Transportation to Australia of convict, Sarah Murden

Today’s article is about my namesake – Sarah Murden (also written as Murdin), who was born on 16 February 1803, at Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, to parents John, a shoemaker, and his wife Ann née Beebby. Sarah’s younger brother, John followed in his father’s footsteps and he became a shoe maker; a traditional role in Northamptonshire, famed for its shoe industry. Sarah’s life, however, took a very different path and not in a positive way.

There is no evidence of Sarah having married in her twenties, as most of her peers probably did, nor of her occupation. However, given that the main employers in Wellingborough at that time were shoe/boot makers, it’s highly likely that Sarah would have worked for such an employer, perhaps working alongside other members of her family.

Walton, Henry; The Shoemaker; Northampton Museums & Art Gallery

Sarah’s name came to prominence locally, when, at the age of 28 her name appeared in the Northamptonshire Mercury, 26 November 1831 – for larceny. Sarah was charged with

the theft of three pairs of army upper leathers, from the warehouse of Mr Mark Sharman, shoe manufacturer of Wellingborough.

Mark Sharman’s company was probably one of the largest and oldest in the town, situated on Sheep Street, near to The Hind coaching inn.

At the Shoemaker’s Shop c1825 (c) National Trust, Wimpole Hall; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

From the nature of her theft it would appear quite likely that Sarah was an employee at Sharman’s, but as to why she stole from her employer is lost to history, but her sentence for this crime was not imprisonment, instead, she received a seven year sentence of transportation to Australia, as apparently this was not her first crime for theft, but it hasn’t been possible to ascertain further details of her earlier misdemeanour, but it seems highly likely that she had already received a warning about what would happen if she committed any further crimes. A warning she clearly chose to ignore. Times were exceptionally hard back then for the likes of Sarah and her family and in all likelihood she stole in order to help support the family, but this crime could potentially have had a greater impact on her family, especially if they all worked for the same employer.

Around the end of July 1832, Sarah boarded the transportation ship, The Fanny, but when The Fanny set sail from London for Port Jackson, Australia, cholera had already made its appearance onboard, according to the ship’s surgeon, who stated that this was possibly due to one of the sailors who had already contracted it.

Fortunately though, none of the women onboard succumbed to it, however, about thirty women did go on to develop scurvy. At the insistence of the surgeons, The Fanny put in to the Cape of Good Hope, where fresh provisions were procured and the prisoners were given an opportunity to recuperate.

Eventually, after a journey of 188 days at sea, The Fanny arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, on February 2, 1833.

Port Jackson 1823 State Library of New South Wales

Upon arrival, prisoners physical details were recorded in the Gaol Description and Entrance Books which recorded that Sarah was 5 feet in height, slender build, with brown hair, hazel eyes and a sallow complexion.

As with all other prisoners, Sarah was immediately set to work having been sent to a Mr and Mrs W Wolcott, a shoe maker on George Street, Sydney. Potentially an ideal employer, given Sarah’s possible previous employment on the other side of the world.

But all was not well with Sarah’s placement, as according to the New South Wales Government Gazette of 18 December 1833 – Sarah had made a bid for freedom. This didn’t go well, as she was captured and returned to her placement.

George Street Sydney1855

Sarah was clearly not happy with her situation, as on Wednesday 8 Jan 1834  her name appeared again on a list of runaways who had been apprehended, along with an account of her court appearance.

Sarah Murden was charged with ‘bolting from her mistress, Mrs Woolcot, of George Street,’ putting herself under the protection of an unnamed man for three weeks. She was then picked up in the area of Kent Street, by someone who suspected her to be a runaway who took her into custody. Something was said about her going back to her mistress, but on hearing this, Sarah simply shrugged her shoulders and said:

she would be blowed if she would go back again and would suffer any punishment rather than return.

The phrase, ‘be careful what you wish for’ springs to mind, as the Bench decided that the best thing to do with her rather than return her to her placement was to sentence her to two months at Parramatta, a goal often used for runaways.

On 3 March 1827, Michael Perrin, also from Wellingborough, a shoemaker and soldier, found himself in court with his accomplice, Philip Hustwaite, charged with stealing a feather bed and a pair of blankets from a mansion house in Wellingborough, owned by Thomas Pochin, Esq. The pair were sentenced to seven years transportation. They were swiftly removed from Northamptonshire to Portsmouth, where they were confined of the Leviathan prison hulk or a few months (conditions onboard the hulks were described as horrendous), then onwards to Australia onboard The Phoenix.

Michael then seemed to disappear from records for a while, but in 1833 he reappeared when he applied to marry Sarah Murden. Whilst Sarah was still bonded, Michael was noted to be free, so even though his sentence had not run its course, his freedom had clearly been granted.

The couple married despite Sarah’s situation, her freedom was not granted until 20 July 1841, some ten years after her initial sentence – could this have been due to her bad behaviour? It would seem likely.

However badly she had behaved during her sentence, she and Michael had a long and fruitful marriage, seeing Sarah given birth to two daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, both of whom went on to have their own families and it is highly likely that Sarah and Michael’s descendants still live in Australia.

Sarah died on 9 July 1866, interestingly this was just 6 months, to the day after the death of the victim of her crime, the shoe manufacture, Mark Sharman.

I have the definite impression that Sarah was quite feisty, and I do have to say that I like that about my namesake.

