Date of Conviction: 24/03/1810

Age at Conviction: 30

Crime Convicted of: Shop Lifting

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

Sentence Length: 7 Years

Ship Transported on: Friends

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 08/04/1811

Arrival Date: 10/10/1811

Biography: 30 year old Elizabeth Hodgson, was convicted of stealing flannel from the shop of town clerk, Robert Lawson on Pudding Lane (now Cheapside) in Lancaster one evening in late February 1810. She had used that common trick of sending in a decoy who bought a small article, distracting the shop owner whilst she hid a large piece of flannel in her apron. Unfortunately for her, she was observed doing so by a neighbour and after running, was caught and apprehended.

Three weeks later, she was found guilty at the Lancaster Assizes and sentenced to seven years transportation. Fifteen of her friends, family and neighbours had a formal petition made to try and get Elizabeth’s sentence reduced to imprisonment. They stated how she fully accepted her crimes, having never been in trouble before and had been ‘dominated by a monster’ called Gideon Yates, who notably, was tried immediately after her at the assizes but was acquitted of stealing a coat on the same evening as Elizabeth’s theft. It went on to say she had been married nine years earlier to a sailor called Sulivan McCartney but as he had never returned from sea, she had resumed her maiden name. The petitioners stated that they never imagined that she would have been sentenced to transportation, only a prison sentence and more would have spoken up for her in court, had they realised what was going to happen. They refer to her as a ‘poor thing’.

Petition unsuccessful, Elizabeth had a long wait of over a year in Lancaster Castle before she was taken to the south coast and put onboard the convict ship Friends and was off to a new life in New South Wales sailing via Rio de Janeiro where the ship briefly sailed in convoy with the male convict ship the Admiral Gambier. Friends arrived at Port Jackson (now Sydney) in October 1811.

Elizabeth married Thomas Buck in 1814 at Windsor; this marriage was short-lived though as Thomas died in 1817 and muster rolls from that year show Elizabeth as a singlewoman. However, by the time of the 1825 muster, it shows her as free by servitude and ‘wife of Mr Hinton at Parramatta’ doing ‘country services’ (general agricultural and dairy work). Elizabeth had married free mariner (and later Parramatta River boatman) Thomas Hinton in 1821 at St Johns Parramatta. Unusually, Elizabeth appears twice on this muster, also as Eliza Hinton, a resident in the female factory, due to the 1825 muster merging together several years at once .Sadly, perhaps this is where she was when she died the following year on 21/09/1826. She is buried in an unmarked plot at St Johns Parramatta as Elizabeth Hinton, aged 46.