Date of Conviction: 19/03/1803

Age at Conviction: 27

Crime Convicted of: Highway Robbery

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

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Experiment

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 02/01/1804

Arrival Date: 12/06/1804

Biography: With an alias of Moore, Margaret was charged with having on 21st December 1802 of having assaulted farmer Richard Harling (who lived at Bulk, on the edge of Lancaster) on the king’s highway at Lancaster on the Green Ayre (therefore the turnpike, now Caton Road) and taking from his person £2 and 6 shillings.

Most highway robberies were like this; an opportunistic mugging, not the much romanticised horseback ‘stand and deliver’ type. The end result was the same though and Margaret received a death sentence, later reprieved, at the March 1803 Assizes at the castle and was sentenced to life transportation. She was put onboard ‘Experiment’ (a ship with both men and women).

In 1818, the muster records Margaret as life emancipated, 1820, musters record Margaret as married. By 1828 Margaret was a housekeeper for Joseph Barnes (ship- Hillsborough) at Parramatta who was her common law husband and by this time, she was free by servitude; somehow her life sentence had become a 7 year one, possibly due to an administrative error.

Margaret’s husband Joseph was tragically killed in 1843 when his cart load of manure fell on him, crushing him. After, she carried on alone and in 1855, Margaret was a victim of her own earlier crime when she suffered a nighttime highway robbery at Parramatta. She described the two men in great detail, they took £1 5 shillings from her.

Margaret died and was buried at St Johns, Parramatta aged 85 or 89 (records vary) in April 1858, sadly having died a pauper at the benevolent asylum and buried in an unmarked location.