The Two Handkerchiefs

Hobart Seafront – Convict Statues

The article I wrote for my parish magazine was published today so I tam including a copy of the text here.

Two Handkerchiefs

In 1789, Ann Carey (aged 17), Mary Anthony and Mary Frost (reported as aged 40) were conveyed from Norwich and escorted to a ship bound for Botany Bay, the first Norfolk women to be sent as convicts to Australia. This is the story of Ann Carey.

Something set her off on a crime spree in Norwich 1788. According to The Women of Neptune by Ann Needham, she was ‘’an enthusiastic if careless thief who scarcely bothered to cover her tracks.” What could have been in her mind when she began stealing? The punishment, if caught, was hanging.

Her trial was based on only stealing two handkerchiefs – why not the rest of the many instances of larceny? Someone must have taken the decision for leniency. Perhaps they could not bear to see such a young girl hang.

The three women, Ann and the two Marys, boarded the Neptune, one of the ships of the second fleet which left Portsmouth in January 1790, arriving in late June. It was a ship of horrors, an ex-slave ship, it carried 428 male and 78 female convicts. 147 males and 11 females died on the journey, of neglect.

The Reverend Richard Johnson witnessed the arrival of the notorious second fleet, writing of the men on one of the other ships,

Never has my mind been so perturbed, my heart so wounded

Below decks on the Surprize, I beheld a sight so abominably shameful

in that dank, dark hold of a prison that I gave way to tears

A great number of these grim and grizzled fogeys were lying

half-naked, without cot or blanket

out of blood – save their gums from scurvy

unable to turn over, downright helpless in their slavers’ shackles

plagued by boils, flogging scars and festering sores

Spoke to the poor wretches as I passed along this divan of illness

But I could scarce endure the thick, rank stench that was so palpable

Blood and ‘ouns!  Are we a wise and understanding people?

In 1793 it was reported in parliament, Out of 500 passengers on board the Neptune but 42 were able to crawl over the ship’s side; the rest were carried and eight out of every ten died at Sydney Cove.

Mary Anthony disappears from the record at this point, but Ann Carey and Mary Frost survived the horrors of the journey.

On very short rations and in urgent need of supplies, expectations of the second fleet’s arrival were on everyone’s mind. Unfortunately, the supply ship of the second fleet hit an iceberg and sank. The new colony did not need more mouths to feed, especially weakened women, so one hundred and fifty women were dispatched to Norfolk Island, almost a thousand miles distant, again by sea. Landing at Norfolk Island was treacherous, a further seven people including women and a child died between the ship and the shore.

Ann Carey and Mary Frost supplanted from their native Norfolk now found themselves back in a far stranger Norfolk, described in a letter by an early settler marine.

The island is fully wooded. Its timber is in the opinion of everyone the most beautiful and finest in the world…they are most suitable for masts, yards, spars and such. The New Zealand flax-plant grows there in abundance. European grains and seeds also thrive wonderfully well on Norfolk Island.

Both Ann Carey and Mary Frost married in November 1791 at a mass wedding conducted by the Reverend Richard Johnson, Ann to a marine, named James Gilbert, and Mary to a First-Fleet convict, named Joseph Peck.

However, the wood on the island was not found useful, and the flax was unsuccessful. The colony was abandoned in 1814 temporarily, but by that time both Ann and Mary had long departed.

Ann and James returned to Port Jackson (Sydney) in 1793 where James joined the NSW Corps and was granted land before dying in 1799, along with their young son. Ann was also granted 110 acres of land at Bankstown SW Sydney. Her husband’s land, she later sold to the renowned navigator, Matthew Flinders. Her status as the landed widow of a marine had changed considerably. However, with two young daughters to support, Ann soon married Theophilus Feutrill, a widower marine from Staffordshire with a son, who had also travelled out on the Neptune. The couple had a further ten children; Ann had thirteen children in all.

So far, Ann had been a pioneer in NSW, Norfolk Island and then in 1804, she was one of the first woman, possibly the first Norfolk woman, to be sent to Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) with her soldier husband to set up a new colony in the Launceston area. Ann and her family settled there although she did travel between Sydney and Tasmania several times over the years.

