The Edward White History Prize Basic Source Documents
To provided some preliminary assistance to contestants in The Edward White History Prize we have provided a few of the relevant source documents below (Contestants will obviously have to search the archives themselves for all the relevant source documents to solve this mystery and enter the Prize).
It is generally accepted that the Edward White who testified before the Aborigines Committee on 16 March 1830 (Edward White #1) is the same Edward White who made several petitions for government assistance in the following few years. Records of these petitions survive and are provided below (Items 1-3).
Also below is the letter by Lt Governor David Collins that some historians have relied upon to claim that an Edward White was on Collins’s list of retained convicts at Risdon Cove in 1804 (Item 4).
Items 5 to 7 relate to the transcripts of Edward Whites’ testimony in 1830.
CSO1-1-533 file 11593 - here
PRO Reel CO 201-220000 p239-42[Collins letter on retained 12 convict list] - p239-40 here and p241-42 here
CSO1 General Correspondence 1824-1836, CBE1 - Edward White’s 16 March 1830 testimony - original (and correct) handwritten transcript from Hobart archives - here and here
PRO 1-5950 (Various) – Records of the Colonial Office (as filmed by the AJCP)/Fonds CO/Series CO 280/File 24. AJCP Reel No: 244–245/Despatches, [image 396ff] - Edward White’s 16 March 1830 testimony - second (with error) handwritten transcript sent to Britain and used for printing (see Item 7) - here and here [Note last page missing]
British Parliamentary Papers, Irish University Press, 1970, facsimile of Great Britain – House of Commons Papers 259 printed on 23 September 1831, Vol. 4, p225-26 (p53-54) [contains error] - here
More copies of documents and their sources are contained in the book Truth-Telling at Risdon Cove.
Primary research data, which provides the evidence as to why Edward White #2 could not, as some historians have claimed, have been at Risdon Cove on 3 May 1804, is available for purchase here.
Note: These original documents are out of copyright and have been produced here with the publication approval of the archival libraries if and as required.
