from the press'.
On 3 August 1818 at Newcastle, during a visit by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, Vaux married Frances Sharkey, a former Irish convict. Next month he was allowed to return to Sydney where Field used him as a clerk. In January 1820 he received a conditional pardon and soon became a clerk in the colonial secretary's office. In 1823 Vaux was converted to Roman Catholicism by Father John Joseph Therry, but on 2 April 1827 he was married to his housekeeper, Eleanor Bateman, another Irish convict, by Marsden, although Frances Vaux was still alive. At the end of 1826 Governor Darling dismissed Vaux in accordance with his policy of not employing convicts and ex-convicts as clerks. Vaux was then employed in an ironmonger's store but in April 1829 he absconded and so broke the terms of his conditional pardon. He went to Ireland, where in August 1830 at Dublin he was convicted once more under the alias James Young, this time for passing forged bank-notes. He pleaded guilty and, with the co-operation of the bank concerned, his death sentence was commuted to transportation for seven years. On his arrival at Sydney in the Waterloo in May 1831 he was recognized, his previous life sentence was revived and he was sent to Port Macquarie penal settlement. In 1837 he was allowed to return to Sydney and became clerk to a wine merchant. In May 1839 he was charged with criminal assault on a girl aged about 8. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and although Governor Sir George Gipps decided that his life sentence should be reapplied he was released in 1841 on the recommendation of Chief Justice Sir James Dowling and disappeared. No reliable record of his further life and death has been traced. Although he is the only convict known to have been transported three times to New South Wales he was probably not unique in this respect, nor was he an outstanding criminal. What does distinguish him is his Memoirs, which were republished (edited and with an introduction and notes by Noel McLachlan) in 1964.
Select Bibliography
- A. F. Fink, ‘James Hardy Vaux, convict and fatalist’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 48 (1962).
Citation details
Averil F. Fink, 'Vaux, James Hardy (1782–1841)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/vaux-james-hardy-2756/text3905, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 26 April 2021.
James Hardy Vauxhall
This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
James Hardy Vaux
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James Hardy Vaux's Dictionary Of Criminal Slang
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