Deported to Oz

He got the death sentence, was gaoled at York Castle, then reprieved and transported to Van Diemen's Land - the original name of Tasmania.

His wife, Ann, was allowed to accompany him, but he had to remain in irons on the ship, the Calcutta.

Apparently, she was berthed elsewhere, in the prison room, which makes her pregnancy on arrival quite a feat.

In the colony Thomas was assigned to his wife as a servant on the 40 acres she had been granted; an 1804 return showed him owning four chickens.

It was 44-year-old labourer James Lord who took the cake when it comes to rags-to-riches stories. He was tried in 1801 "for stealing three bushels of oats, value ten pence, using force and arms."

His wife didn't go with him.

I wonder if she regretted it 23 years later, when it was noted at his funeral, the biggest ever held, that "he had accumulated a fortune of £50,000 pounds" - £1 million today?

Once free from his seven year term, James had become a trader - his first customer was Governor Bligh, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame - and farmer, not to mention an occasional smuggler of spirits. He had more than four chickens, put it that way, and naturally, was also "a member of the Auxiliary Bible Society."

He made the most of his new start. Criminals sent to the other side of the world were generally assigned as servants or labourers for the duration of their sentence, usually seven years. They were put in Port Arthur Gaol if they committed further crimes, or, for the women, a prison known as the Female Factory.

Set amid the dark forests of the Tasman Peninsula and guarded by Australia's tallest sea cliffs, Port Arthur seemed the perfect place for a penal colony.

From 1833, prisoners were subjected to a variety of experimental punishments intended to turn them into useful members of society. Unfortunately, many of these experiments failed, driving men insane and turning others into outcasts.

Back in York, the list of crimes which merited transportation was long and varied.

John Whitehead, a 34-year-old gardener, had already been caught for "stealing two salt fish from the shop of Mr Groves in Beverley" under the name 'Country Jack'.

So when, a year later, he "stole two pairs of breeches with his wife Sarah," he still must have been smelling a bit fishy.

By contrast Mary Wards was convicted at the York Assizes and transported for life in 1808 for highway robbery.

Mary Marshall's colonial record is pretty typical of the life carved out by many of the women convicts. She was 21 in 1829 and got 14 years for robbing a man. Almost as the ship docked, she was up for "assaulting Constable Cooper," says Phillip Tardif in Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls.

Always in trouble for absconding, insolence and "riotous conduct", she once was charged with "threatening to murder a fellow servant" and "breaking out of the police lock-up."

Generally, it was "drunk and disorderly" too, but not with Mary. After five years of it, she got "wash tub three months" - hard labour in the laundry. She probably needed a nice hot bath after all that exertion.

Margaret Hall, 28, got seven years in 1825 at York Quarter Session for stealing £10. She is unusual because she was only up on a "drunk and disorderly" charge once; but what she lacked in frequency she made up for in style.

"This woman," her record says, "was seen last night by Lieutenant Gunn laying in the paddock in a most beastly state of intoxication" and had to be carried back to her employer's house.

The ship surgeons, on the way out to Australia, had to describe the convicts' behaviour. Mary Robinson was down as "swearer"; York straw worker, Ann Jennison, as "a prostitute, shameless and mutinous," and Hannah Jarvis was called "a good-for-nothing old woman."

But by far the longest entry I've come across was reserved for York woman Sarah Fenton, in 1820. Here's just a bit of it: "Yesterday she took her bed and left the hospital, into which she was carried back by force... it is impossible to have any conversation with her, as she uses violent language...

"As desperate and depraved a character as ever has been transported; capable of doing murder; a feigner of illness; an hypocrite; a devil incarnate. Has been repeatedly punished with temporary benefit."

One convict by the name of Billy Connolly was tried for stealing a great coat and was sentenced to transportation, but a year later, they found him still in England and tried him for not having left! It can't have been a great coat he risked a hanging for; it must have been a really great coat.

Often convicts did loopier things in the colony than what they were transported for. According to Caught In The Act by the Port Arthur Management Authority, John Burgen, from York, "was found guilty of having a pigeon".

John Glanville committed 55 offences over ten years in Tasmania, including "having turnips improperly."

Simon Jewey got 50 lashes for "indecently exposing his person, laughing in church and making a noise in school."

One convict got a reprimand for "washing his shirt during Divine Service", another for "baking light bread"; a crime that seems to go unpunished nowadays.

And so the list of crimes goes on; and don't worry, the following aren't all York convicts: "feloniously, wilfully and diabolically" interfering with a dog"; "having lollipops in his possession"; "setting fire to his bedding"; "drawing improper figures on his slate"; "threatening to split the overseer's skull with his spade"; "gross filthiness within the barrack square"; "wilfully breaking his wooden leg"; "apprehending Godfrey Moore and biting his nose off".

Best of all, though, was George (alias Billy) Hunt. His crime was "absconding"; nothing unusual about that, except that Billy was "dressed as a kangaroo at the time and was attempting to hop to freedom, only to be shot at by soldiers on 'rations', who had grown accustomed to hearty kangaroo stews."

Updated: 10:35 Monday, April 22, 2002