By Michaela Ann Cameron

Supported by a Create NSW Arts and Cultural Grant – Old Parramattans & Murder Tales

WARNING: This essay discusses domestic violence and murder, which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

On 31 May 1794, Anne Smith and Simon Taylor exchanged their wedding vows at Parramatta in Burramattagal Country.[1] Before the decade was over, the bride, the groom, and the first of their three witnesses, Simon Burn, were all dead as a result of unrelated violent crimes.[2] Indeed, Anne’s Sugar Cane (1793) shipmate, Mary Martin, would also die a terrible death at the hands of a murderer or ‘gang of ruffians’ within the close-knit community, while the Taylors’ Field of Mars neighbour, John Kenny, would have the dubious honour of becoming a rare recipient of the worst punishment reserved for murderers when he was gibbetted at Parramatta for the murder of Mary Smyth in 1807.[3]

It says a lot about the colony that horrific murders were so commonplace. On one level, as a penal colony in which the majority of the population were either convicts under sentence or expirees, the prevalence of any kind of crime is hardly surprising. As Surgeon Thomas Arndell bemoaned in July 1798, following the departure of Governor Phillip, ‘crimes of every sort increased to an alarming degree; thefts and robberies became so numerous that they were spoken of as mere matters of course and even rapes and murders were not infrequent….no one could think himself safe in passing from one part of the town to the other..’[4] Using Parramatta as a case study, the murders that occurred there remind us that this was not just a colony of harmless thieves who stole loaves of bread, bundles of clothing, and silk handkerchiefs from unsuspecting gents who could well afford to be denuded of a flashy status symbol or two. Murderers walked among them as well. If they had not already been the murdering kind when they were first convicted as petty criminals, then the dehumanising experience of incarceration, transportation and the darkest aspects of the colony itself had at last made far too many of them capable of it.

For many in high-ranking positions in Parramatta, these homicides and other evils were the symptoms of two virulent social maladies in the colony: a lack of public worship and the ‘general and habitual drunkenness’ that, in place of pious behaviour, became the ‘unfortunate fashion of the times.’[5] Arndell acknowledged that ‘a torrent of licentiousness’ which ‘bore down everything sacred and civil before it’ was the root cause of the chaos.[6] Unsurprisingly, Reverend Samuel Marsden was also of the same persuasion. When directed by Governor Hunter to ‘lay before [him] a statement of the immorality of this colony prior to [his] arrival,’ Marsden believed the task of ‘represent[ing] the riot and dissipation, and licentiousness and immorality, which pervaded every part of this settlement, amongst the lower ranks of its inhabitants’ to be entirely beyond him or, indeed, any individual—not that it prevented him from trying.[7] The Reverend confirmed that ‘[g]aming and drunkenness, and robberies and murders, were common crimes,’ and offered his opinion that the colony was ‘deluged with every species of sin and iniquity,’ a place where ‘everything sacred and moral’ was ‘trampled upon’ because ‘[a]ll idea of a Supreme Being and respect for everything decent, moral, and sacred, seemed totally obliterated.’[8]

When the Taylors’ case came before the Judge Advocate, David Collins, in early April 1799, therefore, the couple were quickly regarded as statistics — just another two lost souls swept off by the overpoweringly liquorous ‘torrent of licentiousness.’[9] But while the root cause of their downfall was all too clear to Collins and the like, for some there were—and would ever be—lingering questions about who was really guilty of committing the murder itself.

As was the fashion among the felonry of New South Wales, the Taylors spent their leisure time indulging in liquor. In early April 1799, true to form, they again drank ‘to a great excess’ at the funeral of their friend’s child (most likely nine-month-old Sarah Whiting) and, in their intoxicated state, ‘retired to the bush’ where they collapsed and slept off their booziness beneath a canopy of stars.[10] As the birds began to herald the new day, Simon slumbered like a contented babe. Yet, in spite of nature’s insistence that the world carry on just as it always did, everything around him had changed. The wife with whom he had been drinking and revelling hours earlier lay dead beside him ‘with evident marks of violence on her person.’[11] It was not long before someone discovered her there like that, with Simon peacefully asleep next to her battered remains, as though he had nary a care in the world.

