By Michaela Ann Cameron

Supported by a Royal Australian Historical Society Heritage Grant – St. John’s First Fleeters

It was the tell-tale jingling-jangling sound of loose coins that led to Mary Dykes’s forced transportation from the neighbourhood of Rosemary Lane to the penal colony of New South Wales on a First Fleet prison ship.

‘The Heathenish Part of the Town’

At around 10 o’clock on the night of 11 April 1786, a woman named Elizabeth Hebert engaged a man named John Sampey in conversation. He was neither sober nor ‘very much in liquor’ at the time and was making his way home to Deptford ‘on foot alone’ through London’s East End.[2] This was the ‘heathenish part of the Town…called by the sweet name of Rosemary Lane…in ridicule of fragrant fumes that [arose] from the musty rotten rags and burnt old shoes’[3] sold there at ‘Rag Fair.’[4] The neighbourhood was notorious for its ‘Loose and Disorderly’[5] characters; ‘a numberless congregation of ill-favoured sluts,’[6] the bone-idle, vagrants, ‘Rogues,…Pickpockets…and Thieves’[7] who could sell the coat off a person’s back at the fair in under an hour,[8] and unscrupulous ‘receivers of stolen goods.’[9] Sampey, then, should have known better than to be enticed by the stranger, Lizzie Hebert, at the end of Rosemary Lane when she asked him to ‘treat her with a glass of gin’ and accompany her to her home ‘just by.’[10] But, ever the purveyor of alcoholic beverages, the publican Sampey later admitted, ‘I being a little prevailed upon, went with her.’[11]

‘What do you mean to give me to drink?’ Lizzie asked Sampey upon his arrival at her abode. ‘I do not know,’ Sampey replied. ‘I wanted to go away again,’ he later testified, for it was only then it dawned on him that Lizzie was a nocturnal lass and ‘the situation of the place’ was that of a brothel — at least, that is what Sampey later expected the Court to believe.[12] Nevertheless, the supposedly unsuspecting Sampey did not need his arm twisted when Mary Dykes, professionally known as ‘Polly,’ subsequently entered ‘and persuaded [him] to go into [another] room to her.’[13] Once in there, Mary asked him ‘to send for a pot of porter,’ upon which he rather foolishly divulged to the women, ‘I have no change, only a guinea.’[14] Even Sampey drew the line at entrusting the likes of such women with his guinea, though, so he said to them, ‘if [you]…bring change for a guinea, I w[ill] pay for a pot of porter.’[15]

If Sampey had still been in any doubt about the nature of this establishment and what was afoot, he was soon enlightened. While a third girl went off to purportedly procure change for his well-guarded guinea, ‘Mary Dykes partly undressed herself’ and attempted to lure Sampey on to her bed. When he declined and remained seated on a chair, she, not in the least bit discouraged, ‘began to unbutton [his] breeches in a most scandalous manner.’[16] Thus unbuttoned and scandalised, Sampey announced he would get the pot of porter himself.

‘After that I got out of the house, and found myself clear of the place. I ran as fast as I could, and took water; I said to the waterman, I fancy I shall want change for a guinea; I felt in my pocket and…’[17]

The truth hit Sampey hard and fast. While Mary had distracted him with her partial nudity and fancy finger work, she had fleeced him of not one guinea but six.[18]

Open Sesame!

It was around midnight by the time Sampey reported the theft to two watchmen and, with the officer of the watch and the beadle, began searching ‘two or three different streets’[19] to identify the house of ill repute and recover his six stolen guineas. At almost two o’clock in the morning he finally identified the house in Plough St, Whitechapel: ‘there was a light in it, and the shutters were cracked,’[20] so it was possible to see into one of the rooms. Within, Officer Jeremiah King ‘saw two or three persons’ and ‘heard them disputing about money; the words were very high, and,’ noted King, ‘I believe I could safely say I heard Mary Dykes’s voice in particular.’[21] Sampey confirmed: ‘they were the girls, and that was the house.’[22] Officer King ‘knocked twice’ and ‘somebody’ answered:

Somebody: What do you want?