In 1818, Theophilus and his eldest son, Joseph, were sent with their regiment to Ceylon, leaving Ann alone with her children. Joseph died shortly after arrival while his father also fell sick. Rather than send Theophilus back to the care of his wife and family, he was repatriated broken and in ill health to England where he hung himself in 1821, ironically with two handkerchiefs. Was that a message to his wife? How long did it take for her to hear that news?

Ann stayed in Tasmania but not completely out of trouble. Ann’s daughter, Elizabeth, married John Tibbs around 1824 and became the victim of one of the ex-convict bushrangers who roamed the land.

Murder at Launceston
It is with feelings of the utmost horror, that we have to make public the following appalling circumstance. On Saturday last, Jeffrey, the notorious villain, who lately broke out of the Launceston watch-house, accompanied with the two miscreants who followed him, after having robbed Mr. Barnard’s hut, proceeded to the residence of a respectable Settler named Tibbs, about 5 miles from Launceston. They arrived there about noon. Mr. Tibbs and his wife, a young and respectable woman, to whom he had been married about two years, with their child, and a servant of a neighbouring Settler, named Basham, were in the house. The ruffians attempted to bind them, but upon their offering resistance, these diabolical murderers shot them both. The man fell dead; Mr. Tibbs was dangerously wounded, but he escaped with his life, and contrived to give an alarm. The whole town of Launceston, with one accord, rushed out after the murderous villains; but the unhappy female and her child were gone. About 3 o’clock on Sunday, she returned to her forlorn residence. She was in a state of distraction. The daemons had murdered her infant. We cannot relate the rest. The agitation this dreadful event has excited is beyond expression. We hope and trust the execrable monsters may be quickly brought to condign punishment. Source: Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser 6 Jan 1826.

It seems Elizabeth was raped and to silence the baby, the poor child was bashed against a tree.

We can imagine how Ann felt. Because having stayed out of trouble all those years, having numerous children and become a respected member of society, the next time we meet her it is for attempted murder. This is from her record in the Tasmanian convict records.

Attempted murder of convict constable John Crowther whom she wrongly believed to be the bushranger Thomas Jeffries who had murdered her grandchild.

From the newspaper report, Jeffries (sic) was captured and brought into town a few days later when

Mrs.Feutril, the grandmother of the murdered infant, mistook a constable that was with him for Jeffries, and rushing from her house in a paroxysm of rage, stabbed him with a fork, but fortunately for her he was only slightly wounded.

It seems that once again Ann was treated leniently as there is no record of punishment. Jeffreys was hung along with several other bushrangers.

The year 1826 only worsened for Ann and her family. In August, another daughter, Sarah, died in childbed and her distraught husband cut his throat leaving the baby and three older children as orphans.

Two years later, Ann buried two more daughters, aged 21 and 26 a day apart, before dying herself in 1830 and was buried in St John’s Church, Launceston.

Her son, Theophilus, moved to South Australia in 1839, not long after Adelaide was first settled. Ann’s family were true pioneers.

As a young girl in Norwich, Ann could never have imagined how her life would turn out. From inauspicious beginnings, she developed into a tough but caring woman who raised her family single-handed after her husband was posted away. Her descendants most likely number in their hundreds if not thousands and when I began writing this, I had no idea that I knew one of them. Colette Mcalpine, is a leading researcher with the Female Convicts Research Centre https://femaleconvicts.org.au in Tasmania. Colette is proud of Ann saying:

Perhaps she was no different to so many women today who see their families destroyed by famine, war, poverty and crime, who risk their lives as refugees to give their children a better life, women who survive horrors we cannot face to read about.

And what of Mary Frost? She too ended up in Tasmania with eleven children (her reported age on conviction was likely to be at least ten years out). Unfortunately, her husband and sons turned to sheep stealing. She too was left to bring up the remains of her family single-handed, dying in 1847.

Rosemary Noble – author of The Currency Girls Saga