‘Wild Lawless Irish’

Even the scanty amount of evidence that remains of the victim’s thirty-six years of life makes it clear that she had survived hardship and witnessed some incredible scenes. Anne Taylor or, as she was then known, ‘Anne Smith,’ had been one of the 160 ‘wild lawless Irish’ on board a convict transport when a plot to take the ship was hatched.[12] The finer details of why Anne was there under sentence of seven years transportation are unknown, but when she was tried and convicted in Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin), Éire (Ireland), in July 1790, it had not been her first brush with the law.[13] Even in the admittedly faint image of a young female who was a repeat offender in late eighteenth-century Dublin, we can see the dark cloud of poverty that had surely surrounded Anne for most if not all of her life. And we can guess at much more; deep battle scars of both the physical and psychological kind from spending almost three years of her sentence in an Irish gaol, no doubt enduring all kinds of degradations and fighting her comrades behind bars for all the necessaries of life, before she and another 49 female convicts and 110 male convicts sailed for the Colony of New South Wales.[14]

They left Contae Chorcaí (County Cork) on 12 April 1793 per Sugar Cane, a 403 ton, three-decker merchant and convict ship under the command of Master Thomas Musgrave.[15] Also on board was ship surgeon David Wake Bell and ‘a serjeant’s [sic] party of the New South Wales corps as a guard.’[16] This military presence on board was, of course, soon justified, for it was only around six weeks after sailing that Surgeon Bell came by the knowledge that the Irish convicts intended to mutiny and ‘had proceeded so far as to saw off some of their irons’:

Insinuations were at the same time thrown out, of the probability of their being joined by certain of the sailors and of the guard. The agent, after making the necessary inquiry, thought it indispensable to the safety of the ship to cause an instant example to be made, and ordered one of the convicts who was found out of irons to be executed that night. Others he punished the next morning; and by these measures,…threw such a damp on the spirits of the rest, that he heard no more during the voyage of attempts or intentions to take the ship.[17]

With some of the guard implicated, it was evidently not enough to merely put any old, scrappy, cobbled together military guard in place; in future, the guard itself had to be nothing ‘less than an officer’s command,’ and never ‘composed either of young soldiers, or of deserters from other corps.’[18] What was almost a dangerously eventful voyage upon the high seas for Anne, however, ended up being quite the opposite. The Sugar Cane arrived ‘about six o’clock in the evening’ on Tuesday 17 September 1793, and anchored in Warrane (Sydney Cove), Cadigal Country, where it was noted for its speediness and for delivering its convict cargo ‘in a very healthy state,’ with no one ‘lost by sickness.’[19]

Six months after arriving in the colony, Anne Smith was Mrs. Simon Taylor.[20]

‘One of the few…the colony could boast of’

Simon Taylor was a convict who had been tried, convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation for an undisclosed offence in Warwick, England, on 19 July 1788.[21] Like his future wife, Anne, it was some time before Simon was actually transported. The intervening period between his 1788 arrest and his departure with the Third Fleet per Matilda (1791) on 27 March 1791, would have been spent in a loathsome, fever-ridden gaol or hulk.[22]

In stark contrast to the healthy state of Anne and the other convicts aboard the Sugar Cane two years later, those on the Matilda were in no such condition. The Matilda carried 205 male convicts as well as ‘one serjeant [sic], one corporal, one drummer, and nineteen privates, of the New South Wales corps; and some stores and provisions,’ so it was considerably more crowded than the Sugar Cane, although these numbers would deplete: ‘[T]wenty-five…had [been] buried on the passage’ and so had one of the soldiers.[23] Furthermore, the Matilda’s convicts were recorded ‘on their landing’ on 1 August 1791 as ‘aged and infirm,’ the latter being ‘the state in which they were said to have been embarked’—a clear implication that they had reached this state of debility during their lengthy incarceration in the English gaols and hulks.[24] Those who were particularly unwell were among the twenty ‘brought in and immediately landed at the hospital.’[25] As the month wore on, ‘not less than seventy persons from the Matilda and Atlantic’ were ‘under medical treatment, being weak, emaciated, and unfit for any kind of labour; and the list,’ Collins noted grimly, ‘was increasing.’[26] The Judge Advocate went on to describe these men inexplicably taking a turn for the worse upon ‘changing from the unwholesome air of a ship’s between-decks to the purer air of this country,’ suffering and in many cases dying from their ‘dysenteric complaints’ — sure signs that they were suffering from advanced scurvy because, as James Lind noted in his acclaimed Treatise on Scurvy in 1757, scorbutic patients ‘are apt, upon being moved, or exposed to the fresh air, suddenly to expire.’[27] Indeed, Lind spoke of one of his own scorbutic patients who had suddenly succumbed to the illness ‘in the boat, going to be landed at…hospital.’[28] ‘It was remarkable,’ Lind recalled, ‘he had made shift to get there without any assistance, while many others were obliged to be carried out upon their beds. He had a deep scorbutical colour in his face, with complaints in his breast. He panted for about half a minute, then expired.’[29]

