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The Telegraph; A Consolatory Epistle from Thomas Muir, Esq. of Botany Bay to the Hon. Henry Erskine, late Dean of Faculty
The Telegraph; A Consolatory Epistle from Thomas Muir, Esq. of Botany Bay to the Hon. Henry Erskine, late Dean of Faculty

The Telegraph; A Consolatory Epistle from Thomas Muir, Esq. of Botany Bay to the Hon. Henry Erskine, late Dean of Faculty

Author (Scottish, 1765 - 1799)
Date1796
Object number00004787
NamePamphlet
MediumPaper
DimensionsOverall: 275 mm, 0.6 kg
ClassificationsEphemera
Credit LineANMM Collection Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds
DescriptionA pamphlet titled 'The Telegraph; A Consolatory Epistle from Thomas Muir, Esquire of Botany Bay to the Honorable Henry Erskine, late Dean of Faculty'. Edinburgh, Scotland. 1796. Where names have been omitted in the text, they have been handwritten in the margins.HistoryThomas Muir, a Glasgow lawyer, was one of a group of five radicals, known as the Scottish Martyrs, sentenced in 1794 to 14 years’ transportation for sedition because of his political views. He was a champion of free speech and universal male suffrage, and had tried to promulgate Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. This poem, addressed to Henry Erskine, a fellow radical who remained in Scotland, was actually written not by Thomas Muir but by Rev. George Hamliton, Minister of Gladsmuir. It describes the condition of the convicts and satirises Muir’s revolutionary political ideas. A reference is made on page 8 to the Aboriginal practice of lighting fires in the bush. The pamphlet can be dated by the fact that Erskine was not re-elected as Dean on 12 January 1796 – hence its “consolatory” nature.SignificanceThomas Muir, one of the 'Scottish Martyrs' became one New South Wales’ earliest political prisoners