Was this Coventry man's death sentence based on flawed evidence?

Thomas Burbury was a 21-year-old silk weaver living in Coventry with his parents when he was convicted of leading a mob that burned down a mill in the city in the 1830s.

Sentenced to death, a campaign saved his life and the sentence commuted to deportation instead to Australia.

Almost 200 years later, one of his descendants, Brisbane-based lawyer-turned-author Sarah Thornton, claims the evidence used to convict him is likely to have been questionable at best.

She has written a book, Unwoven, a novel based on the events leading up to the riots and what happened to those accused.

"Our family had always been aware that there was a convicted felon in the history and we knew he'd been convicted of machine breaking and to me, that was a quite interesting crime."

Coventry was one of the hubs of the ribbon weaving industry and Thomas Burbury lived on Sovereign Street.

It was a time when the industry was introducing mechanisation, via the Jacquard loom, which was putting traditional weavers out of business.

There had already been resistance to the new methods in France, where those affected by the new looms would throw their wooden shoes, or sabots, into the machinery, giving the language a new word; saboteur.

In England, opposition to the loom led to the creation of the Luddites - someone who opposes new technology.

Two years before the Coventry riots, several hundred weavers, who mainly worked in their homes and not in the newly constructed mills or factories, pelted the foreman of a factory with filth, while another protest saw an estimated 6,000 weavers and their families protest and demand strike action over what they claimed were unfair prices for the machine-woven ribbons and textiles.

It was against this background that weavers in the city attacked Josiah Beck's steam-powered mill in what is now an area just off Trinity Street in the city centre, on November 7, 1831, burning it to the ground.

That was the crime that Burbury was convicted of and, according to documents held at the National Archives in Kew, he was sentenced to death.

However, hundreds of people signed petitions appealing for clemency due to his age.

The Home Secretary agreed and the sentence was changed to transportation to Australia. He was put on a ship to what was then called Van Dieman's Land, modern day Tasmania.

Thornton said it took her eight years to research and write the historical novel, based on her ancestor's story.

"I was reading this court report and I just couldn't believe what I was reading from the defence witnesses.

"One after another, these Coventry people, standing up [in court] to give testimony on Thomas' behalf as to what he was actually doing on the day of the riot."

Burbury had been accused of bursting through the door of the mill and calling for the building to be burned to the ground. But the consensus seemed to be that he was not a ringleader.

"The concept of beyond reasonable doubt was still developing. It wasn't something that was absolutely immutable standard of proof as it is required now.

"But had it been, I suspect the verdict may have been different."

However, the story of Burbury's life does not end on the other side of the world.

According to the Companion of Tasmanian History, held by the University of Tasmania, Burbury was a model prisoner and received a pardon in 1839, before becoming a leading member of the community and acquiring a large estate near the town of Oatlands.

His son became a politician and another descendant, Sir Stanley Burbury, was the first Australian-born governor of Tasmania.

Thornton visited Coventry in 2025 as part of her research and said being able to see the sights that remain from Burbury's day, had the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

"I was able to see the courthouse and the judge's chair and the trapdoor where prisoners came up from the dungeons."

Thornton said despite the cells beneath the court now closed to the public, she was able to see where prisoners would have emerged from to face their trial.

"There are court reports done by a commission of inquiry into the state of prisons, and Coventry was one of the worst" she said.

She also said that being able to retrace so many of his steps was an emotional experience.

"He lived in Spon End, so we stayed out there and we walked the streets into the city centre and across the Spon Bridge.

"The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck the whole time".

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