William Griffiths

In the novel

William Griffiths enters Young & Condemned as Allen’s father, but he is one of the most elusive members of the Griffiths family. Unlike his son, William left remarkably little trace in the surviving record.

On 5 February 1827, William Griffiths married Cecelia Blyghton at Radford, Nottingham. Over the following decade, five children can be traced to the couple: George, Allen, Mary Elizabeth, Cecelia and Mary Ann.

Beyond those family records, very little can presently be said about William with certainty.

The historical record

William is named as Allen’s father in the surviving records, but two later descriptions provide tantalisingly different glimpses of his working life.

When the young Allen came before the Nottingham courts, his father was described as “a tramper.” The record does not explain what was meant by the term or provide any further information about William’s circumstances.

Years later, when Allen married Alice Elizabeth Keys in Victoria in 1857, Allen identified his father as William Griffiths, coach builder.

The two descriptions may refer to different periods or circumstances in William’s life, but the surviving evidence does not allow us to reconstruct his employment history with confidence.

More striking is his absence from the family home.

William does not appear with Cecelia, Allen and Elizabeth in their Earl Street household in the 1841 census. Cecelia was nevertheless recorded as married in the probable 1861 census entry, and as widowed in 1871. If those later entries belong to Allen’s mother, they suggest that William may still have been alive in 1861, but they do not tell us where he was.

No later record has yet been identified with sufficient certainty to establish what became of him.

For a man whose son would leave behind prison registers, court records, transportation papers and decades of Australian records, William remains remarkably indistinct: a husband in 1827, a father in his children’s records, “a tramper” in the records of Allen’s troubled childhood, and a coach builder in the information Allen himself supplied as an adult.

Beyond that, the historical record has so far remained silent.