Date of Conviction: 08/09/1821

Age at Conviction: 34

Crime Convicted of: Theft from a Dwelling House

Court Convicted at: Lancaster Assizes (held at Lancaster Castle)

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Lord Sidmouth

Where Arrived: Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land

Departure Date: 11/09/1822

Arrival Date: 10/02/1823

Biography: Sarah stole three promissory notes for £1 each and 7 shillings from a house at Cliviger near Burnley. She was sentenced to death but this was reprieved. She had been born in Chepstow, Monmouthshire and was described as having a pale complexion with dark grey eyes, short dark brown hair and a scrofulous (caused by the TB bacterium) mark on the right side of her neck. She was tattooed with ‘S&H’ in blue ink on her left arm near her wrist and she had a large white scar on her lower left arm. Her husband lived in Leeds. The ship’s surgeon recorded that Sarah arrived at the ship with the other Lancaster women and women from Preston on August 30th.

From her arrival in Van Diemen’s Land, Sarah refused to comply- she was persistently absent/missing and refusing to work and was found drunk. She went back and forth for extended periods of time in the female factories at George Town then Launceston. She married free man Daniel Church in September 1830 at Launceston and they were both listed as living at Curramore (White Hills) where perhaps they were employed. She became a ‘habitual drunk’ spending the rest of her life in and out of the female factory and house of correction, locked up on bread and water and in solitary confinements and set to hard labour at the wash tub and also being fined for repeatedly absconding from her work or refusing to work. The ticket of leave she had earned was suspended and she was sent to C-class at Cascades factory in Hobart in May 1838 where she died in April 1839 and was buried in St David’s Cemetery.