Simon must have been among the 55 convicts belonging to the Matilda who were ‘selected from the others as farmers or artificers’ and ‘sent to Parramatta’ in Burramattagal Country, as the remaining healthy Matilda convicts were all sent to Norfolk Island per the Mary Ann.[30] Of those 55 skilled convicts who were deemed healthy enough to make the journey up the Parramatta River for labour, two were dead and buried in the parish of St. John’s, Parramatta before the year was over: Thomas Genders died just over three months after arriving in the colony and was followed closely behind by Edward Faulk, who passed away in mid-December.[31] These deaths were only the beginning: a further 16 of Matilda’s convicts died at Parramatta by June 1792, within ten months of arriving.[32]

Whatever else Simon had endured throughout his life up until then and whatever he continued to struggle against, therefore, he had to have seen that he was comparatively one of the fortunate ones. He certainly conducted himself as such, at least for a time; perhaps because, as his initial identification as a skilled convict suitable for Parramatta seemed to indicate, he had existing skills, either in agriculture or as an ‘artificer,’ which rendered him more capable than others to excel in his new environment. As Collins would later acknowledge, Simon Taylor was ‘a man who had been considered as one of the few industrious settlers which the colony could boast of.’[33] Had been: those were the operative words.

An ‘untimely and disgraceful end’

All thanks to the ‘pernicious practice of drinking to excess,’ Simon Taylor, lying asleep next to his battered wife, was now one of the colony’s great shames.[34] Whoever came upon the scene alerted the authorities and they wasted no time identifying Simon as the prime suspect. He ‘was immediately taken into custody, and reserved for trial.’[35]

Anne Taylor’s untimely demise had come only a few days after the Judge Advocate David Collins presided over the trial of a soldier who fatally stabbed ‘a seaman of the Reliance, who insulted him when centinel [sic] at one of the wharfs at Sydney.’[36] In that case, the authorities were so deeply opposed to alcohol that the alcohol—rather than the act of fatally stabbing—was what determined the guilty party: the soldier who had killed the seaman ‘proved to the satisfaction of the court, that [the stabbing] had been occasioned by the intemperance of the seaman, and he was accordingly found to have committed a justifiable homicide.’ In fact, Collins would, in the next breath, even describe this ‘justifiable homicide’ as an ‘accident,’ which ‘was the effect of intoxication.’[37] Weary of seeing so many crimes in which alcohol played a significant role, Collins complained that,

Such views, along with the verdict in favour of the murderous soldier against his intoxicated victim, did not bode well for Simon Taylor, who had been far from sober at the time of his wife’s death. It could be argued, then, that Collins was predisposed to turn Simon into another example of what befalls those who cannot resist the temptation of the demon drink. Thus, in Collins’s narration of Anne Taylor’s murder, Simon’s guilt was a foregone conclusion: the couple ‘had both been drinking together to a great excess,’ wrote Collins, ‘and in that state they quarrelled, when the unhappy man, in a fit of madness and desperation, put an untimely end to her existence.’[39] When the case was brought before the court of criminal judicature on 16 April 1799, Simon was ‘clearly convicted’ and ‘received sentence of death.’[40]

The condemned man was returned to the log structure that served as Parramatta’s first gaol to await his execution.[41] He would have personally known his gaoler, ‘Richard Rice,’ also known as Richard Partridge and ‘The Left-Handed Flogger,’ indeed, Partridge was one of his closest neighbours.[42] He might have even found himself wishing for a flogging instead, knowing well that even that excruciating punishment was not enough for one convicted of murder, and ‘Rice’ would be the one who carried out his punishment nevertheless. Four days he spent there in that gaol with the knowledge of his impending death at the end of a rope and, undoubtedly, regretting all the wrong turns that had brought him to this point.

On the 20^th, his neighbour turned gaoler and executioner led him out on to ‘the Hanging Green’ behind the gaol where he was confronted by a crowd of familiar faces—among them there would have been many who had regularly consumed alcohol with him.[43] It could just as easily have been any one of them standing where he was, with a noose around their neck, staring death in the face, and might be still. But on this day it was him. The ‘unhappy man was thoroughly sensible of the enormity of his guilt, and in his last moments admonished the spectators against indulging in drunkenness, which had brought him to that untimely and disgraceful end.’[44]

‘I am not dead, but sleeping here’

One morning, three decades after the story of Anne and Simon Taylor reached its sorry conclusion, Simon’s gaoler and hangman was discovered lying dead beside his own spouse.[45] Unlike Anne Taylor, he had not died in suspicious circumstances and, unlike Simon, his widow was not implicated in any way. The man who issued so many corporal and capital punishments during his life in the colony passed away peacefully in his sleep from natural causes without having even known ‘what illness was for a number of years.’[46] It would seem, then, that Partridge or ‘Rice,’ ‘the finisher of the law,’ had nothing weighing on his conscience.[47] Yet there was some suggestion carved into a headstone in the Parramatta Burial Ground (St. John’s Cemetery) that perhaps he should have.

