Date of Conviction: 15/08/1825

Age at Conviction: 19

Crime Convicted of: Theft From A Dwelling House

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

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Providence (2)

Where Arrived: Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land

Departure Date: 08/12/1825

Arrival Date: 16/05/1826

Biography: Julia had robbed a house in Manchester and stolen £60, 13 shillings and 6 pence, as well as six pieces of cotton cloths, six silk handkerchiefs, five shawls and a variety of other articles, the property of John Mallow. She received a death sentence which was commuted to life transportation. She was described whilst in Lancaster Castle as ‘born in Dublin, dark grey eyes, brown hair, a round scar on her left arm, slightly marked with smallpox, thick lips and a single woman’.

Julia married John Hays (free settler- Ship- Tiger), a widower at Hobart in September 1829. John was the under sheriff and already had already had three children with his late wife Charlotte. Julia had a perfect conduct record in Van Diemen’s Land, earning her first a ticket of leave by 1831, a conditional pardon in September 1835, followed by a free pardon in November 1836, renewed in 1840. John had been busy in the meantime- from being a shopkeeper, clerk, Under Sheriff of Van Diemen’s land, publican and auctioneer by 1839 he had been declared bankrupt, the trouble beginning when he had to take on huge loans to find securities for his role as Under Sheriff, and it appears he and Julia sailed for a fresh start for Victoria before 1843 where they carried on in the pub trade first in the Campespies then at Richmond Punt (confirmed by a police statement he gave in Melbourne in 1845) before a final turn as a butcher.

John died in Melbourne in 1851 and Julia married publican/pioneer and free settler Jeremiah Rolfe (ship Amelia- Thompson) in 1855 after the recent death of his own wife. Jeremiah and his many sons ran the Swan Inn (Swan Hill) and Maiden’s Punt Inn (Moama) along the Murray River on the NSW/Victoria border. Julia’s life took a very different turn at this point, as the family began pioneering, first settling at Murrumbidgee in NSW and then around 1860 began the 1000+ mile journey to Rolfe’s Pioneer Station on a creek off the Belyando River in Queensland (named Mistake Creek as it wasn’t on the main river where it was expected to be).

Julia died at Rolfe’s Pioneer Station, Mistake Creek, Belyando, Queensland in April 1862, recorded as aged 46 (she would have been 56). She would have been buried somewhere on the land they owned.