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Keck,Henry
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Unique IDPE-000040SurnameKeckGiven namesHenryBirth date1st January 1800Birth date qualifieryear onlyDeath date1st January 1863Death date qualifieryear onlyBiographical noteHENRY KECK’S LIFE AND CAREER
Henry Keck was baptised in 1800 in Balbriggan Parish, County Dublin, Ireland.
He was the son of Thomas Keck and Sarah Lowe. Thomas Keck came to Ireland in 1787 holding an administrative position with the British Army under the command of the Marquis of Buckingham. His prior origins are not known. Subsequently he held office in the Military Department of the British Government in Ireland at Dublin Castle. In 1798, while convalescing at Balbriggan north of Dublin, he had raised a group of Loyalist volunteers who kept the north road open during the Rebellion. His health declined further and he was appointed Barrack Master at Cashel in 1801 and from 1807 at Fethard, Limerick where he died in 1816. He was survived by his wife and 6 children.
In 1818, the eldest son, Thomas Keck junior, aged then about 24, sought patronage on behalf of himself, his mother and younger siblings from Robert Peel. Peel was at that time Chief Secretary for Ireland in the British Government, having been some years earlier the MP for the Borough of Cashel. Peel expressed some reluctance to help but in January 1819, Thomas Keck junior was appointed Assistant Office Keeper in the Chief Secretary’s office, Civil Department, Dublin Castle. He became Office Keeper in 1831 and in 1838 the Principal Office Keeper and Clerk of Disbursements, a position he held until his death in December 1850. His residence was also in the Castle. In February 1819 his sister, Frances Keck, was appointed Housekeeper and Fire Dresser, a position she held until her retirement in 1853. In May 1819, Henry Keck was appointed Office Porter. The youngest Keck brother, Samuel, became in 1824 a constable in the Irish Constabulary.
Henry Keck when aged only 20 married Teresa Fitzgerald, also a minor, in Dublin in January 1820. He and Teresa had five children in the following 11 years. Then, for reasons unknown, Henry decided to migrate to NSW. He arrived in Sydney on 29 October 1832 aboard the ship Sarah from Liverpool and was accompanied by his five children and an infant acknowledged as his daughter Fanny Keck and a female servant whose identity is not known just as the identity of Fanny’s mother is not known. His wife did not accompany him. He and the eligible children had come as bounty immigrants although he had paid for cabin accommodation.
A family oral tradition was that Keck had come to be private secretary to the Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, who was of Anglo-Irish origins, but that Bourke had decided to employ his son in that role. In Dublin, Keck had known John Hubert Plunkett. Plunkett had arrived in NSW in June 1832 and had been appointed the NSW Solicitor General. (He was later to become Attorney General and a Member of the NSW Parliament.) The Keck family may also have had some connection to Thomas Spring Rice as Keck’s son, Henry, was known as Henry Rice Keck. Spring Rice (later Lord Monteagle) was the Member for Limerick in the British Parliament, and a close life-long friend of Sir Richard Bourke; he was the Secretary of State for War and Colonies and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Whig administrations in the 1830’s. Whatever the connections or whatever the credentials from his public service in Dublin Castle, Keck clearly gained and retained the support of Bourke who was Governor until 1837. This support was continued by Governors Gipps and Fitzroy.
In December 1832, Bourke appointed Keck as Assistant Superintendent of the hulk Phoenix which was moored in Sydney Harbour. The Phoenix was used as housing for certain Government iron gangs, for some aged incapable convicts, or for convicts in transit (either brought to Sydney from the country for official purposes or newly arrived convicts considered dangerous because educated who were to be sent as soon as possible out of Sydney).
In his time on Phoenix, Keck encountered three people who were to play important roles in his life or its recording: Thomas Makeig, Elias Hibbs and Edmund Brewer Campbell.
The first person of note was Thomas Makeig, the Superintendent of the Phoenix. Henry’s relationship with Makeig resulted in the recording of many details of Henry’s private life which would otherwise have remained unknown. Makeig wrote an immediate protest to the Governor on Keck’s appointment. He wrote of the impossibility of accommodating Keck, 6 children and female servant in the small cabin available for use and he bewailed Keck’s lack of the nautical experience necessary in managing a moored ship in the case of storms or winds and also his inexperience in the management of dangerous or wily prisoners. Despite these misgivings, he and Makeig appear to have gone on to have a harmonious professional relationship. Makeig was married to Sarah, the daughter of Abner Brown who was the Ordnance Storekeeper or Master in Sydney until 1838. Perhaps under the stress of domestic tragedies with the death on 26th April 1838 of his wife, the departure from Sydney to England on the 29th April of his father-in-law, and then the death of his infant daughter on the 6th May all of which had followed on his loss of job as Phoenix had been decommissioned, Makeig suffered a mental collapse and was committed to the Lunatic Asylum at Liverpool on 10th May 1838. Keck took care of his only surviving child Abner Thomas, born 1833, and administered Makeig’s estate after his death in August 1839. When Abner Brown wrote to Governor Gipps in 1842 accusing Keck of malfeasance in regard to Makeig’s affairs, he gave many details of Keck’s private life.
The second person of note was Elias Hibbs, a turnkey, first on Phoenix, then at Sydney Gaol and from 1838 the Principal Turnkey at Sydney Gaol. Hibbs and Keck had a stormy but mutually beneficial professional relationship for nearly 17 years.
The third person of note was Edmund Campbell Brewer, a convict and former school teacher convicted of forgery, who arrived in Sydney in September 1834. His wife, together with their children, her mother, her sister and brother, followed him to Sydney arriving while he was aboard Phoenix awaiting transfer to Port Macquarie. Sarah Whitehouse, Brewer’s sister-in-law, became Keck’s mistress and mother of five of his children of whom only two survived to adulthood. She remained his mistress until her death in 1850. Brewer, himself, and his wife Ann benefited from Keck’s presumed patronage. Ann Brewer went to Port Macquarie following her husband and was appointed the Matron of the Female Factory in November 1840 until June 1842. The Brewer family returned to Sydney in 1842. Edmund Brewer’s petition for his conditional pardon in 1847 was endorsed by luminaries of the legal and justice administration systems, namely Sheriff Adolphus William Young, Chief Justice Alfred Stephen, John N Dickinson, William a’Beckett and Magistrate Joseph Long Innes. Brewer was appointed Assistant Sheriff’s Bailiff in 1848. His wife Ann was appointed caretaker of the Criminal Courthouse at Darlinghurst next to the Gaol in about 1845.
In late 1834 or early 1835 Keck appointed Sarah Whitehouse as governess to his children but she soon became his mistress and their first child, a son known later in his life as Henry Gerald or Henry George Kirby, was born in July 1836. In the meanwhile, Keck’s wife Teresa had enterprisingly arrived in NSW aboard Canton in June 1835 as a bounty immigrant described as female, unmarried and a governess aged 29. Upon arrival she announced her identity as the wife of Henry Keck. The marriage resumed and their last child, Henrietta, was born in July 1837. Keck, nevertheless, continued his relationship with Sarah Whitehouse known also as Sarah Kirby.
In July 1836, Keck was appointed Superintendent of the House of Correction and the Debtors’ Prison at Carters’ Barracks. His career continued to flourish and he became Principal Gaoler of Sydney Gaol in October 1837 more than doubling his salary to £250 pa plus £50 in lieu of a house. He prospered further when the Gaol transferred to Darlinghurst in 1841 where he had the use of the substantial sandstone house built for the Principal Gaoler and in addition his wife, Teresa, was appointed Matron with an annual salary of £50. He remained in that position until his spectacular downfall and dismissal in 1849.
Keck had very early on gained the approbation of the newspapers of Sydney. Many items were published lauding his humanity and tender heart to both of which Plunkett had attested during a case in the Criminal Court. Many items reported his efficiency in his job; judges and magistrates frequently called on his knowledge and intelligence to inform them of the sanity or character of prisoners.
His bravery was never in question. There were numerous reported incidents in which it was displayed. In 1833, Keck and Makeig, the Superintendent of the Phoenix had rowed across to Solicitor-General Plunkett’s house at Birchgrove where gunshot had been heard and apprehended Bryant Kane who had killed a convict servant there. Ironically, the gun used belonged to Keck who had loaned it to Plunkett. In 1836, Keck had captured a man in Campbell Street who was attempting to rape a woman. In 1839, at the House of Correction, he had grabbed the leader of a group of 19 soldier prisoners who had armed themselves with various weapons and threatened to shoot him in order to successfully persuade the others to lay down their arms.
The public and press and apparently the establishment were all impressed and charmed by Keck. He was well known to many as the ‘Dublin Castle man’ who had the approbation of the powerful of the realm, but, there may also have been those who had been allowed to share the startling secret that Keck was the illegitimate son of the former Prince Regent who became George IV. The story of his royal parentage is told in the family oral history by his descendants so it seems likely enough that he told some of his contemporaries. There is of course no skerrick of proof for such a claim. Further contradiction of the claim might also be indicated by Keck’s apparent adoption later in his life of a Coat of Arms which appears similar to that held by the landed Keck family of Leicestershire. Pedigrees of this family show no link to the Keck family of Dublin.
In April 1847, he was at the peak of his public popularity when William Kellet Baker began the publication of a weekly journal called Heads of the People. It contained articles about prominent Sydney personalities illustrated with lithographs by William Nicholas. The rest of the journal was to present “literature, whimsies and oddities”. Baker chose Henry Keck as his first Sydney personality. The lithograph showed a very natty, well dressed Keck bearing a benign expression. The article began with Keck’s house and described the beautiful garden, Keck’s birds in “gilded cages”, the captive kangaroo and the library full of books. It moved on to describe the clean and well run gaol, with its regulations and discipline administered with Keck’s humanity.
Nevertheless, behind the scenes, there had been allegations made about his irregular private life. The latter must have been fairly well known in Sydney; there had even been a sly reference in the Sydney Gazette in December 1836 to the christening of Keck’s “little boy” (Henry Gerald/George Kirby christened Gerald Whitehouse) but, as often, a public man’s illicit private life was ignored unless thrust before official eyes in a way impossible to ignore.
There had also been some complaints made about Keck’s administration of the Gaol. In May 1839, the Sydney Herald published an allegation of an infringement of Gaol Regulations in that a visitor and prisoner had several times conferred about the disposal of stolen property. The Sydney Gazette had published Keck’s letter in reply to those allegations. Keck cast doubt on the motives of the complainant’s informer and his credibility. Nothing further came of the matter. In September there was a complaint that he had not delivered a convicted man to an iron gang. Keck replied to the Sydney Gazette that he was awaiting the authority from the Supreme Court.
