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An Important Convict Pottery Discovery - John Moreton and his Colonial Wine Cooler
by:
Geoff Ford
John Moreton was born on 17 September 1777, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Moreton began working at Josiah Wedgwood's pottery in Burslem, where he trained as a potter and modeller. By 1815 Moreton had established a pottery works manufacturing a range of earthenware about a quarter of a mile out of Burslem, on the Burslem to Hanley Road. Working conditions were obviously hard and coupled with the depression in the trade caused by the importation of French wares, profits were small. Consequently, on the night of Sunday 20 December 1818, Moreton, with his apprentice John Whitehurst and fellow potter Jonathan Leak, broke into the home of Mrs Chatterley in Shelton.
The Staffordshire Advertiser on 20 March 1819 devoted almost a complete page to the trial. Anson Moreton, John's younger brother, had a relationship with a domestic servant employed by Mrs Chatterley. Visiting her at Mrs Chatterley's house, Anson saw a variety of silverware items and told his brother. Later, while Moreton, his apprentice and Leak were standing outside Moreton's pottery, during a chance encounter with a travelling jewellery peddler, Moreton asked him if he would buy old silver. Agreeing on a price, Moreton then asked him to return in a few days.
Later that day Moreton, Whitehurst and Leak agreed to burgle the Chatterley house. After entering through a window they placed chairs on the stairs in case the owner came down during the robbery; so that the noise of falling chairs would act as a warning. The trio stole silverware, coins, notes, handkerchiefs, linen and aprons, a total value of around 350 pounds. During the robbery they consumed the contents of four wine decanters, several bottles of spirits and helped themselves to food from the kitchen.
A few days later, Moreton offered the stolen silverware to the jewellery peddler, Unfortunately for Moreton the peddler had seen a handbill regarding the robbery and turned them in. The silverware was found hidden under broken saggers and rubbish at Moreton's pottery while the handkerchiefs were found at Leak's house.
On 11 March 1819, Moreton, Whitehurst and Leak were tried in the County of Stafford, found guilty and sentenced to hang. Their sentence was commuted to transportation to Australia for life, and they arrived at Sydney Cove aboard the brig Recovery on 18 December 1819.
On arrival Moreton was recorded as being 5 feet 11 inches tall, fair ruddy complexion, grey hair with hazel eyes.1 He was put to work with Jonathan Leak at the Government Pottery on Brickfield Hill where they made earthenware of various descriptions. In 1820 Moreton was put in charge of the Government Pottery. On 22 December 1821, Moreton and Leak agreed to commence 'Assignment Payments' to the Government of 2/5/6 pounds per quarter, which enabled them to begin earning money for themselves. Moreton continued as overseer at the Government Pottery, while Leak began establishing his own pottery works.
Moreton's wife and three sons, along with Leak's wife and the four youngest of their six children arrived as free settlers aboard the brig Mary Ann on 20 May 1822. Moreton's three sons joined him at the pottery where they began learning the trade. A few months later, in September 1822, Moreton and Leak received a ticket-of-leave, assigned to themselves. It is not clear when, or if, Moreton was granted a lease on the Government Pottery, but by June 1823, he was running the pottery at the bottom of Elizabeth Street at Brickfield Hill.
On Friday 29 July 1825, Hyacinthe de Bougainville, commander of the French frigate Thetis, visited, I believe, Moreton's pottery. In his notebook diary he records:
Upon leaving the Tread-Mill, we went to visit a new pottery; the whole workforce is made up of members of one family, the father and two or three of his children. The father had previously worked for a considerable amount of time in the workshop of one of the most famous artists in London and seemed most skilful and most experienced to me. In less than ten minutes, he had turned a very fine water jug to which he gave a handle and a spout and which he decorated etc. In brief, all that remained to do was to fire it. I was told that this area of his craft was the one in which he was least knowledgeable, and it was also the most difficult stage of the process. He employs two types of clay which are very fine and which are in his view most attractive, and I would tend to agree with him; one of them is grey and the other reddish and most common. The grey clay is dug out near his workshop. His products are a little dear.2
In his published account, Bougainville adds more detail about Moreton's use of applied decoration, and admits to buying examples which he probably took home as souvenirs:
'...we went to visit a new pottery near Sydney set up by the former apprentice of a skilful London potter. In only a few minutes he had designed and turned several vases decorated with fine embossed figures and which were then fired. He brought them to me the next day, and I did not haggle over the price which anywhere else but here would have seemed excessive.'3
Around November 1825, the authorities realised that Moreton and Leak's quarterly payments to the Government, a condition of their 'Assignment Payments', had not been paid. They were asked by the Superintendent of Convicts to immediately pay their arrears. A petition was submitted on Moreton and Leak's behalf to Governor Darling on 16 June 1826, requesting that their arrears be waived. They each received a letter on 26 June informing them that they must pay the arrears. 4
Leak arranged to pay off his debt, and although Moreton's business and his prospects at this time appeared good he may not have been in a position to pay his arrears. He was arrested while attempting a burglary and had his ticket-of-leave cancelled on 26 July 1826 'for having failed to perform the conditions under which it had been granted.'5 He was sentenced to six years hard labour, and once again became a prisoner. This time serving in a chain gang at Bathurst.6
In Moreton's absence, his wife Mary together with her sons attempted to run the Government Pottery, but this proved to be unsuccessful and the Government put the pottery up for lease in March 1827. David Hayes, a potter, was the successful tenderer.
