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    • Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy Fights Prejudice and Saves Monticello
    • The Stavisky Affair - Sasha the Suave Scammer
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    • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer
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    • The Train Chaser
    • Mary Surratt
    • Farmer Brunett's Ghost Lantern
    • A Bicyclist Encounters a Phantom
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Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, Australian, and American Story

Picture
Convict Ship Neptune - Wikimedia Commons


by Kathy Warnes

Clara Leffingwell ‘s  twenty eight year search across the world for her husband Henry came to an end at the Union Depot in Cleveland, Ohio, on Friday, November 27, 1868, after decades of hard travel and heartbreak.

According to a story in the Cincinnati Times the Leffingwell’s saga began in early 1840 when Clara Leffingwell and her husband Henry lived near the suburbs of London, England.

The Leffingwell’s England – 1840

During the nineteenth century, Britain faced prevalent and persistent poverty, population, and crime problems. The author Charles Dickens took many of his scenes and stories from the conditions he observed every day. His novels including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, are graphic word pictures of the realities of the workhouse and life on the streets for England’s impoverished people and those of modest means.

Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding, estimated that after 1740, the population of England and Wales had risen dramatically from a stable six million.The Industrial Revolution displaced much of the European population and created unemployment for many people. Out of desperation, many resorted to petty theft and other crimes to survive. The government tried to find an alternative to confining people in overcrowded jails, especially in Britain where the overcrowded jails caused the authorities to use hulks from the Seven years War as floating prisons.

In 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution, London had become an overcrowded city filled with unemployed people. Crime posed a major problem that the British authorities tried unsuccessfully to solve by appointing a watchman for every parish. Since Britain didn’t have a police force, informers caught all criminals or their victims denounced them to the local court.

By the 1770s, 222 crimes in Britain carried the death penalty and almost all of them were crimes against property. A person could be executed for petty theft. Law makers decided to make punishments less harsh, but they still wanted to prevent people from committing crimes.

 Some Victorians declared that a “criminal class” existed within the population of working class people and this “criminal class” posed a danger to British society and had to be controlled and ideally removed from society. Transportation, or deporting an offender to a penal colony like Australia often seemed the best solution to the crime problem. 

Henry Leffingwell  Was Branded a Criminal

Henry Leffingwell didn’t belong to the “criminal class.” He earned a profitable living as a mechanic and he and Clara lived comfortably and happily until one day in March, 1840, someone committed a theft near where the Leffingwells lived.  The narrative thread in the newspaper articles telling Henry and Clara Leffingwell’s story, including the Southland Times in Zealand, implies that someone denounced Henry to the authorities for larceny, and they falsely accused Henry of committing the theft. 

One of the stipendary magistrates- a paid magistrate that dealt with police cases- committed him for trial, and in April 1840, Henry Leffingwell was convicted and sentenced to hard labor for ten years in the Australian penal colony. Just a week after his sentence had been pronounced, he sailed on a prison ship bound for Australia.

Henry Leffingwell’s Convict Reality

Australia
was not always a destination for British criminals. From the 1620s until the American Revolution, the British authorities transported their criminals to their colonies in North America. Historian Dr. John Dunmore Lang estimated that about 50,000 prisoners taken in battle from Ireland and Scotland along with common criminals were deported to New England and the rest of the colonies and some of them were sold to the Southern states as slaves. In 1733, with the blessing of the British Crown, James Oglethorpe founded Georgia as a colony where poor people languishing in English debtor’s prisons could begin life anew on a new continent.

After the American Revolution, the British government looked elsewhere to send their criminals. Australia, which Captain James Cook had discovered and claimed for England in April, 1770, seemed the perfect place to send criminals to labor and help develop the new country. Bounty immigrants and assisted immigrants came to settle Australia as well as paying passengers, but the British government also sent convicts to Australia for various periods of time.

Most of the convicts had been convicted of larceny in big cities like London, Liverpool, and Manchester. If a person had committed simple larceny, or robbery, they could be transported to Australia for seven years. Compound larceny which meant stealing goods worth more than $50 in modern money brought a sentence of death by hanging. Usually men had prior conviction records, while women were transported after a first offense. Most of the convicts were working people with a wide variety of skills.