Allegations were made in 1842 in the letter to Governor Gipps by Abner Brown by then at the Government Ordnance Department in Hythe, Kent. His housekeeper in Sydney had been Mrs Elizabeth Whitehouse, mother of Sarah Whitehouse and Ann Brewer. He wrote to Governor Gipps with complaints of Keck’s probity and personal life. Gipps ordered Joseph Long Innes to investigate. Captain Innes was a Sydney magistrate and the Visiting Magistrate for the Sydney Gaol. He found no irregularities in Keck’s administration of the estate of Thomas Makeig, former Superintendent of the Phoenix and Brown’s son-in-law. As far as the allegations Brown made about Keck’s relationship with Sarah Whitehouse, Innes was able to say that Brown had exaggerated the number of children born, there being only one boy not the three children as Brown alleged – not stated by either Keck or Innes was that two other infants had indeed been born but were no longer living. Innes was also able to say that Keck had declared the liaison “long and deeply regretted” and “long since ceased”.
The first of the officially lodged complaints about Keck’s administration of the Sydney Gaol in a letter in 1843 signed by Thomas Hughes of Surry Hills alleged misuse of Government property, the supply of luxury goods to prisoners, the issue of incorrect rations, the discouragement of complaints that might be lodged with the Visiting Magistrate by the threat of laying of retaliatory charges by Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey and the immoral liaisons indulged in by Keck and other prison officers. Once again Long Innes was ordered to investigate. Long Innes stated that he visited the Gaol daily, that it was well run and he had seen nothing improper and as no such person as Thomas Hughes could be located, he recommended the allegations be dismissed. The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 1843, was able to happily report thus: “The authorities have enquired into the charges, and are perfectly satisfied, as must be everyone else acquainted with Mr Keck, and the mode in which the gaol is managed, that the charges were perfectly groundless.”
Denis Lehane made detailed complaints in 1844 including alleging prisoners were not serving correct sentences (no one kept in solitary confinement, men sentenced to hard labour doing other work such as collecting wood, acting as grooms, tailoring, or shoemaking), misappropriation of Government issued goods such as blankets, use of Government hominy to feed Keck’s horses and cows, men under committal in Keck’s house being supplied liquor and various other matters. Once again Joseph Long Innes investigated, Keck explained away or simply denied allegations. Gipps pressed for more details but on Innes’ final report he contented himself with copious annotations in warning tones.
When Richard Daley made accusations, both by petition and in a personal statement to Gipps, the Governor reacted by appointing a Board of Inquiry which met for four sessions during March and April 1846 . The members were Adolphus William Young (the Sheriff), Charles Windeyer (Senior Police Magistrate of Sydney) and Joseph Long Innes (Visiting Magistrate to the Gaol). Daley made many allegations about the behaviour of Keck and Elias Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey, suggesting improprieties with women prisoners, and questioning their behaviour with regard to Caroline Johnson. Johnson had been for a time a prisoner and had been given domestic duties in Keck’s private rooms which, Daley said, had caused Mrs Keck to object. At the end of her sentence Johnson had been appointed a turnkey in the women’s prison and currently she was living with Hibbs. He also stated Keck had used a prison turnkey to assist his kept woman, Sarah Whitehouse, and to deliver wood to her. Other gaol officers were living with women they were not married to. The Board called a number of witnesses. Daley was cross-examined by the Board Members and by Keck and Hibbs. Daley refused to cross-examine witnesses who were employed at the Gaol as he said they were not on oath and would lie to protect their jobs. None of those called supported Daley. The Catholic priests, Reverends Farelly and McEncroe, submitted letters to the Board denying that they had ever heard any allegations about Keck’s conduct. The report stated the Board’s opinion that the charges were “vexatious, frivolous and entirely groundless”. Gipps annotated the report as follows: “It does not seem to me that anything further is necessary - but I shall myself speak to Mr Keck and caution him that he should be more cautious in his conduct in respect of the Female Prisoners. GG”
The 1846 Inquiry was like its predecessors held behind closed doors and, although in this case there was a “leak” to the press, it was one that put the Government line. In an item with many inaccuracies, Bell’s Life in Sydney reported midway through the inquiry that the Board had rejected the “undeserving stigma” the accuser had tried to lay on Keck.
Nevertheless, there were apparently still rumours and talk about the Gaol. The Legislative Council of NSW in 1849 was the part elected and part appointed legislative body which with the Executive Council (the Governor and executive) governed NSW at this time. The Parliament was increasingly being drawn to examine the discharge of their duties by officers of the Crown appointed by the Governor, such as the Governor of the Gaol, its Visiting Magistrate, the Government Architect and others. Select Committees appointed by the Council to conduct inquiries were a means of bringing pressure to bear on the Governor in order to make the executive more responsive to the interests of the people of NSW as interpreted by their representative in the Council.
In February 1849, a complaint was received about the conduct of Elias Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey at the Sydney Gaol. Once again Joseph Long Innes investigated the charges about misappropriation of Government property and once again was happy to report they had no substance; in fact he wrote Hibbs “has always proved himself an upright, zealous and faithful servant of the Public”.
Public attention was drawn to the Gaol in March and April 1849 by three occurrences: the publication in the weekly newspaper, The People’s Advocate, of letters by “Vigil” making wide-ranging allegations of malpractice, the escape of two prisoners from the gaol and the publication of letters in the Sydney Morning Herald by John Alexander, turnkey at the Gaol, relating to the escape and alleging poor security at the Gaol.
The letters by “Vigil” (Mr John Joseph Clayton) published in The Peoples Advocate on 31st March made four main points: there were “serious abuses in the management and superintendence of the prisoners”; a previous Inquiry which had been made “without the formality or solemnity of an oath or any form of affirmation tangible in law, was not calculated to educe the truth, and did not do so”; a complaint by him would be fruitless as his “complaints not being an official of gaol etc might lead to another investigation, another sham examination”; and, he hoped that the People’s Advocate using its “vigilance may find additional facts to justify the exposure of the foul excrescences of an institution”.
Clayton made specific complaints that all of Sydney could see the cells of the Gaol were lit up at night and for what purpose, he asked. He state that, while the 9th clause of the Act of Council allowed the employment of prisoners to defray the costs of their rations, he believed they made boots, shoes, clothes, hats and slops that were sold. Where, he asked, was the accounting for such a practice, where was the money going, were prisoners supplied goods, and who made a profit.
“There is nothing that money can buy that is not accessible there; the grog bottle, the tobacco pipe (sworn companions), are no strangers in Woolloomooloo …… The den of thieves has become a place of merchandise, instead of a place of correction and punishment,” wrote Clayton.
On the night of 31st March, two prisoners escaped from the Gaol under strange circumstances.
On the 4th April, a letter appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald written by James Alexander, the night watchman at the time of the escape. He described events that night, in which he had been taken from his post by Keck, and he included copies of two letters he had delivered to the Sheriff, Adolphus Young. One letter stated that when he took over the watch that night the gate of the prison was open and that he was not responsible for locking up the cells of the prisoners who had escaped. The other (written earlier but only now delivered) complained of the onerous duties placed upon him including the long hours and responsibility for guarding all the prisoners as well as for the close guarding of the prisoner in the condemned cell, the resentment he had suffered because he unlike other turnkeys had tried to do his job efficiently, and also stated that on some nights he had been the only person on duty in the Gaol.
On 23rd May, Elias Hibbs caused James Alexander to be charged in the Magistrates Court with the offence of neglect of duty which had allowed the escape to take place. The matter was heard by two Sydney Magistrates (Edward Flood, Mayor of Sydney and Councillor Dan Egan). Legal counsel for Alexander alleged the prosecution was a sham; Magistrate Flood commented adversely on the lack of any law officer of the Government to prosecute the case and noted the evidence heard failed to establish that the prisoners were ever in Alexander’s custody and if they had been Alexander had clearly been sent by superior officers to other tasks. The case was dismissed.
The Legislative Council responded to these events. On the 6th June Charles Cowper moved in the Council to set up a Select Committee of Inquiry into the Gaol.
The Select Committee came to quite different conclusions from those of the earlier inquiries. The Committee met between June and August 1849 and was chaired by William Cowper (later to be Premier of NSW). Other members of the Committee who were present at most of the 19 sittings were the Attorney General John Hubert Plunkett, William Macarthur and George Allen (also at that time a City of Sydney Alderman).
None of the witnesses to the Select Committee was under oath and none had any legal representation. Cowper and Macarthur asked witnesses many leading questions. Hearsay evidence was not only admitted but solicited. After a slow start, the scandalous, the scurrilous and the sensational began to appear.
In his first appearance before the Committee, Innes painted a glowing picture of the Gaol and of its Gaoler. He said that Keck was so devoted to his work that he rarely left the Gaol and could be termed a hermit. For years after, the newspapers would ironically refer to Keck as the Hermit and the Gaol as the Hermitage.
The Committee established that Keck had created a system of 'trafficking' at the Gaol which benefited both him and the prisoners. While regulations allowed prisoners to make cabbage tree hats in their spare time and accumulate credits to be paid to them on discharge, Keck had been encouraging hat making at all times, including on the Sabbath and at nights. Prisoners sentenced to hard labour did none, if they were skilled hat makers. Clerks kept a tally of the plaiting or hats a prisoner made, and the credits could be spent on goods supplied by Keck, 'luxury' goods such as tea, coffee, tobacco, preserved meats, fresh bread, butter and sugar. At first Keck bought the goods and profited from his mark-up but later he transferred the business to a middle man in return for a cut of 3/6 in the pound (17½%).
It was clear that Keck and Innes had used prisoners as coachmen and grooms. Turnkeys and prisoners had assisted the Visiting Magistrate, Joseph Long Innes, in laundry work, in gardening and in accompanying him on fishing trips on the Harbour. Keck had inmates caring for his caged birds and the garden and serving on his family at picnics and in his house. Two prisoners (soldiers from the regimental band) had played drums and trumpet or clarinet at two family balls at the Gaoler’s House. 'Gentlemen' prisoners including John Terry Hughes had been accommodated in Keck's house rather than in the Gaol and some of them may have paid for the privilege.
It seemed clear that a number of prisoners may have escaped over the years without any official notification of the happening. It was also clear that specific sentences of the Courts were often not applied: those sentenced to hard labour made hats or shirts instead; men intended to be ironed were not if they were of use in some other way; the Government Architect’s office was supposed to take men for iron gangs for quarrying but had no means of knowing how many men should be available and took no action to find out or complain of the shortage of men given to them to work.
