Date of Conviction: 17/01/1820

Age at Conviction: 30

Crime Convicted of: Receiving Stolen Goods

Court Convicted at: Lancaster Quarter Sessions (held at the New Bailey, Salford )

Sentence Length: 7 Years

Ship Transported on: Morley

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 17/05/1820

Arrival Date: 30/09/1820

Biography: Mary was a single woman of Manchester, she had taken in and hidden tea which had been stolen by Patrick O’Neale (Ship- Agamemnon) from the warehouses of Messrs Birch & Hampson, Old Millgate in Manchester. she left Lancaster Castle along with eleven other women at the end of April and they were sent to Woolwich to board the ship. Mary’s life in New South Wales could best be described as a rollercoaster…

Mary stayed in Sydney, unlike many of the other Morley convicts who went to Van Diemen’s Land, it was from here in 1822 she petitioned the governor for a ticket of leave. She stated she had been employed by baker/publican Mr Andrew Frazier (ship- Glatton) of Cambridge St, Sydney since arrival and in fact, from the handwriting it appears that Mr Frazier wrote the petition on her behalf himself, calling her upright, a steady hand and deserving of being allowed a t.o.l so she could begin running a small business for herself. Andrew Frazier would soon go on to marry (unsuccessfully) Lancastrian Ellen Hatton. In January 1824, Mary was still working for Andrew as he petitioned the government NOT to take Mary from him; he divulges that Mary had been long term nursing an unnamed sick female (probably Jane Toone/Toome* who Andrew had lived with for c.20 years and would later be buried with) but that he would ‘bereft of her services, should she be taken from him’. However by October that year he married Ellen who within six months ran off and left him.

(*Andrew had previously lived with a Jane Toome, perhaps this was the ‘sick female’ mentioned- she died less than two months before Andrew who died after a month long drinking binge; possibly from grief and they were buried together at the Devonshire St Cemetery. The newspapers and some of the other evidence (the will etc.) suggests that whilst Andrew’s first love may have been Jane, Mary too was clearly much favoured.)

Mary however remained as a servant to Andrew and just two years later after Jane’s death, within the space of three weeks was reassigned to the female factory (1st class) on the 7th December (largely at the insistence of Andrew’s estranged new wife Ellen) and by early January and Andrew’s death, Mary was named as a principle legatee in his Andrew’s very extensive will (in favour of Ellen who received a trifling amount and ironically ended up in the female factory in 1828 herself) however, she was still a government servant for a few more weeks. Perhaps to alleviate this change of circumstances and what must have been a traumatic few months after a long period of stability, Mary applied to marry William Baxter (an English botanical agent, came free on the Royal George in 1821 and petitioned for land from the governor for scientific botanical research after settling permanently in 1823) just days before she became free by servitude and would receive Andrew’s will and they married at Parramatta on the 15th January, the same week she also received her certificate of freedom.

Sadly, this too was a disaster- Within a year, it turned out that William was an insolvent debtor- he had plans to open a botanical garden and had bought up large areas of land near Petersham and but this failed- he was facing money problems as early as 1824 and by 1828 was declared bankrupt and his land was sold at auction. Had William read that Mary was due to come into money and hence the apparently rushed wedding? The 1828 census, shows Mary (Baxter) now free, a householder, still living in Cambridge St (presumably in one of the properties left to her), there is no sign of William. Mary clearly saw sense and had left him by October 1828, leaving William to say he would not be responsible for any debts(!) she incurred- it is not clear whether William appropriated money left to Mary in Andrew’s will but it would seem he was trying; Mary countered William’s newspaper warning with her own in November telling the public that on no account should he be given any money from any source that was promised to her from the sales of Andrew Frazier’s estate. In 1832 they appeared in court, still trying to clear up legacy arrangements that had been promised to Andrew’s hometown of Montrose in Scotland.

After this date I have struggled to find any further mention of what happened to ‘wealthy’ Mary and whether William did get his hands on her money. There is a potential (early) death record of a Mary Baxter aged c.48 in 1835 within St Philips parish which sadly, could be ‘our’ Mary.