At least seventy percent of the convicts the British government sent to Australia were English and Welsh, twenty four percent were Irish and five percent were Scottish. The Government sent convicts from British outposts like India, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and slaves from the Caribbean.

Once they arrived in Australia, both male and female convicts could redeem themselves. Convicts could obtain a Ticket of Leave, a document that gave them freedom to work and live within a specified district before their sentence expired of they received a pardon. If they maintained good behavior they could earn a Certificate of Freedom Conditional Pardon, or an Absolute Pardon. The Government could withdraw any of these privileges for misbehavior.
In 1868, when the last shipment of convicts disembarked in Western Australia, Great Britain had transported more than 162,000 men and women to the various Australian penal colonies on 806 ships.

Henry Leffingwell’s Journey Began

Clara Leffingwell so firmly believed in her husband Henry’s innocence, that she prepared to follow him to Australia so that she could stay close to him while he remained in prison. When his Ticket of Leave came she wanted to be the first with good counsel, comfort, and love.Henry’s convict ship arrived safely in Australia, and the authorities immediately transferred its cargo of convicts to the Government Work House.
Charles Bateson’s, The Convict Ships 1787-1868, is considered the definitive work on Australia’s convict ships and he and other researchers and writers have documented conditions on board the convict ships. The First Fleet which arrived in Australia in 1788, deposited the convicts in fairly good conditions, but as the 18th century wore on, compassion on the convict ships seemed to wear out and conditions on the ships deteriorated for the remainder of the century. 

Convicts were usually confined in chains and behind bars below decks and brought up only for exercise and fresh air. They were packed together and slept on hammocks and all of them were susceptible to diseases like scurvy, dysentery and typhoid. When they landed in the various Australian penal colonies, convicts endured cruel masters and harsh discipline.

In 1801, the British authorities monitored and evaluated the systems and changed the sailing procedures. They began scheduling the ships to sail twice a day, at the end of May and the beginning of September to avoid the dangerous southern hemisphere winters.  Independent Surgeon Superintendents responsible for the convict’s health and well being replaced the surgeons accountable only to the ship’s captain. Charterers of the ships also received a bonus to disembark the prisoners safe and healthy at voyage end.

By 1840, the time of Henry Leffingwell’s voyage, more enlightened convict ship practices were in place, including a ship’s Religious Instructor who educated the convicts and ministered to their spiritual needs.  Henry Leffingwell’s ship arrived safely and he and his fellow convicts were transferred to the Government Work House.

Clara Leffingwell’s Journey Began and Continued

Clara Leffingwell did not fare as well on her journey. The ship she traveled on had reached the halfway point to Australia, when a fierce storm broke. The waves buffeted her ship for two days and then it foundered and sank. Mrs. Leffingwell and the crew escaped on a hastily built raft and were adrift on the Pacific Ocean for several days before an American ship, the North Wind, bound from New York to China, rescued them.  

Eventually, Clara Leffingwell landed in Japan, her hopes of finding Henry fading on the horizon. After she patiently waited and watched for several months, the American consul at Tokyo, Japan, helped her get a passage to Cuba, where according to the newspaper stories and not geographical distance, her chances of reaching Australia greatly improved.  For the next year and half, Clara Leffingwell passed through several trying experiences, but eventually she landed in Australia, not knowing Henry’s whereabouts. Each convict landing from a ship received a number so his keepers could identify him, and she didn’t know his number. For the next four years, she desperately asked ship’s captains and other authorities about Henry, but when they asked her “His number, ma’m?” she couldn’t tell them because she didn’t know it.

Clara spent four years searching for Henry. She exhausted her funds and had to work at menial labor to sustain herself and her search. One day she picked up a Sydney paper and to her astonishment read the story of her husband Henry’s release and that the real criminal had been caught and deported. The story matched her husband’s number and the facts of his conviction and deportation so closely that she knew it was her husband, Henry Leffingwell. She went to the prison authorities at Sydney and she learned that Ticket of Leave Man No 186, her husband Henry, had left Australia for the United States two weeks after his release.