Officer King: I must see Nancy

John Sampey: No, her name is Polly

Officer King: I want Polly

Somebody: What Polly?

Officer King: The girl that I sleep with sometimes.[23]

King’s last statement was a veritable ‘Open Sesame!’[24] for with that utterance, the officer, the beadle, and Sampey were admitted into the den of iniquity and were soon face to face with Mary ‘Polly’ Dykes who denied ever having laid eyes, let alone a fancy finger, on our ever-so lightly liquored Mr. Sampey. The jingling sound her clothing made suggested otherwise.

Every time Officer King shook the suspect’s clothes as he ‘searched her all over’ he ‘heard the jingle of money’ and, from the particular pitch of that jingly-jangly sound, he was ‘pretty clear it was gold.’[25] Finding her pockets empty, though, King ‘insisted on her pulling off her clothes,’ after which he ‘found sixpence in the tail of her petticoat.’[26] Mary ‘began to swear and storm…and pretended to be in a kind of fit,’[27] the force of which dislodged a well-concealed guinea. Indeed, when Mary again swore, stormed, and feigned a fit another guinea magically appeared on the floor, which the beadle promptly picked up. Meanwhile, Sampey was also uncovering a couple more of Polly‘s hidden treasures, finding another ‘two guineas and a half’[28] beneath the bedstead of a bed in which an unidentified man and woman were reposing.

Mary Dykes and Elizabeth Hebert faced the Middlesex Jury before Judge Baron Eyre at the Old Bailey a fortnight later on 26 April 1786. The defence Mary offered the court was no defence at all; in short, Mary’s feeble story was that she went to the house at ten o’clock that night merely to retrieve a hat she had lent to a woman who lived there.[29] Lizzie got off Scot-free, but 28-year-old Mary ‘Polly’ Dykes was found guilty and sentenced to seven years transportation.

Lady Penrhyn’s ‘Abandon’d Prostitutes’

Nine months after her trial, Mary Dykes and more than 100 other female convicts, including Mary Greenwood and Elizabeth ‘Winifred’ Bird, boarded the First Fleet transport ship Lady Penrhyn.[30] Though the ship was a ‘lady,’ Admiral Arthur Phillip had every reason to suppose her human cargo, by stark contrast, ‘possess[ed] neither virtue nor honesty.’[31] The women, Phillip observed, were ‘stamp[ed] with infamy…almost naked, and so very filthy,’[32] not to mention suffering from ‘venereal complaints.’[33] Phillip’s uncharitable first impressions proved correct.

Before Lady Penrhyn even set sail five of her women had to be fettered to prevent them from engaging in further illicit interactions with the ship’s sailors,[34] but such measures were unsuitable in the long-term. During the eight-month voyage relationships inevitably formed[35] between the female prisoners and the ship’s marines and crew; it was more than likely under these precise circumstances that Mary Dykes first became involved with Humphrey Evans, a marine on board Lady Penrhyn. Bearing witness to such liaisons and the women’s general behaviour, the ship’s surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth ventured to say,

‘there was never a more abandon’d set of wretches collected in one place…The greater part of them are so totally abandoned & callous’d to all sense of shame & even common decency that it frequently becomes indispensably necessary to inflict Corporal punishment upon them, and sorry I am to say that even this rigid mode of proceeding has not the desired Effect, since every day furnishes proofs of their being more harden’d in their Wickedness.

