Convict Stories
Mary Lambert
Mary Lambert was 17 when she was sentenced with William Shribbs to 14 years for forgery in the Old Bailey. The pair were transported on different convict ships but met up again in Van Diemen’s Land. William was first charged with harbouring Mary when she attempted to run away from her master, an offence for which he received 25 lashes. He was awarded the same punishment on two subsequent occasions when he was tried for assaulting and beating her. Despite his record of violence, the couple married in October 1823. While we know little about their private lives William was employed as a constable. We do know that Mary managed to stay out of trouble until December 1830 when she was fined for the unusual offence of having an unlicensed dog in her possession. This was only a few months after the death of William aged just 32. Mary had just given birth to her third daughter and was now deprived of her husband’s income. She might have kept a dog for protection, but perhaps it also gave her some solace. Being on her own with three little children to provide for explains the string of offences that now appeared on her convict record. Sadly, she died only three years after the last entry, the issue of her Certificate of Freedom. She was 38 years old.
Mary Sheriff
Stealing a silk handkerchief from a three-year-old girl was the final straw that would send 18-year-old Mary Sheriff from Edinburgh to be transported overseas. Mary had four dots tattooed on her left arm, probably indicating her membership in a criminal network. In the colonies a string of offences recorded in her conduct record would extend her early criminal life represented by those dots. Originally sentenced to seven years, Mary would spend 13 years under servitude and long periods in female factories. This would be the setting for her darkest moments. In October 1842 Mary sharpened a kitchen knife and, with the help of two other convict women, attacked the surgeon of the Launceston Female Factory, Dr. Maddox, stabbing him several times and cutting down to the bone next to his right eye. What would cause such a violent outbreak? Just like Catherine Owens a few months earlier, Mary lashed out because she was due for another period of solitary confinement and Dr Maddox, the only person who could help, had refused to certify her as physically unfit for that dreaded punishment. For this violent attack Mary was sentenced to death, the sentence later commuted to transportation for life. In 1851 she was given permission to marry a sailor, and after her application for a conditional pardon was approved in 1854, she may have sailed with him far away from Van Diemen’s Land.
Mary Cuttle
A housemaid from Surry, 21-year-old Mary Cuttle was sentenced to 30 years transportation for highway robbery in 1826 and arrived in Hobart the year after. Her first charge in the colony was for wearing her mistress’ jewels. This started a long string of colonial offences committed over a 20-year period, which indicate frequent clashes with her employers and include other thefts of ribbons or wearing apparel. In 1848, Mary married another convict, Charles Ecclestone, who was the father of her youngest three children. It could have been the turning point, but the marriage did not seem to last. While Charles left for Melbourne in 1853, Mary’s application for the Conditional Pardon that would have allowed her to join him, was denied. When it finally was approved eleven years later, they seem to have been too estranged for her to go. So, she stayed behind, ramping up another 36 charges, mostly for drunkenness. In 1868, when 65-year-old Mary died of accidental burns, she was still working as a servant.
Jane Robertson
The surgeon on the Rajah, the ship on which Jane Robertson arrived in 1841, described her as ‘giddy but quiet’. Was it Jane’s giddiness that caused her to set fire to some blankets in the Launceston Female Factory two years later? While arson was not an unusual form of protest amongst female convicts, it could also have been an attempt to extend her stay in the factory, where Jane had just spent 10 days in solitary confinement for absence without leave. Sentenced to 7 years after stealing a watch in Inverness, Jane only collected nine offence entries in her conduct register, all within the first four years of her arrival. Her life changed after her marriage to Henry Cavanagh in 1845, who had been transported twelve years earlier but was free by the time of their marriage. The pair went on to have nine children and relocate to Victoria after Jane became free by servitude. There she would stay until her death in 1901. After Henry committed suicide in Warnambool in 1861, we find Jane living in a de facto relationship with Abel Rathbone in 1888, indicated by the second heart towards the end of her lifeline.
Mary Ann Little
Mary Ann Little’s boots were made for walking. The blue circles on her lifeline highlight her specified abscences and abscondings, but really most of her other offences usually describe her being someplace other than where she was supposed to be. She was absent without leave multiple times, was sentenced for clandestinely leaving the female factory or the nursery, was found tippling in a public house or in a disorderly house or some other location in the company of a man. Alternatively, she sometimes also refused to leave a place when ordered and twice refused to return to her service. Originally sentenced to seven years for stealing, Mary Ann’s habit of running away would earn her eight additional years in sentence extensions. Given how much she liked to be free it seems particularly cruel how much of her 14 years under servitude she spent in places of secondary punishment, usually the crime class of the various female factories in Van Diemen’s Land, and time and again in solitary confinement.
Maria Wright
Maria just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Time and again, her tongue brought her into trouble. Originally a needle woman from Hertfordshire, Maria Wright was sentenced to life for stealing arriving in Hobart in 1833. She was repeatedly sentenced to spend time in the factories because of her profane swearing, her insolence, or her use of ‘grossly obscene’ or ‘blackguard’ language. References to blackguard language or flash notes in the conduct records hint at the widespread use of slang in the female factories. Not uncharacteristically for convict women, Maria’s life in the colony is divided into two phases. An angry first period characterised by a string of offences during which she unsuccessfully applied to marry twice, followed by a quieter second phase in which she cohabited with Thomas Murray, a shoemaker. He is named as the father of the younger 4 of her 6 children.