Forgotten First Fleeters 4: John Turnpenny Altree

John Turnpenny Altree was a young man, ‘bred in the medical line’, employed by the owners of the ‘Lady Penrhyn’ in 1787 to take care of the female convicts on the outward voyage. He remained in the colony and served as an assistant to the surgeon on Norfolk Island, before returning to England in 1791.

Altree is unfamiliar to readers of Australian history because he spent almost all of his time on Norfolk Island – and because family historians have confused him with his father, who bore the same name.

Four of the six convict transports sent out with Australia’s First Fleet, carried naval surgeons who tended to the convicts’ needs throughout the voyage and later in the colony.

However, on the Lady Penrhyn, which was carrying only female convicts, the owners employed a young man ‘bred in the medical line’, to care for the women, in addition to a qualified surgeon hired to attend to the crew. None of the other transports employed a ship’s surgeon, relying instead on young men with basic medical experience to perform these services.

John Turnpenny Attree is described as a surgeon in some of the First Fleet papers, but he was not yet qualified. In 1787, he was only 24 years of age, having completed his apprenticeship as a druggist (in effect, a compounding chemist) only three years before. He was reported to have served as surgeon’s mate with the Staffordshire Militia, where he held the rank of ensign, but this was an informal and occasional position.

His father, also named John Turnpenny Altree, was a surgeon and druggist from a village outside Birmingham. His grandfather, John Altree, had been a physician based in London for some years, an eminent ‘man midwife’ who had performed pioneering caesareans. While his grandfather had died more than ten years before he was born, it was probably because of his reputation that young Altree was chosen to oversee the health needs of 230 female convicts on a voyage to the far side of the world.

The First Fleet

By the time he joined the Lady Penrhyn in March 1787, many of women had already been on board for two months and there was a fever, almost certainly typhus (or gaol fever), among them. Altree threw himself into caring for them, and before the month was out, he too had caught the fever, described as being ‘of a putrescent kind’. He was obliged to go ashore for treatment, and when the ship’s surgeon visited him the next day, he found him dangerously ill. A financial bonus of £30 organised by Captain Arthur Phillip, commodore of the First Fleet and Governor-designate of the colony, was spent on medical care.

Altree recovered and returned to the ship shortly before the fleet sailed from the Mother Bank in mid-May. By that time, Phillip had decided to replace him as medical attendant to the women convicts with the ship’s surgeon, Arthur Bowes Smyth. There can be little doubt that it was John White, the surgeon general for the expedition, who concluded that Altree was ‘very unequal to the task’. Altree was sent to mess in steerage with the ship’s petty officers, working as Bowes Smyth’s assistant throughout the voyage.

Norfolk Island

Two days after the women disembarked in Sydney Cove, Altree was appointed as assistant to Thomas Jamison, a surgeon’s mate from HMS Sirius, who was being sent in support a small secondary settlement on Norfolk Island, around 1,700 kilometres to the north-east of Port Jackson. He remained there until February 1791, when he returned to England with the crew of the shipwrecked flagship, HMS Sirius.

Little is known about his time on the island. We know that he established a small farm at Ball’s Bay and was made responsible for a small community there. It is likely that he took one of the convict women, most of whom were around his age, as a companion.

In the three years he was there, he would have supported Jamison in dealing with a wide variety of medical conditions – assisting with childbirth; inspecting new arrivals for venereal disease; treating scurvy, which was particularly bad when they first arrived on the island; ascertaining the likely cause of a widespread sickness among the convicts in 1790 (thought to stem from cooking their meat in copper kettles); dealing with cases of drowning and poisoning; tending a fractured hip or a broken skull when convicts were struck by falling trees; dressing small wounds; supervising the flogging of offenders to ensure they were capable of bearing their punishment; compiling reports on the sick and hurt and sending them to Port Jackson.

As described by Governor Phillip in a testimonial written on his behalf:

'...on board the Lady Penrhyn, he assisted in the attendance of such convicts as required Medical Treatment, and... he has since been empl'oyed as an assistant to the Surgeon on Norfolk Island, and occasionally as a Superintendent of the Convicts... [1]

Subsequent Life and Career

Three days after he was discharged at Portsmouth in April 1792, he presented his credentials to the Home Office, who put his name forward as a potential convict surgeon for the Royal Admiral which was preparing to carry out another load of convicts. When he was not taken up for this role, he secured a position as a medical assistant at Haslar Naval Hospital near Portsmouth under Dr John Lind, son of the legendary Scottish physician James Lind, who was known as the father of naval hygiene.

It was probably while he was working there that he was examined and approved by the Royal College of Surgeons, based in part on the experience he had gained on Norfolk Island.

In December 1793, Altree was appointed as the surgeon at a new hospital on the island of St Kitts in the West Indies. It was there that he met and married Lucy Emra, the daughter of a prominent St Kitts family (who were significant plantation and slave owners). The couple had two children, returning to England in 1797 and 1798.

By November 1799, they had moved back to Willenhall, the village outside of Birmingham where Altree’s father had lived and recently died.

Notice of Altree's new practice at Wolverhampton, 1799 [2]

Lucy passed away from a lingering disease in November 1804, aged 30 years and 15 days. Altree died in April of the following year. He was just 41 years of age, their now orphaned children, nine and five. Three days later, his practice was offered for sale:

Notice of the sale of Altree's practice, 1805 [3]

A NSW Connection

Whilst researching this Catspaw, I mentioned my findings to a colleague, Glen Lambert, who is descended on his mother’s side from a First Fleet marine (and has specialised in studying the soldiers in the early colony). He mentioned that the family on his father’s side used Altree as a second name: all that was known of this naming tradition was that Altree had been a person of some standing.

After I sent him my research note, Glen said that he had worked out that he was descended from Dr. John Altree’s brother, and John Turnpenny Altree the Younger was his second cousin six times removed. He later messaged to say that on a visit to Norfolk Island several years ago, he had befriended a descendant of Thomas Jamison, the surgeon who had mentored his relative on the island some 230 years before.

_____________________

[1] John King to Charles Long, 27 April 1792, UK National Archives, HO36/7/289.

[2] Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 4 November 1799, p. 3.

[3] Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 8 April 1805, p. 3.

Contact us

botanybaymen@gmail.com

Botany Baymen acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and respects their connection to land, water and community.

© Botany Baymen 2024-2026. All rights reserved.
You may download, display, print and reproduce this content for your personal or non-commercial use but only in an unaltered form and with the copyright acknowledged.
Privacy Policy

Subscribe to our latest updates

Be the first in the know. We promise no spam.