Where's Your License?

DESCRIPTION: "The inspector of traps said, 'Now, my fine chaps, We'll go license-hunting today.'" The inspectors set out to find illegal traps and diggers. But they find few traps, and the illegal diggers all make their escape
AUTHOR: Charles R. Thatcher (1831-1878)
EARLIEST DATE: 1855 (The Old Victorian Songster, according to Ingleton)
KEYWORDS: hunting escape technology law
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia, pp. 102-103, "Where's Your License?" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, pp. 75-77, "Where's Your License" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-GoldrushSongster, pp. 36-37, "Where's Your Licence?" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 14-15, ""Where's Your Licence?" (1 text, tune referenced)
Anderson-FarewellToOldEngland, pp. 196-197, "Where's Your Licence?" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hoskins-GoldfieldBalladeer-LifeAndTimes-Charles-R-Thatcher, pp. 142-143, "Where's Your License?" (1 text)
Hoskins/Thatcher-LifeOnTheGoldfields, pp. 49-50, "(no title)" (1 text); p. 151, "License Hunting" (1 tune, partial text)
Anderson/Thatcher-GoldDiggersSongbook, pp. 23-24, "Where's Your License?" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 63-64, "Licence-hunting" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Geoffrey C. Ingleton, _True Patriots All: or News from Early Australia as told in A Collection of Broadsides_ ("Garnered and Decorated" by Ingleton), Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988, p. 249, "Where's Your License?" (1 text)
Bill Wannan, _The Australians: Yarns, ballads and legends of the Australian tradition_, 1954 (page references are to the 1988 Penguin edition), pp. 168-169, "Where's Your Licence?" (1 text)
Roud #27775
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Gay Cavalier" (tune)
NOTES [3010 words]: According to Wannan, this is a sort of Australian Music Hall song: "From ''"Where's Your Licence?" a celebrated parody on "The Gay Cavalier." and sung by Mr. Thatcher, on the Gold Fields, with great applause.'"
Davey/Seal, p.247, give this micro-biography of Charles Thatcher: "Popularly known as 'The Goldfields Minstrel' and 'The Colonial Minstrel,' Charles Thatcher (1831-1878) migrated from England in 1853. He was well known on both the Australian and New Zealand goldfields, specializing in humorous parodies of popular songs, his new lyrics reflecting the lifestyles and attitudes of the gold diggers."
Clark, p. 151, says, "During the years 1858 to 1861 a colonial minstrel, Charles Thatcher, wandered from town to town in the colony of Victoria singing to audiences who clapped, catcalled, whistled, and cheered him to the echo as he boasted of the power of the people to:
"Upset squatterdom's domination,
Give every poor man a home."
Clark argues that Thatcher's lyrics were emblematic of the changes in the land laws in the period 1861-1883 that gave an economic opening to "the Bourgeoisie."
Ell, p. 122, gives an entry (under the letter "I"!) titled "The Inimitable Thatcher or the Goldfields Balladeer": "Charles Thatcher was a famous entertainer on the goldfields both of New Zealand and Australia. His forte was popular songs, many of which reflected on the lives of miners and their attitudes.... Some said he was vulgar, but the audiences loved him. Thatcher wrote his own ballas, often on events of the day, and frequently targeting politicians and officials. He is thus credited with originating the expression 'old identity' in a song [in the index as "The Old Identity"] about Otago provincial elections."
Hoskins says that his father, also Charles Robert, had an import/export business in Brighton; Charles Jr. was one of nine children. At the age of sixteen, Charles left home, "equipped only with his flute and an idea to seek work amongst London theatre orchestras" (Hoskins, p. 2). He must have had some talent, because he managed to get jobs in the theatres (Hoskins, pp. 3-4), although it sounds as if the financial arrangements were irregular at best. But it gained him exposure to some of the popular performers of the time and their sort of music.
In 1853, he decided that that wasn't a good enough life (Anderson-GoldrushSongster, p. 7); as he recorded, "Left Plymouth one day in July, And soon was on the ocean," heading for the gold-fields of Australia (Bendigo had had a gold rush starting in 1851; Anderson-GoldrushSongster, p. 28). "But deuce a nugget I could find... A deluded green new chum" (Hoskins, pp. 7-8).
Apparently Thatcher had gone to the goldfields with a group of honest men, and they actually made enough to cover their expenses, but he didn't like all the dirt and the tasks of maintaining the claim (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 9). And he chanced to meet one of his old musical acquaintances from London, who was now running an entertainment tent (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 9-10). So he went back to being a musician in the theatres of Bendigo, initially mostly as an instrumentalist, but also singing a few of his own songs. The latter were so successful that he soon started touring.
