William Coleman Balls, 1790 – 1876

William Balls was a prominent and reliable London Chartist, well known as a speaker, and trusted to chair public meetings. But money proved to be his downfall, and in 1846 he found himself on board a convict ship heading for the brutal penal colony at Norfolk Island.

Born in Norwich on 16 January 1790, William Coleman Balls most likely came to London as a child, when his father, also William, moved to the capital in search of work. By 1810, William Balls senior was working as a printer at the well-known City publishing company of Gilbert & Rivington; William Coleman Balls (his middle name taken from his mother Judith) also became a printer, and in 1815 married Ann Phylis Harris at Christ Church in Newgate Street.

There is no record of William Balls playing any part in public life before 1840, when his name first appears in print as the secretary of a committee of London Chartists who were planning to memorialise the Queen and petition Parliament on behalf of the leaders of the Newport Rising, who were then facing trial for high treason (Northern Star, 4 January 1840, p8). But about the same time he also became secretary of the United Brothers’ Provident Society, a small mutual organisation which insured its members against illness, unemployment and the other misfortunes that could destroy a family in early Victorian England.

Most likely Balls had been quietly involved in the life of his community for some years and was only now coming to wider notice. And from 1840 inwards, his name appears regularly in connection with Chartist meetings and events in Clerkenwell, Finsbury and across the City of London. William Balls was not a wealthy man, but he appeared at least to be doing well for a working man: the 1841 census found him at home in Eureka Place, Finsbury, with Phylis and their seven children; the surrounding households were headed by watchmakers, coopers, a cabinet maker and other skilled tradesmen.

Throughout the early 1840s, William Balls appears to have been much in demand as a speaker. In one speech at a ‘public meeting of the Radicals of Finsbury’, he observed that the Reform Act of 1832 had been ‘merely a triumph of one base faction over another’ and of no benefit to ‘the people’ (NS, 3 October 1840 p8). Though this had been a minority opinion in 1832, by the time Chartism emerged it had gained wider currency among working-class radicals.

Balls frequently lectured on the case for the People’s Charter and on aspects of it, and there are numerous if brief accounts of these in both the Northern Star and Feargus O’Connor’s short-lived London Evening Star. He was also frequently called on to chair meetings, perhaps being thought to have the authority of age in managing the sometimes unruly audiences drawn to Chartist meetings. Towards the end of 1842, in the immediate wake of the uproar that had erupted at the first public appearance of the City of London Female Chartist Association, it was William Balls who took the chair at subsequent meetings – evidently as a safe pair of hands.

In 1844, however, a great deal of his time appears to have been taken up as a member of the committee organising a testimonial dinner for Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, the radical if aristocratic MP for Finsbury, who could always be relied upon to support the Chartist and trade union causes.

This came to fruition on 3 February 1845, when a ‘grand soiree’ took place at the White Conduit Tavern. On William Balls’ motion, Arthur Wade was called to the chair. A Church of England clergyman, Wade had long been involved in London radicalism and had been a delegate to the First Chartist Convention; this was, however, to be his final political appearance, before his death that November from apoplexy. Also present were Duncombe himself, Feargus O’Connor, the lawyer W.P. Roberts, and ‘Mr J.Berry, the representative of 10,000 miners’. Evidently a great success, the evening ended with a ball that carried on until 2am (NS, 8 February 1845, p4).

This was, however, to be William Balls’ swansong. On 26 June, he found himself under arrest. Two months later on 27 August he was brought up before Baron Platt at the Old Bailey on charges of defrauding the provident society of £52 – the entirety of its assets. Balls pleaded his innocence, but the evidence of forged signatures and dubious transactions given against him by the society’s stewards and the manager of Finsbury Savings Bank was damning. The jury found Balls guilty, but ‘strongly recommended mercy’. Despite this, Platt sentenced him to be transported for ten years.

William Balls’ father petitioned the Home Secretary. William senior, then 85 years old, appealed for a more lenient sentence. His son was ‘afflicted with rheumatism and gout (occasionally severely)’, had never previously been charged with any crime, and there was, he argued, a ‘probability of him sinking under the operation of his sentence’. He asked that an alternative punishment should be found ‘in this country’ –  a phrase he underlined. The petition was rejected.

After several months incarcerated at Milbank Prison, Balls was put on board the convict ship China. Carrying 200 male prisoners, the ship left Woolwich on 7 January 1846, arriving at the Norfolk Island penal colony on 6 May after more than four months at sea. A tiny speck of land more than 1,400 kilometres east of Melbourne, Norfolk Island had for the most part been used to house transported convicts who went on to commit further crimes. It had a well-earned reputation for violence, for harsh discipline, and for often arbitrary punishment.

The convicts from the China had not been ashore long when a mutiny broke out on the island. Four volunteer ‘convict constables’ were massacred before the rebellion was put down by troops, and thirteen prisoners were hanged. Neither Balls nor any of the new arrivals appear to have been among the mutineers, but it was a brutal introduction to a terrifying place.

William Balls’ convict record does, however, provide some idea of his appearance: 5’4” tall, he had grey eyes, and dark brown to grey hair; not surprisingly, he could read and write. His occupation on his conduct record is listed as a ‘carpenter’; there would have been little call for printers on Norfolk Island.

Back in England, Phylis Balls once again appealed for mercy, arguing that William’s departure had placed a heavy burden on her, and that if only William could be brought back and given a little money, he would once again be ‘an useful member of society, a good father, and a good husband’. It was to no avail.

In 1847, the British government decided to run down the penal colony. William Balls received his ticket of leave on 20 August 1850, and a conditional pardon on 13 July 1852, some two years before the colony finally closed. But there was to be no return to England and no happy reunion with his wife and family. William would live out the remainder of his life in Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land.

Despite his ill health, William lived a surprisingly long life in exile. His death aged 86 at the Wheatsheaf Inn, Macquarrie-street, Hobart on 18 October 1876 ‘after a long and painful illness’, was recorded in the local Mercury newspaper. He was buried in the paupers’ section at the town’s Cornelian Bay Cemetery.

Notes and sources

William Balls’ records in parish baptismal and marriage registers and in the 1841 census can be found in Ancestry and FindMyPast.

Newspaper reports are taken from the British Newspaper Archive. After the first mention, the Northern Star is cited as NS.

William Coleman Balls. Deception; forgery. 18th August 1845. Transcript of court case at Old Bailey Online (accessed 26 December 2024).

Petitions from both William Balls senior and Phylis Balls can be found in UK criminal records at The National Archives in HO 18/155. Accessed via Ancestry.

William Coleman Balls on the Convict Records website (accessed 26 December 2024).

Comprehensive Register of Convicts (Core Series) A- L, 1844-1850, Tasmania Archive and Heritage Office. Accessed via Ancestry.

William Balls’ ticket of leave was reported in The Irish Exile and Freedom’s Advocate, Hobart Town, on 24 August 1850 (accessed on Trove, 26 December 2024).

The official Hobart Town Government Gazette record of William Balls’ conditional pardon was reported in the Cornwall Chronicle, Launceston, 21 July 1852 (accessed on Trove, 26 December 2024).