Colonial Despatches

Reverend Frederick Shum Batchelor was an Anglican priest who spent much of his career working in both the British and Van Diemen's Land prison systems.1 He was born in Keynsham, Somerset and educated at Cambridge.2 In November 1842, he was appointed chaplain of the convict settlement of Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land, arriving there with his wife on 19 July 1843. The Lord Bishop of Tasmania ordained him deacon shortly after his arrival, and he was priested the same year.3 He returned to England in 1852 and served as assistant chaplain at Dartmoor and Chatham Prisons.4 After unsuccessfully applying for the position of Colonial Chaplain to British Columbia in 1858, he continued to work in the English prison system until 1886.5 He died at the age of 74 in 1892.6

• 1. Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1865 (London: Horace Cox, 1865), 37.
• 2. United Kingdom. The National Archives. RG12 General Register Office: 1891 Census Returns. RG12/804, 20; Crockford's, 37.
• 3. Batchelor to Lytton, 10 September 1858, 9429, CO 60/2; Shipping Intelligence, Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen's Land Gazette, 21 July 1843; Local, Hobart Town Courier and Van Diemen's Land Gazette, 18 August 1843; Crockford's, 37.
• 4. Batchelor to Lytton.
• 5. Ibid.; John Venn, ed., Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900. vol. 1, part 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1940), 181.
• 6. United Kingdom. General Register Office Index. Deaths Registered in October, November, and December, 1892. Brighton, vol. 2b, 148.