Item #4505043 The Galley Memento. Edmund GALLEY, F. Faulkner WHITE, illuminator.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.
The Galley Memento.

The Galley Memento.

[Exeter]: [1879].

Large quarto (365 x 275 mm); contents comprising 14 vellum leaves heavily illuminated by F. Faulkner White, Gothic-style calligraphic text surrounded by multicoloured borders; title leaf with small oval albumen photograph of the recipient, Ralph Sanders, mounted; 3-leaf testimonial of appreciation; remaining leaves recording the names of the 342 citizens of Exeter; folding printed broadside titled "A Memento of the Galley Case. Presentation to Messrs. Thomas Latimer and Ralph Sanders, Re-printed from The Daily Western Times…", providing an account of the case and the creation of the memento; finely bound by H. Harris of Exeter, c.1880, in contemporary red morocco gilt, floral motifs to compartments, triple fillet to sides enclosing elaborately decorated brown onlay frames, roundels at each corner with vellum onlays, with two additional vellum onlays bearing the coat of arms of Great Britain and date, title lettered to brown onlay ceremonial ribbon in central panel, board edges, inner dentelles and edges gilt; the remarkable binding protected with a limp red morocco "jacket", double fillet frame to sides, title in gilt Gothic type.

Superb presentation album honouring a campaigner for a wrongly convicted man's release

An exceptionally highly finished and remarkable presentation volume, made to celebrate the release of Edmund Galley, who was famously wrongfully convicted of murder in 1836 and transported to Australia to serve out his sentence in the Yass region of the Southern Tablelands; this remarkable volume is inscribed in its illuminated address to one of the two men chiefly responsible for procuring his eventual pardon over forty years later, the solicitor and county clerk Ralph Sanders.

An exceptionally highly finished and remarkable presentation volume, made to celebrate the release of Edmund Galley, who was famously wrongfully convicted of murder in 1836 and transported to Australia to serve out his sentence in the Yass region of the Southern Tablelands; this remarkable volume is inscribed in its illuminated address to one of the two men chiefly responsible for procuring his eventual pardon over forty years later, the solicitor and county clerk Ralph Sanders.

On 28 July 1836 Edmund Galley (alias "Dick Turpin") had been tried at the Exeter assizes for the murder of Jonathan May, a wealthy farmer; Sanders was present at his trial. Convicted through mistaken identity, he was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment on the urging of a number of junior barristers convinced of his innocence.

After two years on the Ganymede hulk on the Thames, Galley was transported in May 1839 as one of 240 convicts aboard the Parkfield, arriving in Port Jackson on 1 September. He served over forty years of labour, first on a chain gang at Cooks River, then as a farm servant to Thomas Waugh. In 1846 he became a ticket-of-leave man, working in the Southern Tablelands, first as a horse driver for William Howell of Burrowa in the Yass District, then as a farm servant for a Dr O'Brian of Illalong, near the village of Binalong, and finally as a shepherd in Bendinine, for one of the colony's biggest farmers, Henry Brown.

Galley was finally pardoned on 26 July 1879, at the age of 80, and compensated with £1,000 for his unjust conviction. His free pardon was announced widely in the Australian press (e.g. Australian Town and Country Journal, 18 October 1879, where a full-length portrait of Galley accompanies the article; and the Sydney Morning Herald 18 October 1879).

Extraordinarily, his case had garnered international attention over the decades: newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, and even those in the United States and England - despite his far-flung exile - revisited the details of his trial and advocated his innocence. His employers supported him in petitioning the English Home Office, and in 1877 Sanders and Latimer took up his cause once more: a remarkable example of persistence in the pursuit of justice.

In acknowledgement of the central part that both Sanders and Latimer played, "a number of young men in the city [of Exeter] determined to prepare and sign an Address expressing their appreciation of the efforts of these gentlemen, and they quietly proceeded without the gentlemen concerned gaining the slightest inkling of what was intended until the movement was complete. Messrs. Latimer and Sanders were then asked to each accept a volume containing the addresses and the names as a Memento of Galley's release… The addresses were beautifully illuminated by Mr. F. Faulkner White, and the names of the subscribers written by the same gentleman adorned the subsequent pages of the book. Each volume was handsomely bound by Mr. Henry Harris, of Longbrook-street, and presented at the Athenaeum on Wednesday 28 January 1880, at a meeting of the subscribers, which included persons of every class and political allegiance" (The Daily Western Times, 30 January 1880).

See the online British Convict transportation register for further details of the Parkfield and its voyage.

Provenance: Presented to Ralph Sanders, solicitor in Exeter, in 1880; ultimately in the library of Richard S. Lambert, author of "The Innocence of Edmund Galley" (a copy accompanies the album).

Price (AUD): $26,750.00

US$17,429.40   Other currencies

Ref: #4505043