Surviving the Silence: The Benjamin Stanton Story 1819-1891

by Jeff Hopkins

Overview

Convicted of stealing a coat in 1832, Benjamin Stanton was sentenced to seven years transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. He spent twelve months on the prison hulk, ‘Euryalus’ and then another four months on the convict transport ship ‘Isabella’ before arriving in Hobart Town on the 14th of November 1833.

In January 1834 Benjamin was one of the first sixty-eight boys to be incarcerated at Point Puer, across the bay from Point Arthur, where a Boys’ Reformatory was being established. His years at Point Puer with its deprivations, misbehaviour and severe punishments are examined in detail.

With further offences, Benjamin Stanton managed to stretch his original seven years transportation to sixteen years’ incarceration at Point Puer, Port Arthur and on a Hobart Town chain gang, before eventually receiving a Governor’s pardon in 1849.

As a thirty-year-old he left Tasmania and settled in Geelong, Victoria where he took a common law wife and had two sons, Benjamin, and George. Both these boys had large families with intriguing histories of their own. Eventually one of George’s daughters, Roseanna Stanton, gave birth to her fourth illegitimate son, Charles William, in 1908. That boy became Charles William Hopkins who was my father.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940165968082
Publisher:	Tellwell Talent
Publication date:	11/16/2022
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

About the Author
Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Western Australia. As the drama master at a private boys’ school he wrote ten original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school.
In 1992, he researched and wrote a family history, 'Life’s Race Well Run', and after retiring in 2006 he has written eighteen novels, three factional biographies and a memoir.
• Artifice (2015)
• Gnarl (2015).
• The Spiv: The Robbie Sparrow Story (2015)
• Impressment: Managers, Actors and Impressed Boys (2015)
• Benedict Lovelace and the Travelling Show (2016)
• Reflections; A Story of Friendship (2016)
• Rocking Horse Rider (2016)
• The Hydrographer: The Clyde Steadman Story (2017)
• Lord Gnarl : A Sequel to Gnarl (2019)
• Handsome Jack: A Whizz-kid’s Story (2019).
• A Horse Called Signs: A Sequel to Handsome Jack (2020)
• Alaric Pinder Boor: A Life Reimagined (2020)
• Gnarl: Caliphs and Kings:Concluding the Gnarl Trilogy (2020)
• The Gavin Johns Story: A Belle beamish Investigation (2021)
• The Headmaster: Frederick Charles Faulkner's Story (2021)
• Creatively:A Memoir of Plays, Films, Musicals, Commentaries, and Books (2021)
• Resilience: The Story of Cameron and Rick - 1972 (2022)
• Surviving the Silence; the Benjamin Stabton Story 1819-1891 (2022)
• Directed by McCardle O'Hanlon: A Cinematic Story (2022)
• Released and Regained: A Sequel to Directed by McCardle O'Hanlon (2023)
•Adam & Benjamin: The Story of the Seal Island Band (2023)
• Landor: A Saga od Siblings, Schooling, Sparring, and Sinking (2023)

Jeff previously maintained he wrote entirely for pleasure, and to fill in the long summer months between football seasons. Recently he has admitted that he set himself the task of writing in a number of different genres as part of a three-year programme to learn about creative writing and self-publishing. He said it was like an undergraduate degree course for which there was a strict budget and work schedule.That three years has now stretched. It has since become clear that the whole experiment was one of the most interesting and absorbing things he had done in his life. He continues to write.