We might assume that early pioneers working on adjoining properties in the untamed Kentish bush might want to help one another, provide neighbourly assistance and support for each other, considering they shared the same formidable task of surviving until their farms were productive.
Apparently, this wasn’t always the case. In Oct 1868, William Excell (36) charged his neighbour Robert Pease (48) with unlawfully and maliciously wounding him on the left shoulder with an axe. Pease pleaded not guilty, so the case was taken to the nearest criminal court then in existence – the Supreme Court in Launceston – before a jury of 12 Launcestonians.
William Excell was born in 1832 in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where he was a coal miner and blacksmith before answering the call for colliers to come to the newly discovered Mersey Coal Company near Tarleton, Tasmania. With his wife, Elizabeth (b1830), and babies, William & James, they arrived in the Tamar River aboard the Merrington on 23 Oct 1854, one of several ships bringing miners from Yorkshire, Lancaster and Wales. They were immediately transferred to the small steamer Titania, which brought them along the NW Coast into the Mersey River and landed them on the muddy banks of Ballahoo Creek between Spreyton and Latrobe. Then they trundled off into the bush with their belongings to find the wooden slab huts that had been built to house them.
After a few years, the Mersey mines were exhausted, and the much-increased Excell family became very early settlers on the Kentish Plains. About 1860, William Excell bought 100 acres on the eastern side of what is now Carey’s Rd.
Robert Pease (24) was tried and convicted in Norwich, Norfolk, for stealing two bushels of wheat. It was his first offence, and even though he was married to Mary Ann and had two infant children, he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to VDL. Pease was one of 264 convicts to sail aboard the Maria Somes that arrived in Hobart in July 1844. Robert was sent to Maria Island to work in a probation gang. He received his ‘ticket of leave’ in Feb 1848 and found favourable employment with Wm Bonnily on his Forest Hall estate on the Bass Highway west of Elizabeth Town. While there, Robert applied to have his wife, Mary Ann, and two children join him, which they did, arriving in Hobart aboard the Anglia in Feb 1850. Robert went to Hobart and brought his family back to Forest Hill, where they lived and had several more children. Robert gained his full freedom on 1 Jul 1852.
Two years later, in 1854, Robert sponsored his two younger brothers Peter (29) and George (21) Pease out from England. They arrived on the Ocean Chief in Hobart on 25 March 1855 along with Henry Day (19). Youngest brother George Pease married and went to the mainland. Peter Pease married Grace Dawson (6 chn) in Deloraine in 1858. Together, the two married brothers, Robert & Mary Anne Pease and Peter & Grace Pease, bought two adjoining 100-acre blocks on the west-side of what is now Lockwood Rd. Robert Pease’s bush block backed onto Wm Excell’s 100-acre block along Carey’s Rd.
As a result of the back-boundary fence fracas detailed earlier, at least eight Kentish neighbours were called to make the three-day journey, crossing several bridgeless rivers, to appear in this Launceston trial. At the end of Oct 1868, in the Supreme Court of Launceston, Attorney-General Rocher explained to the 12 assembled jurymen the nature of the dispute, then, one by one, called up those to be examined:
William Excell deposed: ‘I am a blacksmith living at Kentish Plains. The defendant’s land adjoins mine. On 1st October, between 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I went down to where my neighbour Robert Pease was falling timber on my land. His 17-year-old son, Peter Pease, was working with him and was up on a scaffold he had erected on my ground, falling a tree on the boundary line so that it should fall on my land. I went and told Pease that it was very wrong to be falling on my ground and that he had already fallen several other trees on my land. He ordered me off his land and wanted to have nothing to do with me. I told him I could shake the scaffold until it brought his son down. After that, as I turned to go home, I met my wife. She went to Pease’s son and told him to come down from the scaffold. Robert Pease called to his son, “Chop her down with the axe, Peter!” And he began to approach us with the axe in his hand. He then ran up within five yards of my wife and flung a piece of wood at her, which missed. He flung another piece of wood at me, then lifted his axe up and ran towards my wife. I ran up to protect her. He struck at me with the axe with all his might. The axe head missed me, but the handle caught me under my left arm. He struck at me a second time and hit me on the left shoulder with the blade of the axe, which cut through my shirt and my flesh. I had no coat on at the time, but the wound did not bleed much. The shirt was cut at the left shoulder and marked with some spots of blood. I have the shirt to prove it. After the first blow, I was making towards Pease to try to get the axe from him. I was in amongst scrub and bushes and could not reach him. He struck at me a third blow and cut me to the shoulder bone and also cut the finger of my right hand to the bone. It bled heavily. After that, I caught hold of his axe and took it away from him. I flung it to my wife. Pease called to his son to grab the axe, but my wife got it first. Immediately after this, my wife and I went home to my place, leaving their axe against a tree some distance away. I sent for my neighbour Wm Jackson to come and dress my wounds.’ Cross-examined by Mr Rocher, Excell continued: ‘Jackson came to my place and dressed all my wounds. I showed Jackson the mark where the axe handle struck me on the left side. Pease and I have been neighbours for three years. We were on friendly terms till lately. I never made any threats to him, nor to Christopher Chilcott about him.’ Replying to a further question by the Attorney-General, Wm Excell said: ‘About sixteen months ago, I accused him of scandalising my name, and he threatened to make me and my family miserable.’
