During my research into Peppermint Billy and his life down under, I came across some fantastic stories. As in mainland Australia, many places in Van Diemen's Land - now Tasmania - are named after villages/towns/cities in the UK. This story really interested me, and with the connections to William, I thought I would share it with you.

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Samuel Blackwell, owner of the thoroughbred racehorse Panic, which won the Championship in Launceston, Tasmania in 1865 and stood second in the Melbourne Cup, was born in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire in 1815.

Samuel’s parents, Peter and Sarah Blackwell, soon relocated to Burley in Gloucestershire, and on 25 December 1815 Samuel was baptised at the parish church in Minchinhampton. According to an unconfirmed and sketchy story, Samuel was allegedly one of the many illegitimate sons of William Henry, Duke of Clarence, later to become King William IV. Samuel had supposedly been paid an undisclosed amount of money and was urged to leave England. To ensure the silence of the offspring, the British Government even paid for a house to be built for one of the Duke of Clarence’s illegitimate sons at Stanley, Van Diemen’s Land. Stanley was one of two settlements created by the Van Diemen's Land Company in the north-west of the island. It was a base for the company's pastoral activities in the area. The house, Poet’s Cottage at 6 Alexander Street in Stanley, was erected in 1849 under the watchful eye of the former colonial architect and police magistrate for the Circular Head district, J. Lee Archer. Samuel Blackwell, who was already in Van Diemen’s Land when the house was built, never took occupation of it. So Mr. Archer, his wife and eight children moved in, living there until Archer’s death on 4th December 1852. Samuel Blackwell emigrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1839, after meeting John Bisdee, the son of a fellow member of the Tedworth Hunt Club in Wiltshire. Mr Bisdee, who had returned to England in the late 1830s for a holiday, had moved from Somerset to Van Diemen's Land in 1821, and was one of several colonial gentry encouraged by the British government to invest their wealth and experience in building the settlement's pastoral industry. To help them achieve this, they were granted land and unlimited supply of convict labour. John Bisdee and his four brothers soon became among the richest men in the colony. The Bisdee family bought large tracts of land north of Hobart, between Bagdad in the south and Ross in the north, and began breeding prime merino sheep and launching the wool industry in the colony.

Samuel Blackwell left Bristol on the Bussorah Merchant Emigrant Ship on 16 March 1839. Shortly after arriving in Van Diemen's Land, Samuel became licensee of the Cape of Good Hope Inn at Apsley near John Bisdee's residence in Hutton Park, and by 1842 Samuel had taken over the Royal Oak Hotel at Green Ponds (now Kempton). In 1858, Samuel Blackwell purchased one hundred and ten acres of land at the junction of Main Road and Bothwell Road, and it was here that Samuel Blackwell built a hotel named after his birthplace in Leicestershire. The Melton Mowbray Hotel became the cradle for hunting in the colony, and two years after its construction, Samuel Blackwell established the Midlands Hunt Club. John Bisdee provided Samuel with a pack of Beagle hounds, formerly the Hutton Park hounds of the Southern Hunt Club, and further supplied several deer from Hatton Deer Park. The Melton Mowbray Hotel was deemed among the elite as the leading destination for race horsing and hunting with hounds. Since its construction, the hotel has not only hosted hunt meetings, but also accommodated military, landed gentry, government officials, and transported convicts. The convicts were secured in an underground cell without any facilities or light, which was the norm in colonial Van Diemen's Land. With the building of a post office, stables, and structures spacious enough to be used for motor garages, a modest community developed around the hotel. The small rural settlement soon assumed the name of the Leicestershire market town of Melton Mowbray.