Newcastle Miners and the Master and Servants Act, 1830-1862

Abstract

One of the problems facing the labour historian working on mid nineteenth-century NewT South Wales is the difficulty of assessing the impact of the Master and Servants Act on the labouring classes.1 The terms of the Act are well known but it is clear that they were not uniformly administered in the various parts of the State. It is also apparent that there was considerable difficulty in the interpretation of the Act and frequent amendments were made to try to make it more effective. In the Newcastle district, in particular, coal miners had come to believe, by 1860, that they were not bound by the Act and it was not until August 1862 that the New South Wales Supreme Court decided that they were. To elucidate these developments it will be necessary to trace the application of the Master and Servants Act in the Newcastle district during the two previous decades. As court records have not survived and newspaper reporting of Newcastle Police Court cases was haphazard before 1861 it is necessary to rely upon the records of the Newcastle and Maitland Gaols for this period.2 Unfortunately, the gaol records only provide information about miners who were sentenced to prison for offences under the Act: they do not provide information about unsuccessful prosecutions nor do they provide the details of prosecutions which resulted in penalties other than gaol terms. These are serious omissions but they do not destroy the significance of the evidence as to gaol sentences. Though the Australian Agricultural (henceworth A.A.) Company introduced a small party of free coal miners in 1826 and continued to bring colliers to the colony after 1830, it was not until January 1846 that a free miner was committed to Newcastle Gaol for any offence.3 John Lindsay had been found guilty of using abusive language to his superior, Mr. Alexander Brown of the A.A. Company, and was sen tenced to fourteen days' gaol under section two of the Master and Servants Act of 1845, i.e., 'that if any servant shall ... be guilty of disobedience or of any . . . misconduct or misdemeanour . . .' he may be committed to gaol for up to three months. This appears to have been the only occasion on which a free miner received a gaol sentence for such an offence and no other free miner was to enter the gaol for a further eighteen months.