To make it easier for others to sing his songs, he usually set them to popular melodies, making it possible to sell them as broadsides. A lawyer by the name of McDonogh had some of them printed (Anderson-GoldrushSongster, p. 8). By 1855, his songs had become widely known, and he was engaged as the chief attraction at the new "Shamrock Concert Hall" (Hoskins, p. 9). The theatre owners hired other performers as well, and one of them, a widow named Annie Vitelli, a soprano, became Thatcher's wife (Hoskins, pp.. 10-11).
Vitelli (maiden name: Day) was the wife of a former choir master from Windsor in England, who expected to find gold in the streets of Australia but instead was reduced to teaching singing (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 108). He and his wife apparently were separated; she came to Bendigo to make a living, and it sounds as if she and Thatcher became friendly very quickly; Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 107, says that Thatcher introduced her to the stage on her first arrival in Bendigo. Apparently they were performing together within days). Hoskins, p. 28, says that she sang sentimental ballads during their tours to balance off his topical songs. When her husband lay dying, he went with her to the deathbed (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 109) -- which of course opened the door for them to marry. The ceremony took place on February 8, 1861 in Newtown, Geelong (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 115). Their first child would be born in New Zealand in 1862 (Hoskins, p. 133).
The fact that Thatcher had become a popular performer doesn't mean that he was entirely out of the gold-hunting business; he and a friend found a nugget on a vacation trip, and this apparently led to a small rush to Bryant's Ranges (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 38-39), now Maldon, which resulted in at least two Thatcher songs, "Bryant's Ranges O" (in the Index) and "Bryant's Ranges" (not indexed, but see under "Bow Wow Wow"). And he wasn't just a lowbrow; in addition to borrowing popular tunes, he would sometimes riff on mid- and highbrow works such as Gray's famous "Elegy," Byron, Dickens, Thomas Moore, and Shakespeare (Hoskins/Thatcher-LifeOnTheGoldfields, pp. 10-12).
Apparently Thatcher's shows had something of a dramatic air about them; he would sometimes appear in costume, as when he sang a piece "The Fire Brigade Dinner" (about the local brigade's foibles) in a fireman's costume (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 94-95). His ordinary costume seems to have been a fancy suit (Hoskins/Thatcher-LifeOnTheGoldfields, p. 8, says he dressed in black, and p. 3 has a very poor sketch which appears to show him singing in a multi-piece suit with tails).
At least once, one of Thatcher's songs was so topical that the theatre owner physically attacked him -- but Thatcher, who was quick with his fists, beat him off (Hoskins, p. 12; he also ended up facing occasional court proceedings, but the libel charges generally didn't stick). On another occasion, he was attacked by an actor with a whip (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 70), and also got into a conflict with a policeman, Captain Robertson, resulting in his imprisonment (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 71, 74). And Thatcher seems to have been restless. When the Australian gold fever died down and there was a strike in Otago, New Zealand in 1861, Thatcher was ready to move again; in 1862, he headed for Otago (Hoskins, p. 13). He went on to several more stops in New Zealand, including Wellington and finally Auckland; the appearances were generally successful except that he sometimes had trouble finding a pianist (Hoskins, p. 38).
He and his wife briefly settled down in Queenstown, opening a public house but still performing in other places (Hoskins, p. 66). But a dreadfully cold, wet winter in 1863 caused him to sell out and leave (Hoskins, pp. 75-76), setting out on an even bigger, longer tour that lasted until 1865 (Hoskins, p. 78). Toward the end, he suffered a shipwreck (Hoskins, p. 89). It's perhaps little wonder he was getting a bit tired of New Zealand.... At least he was able to settle down long enough for his wife to bear their second daughter in New Zealand in 1864 (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 134). He returned to Australia in 1867 and went on a tour there, then made another trip to New Zealand in 1869 (Hoskins, p. 103). After finishing in Dunedin, he returned to Melbourne and never visiting New Zealand again (Hoskins, p. 129). He eventually went back to England and went into business (Hoskins, pp. 132-133).
