Date of Conviction: 14/04/1831

Age at Conviction: 21

Crime Convicted of: Poultry Theft

Court Convicted at: Lancaster Borough Sessions (held at the Old Town Hall, now Lancaster City Museum)

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Mary (2)

Where Arrived: Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

Departure Date: 09/06/1831

Arrival Date: 19/10/1831

Biography: Finding herself at the Borough Sessions in Lancaster Town Hall (now the City Museum) in 1831, 21 year old Mary, originally from Preston, had only just been released from a 12 month sentence of imprisonment in Lancaster Castle for thefts of turkeys and geese belonging to Lancaster Workhouse, now she was back at the bar for the same crime. Mary was part of a gang of petty thieves who went between Lancaster Workhouse, the prison and homelessness, stealing whatever they could, living for the here and now. The gang considered the turkeys which were bred to bring in an income into the workhouse at Christmas easy pickings. She was described by the papers as ‘an abandoned character and the town clearly wanted rid of her.

Having stolen, butchered and cooked the turkeys in the old cinder ovens on the canal near Lancaster Aqueduct, Mary and accomplice William Wharton were apprehended but far from apprehensive during the trial, laughing and joking between themselves. Upon conviction and passing the sentence of transportation for life, Mary thanked the magistrates and whilst being led out shouted “make way for the cinder oven cook!”

After a few months in Lancaster Castle and having been certified free of any ‘putrid or infectious distemper’ by castle surgeon James Stockdale Harrison on the 21st May, Mary was transported to the south where she was put onboard the convict ship “Mary” in June in which she would arrive at Van Diemen’s Land in October. At arrival she was described as 5ft 4, swarthy skin, dark brown hair , blue eyes with overhanging eyebrows, a small chin and curiously; very long arms (which must have come in handy when reaching over workhouse walls to grab poultry!). Her ways didn’t change and over the next few years she would repeatedly be in front of the magistrates for disobedience, insolence, obscene language, absconding from her work, and beating her master’s children, resulting in further jail sentences in solitary confinement on bread and water and long stays in the Georgetown and Launceston female factories.

She married, age 30, later perhaps than other female convicts in 1840 because of her repeated prison sentences, to a fellow convict James Richards at Launceston, though an earlier marriage request to an Alexander Love in 1836 was approved but not seen through and second marriage request to a Thomas Chaplain also in 1836 and again in 1837 was refused. She had both a ticket of leave and had earned convict savings of over £9 in 1841. Mary did receive a conditional pardon in 1845 which was extended in 1847. In 1859, a now widowed 48 year old Mary married George Badmore (also Bradmore or Radmore) at the Evandale manse, but lived at Adelphi- perhaps she had seen the advert earlier in the year in which George had advertised for a respectable housekeeper. George passed away in 1882 and Mary died soon after in 1884 from apoplexy (stroke/brain haemorrhage).