Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

While today’s children are excited about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten 12 months outdated Mary Wade will must have been vastly completely different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship certain for Australia: considered one of 200 and fifty or so women, half method to an odd land. Their feminine convict ship The Lady Juliana, a part of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and found guilty of stealing another child’s garments. Her demise sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter candy. Mary had escaped the gallows however would never see her family again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous situations at Newgate Prison. Mary was certainly one of fifty women fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor lavatories. However, once aboard Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict , her situation improved. All convicts had been fairly fed and given warm beds. Only 5 women and two kids died during the eleven month voyage and the situation of those who arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the strain on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip sent many new arrivals together with Mary, to a spot described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave birth to a daughter. She had two more children with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the household was dwelling in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship however never returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and arrange house close to the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took possession of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived fortunately until Harrigan’s demise in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty yr outdated Mary died at residence. She had given birth to twenty one children. In her lifetime, her household had grown to incorporate 5 generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants quantity in the tens of hundreds, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten 12 months old convict Mary Wade was facing an uncertain future. Today, she is acknowledged as considered one of Australia’s founding mothers.