Scraping together her few remaining funds, in June 1847, she found herself once more in a ship on the ocean bound for the United States of America. She arrived in New York City without being shipwrecked, and she spent the next fourteen years unsuccessfully searching for Henry.

Henry and Clara Leffingwell Served in the American Civil War

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Clara Leffingwell still had not heard a word about her husband Henry. She answered the first call for nurses in the hospitals and all during the war she nursed wounded soldiers. While she worked at one of the hospitals in Washington D.C., she nursed a man to life and strength who had known her husband in the Union Army. In fact, the man had been Henry’s messmate and close friend and while delirious from his wound, had repeatedly called for Henry to help him.

When Clara Leffingwell discovered that Henry’s friend had passed the crisis and recovered, she questioned him about her husband and discovered that he was in a Pennsylvania regiment and that he had enlisted from Pittsburgh two years before. Immediately, Clara wrote her husband a letter telling him the story of her trials and tribulations in her efforts to find him. Thanks to Army mail snags, her letter never reached her husband. Clara watched and waited hopefully, but she never received an answer to her letter.

Finally, the American Civil War ended in 1865, and Clark Leffingwell traveled to Pittsburgh. In   Pittsburgh she discovered that Henry’s term of enlistment had long ago expired and his whereabouts were once more unknown. She placed advertisements in numerous Pennsylvania papers searching for his location and one again, she watched and waited.

Time crawled along, and Clara Leffingwell had nearly given up hope of seeing Henry again, when one day in late November 1868, she received a letter from someone who came across one of the advertisements she had put in the paper in 1865. Her informant told her that her husband lived in or near Cincinnati, and that he knew that she was coming. Clara left Pittsburgh on Friday morning, November 27, 1868, and arrived in Cleveland in the afternoon of the same day.

Climbing down from the train at the Union Depot in Cleveland, Clara went to get something to eat for her midday meal. Suddenly, she came face to face with her husband, Henry Leffingwell! For several startled minutes they just stared at each other. Then both following the same impluse, they rushed into each other’s arms, oblivious of the crowds of people who stopped to stare at their reunion.

During their separation, time had silvered the heads of Clara and Henry and left lines of care on their faces, but it hadn’t changed their love for each other. At seven o’clock that evening, they took the train home for Cincinnati, happy and reunited at last.

Unfinished Chapters?

Can Henry and Clara’s story be documented using English, Australian, and American records? They are two people in the vast pool of human history, but their story if it happened the way the newspapers narrated it, is human, touching, and historical.

References

Baker, Donald. Preacher, Politician, Patriot: a Life of John Dunmore Lang, Melbourne University Press, 1998.
Bateson,  Charles. The Convict Ships, 1787-1868.  Sydney, London: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1974.
Emsley, Clive. Crime and English Society 1750-1900. 2nd edition, Longman, 1996.
Emsley, Clive. The English Police: A Political and Social History. 2nd edition, Longman, 1996.
Ekirch, A. Roger. Bound for America. The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775. Clarendon, 1990.
Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding. Vintage Books, 1988.
Lang, John Dunmore. Reminiscences of My Life and Times, Both in Church and States in Australia, for Upwards of Fifty Years, an autobiographical manuscript, unpublished in Lang’s lifetime. Edited by Donald Baker. Heineman, Melbourne, 1972.
Shaw, A.G. L. Convicts and the Colonies. Melbourne University Press, 1977.

Newspapers that Carried the Leffingwell’s Story
Cleveland Herald, November 28, 1869 Southland Times, New Zealand, 1869 Brooklyn Eagle, December 8, 1868 Morning Chronicle, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1868