Many of the turnkeys were shown to be living with women who were not their wives and there was a general belief that Sarah Whitehouse continued to be Keck's 'kept woman'. Turnkeys had helped her in household tasks and had taken messages to and from her. Much was made of the fact that Miss Whitehouse was housed in the Darlinghurst Courthouse rooms during a court recess while her cottage was being whitewashed. The Courthouse was not of course under Keck’s control but Ann Brewer, Sarah Whitehouse’s sister, was the live-in caretaker of the Courthouse. The cause of a quarrel between Keck and the Brewer family was explored by the Parliamentarians and various witnesses were permitted and encouraged to state that they had heard from other persons that the quarrel had been to do with Henry's behaviour toward the teen-aged Brewer girls. The wife of the turnkey Desmond was asked by Macarthur if Keck had other women in his keeping and she replied "I believe he has them everywhere". She was then asked if he had a 'bad reputation as regards women' and she readily agreed 'awful'. Mrs Desmond said that her husband had told her he had seen Keck coming out of the women's wing 'of a morning with nothing on him but his slippers, his drawers and a morning wrapper'. Her husband did not give the same evidence and he had told the 1846 Board of Inquiry that there were no irregularities at the Gaol but now he said there were many irregularities. He said he had not spoken up previously because he had feared for his job.
Cowper could not have been comfortable with 'evidence' of this nature and one can only imagine Plunkett's discomfort as he heard the multitude of hearsay and irrelevant statements about the private and public life of a man whom he had staunchly supported. In a disingenuous sentence, Cowper wrote in the Report of the Committee that 'In making their Report, your Committee do not think it necessary that every allegation made by each witness should be fully corroborated, so long as the main facts, upon which they rely, are incontestably proved' and the main facts of malpractice were indeed undoubtedly proved. He recommended the dismissal of Keck, Mrs Keck, Innes and various other Gaol employees.
Governor Fitzroy at first ignored the Committee's recommendations. The Sydney newspapers published the report in full on 24 August 1849 and followed up with editorials expressing moral outrage. Details of the evidence given by witnesses were published and clamorous demands made for the dismissal of Keck and Innes. Keck did not wait for the official notice. He sent to auction his furniture, household effects, the piano, the harp, the flutes and barrel organ, the paintings and engravings, pistols, phaeton and saddlery, the extensive library of 'elegantly bound works' and the aviary including the emu, the pair of black swans and the eagles. Newspaper advertisements for the auctions appeared throughout September. Henry and Teresa Keck, Joseph Long Innes and other officials were finally dismissed on 23 September 1849, the position of Visiting Magistrate to the Gaol was discontinued and the Sheriff was given new duties in relation to Gaols.
Keck was aged 49 when dismissed. His Government career was finished and he lost the occupancy of the beautiful sandstone house at the Gaol. He moved in with his daughter Charlotte and her husband, Samuel Terry Hughes, the profligate grandson of Samuel Terry, the 'Rothschild of Botany Bay' and son of disgraced John Terry Hughes. He also continued his relationship with Sarah Whitehouse who died aged 31 in October 1850 after giving birth to their fifth child.
During the 1840s and early 1850s a number of significant family events occurred in Henry Keck’s families.
In February 1845 his youngest daughter, Henrietta died aged 7 after suffering illness for some time.
His youngest brother Samuel died in Ireland in 1846. His sister Georgiana and her husband James Simons and their child died of illness in Ireland in July 1849. His eldest brother Thomas died in Dublin in 1850.
Keck made attempts to help his sons Thomas Fitzgerald Keck and Henry Rice Keck find Government positions in either NSW or New Zealand. His eldest son Thomas had occasionally been a junior assistant to the Sheriff but no permanent position eventuated. Thomas was a keen rider and winner of steeple chases but he died aged 27 in May 1848 Seymour Victoria as a result of a fall from his horse while escorting cattle for Benjamin Boyd to Victoria. Henry Rice Keck, described as a surveyor, received a small gratuity for his assistance in laying the water tunnel at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1846. In July 1847, he married Ann Eliza Flood, the niece of Alderman Edward Flood. They moved out of Sydney for some time but apparently the marriage suffered difficulties. Henry junior died aged 30 in 1853 after a short but severe illness and his only child Marion Charlotte was born posthumously.
In July 1848, the NSW Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the marriage of two minors, namely Henry’s daughter Charlotte and Samuel Terry Hughes, the son of John Terry Hughes, could proceed with John Terry Hughes having first given his permission and then withdrawn it. The marriage ultimately took place out of Sydney and was described by Melbourne papers as an elopement. The Sydney papers were silent. Charlotte has many descendants.
Keck’s daughter Frances or Fanny married Clarence Eager in about 1851. His daughter Adelaide married Joseph Brady, civil engineer, in 1854. His daughter Georgina married Lyndon Bolton Carpenter, in 1856. They all have descendants.
Henry Keck had five children by Sarah Whitehouse. Gerald Henry was born in 1836 and lived to adulthood; he served in the NSW Police Force and had no children. Their second son Edward was born in December 1837 but died when 6 weeks old in January 1838; their daughter Sarah Low was born in November 1839 but died aged 1½ in July 1841. Their second daughter, Anne Elizabeth, was born in January 1844; she married George Wickham and has descendants. In September 1850, their last child Emily Jane was born but her birth was followed within weeks by the death of Sarah Whitehouse, aged 31, in October 1850. The child also seems to have not survived.
Keck returned to public life as Clerk of the Markets of the City of Sydney at George Street in December 1852.
The Sydney Morning Herald 7 December 1852 reported 'great sensation' in the City of Sydney Council Chambers when the result of the ballot for selection to the position was announced. There is no record of who else may have applied for the position other than perhaps the previous Assistant Clerk, James Byrnes, who had been appointed acting Clerk on the resignation of John Carruthers. A letter to the Empire, Henry Parkes’s newspaper, the next day signed “Stallholders of the George St Markets”, but giving no names, merely stating their presence at the meeting of Council, protested the appointment of Keck in view of his disgrace as Governor of the Sydney Gaol.
Another somewhat satirical letter to the Empire a few days later by “M.M.” protested that the hermit Keck could hardly be trusted to protect women at the Market from the “hounds” (louts) who ranged the markets on Saturday nights in view of his moral notions. He proceeded to list the names of Aldermen and Councillors whom he believed had voted for Keck. One of Keck’s supporters in the Council appears to have been George Allen, well-known lawyer, who had served on the Legislative Council Select Committee of Inquiry into the Gaol. Also serving on Council at this time was Edward Flood, uncle to Keck’s daughter in law, although M.M did not indicate he had voted for Keck. Daniel Egan, elected Mayor for 1853, published a letter denying he had supported Keck.
Keck held the job until his death in December 1863 and in it he exhibited the bravery and efficiency shown in his earlier career and none of the corruption evident in the last years of his term as Gaoler. His salary at appointment was £130, about half his salary at the Gaol. The City Commissioners who replaced Council in January 1854 accepted its recommendation for a raise in his salary and it became £200 and rose to £220 from 1855. In comparison, the City Treasurer then earned £400 and the Town Clerk £450. Keck’s sureties for performance of his duties were Andrew Dunn and Mr Greer Senior. Greer was a builder. In 1854, Greer was replaced by Samuel T Hughes, Keck’s son in law and in 1857, Joseph Brady, another son in law replaced Greer.
Revenue from the Markets made a significant contribution to the City finances and their successful management was of great importance to an inadequately funded Council. At times Keck also was responsible for the Hay Market. In most years, the Council auctioned the lease of the Markets, that is, the right to collect tolls and dues on goods and vehicles entering the Markets while Council collected fees for hawkers’ licences and the rents from stalls at the Market. In 1852, the receipts from the George St Markets amounted to £1400 and the Hay Market produced about £840. By 1860 the estimated revenues from George St Market and Hay Market were £8,000, the NSW Government grant was £10,000, Rates were expected to provide £38,000; total receipts were hoped to be almost £70,000. The Markets then were expected to provide about 11% of the annual income.
Keck also acted as the City Auctioneer responsible for conducting the auctions for the leases of City properties such as the Market Wharf, the various water fountains and the Markets themselves. Council paid Keck’s licence fees and gave him an annual gratuity as Auctioneer.
The George Street Markets were used for the wholesale and retail of fruit, vegetables, dairy products, eggs, poultry, preserved meats and butchers’ meat. In 1852 the George Street Markets consisted of four large buildings called sheds, each containing 36 stalls. The Queen Victoria Building now occupies the site. The sheds faced inwards to open space ‘between the markets’. The sheds had blank walls facing onto George, Market and York Streets with entrances between the sheds while the southern boundary abutted the Police Office in Druitt Street. Shed A was for the wholesale growers and market gardeners and in the summer fruit season was crammed full of sellers who also, of necessity, utilised the space ‘between the markets’. At other seasons only a few sellers were present. The wholesale market operated between 5 am and 9 am each day. Sellers were not permitted to sell in retail quantities or to retail produce bought from other sellers. There were continual complaints about breaches of this regulation. The shed was used for the twice yearly exhibitions of the Floral and Horticultural Society. Shed B was occupied by stallholders who sold meats, poultry, dairy products and eggs. Shed C had originally contained only the potato sellers who sometimes sold other root vegetables, pulses and onions but later, butchers were allowed stalls. Shed D stallholders were retailers selling fruits, vegetables, seeds and garden produce. Structural improvements were made during the 1840s and 1850s including renewing the roof and improving market security from thefts.
When asked in May 1857 to describe his duties as Clerk of the Market by the City's Finance Committee, Keck wrote:
“My duties as Clerk of the Market require my constant attendance for thirteen hours daily except on Saturdays when I am obliged to attend for seventeen hours. I have to keep order, cleanliness and observance of the By-Laws, to cause the removal of disorderly persons and frequently prosecute at the Police Office and settle all disputes between growers, hawkers etc and the Lessee, set the stalls, collect the rent, enter them in the Ledger and make weekly returns to the City Treasurer and Town Clerk.”
His duty to keep order in the Markets entailed confrontations with boozy vagrants, troublesome youths, petty criminals and regulation-breaking stall holders. He instigated numerous prosecutions in the Police Court for indecent acts and riotous behaviour in the Markets. The Sydney Morning Herald 9 January 1854 lamented the lack of a constable permanently in the Markets and the problem of a “set of vagabonds” who annoyed the public with “filthy language and disgusting behaviour” but it reported on 4 July 1854 that the Police Magistrate, James Dowling junior “took occasion, in the most handsome manner, to compliment Mr Keck upon the improved state of the market as regards cleanliness and general good order”. The problem of loutish behaviour, particularly on the popular Saturday nights, did nevertheless recur.
Keck's bravery was much on show in December 1859, despite his age of 59. The Sydney Morning Herald 17 December 1859 reported:
“Joseph Hartley, a man of very drunken habits-said to be drunk four or five days at least out of every seven-was charged by Henry Keck, the Clerk of George street Market, with having yesterday assaulted him in the execution of his duty. Defendant was in the market armed with a bludgeon, which, much to the alarm of the stallholders and the public, he flourished about in a most menacing manner; Mr. Keck interfered for the preservation of order, and was violently pushed by defendant with the stick and severely hurt, nor was it without a struggle that defendant was disarmed by Mr. Keck, and handed over to the police. Defendant, having been several times convicted of similar conduct when drunk, was now sentenced to be imprisoned fourteen days.”
