4 Famous Convicts in Australia

1. 4 Famous Convicts in Australia ?

2. Mary Ann Wade • Mary Ann Wade (5 October 1777 – 17 December 1859) was only 11 years old when transported to Australia as the youngest convict aboard the Lady Juliana as part of the Second Fleet. • Mary was born on 5 October 1777 at Southwark, London. She spent her days sweeping the streets of London as a means of begging, being one of a large family of a single mother living in poverty. On 5 October 1788, Mary with another child, Jane Whiting, 14 years old, stole the clothes from Mary Phillips, an 8 year old. She was arrested and then placed in Bridewell Prison. Her trial was held on 14 January 1789 at the Old Bailey, where she was found guilty and was sentenced to death by hanging.

3. On 11 March 1789, King George III was proclaimed cured of an unnamed madness; five days later, in the spirit of celebration, all the women on death row, including Mary Wade, had their sentences commuted to penal transportation to Australia. The 11-month voyage across the ocean to Sydney, arrived on 3 June 1790 and she was then sent on to Norfolk Island, arriving on 7 August 1790. • She had two children on Norfolk Island, Sarah to Teague Harrigan, an emancipated Irish transportee in 1793 and William in 1795, who is believed to be Jonathan Brooker's son. When they arrived back in Sydney, Mary lived with Teague Harrigan, with whom she had another son, Edward. Teague left to go on a whaling expedition in 1806 and was never to return.

4. Mary lived with Jonathan Brooker near the Hawkesbury River from 1809. It was here that Mary raised her family which numbered 21 children, seven of whom lived to have their own children. • At the time of her death, Mary had over 300 living descendants and is considered as one of the founding mothers of the early settlers to Australia. Today her descendants number in the tens of thousands. Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia, is one of her descendants.

5. William Buckley • William Buckley (1780 – 30 January 1856) was an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years. • He was apprenticed to a bricklayer, but left to enlist in the King's Foot Regiment. In 1799, his regiment went to the Netherlands to fight against Napoleon, under the command of the Duke of York. Later, in London, Buckley was convicted of knowingly receiving a bolt of stolen cloth; he insisted he was carrying it for a woman and did not know it was stolen. He was sentenced to transportation to New South Wales for 14 years.

6. Buckley left England in April 1803; they arrived in October 1803. • On 27 December 1803 at 9 PM, Buckley and several other convicts cut loose a boat and made their escape. • In an account collected by George Langhorne in 1835, Buckley told of his first meeting with a small Aboriginal family group, who treated him with great kindness and with whom he “laboured”, shared food and from whom he began to learn language, before parting company. • Significant first meeting with a group of Wathaurung women, several months after his escape: Buckley had taken a spear used to mark a grave for use as a walking stick. The women befriended him after recognising the spear as belonging to a relative who had recently died and invited him back to their camp. Believed to be the returned spirit of the former tribesman, he was joyfully welcomed and adopted by the group. He was given the name Murrangurk which literally meant "returned from the dead".

7. For the next thirty-two years, he continued to live among the Wathaurung people on the Bellarine Peninsula being treated with great affection and respect. He had at least two Aboriginal wives, and almost certainly a daughter by one of them. • On 6 July 1835 William Buckley appeared at the camp site of John Batman's Port Phillip Association with a party of Aboriginal people who had told him about the sighting of a ship. Wearing kangaroo skins and carrying Aboriginal weapons, he walked into the camp. They fed him and treated him with kindness. Buckley showed them the letters "W.B." tattooed on his arm. Fearful of being shot, he told them he was a shipwrecked soldier, but a few days later he revealed his identity, to the amazement of everybody present. In September the same year, he was granted a pardon by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, in Van Diemen's Land. • In 1836, Buckley was given the position of Interpreter to the natives.

8. Jørgen Jørgensen • Jørgen Jørgensen (surname changed to Jorgenson from 1817) was a Danish adventurer during the Age of Revolution.

9. In 1807, while Jørgensen was visiting his family, he witnessed the Battle of Copenhagen and soon afterwards was given command of a small Danish vessel, the Admiral Juul. In 1808 he engaged in a sea battle; the British captured the Admiral Juul. In 1809 he sailed to Iceland, declared the country independent from Denmark and pronounced himself its ruler. Jørgensen was taken back to England and tried by the Transport Board, who found him guilty of breaking his parole while a prisoner-of-war. He was released in 1811. • Jørgensen spent the next few years in London, where he began to drink and gamble, building up substantial debts which eventually led to his conviction and incarceration. When released from prison in 1812, he traveled to Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar and upon his return to England was again imprisoned when his creditors caught up with him. Following correspondence with the British Foreign Office, Jørgensen was recruited into the intelligence service, where he translated documents and travelled throughout France and Germany as a spy.

10. Upon returning to England, Jørgensen continued to write various reports, papers and articles but after being accused of theft in 1820, was imprisoned in Newgate Prison. A sentence of death was commuted thanks to the actions of a prominent friend and he spent another 3 years in Newgate before he was transported to Australia in 1825. • After five months at sea, Jørgensen arrived back in Tasmania in 1826, was granted a ticket of leave in 1827, led several explorations of Tasmania, and was employed by the Van Diemen's Land Council as a Constable. He married an Irish convict, Norah Corbett, in 1831 and died on 20 January 1841.

11. Alexander Pearce • Alexander Pearce (1790 – 19 July 1824) was an Irish convict who was transported to Van Diemen's Land for theft. He escaped from prison several times, but eventually was captured and was hanged and dissected in Hobart for murder. • Pearce was born in Ireland. A farm labourer, he was sentenced at Armagh in 1819 to penal transportation to Van Diemen's Land for "the theft of six pairs of shoes".

12. Pearce escaped with seven other convicts: Alexander Dalton, Thomas Bodenham, William Kennerly, Matthew Travers, Edward Brown, Robert Greenhill and John Mather. Kennerly and Brown voluntarily gave themselves up. Pearce and the others continued without them. • Pearce was eventually captured near Hobart, and confessed that he and the other escapees had successively killed and cannibalised members of their group over a period of weeks, he being the last survivor. Pearce and Greenhill had been the final two, each struggling to stay awake for days out of fear the other would kill him. Greenhill finally nodded off and Pearce killed him with an axe, then ate him. He was captured several months later.

13. Within a year he escaped a second time, joined by a young convict named Thomas Cox. Pearce was captured within ten days. His captors found parts of Cox's body in Pearce's pockets, even though he still had food left. Pearce confessed that he had killed Cox because he was a hindrance to him. Pearce was taken to Hobart, where he was tried and convicted of murdering and cannibalising Thomas Cox. He was hanged at the Hobart Town Gaol at 9am on 19 July 1824, after receiving the last rites from a priest. It is reported that just before Pearce was hanged, he said, "Man’s flesh is delicious. It tastes far better than fish or pork."