Arthur Savage

Awarded part of the compensation for the enslaved people on Strawberry Hill in Port Royal Jamaica with Richard Savage (q.v.) and others.

1. Probably the Arthur Savage (1798 [sic]-1852), naval surgeon, who as surgeon-intendent sailed with three convict ships to Australia between 1833 and 1836 and with an emigrant ship on which he and his family sailed in 1838. He had acted as an immigration agent in the UK before his departure. He served as health officer for Sydney from November 1839 until his death in New South Wales on 19/07/1852.   

2. Certainly the natural son of Arthur Savage of Arthur Savage & Co. Kingston Jamaica, a merchant and coffee planter of Strawberry Hill who died c. 1815 and who after specific bequests to among others his nieces left his residual estate to his sister Faith (later Fidelia, who married the Rev. Richard Munkhouse, both q.v.), and to two natural sons, Arthur and Richard by Jane Bowie: his will also provided for them to be educated in England. The first Arthur Savage was the son of an American loyalist, in turn also Arthur, who was originally a merchant 'in the West India way' in Boston. The London merchant firm of Bird, Savage & Bird was clearly connected to the family given the evidence of naming practices including 'Bird' among the children of Faith/Fidelia Munkhouse.

3. An Arthur Savage age 67, "West India Proprietor", born "Jamaica West Indies B[ritish] S[ubject]" was a visitor in the household of Sarah W. Fenner at 18 St Mary Abbott's Terr., Kensington, in the census of 1851. This is unlikely to be the same person, given the age discrepancy, but no baptism has been found for this Arthur Savage in Jamaica between 1780 and 1790.

4. Arthur, born 29/02/1804 and Richard, born 05/05/1806, children of Jane Bowie, "a free mestee by Arthur Savage", were baptised in Kingston, Jamaica, 14/07/1806. The death of Arthur Savage, the naval surgeon, is given on 20/07/1852 in Sydney, aged 55, which is presumably where the birth year of 1798 is inferred from.

T71/864 Port Royal no. 9, which identifies him as surgeon in the Royal Navy. The estate was shown against Arthur Savage in the Jamaica Almanacs of 1811-12, then against a series names apparently unconnected with the family (including the London merchant J.B. Elin) until 1838, when it is shown against Richard Savage.

1. Charles Bateson, 'Savage, Arthur (1798-1852), Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/savage-arthur-2630 [accessed 16/10/2012].

2. Lawrence Park, Thomas Savage of Boson and his descendants (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1914) pp. 28-30.

3. 1851 census online.

4. Familysearch.org, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880 [database online]; Ancestry.com, Sydney, Australia, Cemetery Headstone Transcriptions, 1837-2003 [database online].

We are grateful to Alan Savage for his assistance in compiling this entry.