By the late 1850s, less produce was coming into the centre of Sydney. Revenues to the Council from the Markets were falling but the buildings occupied a prime position ideal for general retail so Council decided to make changes. Seventy nine of the stallholders petitioned in December 1858 for the deferral of the proposed alterations as they would lose the improvements they had made to their stalls at their own cost, they would be unable to operate their stalls for a period, the leases for the new shops would be open to public tender or auction and the rents were expected to be higher. Major renovations went ahead in 1859 altering both the appearance and function of the Markets. The stalls in sheds A and B were replaced by perimeter shops which faced out onto George, Market and York Streets and by new ‘interior shops’ within the buildings. The new shops were occupied by sellers of footwear, crockery, books, birds, and millinery as well as fruiterers and seedsmen. The York Street shops were assigned to the butchers who were not allowed elsewhere in the Markets. Sheds C and D were still used by fruiterers and sellers of garden produce.
NSW’s economic health fluctuated wildly in the late 1850s and 1860s with rapid increases in population, inflation causing prices and wages to rise and then recession with falling prices and wages in. The Market and stallholders were affected and nearly all years saw stallholders petitioning Council for reductions in rents. Stallholders periodically fell into arrears. Even the weather seemed extreme with years of severe drought in the early 1850s, heavy rainfall in 1855 and 1856 and 1860, while in 1858 a blight caused massive market garden crop failures.
Keck’s personal life continued in the same irregular style as before and he continued living in the Terry Hughes cottage at Elizabeth St. His mistress, Sarah Whitehouse, had died in 1850 and the two surviving children of the relationship were probably living with either their grandmother, Mrs Elizabeth Whitehouse, who died in 1857 or with the Brewer family. Keck acquired a new mistress who was described in his will as his nurse. Mary Chambers was born in Dublin in about 1836 and was about 20 years old when she gave birth to Emily Jane Chambers in 1856. Two more children were born to them, Frederick Henry Chambers in 1858 and William Terry Chambers in 1860. Emily Chambers married John Parsons and they have descendants.
Keck settled into his role as Clerk of the Markets and seems to have gained acceptance by those he worked with and the public he served. He appears to have sorted out problems among the stall holders and implemented fairly the Council By Laws and he seems to have worked well with other Council Officers such as the Inspector of Nuisances who on occasion was called on to check out bad produce at the Markets.
In 1857, Fenwick and Dunn, the lessees of the City Water Fountains, alleged that Henry Keck, as Auctioneer, had made statements at the auction that the City Commissioners would not lay down water pipes to the shipping wharfs and they had bid and signed the leases with that assurance in mind. They threatened to resign their lease if the City Commissioners did supply water to the wharfs. Keck denied saying any such thing and as there was no such condition of sale in the official printing of the conditions of the lease, the City Commissioner took no action.
City of Sydney Council records contain only one suggestion that Keck may have found any questionable mode of enhancing his own finances. In April 1862, the Town Clerk at the direction of the Mayor, James Oatley, formally wrote and asked Keck whether he had 'been in the habit of receiving or appropriating any portion of the Fines or Costs connected with informations filed by you for Breaches of the Market By-Laws etc' and Keck immediately wrote back repudiating the suggestion. It was unlikely he could have done this undetected by the City Treasurer and there is no further mention of the matter. There may have been opportunities in the Market to grant favours or receive gifts but the stall holders and produce growers were very quick to write to or petition Council if any one of them took actions to the disadvantage of the others and none wrote anything to denigrate Keck.
It seems Keck was a faithful servant to the Council and achieved the respect of the market users and the public of Sydney.
Keck’s health declined in the latter part of 1863 and he applied for leave of absence which was granted. He died on Christmas Day 1863. In his will he left individual bequests to his Keck and Kirby children and a servant. He also left his wife Teresa the featherbed while a mattress and bedding went to his ‘nurse’ Mary Chambers. The two women were to share the residue of the estate which was assessed for probate as less than two hundred and fifty pounds.
A POSTSCRIPT ON KECK AND 20TH CENTURY TABLOIDS: MYTHS AND LIES
“Old Chum” (Joseph Michael Forde 1840-1929) wrote interesting items about the history of old Sydney in the newspaper Truth. Forde collected books, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings and other items on historical topics and created extensive files used in his writing. Between 1910 and 1915 a number of items appeared relating to Keck and his family. Most of these were reasonably accurate.
The same cannot be said of “historical” articles published in various Sydney tabloids during the 1960s through to the 1980s of which a number have been located. Articles appeared in the Mirror, the Sun, and Sunday papers and also in Australian Penthouse. The articles in the Mirror and Sunday papers are re-hashes of the same original source while the article in the Sun is somewhat different. The articles have sensational titles and sub-titles such as “Random Vice Den”, “Good-Time Girls in Judge’s Chambers”, “Call girls kept jail birds happy” and “Rogue jail governor set up brothel in Judge’s Chambers.
In the same vein is a website which can be located by typing “the amazing Mr Keck” into a search engine. This originated many years ago at the National Art School which occupies the Darlinghurst Gaol buildings.
An article by Ronald Rose appeared in Australian Penthouse in March 1982 titled “Turn of the Screw”. It is based on a considerable but patchy amount of research and is reasonably accurate although many facts are sensationally interpreted and illustrated.
The central claim of the tabloid stories is that Keck established a brothel or call-girl service operating out of the Darlinghurst Court House. This is simply not true.
There were no gaol operated brothels and no contemporary accusations that there were. The basis for the story is that Keck’s mistress, Sarah Whitehouse, had stayed at the Court House for a short period with her sister Ann Brewer who was care-taker of the building and was visited there by Keck. The contemporary accusations were that there were possible situations that could have allowed sexual relations to occur between turnkeys and women prisoners, and one accusation that Hibbs had been seen in a sexual encounter in the grounds with a woman and there was a hear-say report from Mrs Desmond that Keck had been seen leaving the female prison early one morning and was wearing informal clothes. No one asked Keck about this occurrence. The other contemporary allegations were that a number of the turnkeys were living with women they were not married to and Keck kept a mistress.
Another frequent claim is that Keck had formed a prisoner orchestra or two which were hired out around Sydney, the members of which got drunk and would not return to the Gaol. This is not true. Keck had utilised on two occasions the services of two soldier prisoners, the drummer of the 99th regiment and a clarinet or trumpet player. The occasions were private parties in the Principal Gaoler’s House, very probably a celebration of the marriage of his daughter Charlotte and a birthday party for his daughter Adelaide. Mrs Keck or her daughters played the piano. Mrs Keck was an accomplished player who advertised in 1860 as a piano teacher. It is probably true that one or other of the soldier players got drunk and resisted going back to his cell but he had not after all left the prison premises.
Some of the articles claim that Dublin Castle was a nick-name for an office building in Dublin. Dublin Castle was the Castle of Dublin containing offices and living quarters for the Chief Secretary of Ireland’s administration of Ireland, in other words, the Government Offices. The term ‘Dublin Castle’ was used in the same way that we in NSW might now refer to ‘Macquarie Street’ or the English might refer to Downing Street or Westminster.
Other claims in the articles are that Keck offered fraudulent credentials as to his previous employment. This is not true. He had been employed in the Civil Department of the Chief Secretary’s office in Dublin Castle.
There are claims that Keck had given himself the rank of Colonel and had stated he had military service or was an expert on gaol administration. No contemporary references to that rank or experience have been located.
PRINCIPAL SOURCES
PRO (UK): correspondence of Robert Peel; War Office Abstracts and Lord Lieutenants Letters; Irish Constabulary Register of Officers.
House of Commons (UK): Parliamentary Papers relating to the Chief Secretary's Department in Ireland (1800-1804), (1816-1822), Returns from the Civil Department in Ireland; Royal palaces and buildings, return on those occupied, 1831; Commissioners for Reorganisation , Office Chief Secretary in Ireland; (accessed on-line).
British newspapers: Freeman’s Journal (Dublin).
Dublin Directories: Treble Almanac; Wilson’s; Shaw’s.
Irish Parish Registers
NSW Government Gazette
Historical Records of Australia.
NSW Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages, records.
NSW newspapers 1832-1863, Sydney Gazette, Sydney Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, Commercial Journal and Advertiser, Australian, The Bee of Australia; Heads of the People, People’s Advocate, Empire.; Maitland Mercury.
Victorian newspapers: Melbourne Argus; Port Phillip Herald; Portland Guardian; Belfast Gazette.
Sydney Directories: Stephen & Stokes; Brabazon; Lowe; Ford; Waugh and Cox; Sands.
State Records NSW: Colonial Secretary's Correspondence; Records of the hulk Phoenix including Weekly Returns and Letters by the Superintendent; Sydney Gaol Correspondence; Returns of the Colony (Blue Books); 1841 Census; Sydney Electoral Rolls; Probate papers.
NSW Legislative Council: Report from the Select Committee on the Darlinghurst Gaol, with Appendix and Minutes of Evidence, Government Printing Office 1849
City of Sydney Archives: Council Minutes, Reports and Minutes of the Finance, Markets, By Laws and Improvement Committees, Letters Received and Letters Sent; Assessment Books; City of Sydney website: Council Aldermen.
Australian Dictionary of Biography, ed Percival Serle (online)
July 2014; Marilyn MasonRelationship legacy dataRELATED TO: Markets control FN-0001 (1/12/1852 to 31/12/1863)
RELATED TO: Town Clerks Department AG-0040 (1/12/1852 to 31/12/1863) - Clerk of the Markets
Occupational historyIn Ireland:1819 - ?: Office Porter, Chief Secretary’s Office, Civil Department, Dublin Castle? - c1832: an unidentified position in the Chief Secretary’s Office, Dublin CastleIn NSW:1832-36: Assistant Superintendent of the hulk Phoenix, Sydney NSW1836-37: Superintendent of the House of Correction and Gaoler of the Debtors’ Prison, at Carters Barracks, Sydney1837-49: Principal Gaoler, Sydney Gaol (1837-41 at George St and 1841-49 at Darlinghurst)1838-1839: Acting Superintendent of the House of Correction (concurrently with his position as Principal Gaoler, Sydney Gaol)1849-1852: private lifeDecember 1852- December 1863: Clerk of the Markets, City of SydneyArchivist notePrepared by Archives Volunteer Marilyn Mason.Legacy dataRegistered by: Smith, Michael
Registered date: 12/08/2014
Amendments:
Last amendment date: None
Minister: NoneUpdated Date: 15/08/2014
Updated User: mdsmithSource system ID40
Henry Keck was baptised in 1800 in Balbriggan Parish, County Dublin, Ireland.
