A DESCENDANT of a Cirencester widower who died weeks after emigrating to Brazil in 1873 believes his great, great grandfather was murdered.

Last month, readers of the Standard were regaled with the tale of George Bond, a master blacksmith, whose six children and grandchild were in Cirencester Union Workhouse.

Bond was able to reunite his family and start afresh in South America after the Brazilian government recruited thousands of British farm workers from about 1850 onwards.

The Bond family left England at Christmas 1872, travelling to Brazil via Liverpool, arriving a month later in Rio de Janeiro. They were then sent to a lodge in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian province of Parana.

Bond was sent to sharpen tools used by construction gangs working on a road linking Curitiba with Assunguy, leaving the children at the lodge, under the care of his eldest daughter Clara. But Bond fell ill and two weeks later, on 16 May 1873, he died. Five of his children were sent to a Brazilian orphanage, sparking outrage back in Cirencester.

“George Bond, a confirmed drunkard,” the Foreign Office informed George Harmer, then editor of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Echo, “died near Curitiba of delirium tremens”.

But Mauro Fortes Carneiro, 65, a retired civil engineer, dismisses this cause of death.

He said: “British emigrants were dying like flies as they were 1km above sea level and would lodge in terrible conditions, offering only some protection from the weather and would be provided with bad, or no food. The British, French and German workers would drink and often fight each other.

“George’s son Ernest said that his father was murdered during a fight between British and German emigrants. This was passed down to me by my grandmother, the daughter of Ernest.”

Two British workers then put Bond’s body on a mule, with the intention of burying it at a Protestant cemetery in Curitiba - as there were only Catholic churches in Assunguy and the priests refused to bury Protestants.

Mauro told the Standard how letters written by immigrants’ document how Bond’s body kept falling off the mule so they had to bury a hole in the road, with their hands.

Records also confirm that Bond’s eldest daughter Clara and her lover Hatching attempted to sell her brothers and sisters as farmhands to pay their passage back to the UK.

Mauro continued: “Hatching had a piece of land, as did Clara, because of her late father, against which they could secure two loans from the government but it wasn’t enough to sail back to England. So they went to nearby farms offering the kids as labourers.

“Clara and her daughter Lucy successfully returned to Cirencester and lived with George’s brother John and his wife Mary Bond. Lucy stayed with the couple but Clara started a new life in London where she got married in London and had two sons.”

When reports were published in the Standard that five of Bond’s children Charles (13), Annie (11), Emma (10), Ernest (7) and Alfred (3) had been sold into slavery there was a diplomatic outcry.

Harmer, the Standard’s editor, contacted the Foreign Office to demand an investigation and launched a fund to rescue the children and return them home to Cirencester.

But within weeks, the story altered, with claims the children benefited from their father’s death.

The local Judge of Orphans, readers were reassured, placed the children under the protection of “respectable families”.

Mauro claims the Bond children were only fast-tracked into care because the Brazilian authorities wanted to prevent a media frenzy erupting in the UK over the orphans’ welfare.

He said: “The children became street kids in Assunguy, begging for money, which was reported in the Standard.

“As a result, the Emperor of Brazil sent an order to the foreign minister, who then sent a letter to the President of the Province, who ordered the Judge of Orphans to get the kids housed to stop the situation between the two countries deteriorating.

“They found the children five families and they became servants. Then Charles, the eldest boy, was sent to stay with a doctor from the age of about 10 onwards.

“Charles, Ernest and Alfred all worked for a rail company while the girls got married and disappeared, although I have a picture of one of the sister’s living in Rio.”

Mauro told the Standard his wife’s great grandparents, the Pugsley’s from Barnstable in Devon, also emigrated to Brazil, probably on the same ship as the Bond’s and would certainly have lived under similar circumstances.

Mauro, who visited the UK in 2007 to research his family tree, said: “England is my favorite country and Cirencester is a lovely town. I’d live there if I could.

“It was a strange feeling to be there but my wife and I loved it. The weather was wonderful and it was peaceful. We stayed at The Fleece which was interesting and the church was beautiful. We visited the former workhouse and also managed to find 10 Park Street where George lived. It’s now the kindergarten in front of the town’s museum.

“I only met one relative in Cirencester, not a close one, Judith Gegg Chamberlain, a descendant from George’s wife’s side of the family.”

Any readers who are descendants of the Bond family are asked contact Joe Lumley at the Standard on 01285 627317 or at joe.lumley@wiltsglosstandard.co.uk