Copyright Notice

All of the material on this website is copyrighted.  You are free to link to any of the articles and to download any of the PDF books to read and use as long as you credit me as the author. I fully hope and expect the classroom activities to be freely used.      kathywarnes@gmail.com
Picture
Sunset on Lake Michigan in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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  • Welcome to History? ...
  • Sing Along to the Spring Siren Song
  • Ohio Ghosts Whisper....
  • Major Archie Butt Had a Gift for Friendship, Even on the Titanic
  • A Love Story for Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
  • Valentine's Day Crossword
  • Titanic Headlines, Titanic Questions
  • Hoover Dam
  • Journalists in History
    • Ernie Pyle
    • Robert St. John
    • Joseph Morton
    • Robert Cromie
    • Agnes Meyer and Katherine Graham
    • Walter Cronkite
    • Sigrid Schultz
    • Jack Denton Scott
  • March is Women's History Month!
  • Alcohol in American History - John Barleycorn Tells Some of His Story
  • As Relevant As Today- The Past Connects with the Present
    • Ignoring History is Irrelevant
    • Honoring a Veteran: Veteran's Day, November 11, 2012
    • December 1, 1958: The Day Chicago Cried with Our Lady of the Angels
    • Remembering the Vietnam War - 37 Years Present
    • Rebellion, Murder, and Voting Rights in Rhode Island
  • Words and Remembrance-May 1970 at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi
  • Rub-a-dub-dub in Your Historical Bathtub!
  • The Freedom Summer Murders Changed American Racial Attitudes
  • To Beard Or Not To Beard - That is the Historical Question
  • Scarecrows Historically Speaking
  • Diversionary Thoughts for the Dentists Chair
  • Humans in History
    • Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo, Artists of Montmartre
    • Grandmother Clara Zetkin Speaks
    • High Stepping Ohio Horseman
    • Philip Teitelbaum Creates a Money Making Machine
    • The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake..
    • Poul le Cour
    • John Collier's Fight for Indian Rights and the First and Last Superintendent of Indian Affairs
    • Lt. Colonel Ely Parker, First Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, American, and Australian Story
    • The Murderer and the Museum Curator - Nathan Leopold and Kirtland's Warbler
    • Wilbur Carr, the State Department, and Immigration - 1920-1945
    • Billy Sunday Preached His Prayer Pennant Willing Baseball Story
    • William Alden Smith, Michigan's Titanic Senator
    • Helen and Dickinson Bishop Survive An Earthquake and the Titanic
    • Faster Than Flames: Locomotive Engineer James Root Races the Hinckley Fire
    • Three Hot and Contentious Weeks in July 1925 - The Scopes "Monkey " Trial
    • The Confederados Become Brazilian, but Honor Their American Southern Roots
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goosedown Divorce
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, Australian, and American Story
    • The Molly Maguires - Trailblazers or Terrorists?
    • Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy Fights Prejudice and Saves Monticello
    • The Stavisky Affair - Sasha the Suave Scammer
    • General Santa Anna, Chicle, and Chewing Gum
    • James J. Metcalfe, Gangbuster, Reporter, Poet
  • Women Along the Historical Way
    • Lucena Brockway Adapts to Life in the Keweenaw Copper Mining Country of Lake Superior
    • Ida Tarbell- "Bachelor Soul." Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helped Her Survive the Titanic and Life Beyond
    • Clara Zetkin Speaks Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry - The Courage to Live
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Margaret Fox Kane's Victorian Love Story
    • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Acting History-History Plays
  • Practicing History
  • Classroom Clues
    • Power Point Pointers
    • Pieces of the World History Puzzle
    • Time Machine Tours
  • The Haunted Hollows of History
    • Does Columbus Haunt His Ships...
    • The Phantom Plowman
    • The Western Reserve and the Gilcher
    • The Ticonderoga's Haunted Bell
    • The Train Chaser
    • Mary Surratt
    • Farmer Brunett's Ghost Lantern
    • A Bicyclist Encounters a Phantom
  • Wading in Historical Waters
    • The Lady and the Patriot- The Fateful Voyage of Theodosia Burr Alston
    • Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk- Snatching Soldiers from the Fingers of the Nazis
