Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

While today’s youngsters are excited about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten year previous Mary Wade should have been vastly completely different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship sure for Australia: considered one of 200 and fifty or so women, half way to a wierd land. Their feminine convict ship The Lady Juliana, 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 responsible of stealing one other child’s clothes. Her demise sentence, commuted to transportation for all times, was bitter sweet. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict had escaped the gallows but would by no means see her family again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous conditions at Newgate Prison. Mary was one of fifty ladies fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor lavatories. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her scenario improved. All convicts had been moderately fed and given warm beds. Only five girls 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 pressure on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip sent many new arrivals together with Mary, to a place described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave start to a daughter. She had two extra children with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was residing in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship however by no means returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and set up house near 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 till Harrigan’s dying in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty year previous Mary died at home. She had given start to twenty one youngsters. In her lifetime, her family had grown to incorporate five generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants number within the tens of thousands, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten year previous convict Mary Wade was going through an uncertain future. Today, she is recognized as certainly one of Australia’s founding moms.