In February 1834, a little under three years after Simon’s executioner was dead and buried, The Australian published a brief article about a ‘curious epitaph’ on the tombstone of one Simon Taylor in the Parramatta Burial Ground.[48] The epitaph was a curiosity indeed, but not solely because it included the rather folksy and ‘facetious cognomen’ that The Australian presumed had been Simon’s nickname for his wife: ‘his old tin pot.’[49] The epitaph flies in the face of Judge Advocate Collins’s account of an ‘open-and-shut’ case in which severe intoxication led to a violent quarrel that resulted in the death of a woman at the hands of her grossly inebriated husband:

Beneath this stone lies Simon Taylor,
   Who was hung by Rice the gaoler;
To hang on a tree, it was his lot,
   For knocking the bottom out of his old tin pot.[50]

To which was added, ‘it is supposed, by some friend who doubted Simon’s guilt,’ notes The Australian:

Now let no one be artailer [sic: curtailer?]
   For an innocent man was Simon Taylor.[51]

The Australian clearly entertained the possibility that there may have been something to this claim, because after summarising what befell the Taylors, the reporter correctly described the evidence which had seen Simon Taylor committed to trial as ‘circumstantial.’[52] In truth, passed out as they were in the open air, anybody could have followed or stumbled upon the drunken revellers and taken the opportunity to brutally attack Anne in her incapacitated state, knowing that her blind drunk husband lying unconscious beside her would be blamed automatically. On the other hand, Simon himself reportedly fully accepted that he was guilty of committing his wife’s murder; but was that because he knew for sure that he had done it in a purely alcohol-fuelled rage, or because his drinking had left him with no memory of the event, and he simply believed he must have been guilty because the officials were saying it was incontrovertibly so? If he had enough sense to be conscious of having beaten her to death, then it begs the question of why he had been so foolish as to remain lying next to the body.

Only one thing seems certain: alcohol had, indeed, played a major role in the deaths of Anne and Simon Taylor. In Anne’s case, it was alcohol that had placed her there, in the bush in the middle of the night, in an inebriated and therefore highly vulnerable state in a penal colony where men outnumbered women and crime was rampant. But it remains within the realms of possibility that Simon’s guilt lay more in being too stupefied by his over-indulgence to wake up and come to her assistance than in actually stealing her life.

Elsewhere in the same cemetery, Anne Taylor’s headstone adopts the voice of the slain one herself, as though she is speaking to her husband from the grave. It, too, seems to imply Simon’s innocence:

Sacred
to the Memory of ANN [sic] TAYLOR
who was the wife of SIMON TAYLOR
who departed this Life, April 6, 1799
Aged 26 [sic] Years
How sweets the Love that meets return
I repent to God for whats been done
I Lov'd you Dear I Lov'd you well
I Lov'd you Better than Tounge [sic] can tell
Weep not for me my Husband dear
I am not Dead but Sleeping here
Prepare yourself to follow me
That we may meet in Eternity[53]

For two ex-convicts who were fond of the bottle and died in shameful circumstances, someone (or even a number of people) in Parramatta obviously cared for the doomed couple deeply enough to raise the considerable funds required to install the two headstones, and to adorn them with such lengthy, thoughtful and poetic inscriptions. Together, the epitaphs provide an alternative narrative to the one preserved in the official records, by declaring the Taylors’ eternal love for each other as well as Simon’s innocence. It is a pity, therefore, that the graveyard has lost this rare example of the intertextuality of its texts of stone. For while Anne’s headstone survives, the headstone The Australian transcribed in 1834 is no longer extant and must have already been lost by the time Vernon W. E. Goodin began transcribing the headstones of St. John’s Cemetery in the mid-twentieth century.[54] In the absence of Simon Taylor’s headstone or any original map of the graveyard’s plots, though, we may fancy that the same person or people who went to great expense and care to fund the Taylors’ headstones and compose their epitaphs also ensured that the man who slumbered beside his murdered wife rests close beside her still.

CITE THIS

Michaela Ann Cameron, “The Taylors: ‘I Am But Sleeping Here,’” St. John’s Online, (Parramatta: The Old Parramattan, 2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/the-taylors, accessed [insert current date].