He was the son of Thomas Keck and Sarah Lowe. Thomas Keck came to Ireland in 1787 holding an administrative position with the British Army under the command of the Marquis of Buckingham. His prior origins are not known. Subsequently he held office in the Military Department of the British Government in Ireland at Dublin Castle. In 1798, while convalescing at Balbriggan north of Dublin, he had raised a group of Loyalist volunteers who kept the north road open during the Rebellion. His health declined further and he was appointed Barrack Master at Cashel in 1801 and from 1807 at Fethard, Limerick where he died in 1816. He was survived by his wife and 6 children.
In 1818, the eldest son, Thomas Keck junior, aged then about 24, sought patronage on behalf of himself, his mother and younger siblings from Robert Peel. Peel was at that time Chief Secretary for Ireland in the British Government, having been some years earlier the MP for the Borough of Cashel. Peel expressed some reluctance to help but in January 1819, Thomas Keck junior was appointed Assistant Office Keeper in the Chief Secretary’s office, Civil Department, Dublin Castle. He became Office Keeper in 1831 and in 1838 the Principal Office Keeper and Clerk of Disbursements, a position he held until his death in December 1850. His residence was also in the Castle. In February 1819 his sister, Frances Keck, was appointed Housekeeper and Fire Dresser, a position she held until her retirement in 1853. In May 1819, Henry Keck was appointed Office Porter. The youngest Keck brother, Samuel, became in 1824 a constable in the Irish Constabulary.
Henry Keck when aged only 20 married Teresa Fitzgerald, also a minor, in Dublin in January 1820. He and Teresa had five children in the following 11 years. Then, for reasons unknown, Henry decided to migrate to NSW. He arrived in Sydney on 29 October 1832 aboard the ship Sarah from Liverpool and was accompanied by his five children and an infant acknowledged as his daughter Fanny Keck and a female servant whose identity is not known just as the identity of Fanny’s mother is not known. His wife did not accompany him. He and the eligible children had come as bounty immigrants although he had paid for cabin accommodation.
A family oral tradition was that Keck had come to be private secretary to the Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, who was of Anglo-Irish origins, but that Bourke had decided to employ his son in that role. In Dublin, Keck had known John Hubert Plunkett. Plunkett had arrived in NSW in June 1832 and had been appointed the NSW Solicitor General. (He was later to become Attorney General and a Member of the NSW Parliament.) The Keck family may also have had some connection to Thomas Spring Rice as Keck’s son, Henry, was known as Henry Rice Keck. Spring Rice (later Lord Monteagle) was the Member for Limerick in the British Parliament, and a close life-long friend of Sir Richard Bourke; he was the Secretary of State for War and Colonies and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Whig administrations in the 1830’s. Whatever the connections or whatever the credentials from his public service in Dublin Castle, Keck clearly gained and retained the support of Bourke who was Governor until 1837. This support was continued by Governors Gipps and Fitzroy.
In December 1832, Bourke appointed Keck as Assistant Superintendent of the hulk Phoenix which was moored in Sydney Harbour. The Phoenix was used as housing for certain Government iron gangs, for some aged incapable convicts, or for convicts in transit (either brought to Sydney from the country for official purposes or newly arrived convicts considered dangerous because educated who were to be sent as soon as possible out of Sydney).
In his time on Phoenix, Keck encountered three people who were to play important roles in his life or its recording: Thomas Makeig, Elias Hibbs and Edmund Brewer Campbell.
The first person of note was Thomas Makeig, the Superintendent of the Phoenix. Henry’s relationship with Makeig resulted in the recording of many details of Henry’s private life which would otherwise have remained unknown. Makeig wrote an immediate protest to the Governor on Keck’s appointment. He wrote of the impossibility of accommodating Keck, 6 children and female servant in the small cabin available for use and he bewailed Keck’s lack of the nautical experience necessary in managing a moored ship in the case of storms or winds and also his inexperience in the management of dangerous or wily prisoners. Despite these misgivings, he and Makeig appear to have gone on to have a harmonious professional relationship. Makeig was married to Sarah, the daughter of Abner Brown who was the Ordnance Storekeeper or Master in Sydney until 1838. Perhaps under the stress of domestic tragedies with the death on 26th April 1838 of his wife, the departure from Sydney to England on the 29th April of his father-in-law, and then the death of his infant daughter on the 6th May all of which had followed on his loss of job as Phoenix had been decommissioned, Makeig suffered a mental collapse and was committed to the Lunatic Asylum at Liverpool on 10th May 1838. Keck took care of his only surviving child Abner Thomas, born 1833, and administered Makeig’s estate after his death in August 1839. When Abner Brown wrote to Governor Gipps in 1842 accusing Keck of malfeasance in regard to Makeig’s affairs, he gave many details of Keck’s private life.
The second person of note was Elias Hibbs, a turnkey, first on Phoenix, then at Sydney Gaol and from 1838 the Principal Turnkey at Sydney Gaol. Hibbs and Keck had a stormy but mutually beneficial professional relationship for nearly 17 years.
The third person of note was Edmund Campbell Brewer, a convict and former school teacher convicted of forgery, who arrived in Sydney in September 1834. His wife, together with their children, her mother, her sister and brother, followed him to Sydney arriving while he was aboard Phoenix awaiting transfer to Port Macquarie. Sarah Whitehouse, Brewer’s sister-in-law, became Keck’s mistress and mother of five of his children of whom only two survived to adulthood. She remained his mistress until her death in 1850. Brewer, himself, and his wife Ann benefited from Keck’s presumed patronage. Ann Brewer went to Port Macquarie following her husband and was appointed the Matron of the Female Factory in November 1840 until June 1842. The Brewer family returned to Sydney in 1842. Edmund Brewer’s petition for his conditional pardon in 1847 was endorsed by luminaries of the legal and justice administration systems, namely Sheriff Adolphus William Young, Chief Justice Alfred Stephen, John N Dickinson, William a’Beckett and Magistrate Joseph Long Innes. Brewer was appointed Assistant Sheriff’s Bailiff in 1848. His wife Ann was appointed caretaker of the Criminal Courthouse at Darlinghurst next to the Gaol in about 1845.
In late 1834 or early 1835 Keck appointed Sarah Whitehouse as governess to his children but she soon became his mistress and their first child, a son known later in his life as Henry Gerald or Henry George Kirby, was born in July 1836. In the meanwhile, Keck’s wife Teresa had enterprisingly arrived in NSW aboard Canton in June 1835 as a bounty immigrant described as female, unmarried and a governess aged 29. Upon arrival she announced her identity as the wife of Henry Keck. The marriage resumed and their last child, Henrietta, was born in July 1837. Keck, nevertheless, continued his relationship with Sarah Whitehouse known also as Sarah Kirby.
In July 1836, Keck was appointed Superintendent of the House of Correction and the Debtors’ Prison at Carters’ Barracks. His career continued to flourish and he became Principal Gaoler of Sydney Gaol in October 1837 more than doubling his salary to £250 pa plus £50 in lieu of a house. He prospered further when the Gaol transferred to Darlinghurst in 1841 where he had the use of the substantial sandstone house built for the Principal Gaoler and in addition his wife, Teresa, was appointed Matron with an annual salary of £50. He remained in that position until his spectacular downfall and dismissal in 1849.
Keck had very early on gained the approbation of the newspapers of Sydney. Many items were published lauding his humanity and tender heart to both of which Plunkett had attested during a case in the Criminal Court. Many items reported his efficiency in his job; judges and magistrates frequently called on his knowledge and intelligence to inform them of the sanity or character of prisoners.
His bravery was never in question. There were numerous reported incidents in which it was displayed. In 1833, Keck and Makeig, the Superintendent of the Phoenix had rowed across to Solicitor-General Plunkett’s house at Birchgrove where gunshot had been heard and apprehended Bryant Kane who had killed a convict servant there. Ironically, the gun used belonged to Keck who had loaned it to Plunkett. In 1836, Keck had captured a man in Campbell Street who was attempting to rape a woman. In 1839, at the House of Correction, he had grabbed the leader of a group of 19 soldier prisoners who had armed themselves with various weapons and threatened to shoot him in order to successfully persuade the others to lay down their arms.
The public and press and apparently the establishment were all impressed and charmed by Keck. He was well known to many as the ‘Dublin Castle man’ who had the approbation of the powerful of the realm, but, there may also have been those who had been allowed to share the startling secret that Keck was the illegitimate son of the former Prince Regent who became George IV. The story of his royal parentage is told in the family oral history by his descendants so it seems likely enough that he told some of his contemporaries. There is of course no skerrick of proof for such a claim. Further contradiction of the claim might also be indicated by Keck’s apparent adoption later in his life of a Coat of Arms which appears similar to that held by the landed Keck family of Leicestershire. Pedigrees of this family show no link to the Keck family of Dublin.
In April 1847, he was at the peak of his public popularity when William Kellet Baker began the publication of a weekly journal called Heads of the People. It contained articles about prominent Sydney personalities illustrated with lithographs by William Nicholas. The rest of the journal was to present “literature, whimsies and oddities”. Baker chose Henry Keck as his first Sydney personality. The lithograph showed a very natty, well dressed Keck bearing a benign expression. The article began with Keck’s house and described the beautiful garden, Keck’s birds in “gilded cages”, the captive kangaroo and the library full of books. It moved on to describe the clean and well run gaol, with its regulations and discipline administered with Keck’s humanity.
Nevertheless, behind the scenes, there had been allegations made about his irregular private life. The latter must have been fairly well known in Sydney; there had even been a sly reference in the Sydney Gazette in December 1836 to the christening of Keck’s “little boy” (Henry Gerald/George Kirby christened Gerald Whitehouse) but, as often, a public man’s illicit private life was ignored unless thrust before official eyes in a way impossible to ignore.
There had also been some complaints made about Keck’s administration of the Gaol. In May 1839, the Sydney Herald published an allegation of an infringement of Gaol Regulations in that a visitor and prisoner had several times conferred about the disposal of stolen property. The Sydney Gazette had published Keck’s letter in reply to those allegations. Keck cast doubt on the motives of the complainant’s informer and his credibility. Nothing further came of the matter. In September there was a complaint that he had not delivered a convicted man to an iron gang. Keck replied to the Sydney Gazette that he was awaiting the authority from the Supreme Court.