After serving his six-year term, Moreton returned to Sydney in late 1832 and with his son Anson began making a variety of clay smoking pipes. Moreton was listed in the 1833 and 1834 Post Office and Business Directories as 'Pipemaker, Upper Pitt St'. From surviving shards held in the Sydney harbour Foreshore Authority's Archive Collection it is known that Moreton decorated some of the stems of his tobacco pipes with branches and leaves and embossed his initials 'J.M.' on the spur. From the same archives the surviving examples show that Anson Moreton embossed 'A. Moreton Maker Upper Pitt Street' along the stems of his tobacco pipes.
On 8 January 1835 the Sydney Gazette published the following: 'We have seen two excellent casts of the heads of the late Dr. Wardell and his murderer, Jenkins. They were executed at the pottery on Brickfield-hill, by Mr. Moreton, who has succeeded in admirably preserving correct likenesses.' Shortly after this newspaper report was published, Moreton and his sons set up a pottery on rented land east of Bourke Street, in Surry Hills, somewhere between Oxford and Fitzroy Streets. Although it appears in the Post Office and Business Directories under Anson Moreton's name, it was promoted as the 'SURRY HILLS POTTERY Messrs MORETON & SONS.' Moreton is listed in the Post Office and Business Directories from 1835 until 1837 as: 'pipemaker, Surry-hills Sydney'.
A small range of bottles were produced for a few of the brewers around Sydney and impressed with their name and the potter's mark 'I. MORETON/ & SONS/ POTTERS'. By 1837 Anson Moreton was producing brewing bottles on his own account, and several that have survived were also impressed with the brewer's name or initials and the potter's stamp 'MORETON'.
Once again John Moreton drew attention to himself when he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in July 1838, and spent the next twenty-eight days on the treadmill. On his discharge from the Hyde Park Barracks, he was assigned to his son Henry.7
James King placed a large advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 and 12 August 1844, promoting his Irrawang Pottery at Raymond Terrace. Moreton's advertisement, placed in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 August 1844, may have been in response to King's claims. The 'Established 1820' date in the advertisement probably refers to the year John Moreton was put in charge of the Government Pottery. John Moreton continued making smoking pipes and pottery in Surry Hills until his death on 4 November 1847, aged 70.
Anson carried on the pottery by himself for a few more years and was listed in Ford's 1851 Sydney Commercial Directory as 'Moreton, Anson, potter, East of Bourke Street, Surry Hills.' The pottery came to an abrupt end after Anson died on 17 March 1851, aged 39.
Little of John or Anson Moreton's marked pottery has survived, except for a mere handful of wheel-thrown, salt glazed brewing bottles, a few pieces of broken smoking pipes and now this terracotta wine cooler, acquired through public auction at Stanley & Co. in Sydney on 19 August 2001 by the National Museum of Australian Pottery, with the generous assistance of a benefactor.
The wine cooler is the single most important surviving piece of Australian Colonial convict pottery known. We believe it was inherited by the vendor from her grandmother's estate, where it had been stored for some 70 years, in the pantry of her Sydney home.
The cooler is decorated on the shoulder with two applied, finely worked, slipcast terracotta profiles, one of Admiral Sir John Jervis, Earl St Vincent (1735-1823) and the other of Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson (1758-1805). John de Vaere 8 modelled both these original profiles at the Wedgwood factory in 1798, where John Moreton had been trained. Moreton used the profiles of both these naval heroes to decorate the wine cooler, which may have been commissioned and used in the Officers' Mess of one of the Sydney Regiments.
How did it work? By placing the wine cooler in a container of clean water, the water soaked through the porous terracotta body. After the air bubbles had stopped rising to the surface, it was lifted out of the container, the excess water was poured out of the cooler, and it was then filled with wine. Water evaporating from the surface of the terracotta kept the wine inside cool. Opposite the pouring spout (right) at the other end of the handle is a wider opening that was used like an inbuilt funnel to fill the cooler.
It originally stood on its own terracotta saucer, which is now missing, but the constant tipping forward, rather than picking it up, to fill a glass with wine has worn the bottom base rim quite round. As the wine level in the cooler became lower, the cooler was tipped further forward, bringing it into contact with the edge of the saucer that has also created a wear mark approximately 3 cm up from the base.
Amazingly, at this time this is the only known surviving terracotta piece of convict pottery, the largest piece of convict pottery impressed with a potter's stamp, the only surviving decorated convict piece and the first and only Australian-made terracotta Colonial wine cooler from this early period. The fact that it was made of terracotta around 167 years ago and has survived, is a miracle in itself.
Footnotes
1 Convict Indents, 1818-1826
2 Marc Serge Riviere, The Governor's Noble Guest Hyacinthe de Bougainville's Account of Port Jackson, 1825, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1999, p. 80.
3 Op cit., pp. 180-181.
4 Colonial Secretary in Letters, 1826.
5 Convict Indents, 1818-1826.
6 Sydney Gazette, 26 July 1826.
7 The 1839 Post Office and Business Directory lists Henry Moreton as a 'General dealer, 213 Pitt Street-South.' Henry was listed again in 1851 and may have continued dealing until his death in 1862.
8 Robin Reilly and George Savage, Wedgwood the Portrait Medallions, Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1973, pp. 256, 297. |
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