Carmen Callil - Oh Happy Day

Bad Faith

A forgotten history of family and fatherland

with Colm Tibn

The Modern Library

The 200 best novels in English since 1950

Sarah Lacey called herself Sary when she was young. I refer to her as Sary throughout in order to distinguish her from all the other Sarahs in this story.

A stockinger is a knitter, a person who knits on a stocking frame.

Illegitimate, delivered of

Named so because the church wardens who urged and attended marriages of the parents of illegitimate children carried such an object as their magic wand of office.

The Magic Pudding is a classic Australian childrens book by Norman Lindsay, published in 1918.

For fuller family trees see Appendices, .

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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright Carmen Callil 2020

Jacket Design Suzanne Dean
Typography Etta Vorsanger-Brill

First published by Jonathan Cape in 2020

Carmen Callil has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

The author and publishers have made every effort to trace and contact copyright holders.
The publishers will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in future editions.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781473574687

For people who lived and live like this

To Henry Hunt, Esq., engraving depicting the Peterloo Massacre, published by Richard Carlile, 1 October 1819 (Alamy)

A stockingers knitting frame (reproduced courtesy of Leicester Arts and Museum Service)

Interior of an English workhouse under the New Poor Law Act, 1834 ( National Archives)

The Model Union Workhouse, 1841 ( Punch Limited)

Demonstration on Copenhagen Fields, London, 21 April 1834 (Alamy)

Poster recruiting emigrants, Canterbury Association, 1849

The Manchester Coach, drawing by T. Allom, engraved by S. Lacey, 1837

The Sheep Market, Market Harborough, drawing by George Clarke of Scaldwell, 1836

The old Independent Meeting House, Market Harborough (photograph reproduced by kind permission of Kristin Allen)

Stagecoach and coaching inn (Getty)

Burghley House, Stamford, 1898 (Alamy)

Richard Brooks tombstone (authors own)

The May Sheep Fair, Boston, c. 1840, after George Northouse, lithograph by E. Kaufman, 1845

Bothamley shopfront, Market Place, Boston

Perspective View of a Workhouse for 300 Paupers, Sampson Kempthorne, 1835 (Alamy)

Convicts being rowed out to a prison hulk on the Thames, after Samuel Prout, 1826, engraving by George Cooke, 1834 ( National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

The convicts returning to their hulks from their labour in the arsenal, illustration from Henry Mayhew, The Criminal Prisons of London, 1862 (Alamy)

View of Port Jackson, Richard Read Senior, c. 1820s (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales)

Captain Arthur Phillip, first governor of New South Wales, Francis Wheatley RA, 1786 (Alamy)

The Point of Honour, George Cruikshank, 1825 (Alamy)

Major General Lachlan Macquarie, fifth governor of New South Wales, attrib. John Opie RA, c. 1805 (Alamy)

A Government Chain Gang, Sydney, 1830, by Augustus Earle (Alamy)

Australian birds, illustrations from a Soviet encyclopedia, 1926 (Alamy)

Convict uniform and two caps, c. 1830s 40s (National Library of Australia, nla.obj-139411772)

Flogging a Convict at Moreton Bay, frontispiece of The Fell Tyrant, or, The Suffering Convict, 1836 (State Library of New South Wales)

Melbourne, 1840, engraving from the original sketch by S. H. Haydon (Alamy)

Mrs Winslows Soothing Syrup trade card, c. 1900 (Alamy)

Melbourne Morning Herald, 11 November 1850 (State Library of New South Wales)

Zealous Gold Diggers, Bendigo, July 1852, Samuel Thomas Gill (Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-135678315)

Pacific Chivalry: Encouragement to Chinese Immigration, Thomas Nast, Harpers Weekly, 7 August 1869 (Alamy)

Miners with reef gold from Star of Hope mine, c. 1873 (State Library of New South Wales)

Swearing Allegiance to the Southern Cross, 1 December 1854, Charles A Doudiet, 1854 (Art Gallery of Ballarat / Alamy)

Here and There, or, Emigration a Remedy, Punch, vol. 15, 1848, p. 27 ( Punch Limited)

Scene on Board an Australian Emigrant Ship, Illustrated London News, 20 January 1849 (Getty Images)

From Great Britain to Solve Our Domestic Problem, Canberra Times, 3 February 1927

The first Independent chapel, Prahran, Melbourne, 1851, drawing based on a pencil sketch by C. F.

William Moss, 1851

Funeral Parlour, Chapel Street, Prahran, Melbourne, c. 1852

Robinson Street today (authors collection)

The Allen family, c. 1895 (authors collection)

Alfred Allen, 1907, Yarra Bend Asylum for the Insane, Melbourne

Annie OLeary family photograph, 1904 (reproduced by kind permission of Sheila Geary)

Latoof & Callil receipt (Callil family papers)

Ernest Allen (reproduced by kind permission of Julian Callil)

Peter Callil (reproduced by kind permission of Julian Callil)

Latoof & Callil, Exhibition Street, 1957 (Ms Justine Makin, of John Wardle Architects, reproduced courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

Mary Ann Brooks, c. 1920s (reproduced by kind permission of Julian Callil)

A BOOK SUCH AS THIS, both story and history, requires a different approach to history and a different way of writing about it. My account of the lives of George and Sary, Mary Ann and their families is the result of copious investigation. But sometimes I have had to intuit things, make connections and suppositions. Any mistakes are mine alone, and I will happily correct them.

When I began the research for this book, I intended to write about all my diverse emigrant ancestors, English, Irish and Lebanese, who were sent or emigrated to Australia in the nineteenth century. Many of us are the descendants of people like them, the poor, the criminal, the surplus population of the world, then and now. But I decided to concentrate on my English forebears because, as I wrote, that English construct, the social pyramid, rose again before me. The wealthy and entitled few at the top continue to prey on the much larger number of the poorer beneath them: not lost, not gone before, but in vigorous health, and as strong as ever.