Allegations were made in 1842 in the letter to Governor Gipps by Abner Brown by then at the Government Ordnance Department in Hythe, Kent. His housekeeper in Sydney had been Mrs Elizabeth Whitehouse, mother of Sarah Whitehouse and Ann Brewer. He wrote to Governor Gipps with complaints of Keck’s probity and personal life. Gipps ordered Joseph Long Innes to investigate. Captain Innes was a Sydney magistrate and the Visiting Magistrate for the Sydney Gaol. He found no irregularities in Keck’s administration of the estate of Thomas Makeig, former Superintendent of the Phoenix and Brown’s son-in-law. As far as the allegations Brown made about Keck’s relationship with Sarah Whitehouse, Innes was able to say that Brown had exaggerated the number of children born, there being only one boy not the three children as Brown alleged – not stated by either Keck or Innes was that two other infants had indeed been born but were no longer living. Innes was also able to say that Keck had declared the liaison “long and deeply regretted” and “long since ceased”.
The first of the officially lodged complaints about Keck’s administration of the Sydney Gaol in a letter in 1843 signed by Thomas Hughes of Surry Hills alleged misuse of Government property, the supply of luxury goods to prisoners, the issue of incorrect rations, the discouragement of complaints that might be lodged with the Visiting Magistrate by the threat of laying of retaliatory charges by Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey and the immoral liaisons indulged in by Keck and other prison officers. Once again Long Innes was ordered to investigate. Long Innes stated that he visited the Gaol daily, that it was well run and he had seen nothing improper and as no such person as Thomas Hughes could be located, he recommended the allegations be dismissed. The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 1843, was able to happily report thus: “The authorities have enquired into the charges, and are perfectly satisfied, as must be everyone else acquainted with Mr Keck, and the mode in which the gaol is managed, that the charges were perfectly groundless.”
Denis Lehane made detailed complaints in 1844 including alleging prisoners were not serving correct sentences (no one kept in solitary confinement, men sentenced to hard labour doing other work such as collecting wood, acting as grooms, tailoring, or shoemaking), misappropriation of Government issued goods such as blankets, use of Government hominy to feed Keck’s horses and cows, men under committal in Keck’s house being supplied liquor and various other matters. Once again Joseph Long Innes investigated, Keck explained away or simply denied allegations. Gipps pressed for more details but on Innes’ final report he contented himself with copious annotations in warning tones.
When Richard Daley made accusations, both by petition and in a personal statement to Gipps, the Governor reacted by appointing a Board of Inquiry which met for four sessions during March and April 1846 . The members were Adolphus William Young (the Sheriff), Charles Windeyer (Senior Police Magistrate of Sydney) and Joseph Long Innes (Visiting Magistrate to the Gaol). Daley made many allegations about the behaviour of Keck and Elias Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey, suggesting improprieties with women prisoners, and questioning their behaviour with regard to Caroline Johnson. Johnson had been for a time a prisoner and had been given domestic duties in Keck’s private rooms which, Daley said, had caused Mrs Keck to object. At the end of her sentence Johnson had been appointed a turnkey in the women’s prison and currently she was living with Hibbs. He also stated Keck had used a prison turnkey to assist his kept woman, Sarah Whitehouse, and to deliver wood to her. Other gaol officers were living with women they were not married to. The Board called a number of witnesses. Daley was cross-examined by the Board Members and by Keck and Hibbs. Daley refused to cross-examine witnesses who were employed at the Gaol as he said they were not on oath and would lie to protect their jobs. None of those called supported Daley. The Catholic priests, Reverends Farelly and McEncroe, submitted letters to the Board denying that they had ever heard any allegations about Keck’s conduct. The report stated the Board’s opinion that the charges were “vexatious, frivolous and entirely groundless”. Gipps annotated the report as follows: “It does not seem to me that anything further is necessary - but I shall myself speak to Mr Keck and caution him that he should be more cautious in his conduct in respect of the Female Prisoners. GG”
The 1846 Inquiry was like its predecessors held behind closed doors and, although in this case there was a “leak” to the press, it was one that put the Government line. In an item with many inaccuracies, Bell’s Life in Sydney reported midway through the inquiry that the Board had rejected the “undeserving stigma” the accuser had tried to lay on Keck.
Nevertheless, there were apparently still rumours and talk about the Gaol. The Legislative Council of NSW in 1849 was the part elected and part appointed legislative body which with the Executive Council (the Governor and executive) governed NSW at this time. The Parliament was increasingly being drawn to examine the discharge of their duties by officers of the Crown appointed by the Governor, such as the Governor of the Gaol, its Visiting Magistrate, the Government Architect and others. Select Committees appointed by the Council to conduct inquiries were a means of bringing pressure to bear on the Governor in order to make the executive more responsive to the interests of the people of NSW as interpreted by their representative in the Council.
In February 1849, a complaint was received about the conduct of Elias Hibbs, the Principal Turnkey at the Sydney Gaol. Once again Joseph Long Innes investigated the charges about misappropriation of Government property and once again was happy to report they had no substance; in fact he wrote Hibbs “has always proved himself an upright, zealous and faithful servant of the Public”.
Public attention was drawn to the Gaol in March and April 1849 by three occurrences: the publication in the weekly newspaper, The People’s Advocate, of letters by “Vigil” making wide-ranging allegations of malpractice, the escape of two prisoners from the gaol and the publication of letters in the Sydney Morning Herald by John Alexander, turnkey at the Gaol, relating to the escape and alleging poor security at the Gaol.
The letters by “Vigil” (Mr John Joseph Clayton) published in The Peoples Advocate on 31st March made four main points: there were “serious abuses in the management and superintendence of the prisoners”; a previous Inquiry which had been made “without the formality or solemnity of an oath or any form of affirmation tangible in law, was not calculated to educe the truth, and did not do so”; a complaint by him would be fruitless as his “complaints not being an official of gaol etc might lead to another investigation, another sham examination”; and, he hoped that the People’s Advocate using its “vigilance may find additional facts to justify the exposure of the foul excrescences of an institution”.
Clayton made specific complaints that all of Sydney could see the cells of the Gaol were lit up at night and for what purpose, he asked. He state that, while the 9th clause of the Act of Council allowed the employment of prisoners to defray the costs of their rations, he believed they made boots, shoes, clothes, hats and slops that were sold. Where, he asked, was the accounting for such a practice, where was the money going, were prisoners supplied goods, and who made a profit.
“There is nothing that money can buy that is not accessible there; the grog bottle, the tobacco pipe (sworn companions), are no strangers in Woolloomooloo …… The den of thieves has become a place of merchandise, instead of a place of correction and punishment,” wrote Clayton.
On the night of 31st March, two prisoners escaped from the Gaol under strange circumstances.
On the 4th April, a letter appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald written by James Alexander, the night watchman at the time of the escape. He described events that night, in which he had been taken from his post by Keck, and he included copies of two letters he had delivered to the Sheriff, Adolphus Young. One letter stated that when he took over the watch that night the gate of the prison was open and that he was not responsible for locking up the cells of the prisoners who had escaped. The other (written earlier but only now delivered) complained of the onerous duties placed upon him including the long hours and responsibility for guarding all the prisoners as well as for the close guarding of the prisoner in the condemned cell, the resentment he had suffered because he unlike other turnkeys had tried to do his job efficiently, and also stated that on some nights he had been the only person on duty in the Gaol.
On 23rd May, Elias Hibbs caused James Alexander to be charged in the Magistrates Court with the offence of neglect of duty which had allowed the escape to take place. The matter was heard by two Sydney Magistrates (Edward Flood, Mayor of Sydney and Councillor Dan Egan). Legal counsel for Alexander alleged the prosecution was a sham; Magistrate Flood commented adversely on the lack of any law officer of the Government to prosecute the case and noted the evidence heard failed to establish that the prisoners were ever in Alexander’s custody and if they had been Alexander had clearly been sent by superior officers to other tasks. The case was dismissed.
The Legislative Council responded to these events. On the 6th June Charles Cowper moved in the Council to set up a Select Committee of Inquiry into the Gaol.
The Select Committee came to quite different conclusions from those of the earlier inquiries. The Committee met between June and August 1849 and was chaired by William Cowper (later to be Premier of NSW). Other members of the Committee who were present at most of the 19 sittings were the Attorney General John Hubert Plunkett, William Macarthur and George Allen (also at that time a City of Sydney Alderman).
None of the witnesses to the Select Committee was under oath and none had any legal representation. Cowper and Macarthur asked witnesses many leading questions. Hearsay evidence was not only admitted but solicited. After a slow start, the scandalous, the scurrilous and the sensational began to appear.
In his first appearance before the Committee, Innes painted a glowing picture of the Gaol and of its Gaoler. He said that Keck was so devoted to his work that he rarely left the Gaol and could be termed a hermit. For years after, the newspapers would ironically refer to Keck as the Hermit and the Gaol as the Hermitage.
The Committee established that Keck had created a system of 'trafficking' at the Gaol which benefited both him and the prisoners. While regulations allowed prisoners to make cabbage tree hats in their spare time and accumulate credits to be paid to them on discharge, Keck had been encouraging hat making at all times, including on the Sabbath and at nights. Prisoners sentenced to hard labour did none, if they were skilled hat makers. Clerks kept a tally of the plaiting or hats a prisoner made, and the credits could be spent on goods supplied by Keck, 'luxury' goods such as tea, coffee, tobacco, preserved meats, fresh bread, butter and sugar. At first Keck bought the goods and profited from his mark-up but later he transferred the business to a middle man in return for a cut of 3/6 in the pound (17½%).
It was clear that Keck and Innes had used prisoners as coachmen and grooms. Turnkeys and prisoners had assisted the Visiting Magistrate, Joseph Long Innes, in laundry work, in gardening and in accompanying him on fishing trips on the Harbour. Keck had inmates caring for his caged birds and the garden and serving on his family at picnics and in his house. Two prisoners (soldiers from the regimental band) had played drums and trumpet or clarinet at two family balls at the Gaoler’s House. 'Gentlemen' prisoners including John Terry Hughes had been accommodated in Keck's house rather than in the Gaol and some of them may have paid for the privilege.
It seemed clear that a number of prisoners may have escaped over the years without any official notification of the happening. It was also clear that specific sentences of the Courts were often not applied: those sentenced to hard labour made hats or shirts instead; men intended to be ironed were not if they were of use in some other way; the Government Architect’s office was supposed to take men for iron gangs for quarrying but had no means of knowing how many men should be available and took no action to find out or complain of the shortage of men given to them to work.
Many of the turnkeys were shown to be living with women who were not their wives and there was a general belief that Sarah Whitehouse continued to be Keck's 'kept woman'. Turnkeys had helped her in household tasks and had taken messages to and from her. Much was made of the fact that Miss Whitehouse was housed in the Darlinghurst Courthouse rooms during a court recess while her cottage was being whitewashed. The Courthouse was not of course under Keck’s control but Ann Brewer, Sarah Whitehouse’s sister, was the live-in caretaker of the Courthouse. The cause of a quarrel between Keck and the Brewer family was explored by the Parliamentarians and various witnesses were permitted and encouraged to state that they had heard from other persons that the quarrel had been to do with Henry's behaviour toward the teen-aged Brewer girls. The wife of the turnkey Desmond was asked by Macarthur if Keck had other women in his keeping and she replied "I believe he has them everywhere". She was then asked if he had a 'bad reputation as regards women' and she readily agreed 'awful'. Mrs Desmond said that her husband had told her he had seen Keck coming out of the women's wing 'of a morning with nothing on him but his slippers, his drawers and a morning wrapper'. Her husband did not give the same evidence and he had told the 1846 Board of Inquiry that there were no irregularities at the Gaol but now he said there were many irregularities. He said he had not spoken up previously because he had feared for his job.
