Ind, Samuel Henry

IND, Samuel Henry (1823 – 1898), was born at Bethnal Green, London, England, seventh of eight children and third son of Ambrose Ind, a labourer, and Mary Ann Trickey. By 1841 both his parents had died and Ind was living a Dickensian existence in the household of John Lloyd, a pawnbroker, as one of two fifteen-year-old assistants. In London in January 1846 Ind was convicted of larceny and gaoled for one month. At Lancashire in October he was again convicted of larceny, this time sentenced to four months gaol with a whipping. A year later he was again convicted of stealing money and sentenced to seven years transportation to Tasmania, arriving in the Blenheim in July 1850. In 1852 at Robert Home’s school at Hobart, Ind offered classes in singing and harmony. He was said to be late of the Abbey-street School, opened at Bethnal Green in 1839 and where Ind could have attended classes. At Hobart, after Home died in September 1852, Ind received permission to marry his widow, Emi Emma Midcraft, in 1853. By 1854 he oversaw Home’s Academy, a boarding school with annual fees of 50 guineas, French, German and Italian extra. Drawing, linear and perspective, was included. The Academy’s half yearly examination in June 1854 was elaborately celebrated and well reported but 9 months later Ind was insolvent with teachers unpaid. For various fraudulent transactions, the Insolvency Commissioner jailed Ind for four months which the Hobarton Mercury thought lenient in comparison with William COOTE’s recent jailing. Following his release, the Inds moved to New South Wales in 1856 where his appointment at schools in Newcastle and Richmond, followed a now familiar pattern – being well received but moving on within a couple of years. Moving to Queensland where as “Jean des tous les oeuvres” he claimed an English training and certification by the New South Wales Board of Education. He was in Brisbane by March 1861 when he became a probationary teacher at the Normal School. In the following May he was appointed to the new primary school in Dalby, but after complaints was dismissed at the end of 1862. Remaining in Dalby he offered among diverse accomplishments, to provide architectural services, apparently without success. Subsequently he reverted to teaching. Ind’s schemes for a private academy at Dalby and a boarding school at Condamine were short lived but he was appointed to the National School at Condamine in 1865, teaching in temporary accommodation – a room in the Post Office, then the Courthouse, pending completion of Benjamin BACKHOUSE’s school. By November 1967, Ind had 52 pupils but when he attempted to make additions to the school in 1869, he was charged with defrauding a timber supplier. Despite being found not guilty, he was dismissed. After he applied unsuccessfully for the position of town clerk at Dalby he reverted to his slogan Jean des tous les oeuvres but the edited list of services he offered, although still broad-ranging, no longer included architecture. He was re-admitted as a teacher in 1880 and in 1886 was teaching at Samford when his wife died. Subsequently he moved to North Queensland, where he was teaching at Macrossan Bridge in 1888 when he married Hephzibah Field at Townsville. His death in July 1898 at Charters Towers was not reported. Of Ind’s six siblings only the two eldest brothers stayed in Eng. His two youngest sisters after their marriages went to the USA; and his eldest sister and youngest brother migrated to South Australia, both before Ind was transported. It is not known if members of the family remained in touch.