Date of Conviction: 23/03/1822

Age at Conviction: 30

Crime Convicted of: Receiving Stolen Goods

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

Sentence Length: 7 Years

Ship Transported on: Mary (1)

Where Arrived: Sydney Cove, New South Wales

Departure Date: 03/06/1823

Arrival Date: 18/10/1823

Biography: Ellen Hargreaves was 30 when she found herself arrested and convicted of arranging for two neighbours Ellen Bramfitt and Hannah Whittaker to steal 4.5 yards of worsted stuff (woollen cloth) and six handkerchiefs from their husbands (Thomas Bramfitt and William Whittaker) for her in Lancaster. She was sentenced at the Lent Assizes at Lancaster Castle to seven years transportation.

After a long 15 month’s stay in the Castle’s cells, Ellen was transported to Woolwich where she was put onboard the convict ship ‘Mary’ along with a group of other women from Manchester. The surgeon onboard the Mary recorded in great detail how she suffered with six weeks of severe sea sickness, constipation, heavy bleeding after an absence of her menstrual cycle (many women due to malnutrition and stress in the prisons stopped having periods), very painful rheumatism in all her joints and suffered the administrations of laudanum, calomel, gentian, blood letting and a hot blister. On arrival at Sydney after a journey of four months, she was sent straight to the general hospital.

Two years after arrival and working as a bonded servant, Ellen applied for permission to marry a fellow convict, Thomas Flint (ship- Hebe, convicted of highway robbery at Hertfordshire). They were married at St Matthews, Windsor, Sydney in October 1825.

Two years further on Ellen had fallen foul of the law once again and was a prisoner in the Parramatta female factory. The prisoners had been growing increasingly dissatisfied over the reducing food rations and treatment by the matron. The matron herself resigned from her post citing the ‘irksome’ duties she had and a new matron was brought in who immediately cut rations of bread and sugar even further and a riot ensued. On October 27th 1827, around 200 armed women broke down the gates of the prison and charged around Parramatta ‘like Amazonian Banditti’, breaking into shops and taking the food. It took several months to recapture all the women who had escaped. Ellen was said to have been one of the ringleaders that encouraged this breakout. For her part, Ellen received three months in ‘3rd class’, the area of the prison with the harshest conditions. She was still at the factory the following year.

Despite her tumultuous early years in Australia, Ellen still received her certificate of freedom on 1st April 1829. In her record she was described as being 5ft 2, brown haired, blue eyes and had a fair, though pockpitted complexion.

Ellen died, aged 47 in 1840 and was buried within St Matthew’s at Windsor.