Cowper could not have been comfortable with 'evidence' of this nature and one can only imagine Plunkett's discomfort as he heard the multitude of hearsay and irrelevant statements about the private and public life of a man whom he had staunchly supported. In a disingenuous sentence, Cowper wrote in the Report of the Committee that 'In making their Report, your Committee do not think it necessary that every allegation made by each witness should be fully corroborated, so long as the main facts, upon which they rely, are incontestably proved' and the main facts of malpractice were indeed undoubtedly proved. He recommended the dismissal of Keck, Mrs Keck, Innes and various other Gaol employees.
Governor Fitzroy at first ignored the Committee's recommendations. The Sydney newspapers published the report in full on 24 August 1849 and followed up with editorials expressing moral outrage. Details of the evidence given by witnesses were published and clamorous demands made for the dismissal of Keck and Innes. Keck did not wait for the official notice. He sent to auction his furniture, household effects, the piano, the harp, the flutes and barrel organ, the paintings and engravings, pistols, phaeton and saddlery, the extensive library of 'elegantly bound works' and the aviary including the emu, the pair of black swans and the eagles. Newspaper advertisements for the auctions appeared throughout September. Henry and Teresa Keck, Joseph Long Innes and other officials were finally dismissed on 23 September 1849, the position of Visiting Magistrate to the Gaol was discontinued and the Sheriff was given new duties in relation to Gaols.
Keck was aged 49 when dismissed. His Government career was finished and he lost the occupancy of the beautiful sandstone house at the Gaol. He moved in with his daughter Charlotte and her husband, Samuel Terry Hughes, the profligate grandson of Samuel Terry, the 'Rothschild of Botany Bay' and son of disgraced John Terry Hughes. He also continued his relationship with Sarah Whitehouse who died aged 31 in October 1850 after giving birth to their fifth child.
During the 1840s and early 1850s a number of significant family events occurred in Henry Keck’s families.
In February 1845 his youngest daughter, Henrietta died aged 7 after suffering illness for some time.
His youngest brother Samuel died in Ireland in 1846. His sister Georgiana and her husband James Simons and their child died of illness in Ireland in July 1849. His eldest brother Thomas died in Dublin in 1850.
Keck made attempts to help his sons Thomas Fitzgerald Keck and Henry Rice Keck find Government positions in either NSW or New Zealand. His eldest son Thomas had occasionally been a junior assistant to the Sheriff but no permanent position eventuated. Thomas was a keen rider and winner of steeple chases but he died aged 27 in May 1848 Seymour Victoria as a result of a fall from his horse while escorting cattle for Benjamin Boyd to Victoria. Henry Rice Keck, described as a surveyor, received a small gratuity for his assistance in laying the water tunnel at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1846. In July 1847, he married Ann Eliza Flood, the niece of Alderman Edward Flood. They moved out of Sydney for some time but apparently the marriage suffered difficulties. Henry junior died aged 30 in 1853 after a short but severe illness and his only child Marion Charlotte was born posthumously.
In July 1848, the NSW Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the marriage of two minors, namely Henry’s daughter Charlotte and Samuel Terry Hughes, the son of John Terry Hughes, could proceed with John Terry Hughes having first given his permission and then withdrawn it. The marriage ultimately took place out of Sydney and was described by Melbourne papers as an elopement. The Sydney papers were silent. Charlotte has many descendants.
Keck’s daughter Frances or Fanny married Clarence Eager in about 1851. His daughter Adelaide married Joseph Brady, civil engineer, in 1854. His daughter Georgina married Lyndon Bolton Carpenter, in 1856. They all have descendants.
Henry Keck had five children by Sarah Whitehouse. Gerald Henry was born in 1836 and lived to adulthood; he served in the NSW Police Force and had no children. Their second son Edward was born in December 1837 but died when 6 weeks old in January 1838; their daughter Sarah Low was born in November 1839 but died aged 1½ in July 1841. Their second daughter, Anne Elizabeth, was born in January 1844; she married George Wickham and has descendants. In September 1850, their last child Emily Jane was born but her birth was followed within weeks by the death of Sarah Whitehouse, aged 31, in October 1850. The child also seems to have not survived.
Keck returned to public life as Clerk of the Markets of the City of Sydney at George Street in December 1852.
The Sydney Morning Herald 7 December 1852 reported 'great sensation' in the City of Sydney Council Chambers when the result of the ballot for selection to the position was announced. There is no record of who else may have applied for the position other than perhaps the previous Assistant Clerk, James Byrnes, who had been appointed acting Clerk on the resignation of John Carruthers. A letter to the Empire, Henry Parkes’s newspaper, the next day signed “Stallholders of the George St Markets”, but giving no names, merely stating their presence at the meeting of Council, protested the appointment of Keck in view of his disgrace as Governor of the Sydney Gaol.
Another somewhat satirical letter to the Empire a few days later by “M.M.” protested that the hermit Keck could hardly be trusted to protect women at the Market from the “hounds” (louts) who ranged the markets on Saturday nights in view of his moral notions. He proceeded to list the names of Aldermen and Councillors whom he believed had voted for Keck. One of Keck’s supporters in the Council appears to have been George Allen, well-known lawyer, who had served on the Legislative Council Select Committee of Inquiry into the Gaol. Also serving on Council at this time was Edward Flood, uncle to Keck’s daughter in law, although M.M did not indicate he had voted for Keck. Daniel Egan, elected Mayor for 1853, published a letter denying he had supported Keck.
Keck held the job until his death in December 1863 and in it he exhibited the bravery and efficiency shown in his earlier career and none of the corruption evident in the last years of his term as Gaoler. His salary at appointment was £130, about half his salary at the Gaol. The City Commissioners who replaced Council in January 1854 accepted its recommendation for a raise in his salary and it became £200 and rose to £220 from 1855. In comparison, the City Treasurer then earned £400 and the Town Clerk £450. Keck’s sureties for performance of his duties were Andrew Dunn and Mr Greer Senior. Greer was a builder. In 1854, Greer was replaced by Samuel T Hughes, Keck’s son in law and in 1857, Joseph Brady, another son in law replaced Greer.
Revenue from the Markets made a significant contribution to the City finances and their successful management was of great importance to an inadequately funded Council. At times Keck also was responsible for the Hay Market. In most years, the Council auctioned the lease of the Markets, that is, the right to collect tolls and dues on goods and vehicles entering the Markets while Council collected fees for hawkers’ licences and the rents from stalls at the Market. In 1852, the receipts from the George St Markets amounted to £1400 and the Hay Market produced about £840. By 1860 the estimated revenues from George St Market and Hay Market were £8,000, the NSW Government grant was £10,000, Rates were expected to provide £38,000; total receipts were hoped to be almost £70,000. The Markets then were expected to provide about 11% of the annual income.
Keck also acted as the City Auctioneer responsible for conducting the auctions for the leases of City properties such as the Market Wharf, the various water fountains and the Markets themselves. Council paid Keck’s licence fees and gave him an annual gratuity as Auctioneer.
The George Street Markets were used for the wholesale and retail of fruit, vegetables, dairy products, eggs, poultry, preserved meats and butchers’ meat. In 1852 the George Street Markets consisted of four large buildings called sheds, each containing 36 stalls. The Queen Victoria Building now occupies the site. The sheds faced inwards to open space ‘between the markets’. The sheds had blank walls facing onto George, Market and York Streets with entrances between the sheds while the southern boundary abutted the Police Office in Druitt Street. Shed A was for the wholesale growers and market gardeners and in the summer fruit season was crammed full of sellers who also, of necessity, utilised the space ‘between the markets’. At other seasons only a few sellers were present. The wholesale market operated between 5 am and 9 am each day. Sellers were not permitted to sell in retail quantities or to retail produce bought from other sellers. There were continual complaints about breaches of this regulation. The shed was used for the twice yearly exhibitions of the Floral and Horticultural Society. Shed B was occupied by stallholders who sold meats, poultry, dairy products and eggs. Shed C had originally contained only the potato sellers who sometimes sold other root vegetables, pulses and onions but later, butchers were allowed stalls. Shed D stallholders were retailers selling fruits, vegetables, seeds and garden produce. Structural improvements were made during the 1840s and 1850s including renewing the roof and improving market security from thefts.
When asked in May 1857 to describe his duties as Clerk of the Market by the City's Finance Committee, Keck wrote:
“My duties as Clerk of the Market require my constant attendance for thirteen hours daily except on Saturdays when I am obliged to attend for seventeen hours. I have to keep order, cleanliness and observance of the By-Laws, to cause the removal of disorderly persons and frequently prosecute at the Police Office and settle all disputes between growers, hawkers etc and the Lessee, set the stalls, collect the rent, enter them in the Ledger and make weekly returns to the City Treasurer and Town Clerk.”
His duty to keep order in the Markets entailed confrontations with boozy vagrants, troublesome youths, petty criminals and regulation-breaking stall holders. He instigated numerous prosecutions in the Police Court for indecent acts and riotous behaviour in the Markets. The Sydney Morning Herald 9 January 1854 lamented the lack of a constable permanently in the Markets and the problem of a “set of vagabonds” who annoyed the public with “filthy language and disgusting behaviour” but it reported on 4 July 1854 that the Police Magistrate, James Dowling junior “took occasion, in the most handsome manner, to compliment Mr Keck upon the improved state of the market as regards cleanliness and general good order”. The problem of loutish behaviour, particularly on the popular Saturday nights, did nevertheless recur.
Keck's bravery was much on show in December 1859, despite his age of 59. The Sydney Morning Herald 17 December 1859 reported:
“Joseph Hartley, a man of very drunken habits-said to be drunk four or five days at least out of every seven-was charged by Henry Keck, the Clerk of George street Market, with having yesterday assaulted him in the execution of his duty. Defendant was in the market armed with a bludgeon, which, much to the alarm of the stallholders and the public, he flourished about in a most menacing manner; Mr. Keck interfered for the preservation of order, and was violently pushed by defendant with the stick and severely hurt, nor was it without a struggle that defendant was disarmed by Mr. Keck, and handed over to the police. Defendant, having been several times convicted of similar conduct when drunk, was now sentenced to be imprisoned fourteen days.”
