Date of Conviction: 22/03/1817

Age at Conviction: 17

Crime Convicted of: Highway Robbery

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

Sentence Length: Life

Ship Transported on: Maria

Where Arrived: Port Jackson, New South Wales

Departure Date: 15/05/1818

Arrival Date: 17/09/1818

Biography: Alice had stolen on the highway at Manchester, a pocket book, a £30 bill of exchange and £13 in bank notes from Thomas Robinson along with two other men. She received a death sentence but was reprieved.

Lancaster Castle Governor, Mr Higgin, reported that Alice was in trouble in jail for not standing up during singing hymns in chapel, and she was also was locked up in a solitary cell for being abusive to Elizabeth Stott; Alice said she didn’t care if she was locked up in there the whole time she was in there.

Alice was put on board ship on the 17th march 1818. The surgeon’s notes say she is aged 22- she had a violent pain in her side but no fever. Alice also suffered from a vaginal abscess onboard and was given magnesium sulphate and hot compresses, it eventually burst.

Immediately after arrival, Alice was sent to Port Dalrymple at Van Diemen’s Land on the Elizabeth Henrietta. Here, she was set to work as a housekeeper for convict James Turley (ship- Elizabeth) who was from Liverpool. They married in January 1819 at Launceston and soon had a daughter in 1820. Alice’s husband James was sent to Newcastle penal colony this year for a colonial crime and two years later, in 1822 Alice followed him to Newcastle. They had a son around this time.

The family received permission to head to Sydney in later 1822 with her husband working as a shoemaker (and selling illicit spirits) at The Rocks and lived on Cumberland Street. By 1826 Alice, described as a ‘notorious character’ was in trouble with the law again and was sent to the third class of the female factory at Parramatta. Her seven year old daughter Mary Ann was sent to live with James and Elizabeth Cheetham on their farm at Anthony’s Creek, Bathurst (Elizabeth being fellow Lancastrian convict and shipmate Betty Taylor; James and his brother also being Lancastrians). Two years later her son Edward, also now seven, was sent to an orphanage (it is believed James, her husband had died or had left her).

In November 1831 Alice, now 32, married free convict John Simpson (ship- Shipley) at Holy Trinity, Kelso, Bathurst, suggesting she had moved near her daughter. They had three children (two girls and a boy) between 1832 and 36 and in 1833, they applied to have Alice’s son Edward returned from the orphanage. She also saw her oldest daughter (aged 15) marry in 1835 at Bathurst. Alice received a conditional pardon in 1837. She died at Bathurst in 1848, aged around 49.