A large coloured, silk, needlework sampler, embroidered by Margaret Ingham, dated Sydney, August 31st, 1844, woven with figures, flowers, baskets of fruit and central verse entitled Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. The verse is taken from a letter by I.N. Cooper, Lieutenant, 58 Regiment, Commanding Guard of the Blundell, convict transport ship to the family of Samuel Ingham reporting his death of consumption whilst on a voyage from England to Norfolk Island in 1844.

Samuel Ingham, a private in the 58th Regiment of Foot, was sent out with other members of the 58th Regiment to take over garrison duties in the colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s (Tasmania) from the 80th Regiment. The 58th Regiment provided guards on 19 convict ships to Norfolk Island and Van Diemen’s Land between 1842 and 1845. In March 1844, Lieutenant I.N. Cooper, Private Ingham, along with 33 other rank and file of the Regiment, embarked on board the 573 ton, three masted barque Blundell, to act as the guard for 210 male convicts. According to the ship’s surgeon Benjamin Bynoe, whose log has been copied under the Australian Joint Copying Project, there was only one death on the voyage, a case of phthisis or consumption, what is today called tuberculosis, The victim, Private Samuel Ingham, was subsequently buried at sea and his family in England contacted. Mourning silk works were not an uncommon art form in England and America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They appeared to evolve from European art that commemorated deceased heroes.

Mourning pictures, cards, silk works and wool works became an acceptable way of remembering a loved one and were designed to hang in the ‘public rooms’ of the house. They were considered neither morbid nor over sentimental and reflected the religious and social ideals of the period. Although samplers were traditionally made as away of showing off a young woman’s skills in housework - creating a work of mourning art was not simply an art exercise. Apart from demonstrating a talent for needlework and design, it reinforced literary, religious and historic lessons by incorporating into the mourning scene symbols such as the urn, the elm, the willow, the fern, flowers and thistles. Elements that represent life after death, strength, dignity and resurrection. Very few examples of material directly related to the transportation of convicts to Australia survives. No other examples of a memorial silkwork directly related to convict transportation to Australia have been located in any Australian public collection. This sampler is a rare, possible a unique item, illustrating the impact and cost of convict transportation from an unusual angle, from the friends and family of one of the guards. (Keiran Hosty 2005)

The substance of this sampler is a transcription in cross stitch of a condolence letter written from Sydney on 31 August 1844 by Lieutenant Isaac Rhodes Cooper (1819-1889) of the 58th Regiment to the father of Samuel Ingham, a 21 year old Private in the 58th Regiment, who died on board the convict transport Blundell on 19 May 1844, while the ship was en route to Norfolk Island with a cargo of male convicts. Cooper was the officer commanding the detachment of the 58th Regiment serving as guard for the voyage.

The Blundell had sailed from England on 20 March 1844 and according the medical journal kept by the ship’s surgeon-superintendent Benjamin Bynoe (1803-1865) Ingham had been taken ill almost immediately. He was put on the sick list on 29 March when Bynoe recorded that Ingham complained of having been a subject of cough & expectoration for the last six months and that he had been told by the examining medical officer at Chatham that the voyage would be beneficial. He was diagnosed with phthisis [tuberculosis] and never recovered, Bynoe noting on May 18th that he was “sinking very fast, refuses all nourishment, he gradually became weaker and died on the 19th day May 10 pm”. The Blundell arrived at Norfolk Island on 5 July 1844, landed 210 prisoners the following day and departed for Port Jackson on the same evening, arriving on 30 July 1844.

The maker of the sampler stitches her name as ‘Margret Ingham’ and must surely be related to Samuel Ingham, perhaps a younger sister, possibly a young cousin. Her identity is yet to be discovered, as is the identity of Samuel’s father, the man to whom Lieut. Cooper has taken some trouble to write a detailed letter.

There are a number of ‘errors’ in the transcription of the letter. The date of death is given as 18 May (although that error may have been Cooper’s), Bynoe’s name is stitched as Bynor and Cooper’s initials are given as I. N. The mis-transcription of the names, and even the substance of the sampler, could suggest that it may have been sewn some time after the date of the event that it records.

Benjamin Bynoe was born in Barbados in the West Indies. He was assistant naval surgeon and later surgeon on HMS Beagle from 1825 until 1843 including the voyage under Captain Robert FitzRoy with Charles Darwin 1831-1836. Professionally, Bynoe was a ship's surgeon, but he was also a naturalist and is immortalized in geographical features and in the names of Australian plants and animals.

Isaac Rhodes Cooper joined the 58th (The Rutlandshire) Regiment of Foot as an Ensign by purchase on23 April 1839. He became Lieutenant by purchase on 16 November 1841 and Captain in 1851, retiring in 1857 in New Zealand. He spent his final years in the Sydney suburb of Manly.
(Megan Martin March 2016) The National Archives (Kew) ADM 101/12/7 Medical Journal of the Blundell