Henry Stoliday / Stolliday (1841-????).
My 2nd great grand-uncle.
Henry was born in 1841 and baptised on 5 December that year at All Saints Church in Salhouse, Norfolk, to parents William Stoliday and Sarah Rose.
He grew up in the village with his family but as a boy got into trouble with the law. A report on the Norwich summer assizes in the Morning Post of 29 July 1854 reported that Henry Stolliday had been found guilty of setting fire to two stacks of straw and other property in the village of Rackheath, not far from his home village.
Despite being so young, he was sentenced to four years of penal servitude. Various newspaper reports, including the Norwich Mercury of 15 April 1854, gave details of the incident and the court case. Henry, who denied the charge, worked for Thomas Etheridge at his farm in Rackheath and admitted that he had lit a match there but that he’d thrown it against a gate. He did not set out to deliberately burn the stacks. After being apprehended the day after the incident and taken to jail by police, he told them that he and another boy were angry at being told by his boss to attend some bullocks on a Sunday, which was normally the job of the farm steward’s son. He pleaded for mercy and Mr Etheridge also urged leniency in sentencing.
It’s unclear where and for how long Henry served his sentence but it’s obvious that he ended up at the Royal Philanthropic School in Redhill, Surrey, registering there on 19 March 1855. This society had been established in London in the late 18th century to help support homeless children and young delinquents, giving them an alternative to prison and an opportunity for rehabilitation. The Surrey school was opened a few years before Henry arrived. But while it sought rehabilitation, many youngsters were encouraged to emigrate, perhaps in part to remove ‘problem children’ from British shores, to push the cost of supporting them overseas and to help populate growing colonies.
Henry ended up in Australia, like his troubled uncle Robert, sailing from London on the Alnwick Castle late in 1856 and arriving in Sydney on 12 January 1857. However, by this point his name had morphed into Holliday either by accident or design (again like his uncle Robert). I thought for a time that he was the Henry Holliday who died in Sydney in March 1906 but that man was born in London and other details from his death certificate don’t match. I’ve yet to trace my family member after his arrival in the city.
Sources: Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns, criminal and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society.
British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).
Royal Philantrophic Society information.