Upon any very extraordinary occasion such as thieving, fighting with each other or making use of abusive language to the Officers, they have thumb Screws put on — or Iron fetters on their wrists…and sometimes their hair has been cut off and their head shaved, which they seemed to dislike more than any other punishment they underwent…’[36]

Gagging the women to prevent them from hurling profanities whilst flogging their naked buttocks with a cat o’ nine tails[37] was another form of punishment endured by some of the Lady Penrhyn’s prisoners, whose ‘Oaths and imprecations’ reportedly ‘exceed[ed] anything of the kind to be met [with] amongst the most profligate wretches in London.’[38]

However, even these ‘abandon’d Prostitutes’ were brought to their knees uttering the most pious prayers towards the end of their voyage when they were confronted with the tempestuous sea around Lutruwita (Van Diemen’s Land / later ‘Tasmania’). Ultimately, though, Lady Penrhyn’s unladylike prisoners were safely delivered into Kamay (Botany Bay) on 20 January and Warrane (Sydney Cove) in Cadigal Country on 26 January 1788 — blaspheming all the way.[39]

Mrs Evans: An Honest Woman

In the six years since Arthur Phillip first looked upon Lady Penrhyn’s prisoners with disdain, there had been many changes. The new settlement had been established at Warrane (Sydney Cove) in Cadigal Country, a church called ‘St. Phillip’s’ erected, and a new governor had taken office in December 1792.[40] On 12 April 1793, another change was about to take place.[41] Standing in the church that honoured the name of Governor Phillip was one of the very ladies of Penrhyn whom Phillip himself had concluded in 1787 possessed ‘neither virtue nor honesty.’ However devoid of ‘virtue’ Mary Dykes might have been, First Fleet marine Private Humphrey Evans, by then a member of the New South Wales Corps, was about to make an ‘honest’ woman of her.

The newlyweds made a home for themselves on a 25-acre land grant Evans received at Turramurra (Lane Cove) the following year, in December 1794.[42] In 1795, this grant appears to have been cancelled and Evans took up a larger grant of 45 acres in Wallumettagal Country in what the newcomers then called the ‘Field of Mars.’ However, when Evans had completed five years of service with the New South Wales Corps in 1797, the couple decided to sail for England.

Perhaps their homecoming was not all they had hoped for after nearly ten years in the colony; by 1801, they were preparing to return to life in New South Wales as free settlers. They sailed on the Rolla and arrived at Warrane (Sydney Cove) on 12 May 1803. To support their endeavour as settlers, it is highly probable that upon disembarking the couple were assigned a servant from among the Irish convicts transported on the same ship.[43] If so, the convict assigned to them was a man from County Armagh named Hugh Kelly.[44]

Two months later, the Evanses were granted 135 acres in what was practically a no-man’s-land between the more visibly settled areas of Mogoaillee (Castle Hill) in Bidjigal Country and Bulyayorang (Windsor); a place for passing through that was humorously called ‘there or nowhere,’ ‘nowhere here,’ or ‘there and nowhere else.’[45]

If Mr. Evans’s numerous purchases of rum and brandy from Rowland Hassall’s Parramatta store in the years that followed are anything to go by, Mary and Humphrey may have taken advantage of parched travellers ‘passing through’ the sparsely populated area favoured by bushrangers by operating an unlicensed drinking den on their property. In fact, this could have been the inn later known as the ‘Half-way House between Parramatta and Hawkesbury.’[46]

Convict Rebellion, 1804

On the evening of Sunday 4 March 1804 the Hills were alive with rebellion. A large percentage of the rebels had been ‘United Irishmen’ on their native soil, transported from Ireland to New South Wales as political prisoners without trial following their failed attempt to bring centuries of British rule to an end during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.[47] Aware that convicts outnumbered their oppressors and it was, therefore, possible to achieve in New South Wales what had failed in Ireland, the Irish convicts based at Mogoaillee (Castle Hill) in Bidjigal Country hatched an ambitious plot to unite convicts and sympathetic settlers to ‘seize Sydney, kill the Governor, and flog the Judge to death’ and declare the colony the Republic of New Ireland.[48] Rallied by the American Revolutionary cry of ‘Give me liberty, or give me death,’ the insurgents also planned to plant a ‘Tree of Liberty’ at Old Government House.

