Date of Conviction: 21/03/1818

Age at Conviction: 25

Crime Convicted of: Uttering Forged Notes

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

Sentence Length: 14 Years

Ship Transported on: Janus

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 23/10/1819

Arrival Date: 03/05/1820

Biography: Hannah (more often known as Ann, and probably Rosannah) uttered ten forged £1 notes to Hannah Hemsworth at Manchester. The death sentence she initially received was commuted to 14 years transportation (also sometimes recorded as life).

Very soon after arrival, Hannah was transferred to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) onboard the Princess Charlotte where she was noted as a servant. Almost immediately after arrival she absconded from Mr Jennet who she had been assigned to and was held in solitary confinement on bread and water for a week. She repeated this the following year, being away for three days and was jailed for two weeks, and had to sit in the stocks four times. Only three months after in August 1821, the same crime and punishment was repeated. In 1823 she was a servant to G. Richards. In June 1825, Hannah was absent from the muster and was reprimanded and also that year was fined for missing church. By 1832 Hannah was recorded as married to Jacob Mayall (ship- Sir William Bensley). What is missing is that if Hannah and Jacob were already a married couple who reunited in Van Diemen’s Land or by coincidence they both had the same uncommon surname. There is a marriage in 1815 of a Roseannah Edwards to a Jacob Mayell on the outskirts of Birmingham, England (Jacob was tried nearby in 1816) so it is possible.

In 1827 Jacob had received an additional 14 year sentence for receiving a huge amounted of stolen money but doesn’t appear to long have remained away from Launceston and by 1835 had a ticket of leave

In August 1836, Jacob died at Lauceston and in 1839, Hannah, now a widow, remarried Henry Barrett one of the founders of York Town (also a widower) (ship- probably Fortune) at St Johns Launceston. Henry was a gardener to the governor or the settlement and one of the only remaining inhabitants after the settlement had been abandoned. With his previous wife and children, they had lived at York Town for many years.By February 1840, Henry was advertising in the newspapers that Hannah (better known, he said, as Anne Maile) had already run up several debts and that she should not be given credit.

After this, they both disappear for many years, until the death of Henry in 1870 at Georgetown, aged 94 and in 1885, Rose Ann Barrett, aged 95 at Beaconsfield from senility (dementia). The death register was signed by Henry’s daughter from his earlier marriage and newspaper accounts refer to Hannah (actually it was her husband Henry) being an early settler of York Town. She was buried at York Town cemetery, along with Henry and his previous wife Mary. This final mention of her full name, Rose Ann lends itself to the theory she had already been married upon transportation, to Jacob.

Whilst she probably wasn’t quite as old as 95 at her death, she was one of the last surviving Lancastrian female convicts.