    • Beaver Island - Mormon Kingdom, Fisherman's Paradise, Pirate Lair
    • Captain Jedediah Spinnet and His Sons Caught Fish and Pirates
    • Roman Emperor Caligula and His Legendary Lake Nemi Ships
    • Great Lakes Steamers and the Black Hawk War
    • Captain Harry Ward Cruised Gold Fields and Commanded a Slave Ship
    • "Father Put Me in the Boat-" The Story of the Northfleet
  • Catching Up with Clio's Creatures
    • Gertie the Duck, Black Bill, and the Muffled Memorial Day Parade
    • Verdun Belle Rescues a Shell-Shocked World War I Marine
    • Storks are the Stuff of Legend and Every Day Life
    • Susa White Gives Her Pet Lamb Nebby to Boston
    • Sergeant Stubby, the World War I Dog
    • Pistol Head, Cocker Spaniel, Combat Veteran
    • Sallie the Civil War Heroine
  • Creative History
    • World War II Photographs by Sandy Blakeman
    • Church Going is a Common Historical Experience
  • Musical Muse
    • Lydia Maria Child Writes and Explores Over the River and Through the Wood
    • Solomon Linda, Mbube, Wimoweh, The Lion Sleeps Tonight
    • Leroy Anderson Captures Fun and Feelings in His Music
    • Harry Barnhart Helped Soldiers Sing Their Way Through World War I >
      • Presidents in a Package-George Washington >
        • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
        • George and Harry Washington Fight for Freedom
        • Charles Wedel Served on Manitowoc Submarines >
          • Navy Diver Frank Prebezich Remembered Pearl Harbor by Salvaging Battleships
          • Stan Valentine at Pearl Harbor
          • World War II - Serving Aboard the USS Enterpise
          • Michel Linovich-an Italian in Napoleon's Grand Army
          • Charles Whittlesey- Scholar, Soldier, Humanist
          • The Five Sullivan Brothers Stick Together...
          • Kentuckian James Andrews and the Yankee Bridge Burners
          • General Grant, General Babcock, General McDonald and Journalist Colony: A Study in Scandal and Friendship
          • The Dudman Family Lived the Meaning...
        • George Washington Travels French Creek to Fort Le Boeuf
        • Miracle in World War I - the Christmas
        • Presidents in a Package - Thomas Jefferson
        • President James Monroe Inspects Michigan Territory - 1817
        • President Grover Cleveland's Secret Surgery on the Steam Yacht Oneida
        • John Kissinger Volunteers to Get Yellow Fever
        • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
        • Violets for Valor - Two Bereaved Fathers in the Civil War
      • Clarence and Mildred Beltmann - Persevering Through Hard Times
    • Singing Kumbayah- Harmonious in Hope, Discordant in Derision
    • James Bird - The Battle of Lake Erie, The Execution, The Ballad
    • PDF Musical Muse- Music History
    • Phil Ochs- A Musical Conscience of the 1960s and Beyond
    • Dan Fogelberg and His Music
    • Philip Paul Bliss and His Trunk of Songs
    • Riding with Private Andrew Malone: For All of those who didn't Make it Home
    • Do You Ken John Peel?
    • "Mind the Music and the Step-" Yankee Doodle Sings History
  • Back Water River and British Bluster
  • Soldier's Stories
  • September 11, 2001 is a "Mixed Feeling Day"
  • Memories of the Pearl Harbor Attack Haven't Faded with Time
    • Memories of Pearl Harbor
  • Light and Radiance - Figure Skater Laurence Owen and Her Team
  • Historic Halloween Tales
  • Thanksgiving Perspectives
    • Drive A Thanksgiving Turkey!
    • The Centerpiece of Thanksgiving Celebrations is Giving Thanks >
      • Presidents in a Package - Abraham Lincoln
      • Americans and Britons Celebrated Thanksgiving 1942 in War Weathered England
      • Writing a Gratitude Journal for Thanksgiving Day
      • "Do You Hear What I Hear?" >
        • Christmas Eve, 1941-A Sailor
        • Alfred Burt and Wihla Hutson
        • Milwaukee Soldiers and Sailors in World War II
        • History Sports Scenes >
          • Throwing Out the First Pitch - American Presidents On Opening Day
          • Kenesaw Mountain Landis
          • Jim Rice - A Big Time Coach in a Small Town
          • Playing Lucky Baseball with Lady Luck Sitting in the Catbird Seat
        • Silent Night Had Simple Beginnings >
          • The Angels Song - It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
          • Stuffing Stockings on St. Nicholas Day >
            • Mrs. Santa Claus- A Strong and Supportive
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