Promissory Notes

Lot 1503       Promissory Notes

Estimate $5,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $10,200

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land Police Fund, Edward Foord Bromley, Treasurer of the Police Fund, Government police fund bill, forty pounds, 22 June 1821 (year 182 printed), No.184, to E.F. Bromley, hand signed by Lt. Governor William Sorell, black on white, watermarked paper with crude Britannia with shield on waves in oval on side, with additional four horizontal lines. Small thin near GOV of GOVERNMENT and some minor paper toning, otherwise very fine and extremely rare, being one of only two known in private hands.

Notes issued by the New South Wales Police Fund are well known (see W.J. Mira, The Note Issues of the Colonial Police Fund of New South Wales 1810-1824, 1979 [1990]), but issues from Van Diemen's Land are only noted by Mira (Coinage and Currency in New South Wales 1788-1829 etc.), on p.58, but these have never previously been described and illustrated. Edward Foord Bromley (1777-1836) was a naval surgeon who arrived in Australia as surgeon-superintendent in March 1816. In November 1818 the secretary of state appointed him Naval Officer at Hobart Town, with a salary of 5% of the duties collected, and to make up for his disappointment hoped 'that his situation as Naval Officer should be rendered as comfortable as circumstances will permit'. He received a residence and a large town allotment. He went back to England and returned to Hobart in February 1820 and took up the position of treasurer of the Police Fund at a salary of Å“60. Deciding 'to brave the opinion of the world' to do 'an act of common justice to a careful deserving young woman' Bromley took his housekeeper, Sarah Greenow, as his second wife on 23 November 1820. He also became a magistrate and a foundation shareholder in the Bank of Van Diemen's Land. However he is remembered chiefly for a spectacular misappropriation of colonial funds which was finally discovered in 1824. Although Lieut-Governor Sorell entirely approved his administration and his many friends supported him after his suspension, the evidence of the inquiry revealed a well-nigh incredible laxness and inefficiency. The degree of his personal guilt was never established and it seems likely that his convict clerk, Bartholomew Broughton, participated in the embezzlement. Lieut-Governor Arthur (who succeded Sorell in May 1824) suspended Bromley, and the deficiency in the Naval Office and Treasury amounted to Å“5822 which increased with later discoveries to Å“8388. He was refused permission to leave to plead his case in England and his worldly possessions were seized and sold, but he still owed Å“4200. A varied career followed and he died in the Marine infirmary at Woolwich in England on 29 June 1836. (see more details in Australian Dictionary of Biography, p.155-6). Only two specimens of the Van Diemen's Land Police Fund are known to exist in private hands (this example and the one in the next lot, but another could be in the Dixson Collection) and these examples probably form part of his misappropriation of treasury funds. A most interesting note with a spectacular association with early Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land).