Date of Conviction: 24/03/1821

Age at Conviction: 26

Crime Convicted of: Uttering Forged Notes

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

Sentence Length: 14 Years

Ship Transported on: Mary Anne (3)

Where Arrived: Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

Departure Date: 25/12/1821

Arrival Date: 02/05/1822

Biography: Catherine was from Ormskirk and had used a forged bank of england note in Liverpool. She was described in jail in Lancaster as having a sallow complexion with smallpox scars. She had brown eyes and was stoutly built. She was the under cook at the Talbot Inn in Liverpool. She had given birth to a daughter, Mary, in June whilst imprisoned, who was baptised in August at St Marys next door to Lancaster Castle.

On board the Mary Anne, reformer and friend of Elizabeth Fry, Mrs. Pryor, complained that “the prisoners from Lancaster Castle arrived, not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had occasioned considerable swelling, and in one instance, serious inflammation”. During the voyage Catherine struggled with the heat, suffering headaches and dizziness which turned into sickness and diarrhoea and lack of appetite. The surgeon noted she was breastfeeding her infant, Mary. She was given a powder of castor beans and then cinchona- unsurprisingly both continued her symptoms.

The year following arrival, in 1823, Catherine was in the hospital. In Hobart, she has no further criminal records but the notes stated that she had ben ‘an old offender’ prior to conviction, she had formerly been convicted at Wigan and she had been disorderly onboard ship and the father of the child was at Liverpool. It also says she had a squint. In October 1825, Catherine’s daughter Mary died. In the 1833 muster, she is shown as the wife of R Orford. Catherine gained her freedom when her sentence expired in March 1835. It seems unlikely that Catherine was married to R (possibly Robert) Orford; as if one and the same, he had a wife and family and no marriage record exists between Catherine and Robert; perhaps she was employed by him? A 1842 census record shows a Catherine Milton (or Hilton?) living alone in a wooden house in Hobart but it is not clear if this is ‘our’ Catherine.