Elizabeth Excell deposed: ‘I am the wife of the last witness. I went to my husband on our boundary fence on October 1st. I told Robert Pease’s son to come down from the tree, or I would shake the scaffold and make him come. Robert Pease called to his son to chop me down with the axe. Pease came forward and threw a stick at my head. He picked up the axe and made towards me. My husband ran towards me, and Pease made a blow at him. He struck him on the side with the handle of the axe; he made another blow at him and struck him on the shoulder. He struck at him again, and I did not see where because I was frightened and turned my head away. I next saw my husband catch hold of the axe and take it out of Pease’s hand. He then threw the axe on the ground, and Robert Pease called to his son to pick up the axe. The son ran, and I ran, and I picked up the axe first. My husband and Pease closed in, began to scuffle and fell. The wound on his finger bled very much; the wound on his shoulder not so much.’
The Attorney-General Mr Rocher briefly addressed the jury and said they had heard but one side of the story; he would now let them hear the other. He called on 17-year-old Peter Pease, who deposed: ‘I remember the 1st October. I was falling a tree on our boundary line between my father’s land and Excell’s. My father was working near me, cutting wood in pieces. Excell came to me first and told me not to fall the trees there. He went to my father and struck him once with his fist. My father pushed the axe at him to protect himself, and Excell caught hold of my father; they were wrestling, and both fell down. Mrs Excell came up and said to me, “Oh, you b——, if you don’t come down, I’ll fetch you down.” And she struck at me with a stick. I was on the scaffold at the time; it was seven feet high. The stick struck me on the left thigh, and I caught hold of the big end of it. My father and Excell were wrestling together. Mrs Excell went towards her husband, and I came down off the scaffold to go to my father when Mrs Excell lifted the axe to me and said, “You leave him alone.” I asked her for the axe, and she said she would carry it home and show it to everyone. My father never struck at Excell with the axe during the scuffle; he never lifted the axe at all during the scuffle to strike Excell.’
To some questions by the Attorney-General, young Pease replied: ‘Some words passed between Excell and my father before any blows were struck. He told my father not to interfere with the tree I was falling. Before Mrs Excell struck me with the stick, my father called to me to chop the tree; he did not call to me to chop her down.’
Wm Jackson was called. (Jackson had given up medical studies in London to come to the Victorian Gold Rush. In the early 1860s, he bought the property next to Wm Excell’s along Carey’s Rd. When the Railton-Roland railway opened in 1917, his son John Jackson built a house/store at Roland and ran it till 1945.) Wm Jackson deposed: ‘I am a neighbour of Excell’s. He sent for me on the 1st of October, and I went to his house, to dress some wounds. He showed me a wound on the small finger of the left hand, which was rather extensively cut, and a wound on the shoulder about two inches in length. There was apparently a small bruise under his left arm. In conversation with him as to how he got these wounds, he said he cut his finger grasping at an axe. For the slight wound on his shoulder, he showed me a cut upon his shirt with a little bit of blood on it and said he had been struck with an axe. The wound on his side had been done by the handle of the axe. I have known the defendant for some years and always knew and heard of him being a peaceable, well-conducted man.’
Christopher Chilcott deposed: ‘I have resided at Kentish Plains about eight years. I have known Wm Excell and Robert Pease for about four years. At the latter end of last November, Excell was speaking to me about a horse that had been in my grain. Excell’s boy had come for the horse. Pease told me that Excell had said that I had threatened to kick the boy off the place, which wasn’t true. On another occasion, sometime later, Excell blamed Pease for shooting his dog, and he said he would make him pay for it if he had the chance. I have found Pease a very quiet neighbour and never knew anything against him.’
The jury retired for some time and then applied to have the cut on the shirt compared with the wound on Excell’s shoulder. They returned to court for this purpose and again retired. They later found the defendant, Robert Pease, not guilty. All the witnesses now faced the prospect of making the three-day return to Kentish to continue developing their farms.
William & Eliza Excell, with most of their family, moved to NZ for several years before returning to live at their Primrose Hills property in the Promised Land (later owned by Neville Byard). Wm Excell died there suddenly in 1900, aged 69, while reading the newspaper. His wife, Eliza, had died a year earlier in 1899. Both were buried in the Sheffield General Cemetery, leaving a big family to mourn their loss. One daughter, Charlotte, married Joseph Schmidt, who founded the Sheffield retail store York Schmidt & Co.
Ex-convict Robert Pease Snr d July 1891, aged 72. He was buried in the original cemetery in High St where his name appears on the Pioneer Monument. His wife, Mary Ann Pease, d1905 aged 95 and was buried without a headstone in the Sheffield General Cemetery. Robert’s younger brother Peter Pease, who had the adjoining farm, died in 1877 at the age of 52 and was also buried in the old High St Cemetery. His wife, Grace, carried on until their oldest son, Alex, and wife Louisa (Lord) Pease took over the farm and raised their 12 children, They included Cliff Pease, who married Lucy Lockett, and Alfred and Lloyd, who commenced Pease’s Shoe Shops in Burnie and Devonport. Later, John Sherriff farmed both pioneering Pease brothers’ properties.