Some of the Irish convicts participating in the uprising passed through ‘there and nowhere else’ that night, scouring the farms for weaponry, ammunition, food and more recruits. To this end, they entered the Evanses’ home, demanded arms, threatened Humphrey’s life, and forced their ‘Government Man,’ Hugh Kelly, to join the rebellion.[49] How much force was actually needed to co-opt the Evanses’ Irish convict servant is unknown, but there is good reason to believe Kelly was sympathetic to his countrymen’s cause.[50] Many simply cited ‘forced recruitment’ later to avoid punishment for participation in the insurrection, which was quashed the next day, Monday 5 March 1804, in the Battle of Vinegar Hill on the site of present-day Castlebrook Memorial Park, Rouse Hill in Dharug Country. In subsequent days, nine rebels were executed at Bulyayorang (Windsor), Mogoaillee (Castle Hill), Cadi (Sydney), and Parramatta’s Prince Alfred Park (known then as ‘the Hanging Green’). Many more were exiled to Muloobinba (‘Coal Harbour’, later ‘Newcastle’) in Awabakal and Worimi Country, flogged and sentenced to hard labour in irons.

Despite finding themselves in the thick of the rebellion in their middle-of-nowhere residence, the Evans family and their convict servant Kelly came through the episode unscathed. Nevertheless, Mary’s husband’s days were numbered.

The Felling of a Trusty Tree

O Waly, waly…[woe is me]

I lean’d my back up against an oak

I thought it was a trusty tree

But first it bent and then it broke…

And so did my true love to me…[51]

It was a trifling thing that took Mary’s love from her. The pigsty needed palings and, though it was already ‘four in the afternoon’ on Thursday 1 August 1805, Humphrey elected to tackle the job of procuring the wood rather than leaving the task for another day. He covered a lot of ground on his mission to find precisely the right tree, but when he spied the great oak he knew it was the one.

Dusk came, but Humphrey did not. With Mary’s anxiety mounting for the father of her two children, she ‘dispatched a man’ to locate him—the ‘man’ was probably her convict servant Hugh Kelly.[52] When he returned ‘without any tidings of his master,’ Mary ‘directed him to accompany her….After a long research [they] discovered the unfortunate object of her anxiety outstretched, and across his breast’ the ‘heavy oak tree which he himself had fallen.’[53]

The former First Fleet marine was buried at the Parramatta Burial Ground (St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta) in Burramattagal Country by Reverend Samuel Marsden on 3 August 1805. If his grave was ever marked, there is no longer any trace of it.[54]

Despite ‘bemoaning’ Humphrey’s ‘unexpected loss,’ Mary managed to maintain a productive farm.[55]The muster taken the year after her husband’s death, for example, reveals Mary had ‘13 acres sown in wheat, eight in maize and two in barley, with two acres of vegetables, garden and orchard. On 110 acres of pasture she grazed nine sheep, three goats and 30 hogs. She also had 19 bushels of wheat and maize on hand.’[56] Hugh Kelly, still Mary’s convict servant, had undoubtedly worked hard to ensure the continued success of what had until only recently been his master’s farm and, as it happened, would soon be his.

Mrs Kelly

Mary wed her Irish Catholic convict servant in St. John’s Church, Parramatta on 14 August 1808.[57] A little over a year later, Hugh Kelly received his Certificate of Freedom and was running the farm and probably the Half-way House, too. As early as 1820, the Half-way House was a fully licensed enterprise. It is unclear whether the Half-way House and Hugh Kelly’s later establishment ‘Bird-in-Hand’ were one in the same, but the latter’s location on the corner of Wrights and Windsor Roads does lie roughly ‘half way’ between Parramatta and Bulyayorang (Windsor).[58]

Mary’s convict husband turned out to be quite a high achiever. Kelly, the ‘much respected inhabitant,’[59] went on to acquire thousands of acres in Goulburn Plains in Gundangara Country, in addition to the considerable land surrounding the Bird-in-Hand and a nearby property, which the supposedly reluctant rebel called ‘Vinegar Hill Farm’ over twenty years after the failed attempt to make the colony the Republic of New Ireland.[60] While his countrymen’s hostile takeover had been unsuccessful, Hugh Kelly’s domination of the land in his piece of the Hills district, beginning with the old Evans farm, ensured it was ultimately called ‘Kellyville.’ But much of this was achieved without his wife Mary at his side—she had passed away at age 62 on 10 November 1820 and was interred at St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta the following day.[61]

