Date of Conviction: 20/01/1817

Age at Conviction: 18

Crime Convicted of: Theft

Court Convicted at: Lancaster Quarter Sessions (held at the Old Moot Hall, Wigan)

Sentence Length: 7 Years

Ship Transported on: Friendship (2)

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 03/07/1817

Arrival Date: 14/01/1818

Biography: Ruth was a weaver and a single woman from Wigan. She had stolen from Thomas Burton and Catherine Banks at Wigan. Whilst at Lancaster Castle, she was part of a group of four women including Mary Ann Buckley, Sarah Robinson and Mary Sharpe who broke through locked doors in the dungeon tower where they were held and escaped to the roof, claiming they ‘wanted to see the fine prospect from up there’. For their adventures, they were to remain in irons for the rest of their stay, leaving the castle together for the ship a month later.The ship’s surgeon described her as ‘an idiot but given to thefts’.

After arrival in Sydney, Ruth was transferred to Van Diemen’s Land on the Duke of Wellington. In November of that year she had to sit in the stocks for two hours for insolence. She appears to have kept her head down after that for five years until 1823 when a continuous series of charges of absconding, neglecting her duties and mainly being drunk and disorderly follow for the next ten years with short term incarcerations in the house of correction and fines (always unpaid) following. Ruth still gained her certificate of freedom in 1824. in a 1837 newspaper report from court the newspapers said ‘it was evident, the moment she entered the office, that a strong prepossession was created in her favour, “her beauty being of that order that force description only would abate”. Similar descriptions (all ironic) call her the ‘beau-ideal’ of a female drunkard and a living commentary on the baneful effects of dram-drinking. Another visit to the police office witnessed ‘outrageous behaviour, with language impossible to repeat’ and Ruth clinging to the floor, the magistrates declaring her ‘insane’.

In 1839, Ruth was indicated as being in receipt of ‘outdoor relief’ of the hospital and labouring under an affliction, which medical casebooks reveal to be mania and a suspected uterine tumour. She managed to steal and consume a quantity of pharmaceutical cordials and compounds on more than one occasion, including extract of belladonna which required her to be subjected to a powerful emetic of castor oil.

Ruth died a pauper in March 1868 at the New Norfolk Lunatic Asylum from uterine cancer. She had been a patient for the last 30 years with ‘mania’ and referred to by doctors as an ‘idiot’ but had refused examination for the gynaecological symptoms she started having in 1864- the doctors suggested giving her chloroform at her next examination. She was buried at St Mathews in New Norfolk, Derwent Valley.

The labels and descriptions of her, whilst derogatory, strongly suggest that she had learning disabilities which would make Ruth unique out of all the Lancastrian female convicts.