Date of Conviction: 22/01/1822

Age at Conviction: 24

Crime Convicted of: Theft

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

Sentence Length: 7 Years

Ship Transported on: Mary (1)

Where Arrived: Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

Departure Date: 03/06/1823

Arrival Date: 05/10/1823

Biography: Sally (officially Sarah) stole £24 of mixed silver coins. Her mum Betty was acquitted of receiving the money. Sally was described in jail at Lancaster as ‘says she was born in Oldham, pale complexion, hazel eyes, light brown hair, a few small pox marks, a large scar on her right temple, big with child, has had one before, 2nd finger right hand has been crushed. A single woman’.

Sally was put onboard the Mary on the 17th May 1823 and it is not clear what happened to the child she was pregnant with. She was sent to the female factory two months after arrival at Hobart as she was ‘not sleeping under the same roof as her master (Thomas McCraw). She gave birth to Sarah (Wright) around 1825. Sally married free convict shoemaker John Wright (ship- Caledonia) in Hobart in 1826. They had four sons Samuel around 1827, John James in 1831, Robert around 1832 and Isaac in 1833. The same year, living at Bathurst St, Sally and John were fined twice for drinking for two days straight in July. She gained her freedom in 1829.

In 1834, Sarah, described as ‘a most disorderly character’ was fined one shilling for obstructed a police constable and scratching at him with her nails. The magistrates took pity on her as she was carrying a baby (Isaac?) and had numerous other children with her and her husband was awaiting trial for felony. The felony was stealing a watch and John was transported again for seven years. It was the last she saw of her husband until c.1842 when he returned to their house.

In 1835, three of her children (Sarah, Samuel and Robert) were put into the Queen’s Orphan School- they were in there for 5, 3 and unknown years respectively). The same year Sarah was fined for ‘accommodating a prisoner in half her bed at Harrington Street’. A charge of harbouring a female convict in 1838 was dismissed though she received a fine for being drunk again this year. In 1840 she was fined £15 for running a ‘grog shop’ along with gentleman friend John Wilson at Harrington Street. In 1841 she was described as ‘one of the worsest women’ by the police constables in the St Giles area where she lived for breaches of the Quarter Sessions Act (Sarah to paraphrase said she was always getting picked on), the newspaper named her a ‘drunkard’ that year. In 1843, Sarah was beaten up in her house on Harrington Street by a Thomas Nakin. Her house/grog-shop was euphemistically called a ‘chapel of ease’ several times in the newspapers. She was also called a ‘squalid looking creature’ and did not appear on charges of a theft of a bonnet and tippet (claiming she took them for non-payment of money due to her).

Sally died in January 1844 at Harrington Street, Hobart, aged 46, with the cause of death listed as ‘convulsions’. Her daughter Sarah was the informant.