Date of Conviction: 24/03/1821

Age at Conviction: 34

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: Along with her husband Hugh Hammill (ship- Malabar), Mary Burns, Margaret Kelly and Mary Pimblott, Isabella paid and put off to Thomas Pennington at Liverpool £6 of forged £1 notes and 23 fake coins. She had been born at Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland and was described as having a fresh complexion, grey eyes, dark hair, large scar right wrist. She was a dress maker.

Mrs. Pryor, who worked with reformer Elizabeth Fry, complained “the prisoners from Lancaster Castle arrived [at the port], not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had occasioned considerable swelling, and in one instance, serious inflammation.”

Within four months of arrival Isabella, reunited with husband Hugh, had received a 5 year colonial sentence and was sent to Macquarie Harbour Penal Station for receiving stolen goods- 300 shirts and 5 pairs of ‘duck’ trousers had been stolen from H.M magazine, of which six shirts were found hidden in their bed and eleven more in their loft. Hugh, her husband, was acquitted. She is one of only 15 women sent to Macquarie Harbour and the only Lancastrian woman. She may have initially been held on the tiny Grummet Island and was probably transferred to Sarah Island when facilities had been built for the women. She then received two further week long sentences there on bread and water for a week each. One for using abusive and dis-respectable language to the assistant surgeon in Nov 1823 and the other for giving false and scandalous information in a trial; for this she also had to sit in the stocks for two hours each day.

A notice was posted in the newspapers saying that Isabella could collect a certificate of freedom in March 1835 if fees were paid but there is no record of her collecting it.