Sources

State Archives NSW; Kingswood, New South Wales; Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930; Series: 2517; Item: 4/6296; Roll: 855

New South Wales, Australia Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849 

New South Wales, Butts Of Convicts’ Certificates Of Freedom 1827-1867

Bateson, Charles. The Convict Ships 1787-1868

Featured Image

Prison Hulk in Portsmouth Harbour. Louis Garneray (1783–1857). National Maritime Museum

 

 

What can the reader expect from An Infamous Mistress?

Today’s blog is a little different. Our biography An Infamous Mistress: The Life, Loves and Family of the Celebrated Grace Dalrymple Elliott has now been released worldwide, so we thought it might interest our readers if we wrote a little Q&A style piece for anyone who may be thinking about buying our book, to tell you a little more about it.

What made us decide to write about Grace and her family?

Grace simply landed in our lap, we didn’t go out looking for her. The reality was that we were actually researching someone else who turned out to have a familial connection to her and so up she popped. For someone so well known in her day, there still seemed to be huge gaps in what was known of her life and, ever ones to enjoy a challenge, we set out with the intention of merely filling in these gaps and were astounded by how much new information we eventually uncovered.

Being genealogists, we also looked at her wider family and ancestry, particularly her maternal family who had lain undiscovered until now. The only information which was already known was some scant information about her father, and of course her sister Jacintha who married into the Hesketh family, but that was about it.

Her Journal is there in the public domain for all to read, so why write about it again?

The deeper we dug, the more we realized that research into her life has long been muddied by the misinformed biographical information given in the preface to her own Journal of My Life during the French Revolution, which was published posthumously.

Replete with mistakes and half-remembered anecdotes, it was supplied more than two decades after Grace’s death by her granddaughter and a friend. Despite two former biographies on this fascinating woman, the elements which were actually truthful in her Journal were still disputed. For instance, it mentioned a brother, but no brother had ever been identified before (in fact Grace had two brothers which we are able to introduce to her story!).

We have been able to correct this mishmash of information but, more than that, we located previously unconsulted documents, including family ones, which shed new light on the areas of Grace’s life which had formerly lain in the shadows, enabling us to tell her story more completely, and more accurately, than it has ever been told.

Her Journal as it relates to her experiences during the French Revolution is another area we have attempted to illuminate more fully than it has been before. Glaring errors contained within its pages have discredited what ought to have been a superb first-hand account of that period. Grace is placed in confinement in French prisons awaiting the guillotine with notable personalities, when it can be proved that the people so named were not there at that time. Added to the biographical inaccuracies, it has led to people washing their hands of the whole Journal. We set to with a fine tooth comb, to try to establish fact from fiction (a task not helped by Grace habitually misspelling names, either she had a terrible memory for them or the person who transcribed the pages she had written could not read her handwriting).

Slowly but surely we were able to verify much of it, even down to a plausible account of her acting as a courier for the French queen, Marie Antoinette (rumours have ever swirled that Grace courageously worked as a spy). The errors all come in towards the end of the Journal, put there (we strongly suspect) by the over-enthusiastic publisher who wished to have a more dramatic finale to it. The ending we discovered was perhaps a little more mundane, but it is truthful and perhaps, we hope, gives back some credence to Grace’s Journal as an excellent source for those researching the French Revolution, especially as it is an invaluable first-hand account written by a woman.

Why didn’t we simply write about Grace’s life alone?

That would, of course, have been the easy option and for those who regularly read our blog, we rarely take the easy option! We are both genealogists as well as historians and love nothing more than seeking out new pieces of information about the Georgian period. It may be a slightly contentious decision on our part, but the more we discovered, the more fascinated we became by the people we uncovered, especially her siblings and maternal family, and we hoped that the reader would be too for they each had a story to tell, especially one of her brothers!

Were any of Grace’s relatives famous?

 None remain well-known today, although we’d contend that Grace’s eldest brother deserves as much renown as his ‘celebrated’ sister, but some were certainly among the ‘great and the good’ of the day. They made their way around the globe, made the acquaintance of several personalities of the day (George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to name but two) and their lives exhibit a snapshot of a strata of Georgian society and offer an invaluable insight into the social history of the period. The fact that they are all but forgotten now does not make their lives any the less interesting and we relished the chance to rescue them from the obscurity they have long languished in.

We also realized that Grace’s actions and decisions became much clearer when viewed in the context of her wider family. For instance, knowing that two of her aunts made their fortunes and gained their social standing by first being mistresses to wealthy and titled men, that one of these aunts was mistress to an earl and ultimately became his countess, what light does this then shed on Grace herself following their path and becoming a courtesan? What counsel did these two worldly-wise women give to their wayward niece? Grace was well-born too, when most courtesans had been plucked from the stage or the London bawdy houses by their ‘keepers’. Only a few, notably Grace, the scandalous Lady Worsley and Gertrude Mahon (aka the Bird of Paradise) were of good birth. But to know that Grace was from a once landed and noble family, you need to understand and be conversant with her ancestry.

Lastly, we believe that charting the lives of her wider family gives a contrast to Grace’s own life. Although she hated her husband, would she have been better, in that day and age, to have survived a few more years of marriage to arrive at a titled and wealthy widowhood whilst still young enough to contemplate a good marriage to a man of her choosing? Grace could have ended her days like her cousin, mistress of both a country pile and a smart London townhouse and entertaining royalty at her dinner table, rather than in her bed.

What have other readers said?

We’re delighted to say that we have received some excellent reviews for our book. You can read more on our Press page.

Where can I buy An Infamous Mistress?

Our book is available in hardback and as an ebook direct from our publisher, Pen and Sword Books, or from Book Depository, Amazon UK, Amazon US and all good bookshops.