You think you’ve had a bad day?

4 October 1843 Van Diemen’s Land; a British Prison Colony:

• Irish “Javelin Man” and convicted felon, Sir John Turner Flinn used to be a navy intelligence officer but at the age of fifty he’s been transported for life. How can he retain the respect of his sons and restore his honor? “Javelin Men” were trustee convicts who were employed as turn-keys, prisoner escorts and as guards at public hangings.
• The new Governor learns his “sinecure” is a “poison chalice” as the Colony’s bankrupt and his reform agenda unworkable..
• The new police chief, Frank Burgess is worried; he’s supposed to clean up a force that’s manned by serving convicts and brutality and graft is a way of life.
• Long serving colonial auditor, George Boyes is fed up with the worse thieves in the Colony; the Men at the Top.
• Bushrangers, Marty Cash and Lawrie Kavenagh pace the death cell dreading the gallows. They broke out of Port Arthur Prison, went on a rampage but now they must pay. Lawrie says he only escaped to go to Mass.
• Convicted Irish Patriot, Richard Jones is a man the System can’t break. His plan to seize the prison ship and to sail to New York, would have worked but for betrayal. He faced trial for piracy in Hobart but out-witted “the System” and beat the charge. However, he must finish his original sentence and he’s now in solitary and recovering from a savage flogging inflicted for leading a protest about the absence of Catholic prison chaplains. Dreams of liberty and dignity in America are the only thing keeping him going.
• Pub owner and widow, Mary Anne Smith is a beautiful, passionate but brutalized former convict; she’s lonely and yearns for a strong but gentle man.


• The only person who’s had a good day is magistrate, John Giles Price. He’s a man with a very dark past and he’s planning an even darker future…

How the Story Came About.
"John Turner Flinn" dropped into my lap one Christmas holiday in Alice Springs NT. It was too hot to do anything but watch videos and we became engrossed in a crime series set in the 1920’s. My girlfriend’s granddad was a gangster in Melbourne in that era so we looked him up on “Trove”. After seeing his many press cuttings, we decided to dig into earlier generations and uncovered an array of petty thieves, Swing Rioters, ships’ captains, a Chinese gold miner and a lot of wayward women.

I became jealous as my own family tree yielded a staid collection of Lancashire refugees from the Irish “Great Hunger” of ‘47. Envy led to a series of “jokes” about “checking change” and “watching pockets”; the response went from polite smiles to “probably a lot of your bloody relatives came here in chains as well!” I decided to check this and the first “Flynn” I saw on a convict list became my hero; John Turner Flinn. His record revealed he’d been an “officer and gentleman” in the Navy and contained a strange reference to the “Regiment” so I “Googled” further and found :

• His case was in the “Newgate Calendar” so his trial was big news.
• He gave evidence at Queen Caroline’s trial for adultery in 1820. The trial was example of public crucifixion of another “People’s Princess”.
• He was a “spook” in the Napoleonic War; and then
• The coup de grace; rumors that his wife, Edwardina Kent was the secret daughter of Queen Caroline and the Prince Regent. If true, this gave her a better claim on the throne than Victoria.