Hugh Kelly’s penchant for ‘entering into the holy state of matrimony’ as well as less holy arrangements ensured there would be many ‘Mrs. Kelly’s’ in the succeeding years, both legitimate and otherwise.[62] One estimate, given by a man who knew the several Mrs. Kellys personally, was ‘no less than four or five’ wives,’ the last of whom was also ‘Mrs. Mary Kelly.’[63] But while she may not have had the honour of being the only or even the last Mrs. Mary Kelly, First Fleeter Mary Dykes of the Lady Penrhyn was—and forever will be—the first lady of ‘Kellyville.’

CITE THIS

Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mary Kelly: The ‘First Lady’ of Kellyville,” St. John’s Online, (2016) https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-kelly/, accessed [insert current date]

References

• British Museum (http://www.britishmuseum.org/).
• Alexander Britton (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney: Charles Potter Government Printer, 1892), accessed 4 April 2016.
• Michaela Ann Cameron, “Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta,” Dictionary of Sydney, (2015) http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/prince_alfred_park_parramatta accessed 8 April 2016
• Lesley Uebel & Hawkesbury on the Net, Claim a Convict, (2016).
• Judith Dunn, The Parramatta Cemeteries: St. John’s, (Parramatta, NSW: Parramatta and District Historical Society, 1991).
• London Lives 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis (https://www.londonlives.org/).
• Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989).
• NSW Government, “Hidden Heart: The unfolding mystery of Kellyville’s White Hart Inn,” and “History: White Hart Inn,” Northwest Rail Link,  (2014), accessed 9 April 2016.
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2).
• Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016.
• Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/).
• Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 95-109.
• Anne-Maree Whitaker, Unfinished Revolution: United Irishmen in New South Wales, 1800-1810, (Darlinghurst, NSW: Crossing Press, 1994). 

Notes

[1] Alternate spellings include Dicks, Dix.

[2] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[3] Ned Ward, The London Spy, The Vanities and Vices Of The Town Exposed To View (1703), edited with notes by A. L. Hayward, (1927), 248-9 cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 97. “Rosemary Lane” was renamed “Royal Mint Street” in 1850.

[4] Ned Ward, The London Spy, The Vanities and Vices Of The Town Exposed To View (1703), edited with notes by A. L. Hayward, (1927), 248-9 cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 97.

[5] London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MJ/SP/1701/01/001 (Inhabitants of Rosemary Lane Whitechapel ask for the Rag Fair to be suppressed); LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/065, City Proclamation issued by Mayor Thomas Barnard January 1737; LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/065, Proclamation to suppress Rag Fair issued by Mayor Daniel Lambert, 1741; LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/066, Proclamation issued by Mayor Richard Clark, 1785’ cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 95.

[6] Ned Ward, The London Spy, The Vanities and Vices Of The Town Exposed To View (1703), edited with notes by A. L. Hayward, (1927), 248-9 cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 97.

[7] London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MJ/SP/1701/01/001 (Inhabitants of Rosemary Lane Whitechapel ask for the Rag Fair to be suppressed); LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/065, City Proclamation issued by Mayor Thomas Barnard January 1737; LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/065, Proclamation to suppress Rag Fair issued by Mayor Daniel Lambert, 1741; LMA, CLA/048/PS/01/066, Proclamation issued by Mayor Richard Clark, 1785’ cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 95

[8] Old Bailey Proceedings Online, (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2), 10 May 1744, trial of Elizabeth Phillips, (t17440510-24), cited in Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 97.

[9] Janice Turner, “‘Ill-Favoured Sluts’? — The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair,” The London Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July, 2013): 95.