I have yet to see a photo of Thatcher (it sounds as if there are none), but Hoskins, p. 73, says that he was "a big man, good looking, always smiling, and quick in wit, temper, and ideas"; he reproduces a woodcut of Thatcher facing p. 36. Anderson-ColonialMinstrel has the same drawing as a frontispiece, and says it comes from the cover of a songbook. Anderson-GoldrushSongster has a different but clearly related woodcut on p. 6 and on p. 7 says Thatcher "has been described as a physically big man, good-looking in a slightly effeminate way. The one drawing of the songster that we know of shows him with long hair and a rather drooping mustache. Although born in Bristol (1831), Thatcher always referred to Brighton as his home. It was to Brighton that his parents moved to begin a 'Foreign Warehouse' in King's Road.... [A]s far as we know, [he] did not return to Brighton until some time after 1870.
Once he arrived back, he built an import/export business, and began visiting other countries to buy merchandise. He seems to have been restless -- he even visited China and Japan, and in a letter to his fans printed in the Wellington Independent, reported that he had even learned Chinese and Japanese (Hoskins, p. 135). His last trip was to China; he arrived during a cholera outbreak, and died there (although it's not clear that he died of cholera) in November 1878 (Hoskins, p. 137). Fortunately, he had built up enough of a fortune to allow his widow and children a decent living.
In addition to flute, he was able to play the harmonium; strongly attracted to evangelical preaching, he at times played harmonium for services and revival meetings (Hoskins, p. 98). At least once, he played his flute with a sort of chamber ensemble -- piano, violin, cornet, and flute (Hoskins, p. 104). And he was handy with firearms, winning at least one sport shooting trophy (Hoskins, p. 101).
Hoskins/Thatcher-LifeOnTheGoldfields, p. 1, declares that "Thatcher was a reformer, but always impatient with the realities of politics. His topical song champion working people with cutting attacks on official incompetence."
Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 151-153, lists no fewer than twelve Thatcher songsters, some of them published in multiple editions but most of them now extremely rare; Anderson was unable to locate any copies at all of the Wakatipu Songster, and the only copy of the Auckland Vocalist he located is damaged. It appears, based on the bibliography in Hoskins, that Anderson may have missed some New Zealand editions, but there is no question but that Thatcher's output was high and its survival low. The one modern publication, which I have indexed as "Thatcher," contains reprints of only a third of the total, having only the "Colonial Minstrel" (1859), the "Colonial Songster [#1]" (1857?), the "Colonial Songster [#2]" (1865?), and the "Victoria Songster" (not listed by Anderson). He also published a number of broadsides. Clearly there is more work to be done on his bibliography.
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 58-59, says that this particular song refers to a riot which took place on December 3, 1854, when soldiers assisted policemen in violently controlling a protest by gold diggers. "Thatcher's License-Hunting describes the provocative police practices which did a good deal to cause the revolt. Captain Bumble's Letter [also by Thatcher] jeers satirically at the victorious, but unpopular, soldiers." It's not hard to understand why the miners were upset; as early as November 1851, two months after the discovery of gold at Bendigo, the government had declared that it owned the gold, and made prospectors pay for a license -- at first, thirty shillings a month, raised to three pounds in 1852. And the government hired informants to search for un-licensed prospectors -- and paid them out of the fines levied against those they caught. Even when licenses were lowered to one pound a month, that was more than many prospectors could spare, given the cost of living and the relatively small amount of gold available (Anderson-GoldrushSongster, p. 18). Those who were caught without a license and were unable to pay a fine were imprisoned for ten days (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, p. 13). So licenses were a very hot topic.
Moore's photo insert, which follows page 80, reproduces one of the licenses -- a printed form, although some of the text has been crossed out (e.g. the original form charged a fee of one pound and ten shillings, but this has been crossed out and raised to two pounds. There are four conditions: The license must be carried at all times; the digger must not dig in or interfere with a road, store, or any other structure designated by the authorities; the diggers must take Sundays off; and they are restricted to digging an area of twelve feet by twelve feet! (A party of two, three, or four was allowed a larger area, but the total was not to exceed 144 square feet per miner.) It was a lot of restriction for something that didn't promise much reward.
According to Moore, p. 87, "In May 1851 Governor FitzRoy introduced the license fee of thirty shillings per month in New South Wales, and this was emulated by Governor La Trobe in Victoria in September of the same year. The purpose of the license fee was not to raise revenue. Rather, it was to discourage people from leaving their normal occupations and taking up gold hunting, since there was great fear of social dislocation." On this count the idea seems to have failed, largely for reasons described in this song. Moore quotes this song in connection with his definition of "license-hunting."