By the late 1850s, less produce was coming into the centre of Sydney. Revenues to the Council from the Markets were falling but the buildings occupied a prime position ideal for general retail so Council decided to make changes. Seventy nine of the stallholders petitioned in December 1858 for the deferral of the proposed alterations as they would lose the improvements they had made to their stalls at their own cost, they would be unable to operate their stalls for a period, the leases for the new shops would be open to public tender or auction and the rents were expected to be higher. Major renovations went ahead in 1859 altering both the appearance and function of the Markets. The stalls in sheds A and B were replaced by perimeter shops which faced out onto George, Market and York Streets and by new ‘interior shops’ within the buildings. The new shops were occupied by sellers of footwear, crockery, books, birds, and millinery as well as fruiterers and seedsmen. The York Street shops were assigned to the butchers who were not allowed elsewhere in the Markets. Sheds C and D were still used by fruiterers and sellers of garden produce.
NSW’s economic health fluctuated wildly in the late 1850s and 1860s with rapid increases in population, inflation causing prices and wages to rise and then recession with falling prices and wages in. The Market and stallholders were affected and nearly all years saw stallholders petitioning Council for reductions in rents. Stallholders periodically fell into arrears. Even the weather seemed extreme with years of severe drought in the early 1850s, heavy rainfall in 1855 and 1856 and 1860, while in 1858 a blight caused massive market garden crop failures.
Keck’s personal life continued in the same irregular style as before and he continued living in the Terry Hughes cottage at Elizabeth St. His mistress, Sarah Whitehouse, had died in 1850 and the two surviving children of the relationship were probably living with either their grandmother, Mrs Elizabeth Whitehouse, who died in 1857 or with the Brewer family. Keck acquired a new mistress who was described in his will as his nurse. Mary Chambers was born in Dublin in about 1836 and was about 20 years old when she gave birth to Emily Jane Chambers in 1856. Two more children were born to them, Frederick Henry Chambers in 1858 and William Terry Chambers in 1860. Emily Chambers married John Parsons and they have descendants.
Keck settled into his role as Clerk of the Markets and seems to have gained acceptance by those he worked with and the public he served. He appears to have sorted out problems among the stall holders and implemented fairly the Council By Laws and he seems to have worked well with other Council Officers such as the Inspector of Nuisances who on occasion was called on to check out bad produce at the Markets.
In 1857, Fenwick and Dunn, the lessees of the City Water Fountains, alleged that Henry Keck, as Auctioneer, had made statements at the auction that the City Commissioners would not lay down water pipes to the shipping wharfs and they had bid and signed the leases with that assurance in mind. They threatened to resign their lease if the City Commissioners did supply water to the wharfs. Keck denied saying any such thing and as there was no such condition of sale in the official printing of the conditions of the lease, the City Commissioner took no action.
City of Sydney Council records contain only one suggestion that Keck may have found any questionable mode of enhancing his own finances. In April 1862, the Town Clerk at the direction of the Mayor, James Oatley, formally wrote and asked Keck whether he had 'been in the habit of receiving or appropriating any portion of the Fines or Costs connected with informations filed by you for Breaches of the Market By-Laws etc' and Keck immediately wrote back repudiating the suggestion. It was unlikely he could have done this undetected by the City Treasurer and there is no further mention of the matter. There may have been opportunities in the Market to grant favours or receive gifts but the stall holders and produce growers were very quick to write to or petition Council if any one of them took actions to the disadvantage of the others and none wrote anything to denigrate Keck.
It seems Keck was a faithful servant to the Council and achieved the respect of the market users and the public of Sydney.
Keck’s health declined in the latter part of 1863 and he applied for leave of absence which was granted. He died on Christmas Day 1863. In his will he left individual bequests to his Keck and Kirby children and a servant. He also left his wife Teresa the featherbed while a mattress and bedding went to his ‘nurse’ Mary Chambers. The two women were to share the residue of the estate which was assessed for probate as less than two hundred and fifty pounds.
A POSTSCRIPT ON KECK AND 20TH CENTURY TABLOIDS: MYTHS AND LIES
“Old Chum” (Joseph Michael Forde 1840-1929) wrote interesting items about the history of old Sydney in the newspaper Truth. Forde collected books, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings and other items on historical topics and created extensive files used in his writing. Between 1910 and 1915 a number of items appeared relating to Keck and his family. Most of these were reasonably accurate.
The same cannot be said of “historical” articles published in various Sydney tabloids during the 1960s through to the 1980s of which a number have been located. Articles appeared in the Mirror, the Sun, and Sunday papers and also in Australian Penthouse. The articles in the Mirror and Sunday papers are re-hashes of the same original source while the article in the Sun is somewhat different. The articles have sensational titles and sub-titles such as “Random Vice Den”, “Good-Time Girls in Judge’s Chambers”, “Call girls kept jail birds happy” and “Rogue jail governor set up brothel in Judge’s Chambers.
In the same vein is a website which can be located by typing “the amazing Mr Keck” into a search engine. This originated many years ago at the National Art School which occupies the Darlinghurst Gaol buildings.
An article by Ronald Rose appeared in Australian Penthouse in March 1982 titled “Turn of the Screw”. It is based on a considerable but patchy amount of research and is reasonably accurate although many facts are sensationally interpreted and illustrated.
The central claim of the tabloid stories is that Keck established a brothel or call-girl service operating out of the Darlinghurst Court House. This is simply not true.
There were no gaol operated brothels and no contemporary accusations that there were. The basis for the story is that Keck’s mistress, Sarah Whitehouse, had stayed at the Court House for a short period with her sister Ann Brewer who was care-taker of the building and was visited there by Keck. The contemporary accusations were that there were possible situations that could have allowed sexual relations to occur between turnkeys and women prisoners, and one accusation that Hibbs had been seen in a sexual encounter in the grounds with a woman and there was a hear-say report from Mrs Desmond that Keck had been seen leaving the female prison early one morning and was wearing informal clothes. No one asked Keck about this occurrence. The other contemporary allegations were that a number of the turnkeys were living with women they were not married to and Keck kept a mistress.
Another frequent claim is that Keck had formed a prisoner orchestra or two which were hired out around Sydney, the members of which got drunk and would not return to the Gaol. This is not true. Keck had utilised on two occasions the services of two soldier prisoners, the drummer of the 99th regiment and a clarinet or trumpet player. The occasions were private parties in the Principal Gaoler’s House, very probably a celebration of the marriage of his daughter Charlotte and a birthday party for his daughter Adelaide. Mrs Keck or her daughters played the piano. Mrs Keck was an accomplished player who advertised in 1860 as a piano teacher. It is probably true that one or other of the soldier players got drunk and resisted going back to his cell but he had not after all left the prison premises.
Some of the articles claim that Dublin Castle was a nick-name for an office building in Dublin. Dublin Castle was the Castle of Dublin containing offices and living quarters for the Chief Secretary of Ireland’s administration of Ireland, in other words, the Government Offices. The term ‘Dublin Castle’ was used in the same way that we in NSW might now refer to ‘Macquarie Street’ or the English might refer to Downing Street or Westminster.
Other claims in the articles are that Keck offered fraudulent credentials as to his previous employment. This is not true. He had been employed in the Civil Department of the Chief Secretary’s office in Dublin Castle.
There are claims that Keck had given himself the rank of Colonel and had stated he had military service or was an expert on gaol administration. No contemporary references to that rank or experience have been located.
PRINCIPAL SOURCES
PRO (UK): correspondence of Robert Peel; War Office Abstracts and Lord Lieutenants Letters; Irish Constabulary Register of Officers.
House of Commons (UK): Parliamentary Papers relating to the Chief Secretary's Department in Ireland (1800-1804), (1816-1822), Returns from the Civil Department in Ireland; Royal palaces and buildings, return on those occupied, 1831; Commissioners for Reorganisation , Office Chief Secretary in Ireland; (accessed on-line).
British newspapers: Freeman’s Journal (Dublin).
Dublin Directories: Treble Almanac; Wilson’s; Shaw’s.
Irish Parish Registers
NSW Government Gazette
Historical Records of Australia.
NSW Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages, records.
NSW newspapers 1832-1863, Sydney Gazette, Sydney Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, Commercial Journal and Advertiser, Australian, The Bee of Australia; Heads of the People, People’s Advocate, Empire.; Maitland Mercury.
Victorian newspapers: Melbourne Argus; Port Phillip Herald; Portland Guardian; Belfast Gazette.
Sydney Directories: Stephen & Stokes; Brabazon; Lowe; Ford; Waugh and Cox; Sands.
State Records NSW: Colonial Secretary's Correspondence; Records of the hulk Phoenix including Weekly Returns and Letters by the Superintendent; Sydney Gaol Correspondence; Returns of the Colony (Blue Books); 1841 Census; Sydney Electoral Rolls; Probate papers.
NSW Legislative Council: Report from the Select Committee on the Darlinghurst Gaol, with Appendix and Minutes of Evidence, Government Printing Office 1849
City of Sydney Archives: Council Minutes, Reports and Minutes of the Finance, Markets, By Laws and Improvement Committees, Letters Received and Letters Sent; Assessment Books; City of Sydney website: Council Aldermen.
Australian Dictionary of Biography, ed Percival Serle (online)
July 2014; Marilyn MasonRelationship legacy dataRELATED TO: Markets control FN-0001 (1/12/1852 to 31/12/1863)
RELATED TO: Town Clerks Department AG-0040 (1/12/1852 to 31/12/1863) - Clerk of the Markets
Occupational historyIn Ireland:1819 - ?: Office Porter, Chief Secretary’s Office, Civil Department, Dublin Castle? - c1832: an unidentified position in the Chief Secretary’s Office, Dublin CastleIn NSW:1832-36: Assistant Superintendent of the hulk Phoenix, Sydney NSW1836-37: Superintendent of the House of Correction and Gaoler of the Debtors’ Prison, at Carters Barracks, Sydney1837-49: Principal Gaoler, Sydney Gaol (1837-41 at George St and 1841-49 at Darlinghurst)1838-1839: Acting Superintendent of the House of Correction (concurrently with his position as Principal Gaoler, Sydney Gaol)1849-1852: private lifeDecember 1852- December 1863: Clerk of the Markets, City of SydneyArchivist notePrepared by Archives Volunteer Marilyn Mason.Legacy dataRegistered by: Smith, Michael
Registered date: 12/08/2014
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Minister: NoneUpdated Date: 15/08/2014
Updated User: mdsmithSource system ID40
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CollectionPeople and PositionsRelated agenciesTown Clerk's DepartmentRelated functionsMarkets control
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Date registered5th December 2018Registered byData Migration UserRegistration statusApprovedDetailed recordYes
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Keck,Henry [PE-000040]. City of Sydney Recollect - UAT, accessed 05 Aug 2025, https://cosauat.recollect.net.au/nodes/view/62711