[10] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[11] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[12] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[13] ‘Polly’ is a colloquial name for ‘mistress’ or ‘prostitute.’ ‘Molly’ is a male, effeminate, homosexual prostitute, hence the associated early 18th-century to late 19th-century term ‘Molly Houses.’ See ‘polly‘ and ‘molly‘ in Jonathan Green, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, (2017) accessed online 10 March 2017; Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[14] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[15] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[16] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[17] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[18] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[19] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[20] Old Bailey Sessions: Sessions Papers – Justices’ Working Documents 23rd July 1783-1st June 1786, London Lives, 1690-1800, LMOBPS450310261 (www.londonlives.org, version 1.1), Westminster Archives Centre, 15 April 1786, accessed 9 May 2016; Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 2 April 2016.

[21] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[22] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[23] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[24] In the folk tale ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,’ ‘Open Sesame!’ is a magical phrase that opens a cave containing the thieves’ treasure.

[25] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[26] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[27] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[28] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[29] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 02 April 2016), April 1786, trial of MARY DYKES ELIZABETH HEBERT (t17860426-40), accessed 3 April 2016.

[30] Some of the women boarded at Woolwich on the 6 January, others were transferred from Newgate prison to the Lady Penrhyn on 8 January 1787.

[31] “Phillip’s views on the conduct of the expedition and the treatment of convicts,” [1787], Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney: Charles Potter Government Printer, 1892), p. 51, accessed 4 April 2016.

[32] “Governor Phillip to Under Secretary Nepean,” [18 March 1787] Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney: Charles Potter Government Printer, 1892), p.59, accessed 4 April 2016.

[33] “Governor Phillip to Under Secretary Nepean,” [18 March 1787] Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney: Charles Potter Government Printer, 1892), p.59, accessed 4 April 2016.

[34] Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016.

[35] For example, see Smyth’s discussion of a relationship between marine Thomas Bramwell (servant to Lieutenant G. Johnstone from Lady Penrhyn) and Elizabeth Needham ‘a most infamous hussy…[with] whom he had had connections while on board [Lady Penrhyn].’ Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China – in the Lady Penrhyn, [1787], transcript at http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1085.html accessed 4 April 2016.

[36] Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016. Smyth records that Mary Dykes was a ‘stay maker,’ that is a corset maker by trade.

[37] Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016.

[38] Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016.

[39] Arthur Bowes Smyth, A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, [manuscript], State Library of New South Wales, transcript and c.1790 copy, accessed 4 April 2016. Regarding the Aboriginal endonyms “Kamay” and “Warrane” and their respective European exonyms, “Botany Bay” and “Sydney Cove” see Harold Koch and Luise Hercus (eds.), Aboriginal Placenames: Naming and Re-naming the Australian Landscape, (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2009), p. 37, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HyHh-OrnRGoC&lpg=PR1&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 26 August 2019. For a general discussion about adopting a dual-naming policy but giving prime position to indigenous endonyms and subordinating European imposed exonyms in both the colonial Australian and colonial American contexts as a mark of respect and to “sound” language via audiation, see “Name-Calling: Notes on Terminology,” in Michaela Ann Cameron (Ph.D. Diss.), “Stealing the Turtle’s Voice: A Dual History of Western and Algonquian-Iroquoian Soundways from Creation to Re-creation,” (Sydney: Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, 2018), pp. 25–35, http://bit.ly/stealingturtle, accessed 28 March 2020.

[40] The second governor of New South Wales was John Hunter.

[41] On her wedding day, Mary was two weeks away from the expiry of her seven year sentence, having been convicted on 26 April 1786.

