Date of Conviction: 23/07/1800, 31/03/1809 and 16/07/1821

Age at Conviction: 51 (1st) 59 (2nd) and 73 (2nd)

Crime Convicted of: Thefts

Court/s Convicted at: Lancaster Quarter Sessions (held at the New Bailey, Salford) x2 and Chester Assizes (Chester Castle)

Sentence Length: 7 Years x2 and Life

Ship Transported on: Remained in England

Where Arrived: N/A

Departure Date: N/A

Arrival Date: N/A

Biography: Mary from Manchester, had an incredibly long criminal history, with a death sentence and three sentences of transportation, escaping them all.

In her first sentence, she had stolen a hat at Manchester. She had narrowly avoided an earlier sentence just a few months earlier at Easter- being charged alongside a Henry Barker who would later be executed for a burglary at Garstang whilst Mary was still inside. Due to poor health, Mary was given a free pardon from Lancaster Castle on the 30th January 1805. By October, Mary was back at Lancaster, having been given three years of solitary confinement and hard labour for a theft at Bury.

Mary was back out and offending again by March of 1809; along with two other women, one of them her niece, and had stolen cotton print from a shop at Stockport and this time she was given a death sentence, later commuted to life transportation at Chester Assizes. From here she was again deemed by the Chester Castle Surgeon as unsuitable to send to the transport ships and after seven years in 1816 was again given a free pardon. At this point, the newspapers reported on her history, saying how she had lived a life of degradation and had already been upwards of twenty years in Lancaster Castle.

At the time of her final conviction, Mary was described as the wife of Samuel Walker of Manchester and this time had stolen two pairs of bellows. She now had nine past convictions and was described as a very old offender. She is the oldest of all the Lancastrian women to be sentenced to transportation.

Mary was recorded in 1824 as now widowed, aged 76 and currently sick. However, she served her time at Lancaster and was discharged, aged 80 on the 16th July 1828.