After 93 nights in the Newgate Prison Mary set sail for Australia. King George III was declared mad. As a result, many waiting to be executed were instead bound for transportation to the penal colony of Australia. At 10 years old, Mary took voyage, the youngest ever convict, aboard the Lady Juliana.
Mary Wade
The youngest ever convict to be transported to Australia at the age of 11. Her hideous crime was that she stole another girls clothes and for that she was sentenced to death by hanging.
Hudson, John (c.
Recaptured, he was sent to the Dunkirk hulk in June 1784. He was discharged to the Friendship in March 1787 and arrived in Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet. Hudson was probably the youngest male convict (when sentenced) to be sent to New South Wales.
Child convicts of Australia - Chapter 1 Transportation and the First Fleet. From 1788, for more than 50 years, convicts were transported from Britain to New South Wales. These included children as young as nine years of age.
The Western Australian records we've been using for our recent research and digitised for the Digital Panopticon project reveal the story of Samuel Speed, the last living Australian convict. He was transported to Western Australia in 1866 and died in 1938, just short of his 100th birthday.
Mary Wade (17 December 1775 – 17 December 1859) was a British teenager and convict who was transported to Australia when she was 13 years old. She was the youngest convict aboard Lady Juliana, part of the Second Fleet. Her family grew to include five generations and over 300 descendants in her own lifetime.
Samuel Terry (c. 1776 – 22 February 1838) was transported to Australia as a criminal, where he became a wealthy landowner, merchant and philanthropist. His extreme wealth made him by far the richest man in the colony with wealth comparable to the richer in England.
THE FIRST FLEET
They carried around 1400 convicts, soldiers and free people. The journey from England to Australia took 252 days and there were around 48 deaths on the voyage.
“The convict men were transported first and soon outnumbered women nine to one in Australia. You can't have a colony without women so the female convicts were specifically targeted by the British government as 'tamers and breeders'.”
Dorothy Handland (born Dorothy Coolley; c. 1705/26 -) was perhaps the oldest convict transported on the First Fleet.
Notable sentences
The longest non-parole period imposed for a single murder is 35 years, being served by Melbourne CBD gunman Christopher Wayne Hudson (Victoria).
About 20,000 or 12.3% of the convicts transported to Australia were women.
South Australia was an experimental British colony and the only Australian colony which did not officially take convicts.
Beth - The Story of a Child Convict, is an incredibly moving tale inspired by the experiences of Elizabeth Hayward, the youngest female convict on the First Fleet and the journals of naval officer William Bradley and Arthur Bowes Smyth, the surgeon and artist also onboard.
The Commonwealth
Under the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) (Crimes Act), the minimum age of criminal responsibility for Commonwealth offences is 10 years of age.
Private James Charles ('Jim') Martin is the best known boy soldier. He is believed to be the youngest soldier on the Roll of Honour. Jim was 14 years 9 months old when he died at Gallipoli. Studio portrait of 1553 Private (Pte) James (Jim) Martin, 1st Reinforcements, 21st Battalion, of Hawthorn, Vic.
On 30 March 1789 Ann Martin was sentenced to 25 lashes, reduced from 30 lashes, for creating a disturbance at night. Later in our convict history, female convicts would receive other punishments instead of flogging. They could be put in solitary confinement and have only bread and water.
The female children were provided with a brown woollen jacket, a petticoat, two shifts, a cap made of linen, a pair of stockings, a neckerchief, a pair of stockings and a pair of shoes.
Convict women were employed in domestic service, washing and on government farms, and were expected to find their own food and lodging. Punishment for those who transgressed was humiliating and public. Exile itself was considered a catalyst for reform.
It is estimated there were about 50 children on the First Fleet when it arrived at Botany Bay. Over 20 children were born at sea during the eight-month voyage.
Some of the First Fleet convicts had been found guilty of serious crimes, such as assault and highway robbery. But most had committed nonviolent offenses, mainly theft. Among the wide range of items they were convicted of stealing were livestock, tea, clothes, bedding, watches, mugs, and handkerchiefs.
At 8.30pm the yard bell sounded and the convicts trudged up the Barracks staircases to their wards, where each man had his own numbered hammock. At night the hammock rooms were lit by oil lamps until 8.45pm, when they were put out as part of 'lights out'.
Boggo Road Gaol opened in 1883 as the Brisbane Gaol. Used mainly as a holding prison for those serving short sentences or on remand, its initial infamy came from it being a place of execution.
Ivan Milat, (1944–2019) convicted of the murder of seven young men and women between 1989 and 1993; known as Australia's most prolific serial killer. His crimes are collectively referred to as the "Backpacker murders".
A desperate escape attempt occurred on 25 January 1859 soon after construction of the Convict Establishment was completed. Peter Campbell, Henry Stevens, John Haynes, John William and Stephen Lacey who were on a work party in Fremantle absconded into the bush and made their way up river to Melville Waters.