Transcription of the Diary of John Basson Humffray

J.B. Humffray Journal 1853-54

including the Diary of his Voyage on the “Star of the East” July –September 1853

Transcribed by Ted Maidment

Foreword On Saturday November 11th, 1854, just three weeks before the Eureka event, there was a meeting of about 10,000 miners at Bakery Hill in Ballarat. This meeting adopted a Charter of Democratic Rights as put forward by secretary/spokesman of the “Ballarat Reform League”, John Basson Humffray. This Charter was submitted to Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham.

Over the next few weeks a series of events occurred, including the killing of James Scobie, the burning of the Eureka Hotel and the arrival of troop reinforcements. On November 29th there was another mass meeting of the miners, who were told that the Charter was effectively rejected, and so turned from the pathway of conciliation to the alternative of taking arms under Peter Lalor, leading in turn to the Eureka event on December 3rd. While not denying in any way the significance of Eureka, it by no means confined the Charter – and Humffray - to insignificance. To the contrary, it became the basis upon which the miners’ democratic rights were put into law, and is recognised by being added in 2004 to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register as one of Australia’s most fundamental National documents.

While Humffray, the Secretary of the League, separated himself from the Eureka conflict, he was, along with Lalor, elected as an MLC for Ballarat to the Parliament in 1855. With the franchise extended, he was elected as MLA at the end of 1856 for the electorate of North Grant, and was re-elected under changed boundaries for East Ballarat in 1859. He lost his place in 1864, was re-elected in 1868, but lost the next two attempts in 1871 and 1874. His life ended in comparative obscurity and poverty and he died in 1891. He was buried, as he wished, in the Ballarat Old Cemetery close to the Diggers Memorial.

Despite his fall from prominence, his part in shaping democracy in Victoria cannot be overlooked. That this young man was able to speak in public and put forward the Charter, written in his own fair hand, only a little more than a year after arriving in the Colony, is quite remarkable. It is known that he was born in Newton, Montgomeryshire, Wales; his father was a master weaver and the family was actively involved in the Chartist Movement. In 1853, at the age of 30, he left his home in Shrewsbury, his wife, and a career as an articled clerk to a solicitor, to journey, with his young brother Frederick, to seek his fortune on the other side of the world. He embarked on the Star of the East, under Captain Robertson, on July 7th 1853, and arrived in Melbourne on September 22nd, and after a short period in Melbourne made his way to Ballarat. The Journal transcribed here, currently held as part of the Ballarat Historical Society collection, is a now-uncovered, unlined, quarto-sized book which J. B. Humffray has written under a number of headings. The majority of the material was written during the voyage on the Star of the East, with some few items being added during his first year in Victoria. The major segment is the Shipboard Diary, but there are also entries which include philosophical and religious reflections, drafts of shipboard ‘papers’, rules for shipboard conduct, rules for setting up a mining group on arrival, a vote of thanks to the Captain, complaints concerning the shipping agent and a very interesting funeral oration.

The calligraphy of what is written is varies from easy to read to almost impossible, and size from minute to very large. The physical conditions would have played a considerable part in this problem. Some of the non-Diary material appears as draft copies from which final copies were presumably made. This means that the vast majority of the content is private in nature, and therefore not intended for anyone else. A further complication is in the occasional use of shorthand, at least some of which I am told is a very early form of Pitman – this would be a probably be a skill Humffray employed in his career as an articled solicitors’ clerk. Blank spaces where he apparently intended to fill in the missing words or finish a sentence, or add a sketch, are again frustrating and may be the result of faded pencil work. Other ‘gaps’ are caused by indecipherable writing or by shorthand which the team has been unable to translate.

Concerning the shorthand, I would acknowledge the assistance given by Nancy Beecham, Annabelle Anderson and others from the North Coast of NSW. This very early version of shorthand, combined with the problems of shipboard motion, made this a very difficult task and the words painstakingly unravelled are a positive contribution to what Humffray was telling.