[42] For the Aboriginal endonym “Turramurra” and its European exonym “Lane Cove,” see Harold Koch and Luise Hercus (eds.), Aboriginal Placenames: Naming and Re-naming the Australian Landscape, (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2009), p. 33, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HyHh-OrnRGoC&lpg=PR1&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 26 August 2019. For a general discussion about adopting a dual-naming policy but giving prime position to indigenous endonyms and subordinating European imposed exonyms in both the colonial Australian and colonial American contexts as a mark of respect and to “sound” language via audiation, see “Name-Calling: Notes on Terminology,” in Michaela Ann Cameron (Ph.D. Diss.), “Stealing the Turtle’s Voice: A Dual History of Western and Algonquian-Iroquoian Soundways from Creation to Re-creation,” (Sydney: Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, 2018), pp. 25–35, http://bit.ly/stealingturtle, accessed 28 March 2020.

[43] The earliest record of Hugh Kelly working for them as an assigned convict servant is in 1806, but given that he was transported on the same ship and convicts were frequently assigned to masters upon arrival, it is very likely this occurred when the ship arrived rather than in later years.

[44] Hugh Kelly did have the luxury of a trial in 1802 where he received sentence of seven years transportation. It is, therefore, unlikely he was transported as a political prisoner after the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Ireland; such men were typically ‘lifers’ and were transported on other, earlier ships from Ireland. “Between 1800 and 1806, eight ships arrived in New South Wales from Ireland with 1023 male convicts and 173 females: Minerva, Friendship II, Anne I (or Luz St. Ann), Hercules I, Atlas I, Atlas II, Rolla and Tellicherry. As with the First Fleet and Irish ships arriving in the 1790s, they did not bring records of the date of conviction and term of sentence and as a result the number of political prisoners sent out after the 1798 rebellion can never be precisely determined.” Whitaker’s findings “appear generally to confirm Rudé’s analysis that the main rebel ships were the Minerva, Friendship, Anne and Atlas II, with a few rebels on the Hercules and Atlas I and hardly any on the Rolla and Tellicherry.” Anne-Maree Whitaker, Unfinished Revolution: United Irishmen in New South Wales, 1800-1810, (Darlinghurst, NSW: Crossing Press, 1994), pp. 23, 25; Lesley Uebel & Hawkesbury on the Net, Claim a Convict, accessed 11 April 2016.

[45] “Court of Criminal Jurisdiction,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Sunday 17 September 1809, p.1, accessed 11 April 2016; NSW Government, “Hidden Heart: The unfolding mystery of Kellyville’s White Hart Inn,” and “History: White Hart Inn,” Northwest Rail Link, , (2014), accessed 9 April 2016. Mogoaillee, the Aboriginal endonym for ‘Castle Hill’ was recorded by Reverend William Branwhite Clarke in his diary entry dated 6 November 1840, W. B. Clarke – Papers and Notebooks, 1827–1951, MLMSS 139 / 7, Item 5, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, cited in The Hills Shire Council, Traditional Aboriginal Names for the Natural Regions and Features in the Hills Shire, (The Hills, NSW: The Hills Shire Council, Local Studies Information, c. 2009), p. 1, https://www.thehills.nsw.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/ecm-website-documents/page-documents/library/library-e-resources/traditional_aboriginal_names_baulkham_hills_shire.pdf, accessed 10 April 2020. Mogoaillee comes from mogo, stone hatchet, while aillee may be possessive, meaning belonging to somewhere or something, for example, place of stone for hatchets.

[46] “Sydney,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Sunday 25 June 1809, p. 2, accessed 11 April 2016.

[47] United Irishmen involved in the original Irish Rebellion of 1798 were transported from 1800 to 1806. Anne-Maree Whitaker, Unfinished Revolution: United Irishmen in New South Wales, 1800-1810, (Darlinghurst, NSW: Crossing Press, 1994), p. 33.

[48] “Notable Australian Events. No. 3: A Convict Insurrection. Plot to Seize Sydney, Kill the Governor, and Flog the Judge to Death. Parramatta Under Martial Law. The Battle of Toongabbie – Execution of Insurgents,” Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW: 1895-1930), Sunday 26 September 1897, p. 9, accessed 9 April 2016.

[49] Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989), p. 121.

[50] As the current biography later reveals, Hugh Kelly named one of his properties in the Hills district “Vinegar Hill Farm.”