The song refers to "The little word 'Joe.'" According to Anderson-GoldrushSongster, p. 20, "Joe" was a code word meaning that someone had showed up to check licenses. Similarly Morris, p. 222: "Joe, Joe-Joe, Joey, interjection, then a verb, now obsolete." His first citation is from 1855, W. Howitt, "Two Years in Victoria," vol. i. p. 400: "The well-known cry of 'Joe! Joe!' -- a cry which means one of the myrmidons of Charley Joe, as they familiarly style Mr. [Charles Joseph] La Trobe [the Lt.-Governor of Victoria 1851-1854; Learmonth, p. 304], -- a cry which on all the diggings resounds on all sides on the appearance of any of the hated officials."
Moore, p. 79, has his earliest citation from 1858, shortly before Thatcher used the word, and gives this definition: "*a* A mocking nickname for a policeman or trooper, especially one charged with implementing the licensing regulations of the Victorian goldfields; a cry of warning of such a person. [Australian. Probably from the name of Charles Joseph La Trobe (familiarly called 'Charley Joe'), Lieutenant Governor of Victoria in the period 1851-54.]" Moore goes on to cite two Thatcher songs although not this one) with reference to the call of "Joe" and the verb "to Joe," i.e. to taunt, jeer, or refer to as "Joe" or a Joe.
Carbonii, p. 16 (in Chapter IX, "Abyssus, Abyssum Invocat") writes, "'Joe, Joe!' No one in the world can properly understand and describe this shouting of 'Joe,' unless he were on the El Dorado of Ballarat at the time."
Thatcher himself described the license enforcement process in his "Life on the Goldfields" presentation (Hoskins/Thatcher-LifeOnTheGoldfields, p. 47): "In the early days no one was permitted to dig except on payment of a license fee.... [T]he Commissioner... was usually a swell with fierce mustachios who for the moderate stipend of £800 or £1000 a year idled away his time on the gold fields. He was also entitled to sit on the bench and settle all mining disputes. He usually carried an eye glass[,] was fond of the bottle and not insensible to the charms of the female sex. The high living and monotony of Camp life produced ennui.... and to stimulate the system the sport of license hunting was instituted. So the diggers were hunted instead and the foot police acted as hounds....
"[It] was a hard matter to run the game down. The diggers knowing the penalty of £5 or imprisonment would be inflicted if they were captured were slightly interested in eluding the live traps.... A rigid watch in every flat and gully was kept and on the appearance of the police a warning cry of Joe resounded far and wide and work was suspended instantly -- Then like rabbits when pursued thy popped into some friendly hole to lie there until the storm below over." [The police rarely went down in the dirty holes, because often they would get dirty and find that the person in the hole had a licence.] Another reason against going down a hole was a fear of a trial of strength between their heads and a pick and although many of the police were possessed of good substantial skulls they declined."
Thatcher would then sing this song.
According to Hoskins, p. 13, this is one of two Thatcher songs that have unquestionably survived in oral tradition, "Look Out Below" being the other, although Harding, p. 5, says the only one is "The Wakamarina." The (I hope) full list of Thatcher songs in the Index, with tunes where I know them, is as follows:
The Bazaar
Bryant's Ranges O
Buying Land
Castlemaine
The Chinaman (II) [tune: The Englishman]
Colonial Courtship [tune: Drops of Brandy]
Coming Down the Flat [tune: Coming Through the Rye]
The Escaped Prisoners [tune: Darling Nelly Gray]
The Fine Fat Saucy Chinaman [tune: Old English Gentleman]
The Flash Colonial Barman
Gold's a Wonderful Thing (Thatcher's title: Olden Days of Lake Wakitipu)
The Green New Chum
The Jolly Puddlers [tune: Jolly Waggoner]
The Lady and the Bullock Driver [tune: Drops of Brandy]
Laying Information [tune: Standard Bearer]
Look Out Below [tune: Smuggler King]
New Chums at the Diggings (probably only partially by Thatcher)
The Old Identity [tune: Duck Leg Dick]
Poll the Grogseller [tune: Philip the Falconer]
Presented at Court
The Rowdy Mob [tune: Green Grow the Rushes]
The Rush to Coromandel
Shepherding [tune: Days We Went Gipsying]
The Shipping Agents [tune: Oh! Susanna]
The Song of the Trap [multiple tunes: I'm Afloat, Rosin the Beau, Norah Creina]
The Southland Gold Escort
The Surrender of the Natives [tune: Courting in the Kitchen]
The Unsuccessful Swell
The Voyage to Australia
The Wakamarina [tune: The Twig of Shannon]
Weston and His Clerk
Where's Your License? [tune: The Gay Cavalier] - RBW
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