Date of Conviction: 10/03/1831

Age at Conviction: 28

Crime Convicted of: Uttering Forged Notes

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

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Pyramus

Where Arrived: Sydney Harbour, New South Wales

Departure Date: 08/10/1831

Arrival Date: 05/03/1832

Biography: Sarah, from Manchester, had uttered a forged £5 promissory bank note at Macclesfield along with her common law husband Martin Collins. She used the ‘Wirksworth’ (a town in Derbyshire) notes to buy workboxes and articles from a toy shop ”for her daughter who was at boarding school” and a pound of tea from another. They had been to Birmingham previously doing the same and had been buying a number of these notes. The death sentence she received was reprieved as it was felt Sarah was duped into it by Collins (who she’d originally met eight years previously at a funeral and offered her employment as his housekeeper after her husband had abandoned her). She had ‘cried pitifully for mercy’ at the bar.

On arrival, after a short stay in the female factory at Parramatta, Sarah was assigned as a cook to a Mr George Slade. In 1841, Sarah was briefly jailed- at this time she was described as 5ft 2, ruddy faced, stoutly built with brown hair and blue eyes. She had a ticket of leave by 1842 and was a housekeeper/laundress. In 1847, Sarah received a conditional pardon and was free. Her certificate adds a little more in the way of description to the above, she was a native of Caernarfonshire, Wales and also a little freckled with a scar on the upper part of her nose, a mole over her left eye, a wart on her left ring finger and a blue dot on the back of her right hand.