[51] Francis James Child (ed.), “Child Ballad number 204 / Roud Folk Song Index number 87: Jamie Douglas / O, Waly, Waly / Waly Waly, Gin Love Be Bonny / The Water Is Wide / Must I Go Bound? / Will Ye Gang, Love?” The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company: The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1882), pp.490-1, accessed 10 April 2016.

[52] The two children are mentioned in the report of the coronial inquest into Humphrey Evans’s death. The children have never been identified, so age, name, gender are all unknown. They may have been born in the colony before the Evans returned to England or born in England and travelled to the colony on board the Rolla. If they were born in the colony after the Rolla’s arrival in May 1803, no birth or baptism records have been uncovered for children born to Mary and Humphrey Evans to date. “Sydney,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Sunday 4 August 1805, p. 2, accessed 11 April 2016.

[53] “Sydney,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Sunday 4 August 1805, p. 2, accessed 11 April 2016; Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989), pp. 113, 121.

[54] Humphrey Evans appears in the St. John’s parish burial register. The burial register for St. John’s Cemetery itself was destroyed in a fire, so people like Humphrey who appear in the parish register but do not have a headstone extant in the cemetery to prove their remains are buried there may have been buried in another cemetery within St. John’s parish. Parish Burial Registers, Textual records, St. John’s Anglican Church Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[55] “Sydney,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Sunday 4 August 1805, p. 2  accessed 11 April 2016.

[56] Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989), p. 113.

[57] Justice of the Peace Anthony Fenn Kemp officiated the ceremony, which took place on 14 August 1808; Parish Marriage Registers, Textual records, St. John’s Anglican Church Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[58] 19 August 1826 is the earliest reference to the Bird-in-Hand on Windsor Rd the author has found in the newspapers. See “Police Reports,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Saturday 19 August 1826, p. 3, accessed 11 April 2016. In May the same year, Kelly’s establishment was still being referred to as ‘Kelly’s Half-way House.’ See “DEATH: Mr. Thomas MacDougall,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Wednesday 17 May 1826, p. 3, accessed 11 April 2016.

[59] “Family Notices: Deaths,” Sydney Herald (NSW: 1831-1842), Thursday 23 July 1835, p.2, accessed 11 April 2016; “The Friends of Mr. Hugh Kelly…,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Thursday 23 July 1835, p. 3, accessed 11 April 2016. As Hugh Kelly was Catholic, he was likely buried at the Catholic cemetery at Parramatta: St. Patrick’s.

[60] Historic Aberdoon house is located on the site of Kelly’s ‘Vinegar Hill Farm.’ See The Hills Shire Council, “Aberdoon House,”  and “Fact Sheet – Aberdoon Park,” accessed 11 April 2016.

[61] “Mrs. Mary Kelly” is buried in Left Section, Row 12, Memorial D (L.12.D) at St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta. Her burial record reads “Margaret Kelly,” but it is the same person. See Parish Burial Registers, Textual records, St. John’s Anglican Church Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[62] “Law Intelligence: Supreme Court – Thursday,” Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842-1954), Saturday 24 November 1849, p.2, accessed 11 April 2016. Hugh Kelly was “remarried” within four months of Mary’s death, as is apparent in this article in which the new Mrs. Kelly was attacked by bushrangers entering Kelly’s dwelling in March 1821: “Sydney,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Saturday 31 March 1821, pp. 2-3. I have put “remarried” in inverted commas, because it seems this particularly Mrs. Kelly was probably a common-law wife, who went by the name of ‘Esther Harley’ and officially claimed to be Hugh Kelly’s “servant.” See also “Criminal Court,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842), Saturday 18 August 1821, p.3; New South Wales Government, Secretary to the Governor. Population musters, New South Wales mainland [1811–1819]. NRS 1260 [4/1224–25, 4/1227], State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia.

[63] “Law Intelligence: Supreme Court – Thursday,” Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842-1954), Saturday 24 November 1849, p.2, accessed 11 April 2016.

© Copyright 2016 Michaela Ann Cameron