David Kelly

The first update to my book Convict and Free: the Master Furniture-makers of NSW 1788–1851 will be available on CD in December, with at least two new chapters, on Thomas Mercer Booth and John McMahon. However, Australiana members may be interested to learn now that a reader from Ireland has provided me with details of the businesses run in Ireland by two of the cabinet-makers covered in the book. The first is James Templeton, to whom Andrew Lenehan was apprenticed both in Ireland and in Sydney. It was already known that he ran a business in Dublin, but the details were uncertain. Kevin Fahy, Christina Simpson and Andrew Simpson suggested in Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture that he might be the man by that name who was in business at 6 Henry-street, Dublin, in 1835.

In his new book Convict and Free: The Master Furniture-makers of Early New South Wales, David Kelly presents well-researched biographies of dozens of previously little-known cabinetmakers. Tasmanian and NSW cabinet-maker, undertaker and upholsterer Joseph Baronet Bridekirk is just one of them. His story is documented in the book, and abridged here for reasons of space.