References

Primary Sources

• Thomas Arndell, “Surgeon Arndell to Governor Hunter, Arthur’s Hill, 25July 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 437–9.
• George Barrington, The History of New South Wales, (London: M. Jones, 1802).
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798).
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802).
• James Lind, A Treatise on Scurvy: In Three Parts, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure, of that disease: together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject, (The Strand, London: A. Millar, 1757).
• Samuel Marsden, “Rev. S. Marsden to Governor Hunter, Parramatta, 11 August 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 439–42.
• New South Wales Government, “Simon Taylor: Offence: Murder of Ann Smith otherwise Ann Taylor, 17 May 1799,” in Criminal Court Index 1788–1833: Appendix A: Schedule of Prisoners Tried, 1788–1815 – Court of Criminal Jurisdiction: Minutes of Proceedings, 1788–1815, NRS: 2700; Item: [X905]; Reel: 2651, p. 199, https://records-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ebnd1l/INDEX92528, accessed 27 October 2020.
• New South Wales Government, “Simon Burn: Offence: Murder of Ann Smith otherwise Ann Taylor, 17 May 1799,”  in Criminal Court Index 1788–1833: Appendix D: Indictments, Informations and Related Papers, 1796–1815 — Court of Criminal Jurisdiction: Informations, Depositions and Related Papers, 1796–1824, NRS: 2703; Item: [5/1145]; Reel: 2392, p. 65, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia), https://records-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ebnd1l/INDEX94841, accessed 27 October 2020.
• Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
• Parish Marriage Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
• St. John’s Online (https://stjohnsonline.org, 2020).
• “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

Secondary Sources

• Michaela Ann Cameron, “Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta,” Dictionary of Sydney, (2015), http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/prince_alfred_park_parramatta, accessed 27 October 2020.
• “ANN TAYLOR HEADSTONE,” in Judith Dunn, The Parramatta Cemeteries: St. John’s, (Parramatta, NSW: Parramatta and District Historical Society, 1991), p. 132.
• Vernon W. E. Goodin, St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta: Monumental Inscriptions and Key to Graves, (Sydney: Society of Australian Genealogists, 1964).
• Terri McCormack, “Parramatta Gaol,” Dictionary of Sydney, (2008), http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_gaol, accessed 27 October 2020.

NOTES

[1] “Marriage of ANNE SMITH and SIMON TAYLOR, 31 May 1794,” Parish Marriage Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. It is not clear exactly where in Parramatta this marriage took place. Two timber convict huts were joined together and served as St. John’s first timber church from 1796, two years after the Taylors’ marriage.

[2] Michaela Ann Cameron, “The Killing and Keening of Simon Burn,” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/simon-burn, accessed 27 October 2020.

[3] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Ungodly Visitation,” St. John’s Online, (2020), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-martin, accessed 27 October 2020. For more on the case of John Kenny and Mary Smyth, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “A Murderer’s Banes in Gibbet Airns,” St. John’s Online, https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/mary-smyth, accessed 27 October 2020. The primary evidence confirming that John Kenny and his brother James Kenny were once neighbours of Simon Taylor see New South Wales Government, “Land Grant, Field of Mars, Jno Kenny, Kenny Farm, 30 December 1796,” and Land Grant, Field of Mars, James Kenny, Kenny Farm, 30 December 1796,” Colonial Secretary: List of all Grants and Leases 1788–1809, Series: NRS 1213; Reel: 1999; State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). 

[4] Thomas Arndell, “Surgeon Arndell to Governor Hunter, Arthur’s Hill, 25July 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 437–9, esp. p. 438.

[5] Thomas Arndell, “Surgeon Arndell to Governor Hunter, Arthur’s Hill, 25July 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 437–9, esp. p. 438.

[6] Thomas Arndell, “Surgeon Arndell to Governor Hunter, Arthur’s Hill, 25July 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 437–9, esp. p. 437.

[7] Samuel Marsden, “Rev. S. Marsden to Governor Hunter, Parramatta, 11 August 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 439–42, esp. p. 439.

[8] Samuel Marsden, “Rev. S. Marsden to Governor Hunter, Parramatta, 11 August 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 439–42, esp. pp. 439, 441.

[9] Thomas Arndell, “Surgeon Arndell to Governor Hunter, Arthur’s Hill, 25July 1798,” in F. M. Bladen (ed.), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III.—Hunter, 1796–1799, (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1895), pp. 437–9, esp. p. 437.

[10] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203; “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2. “Burial of SARAH WHITING, 9 months old, 4 April 1799,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. Note: there are minutes from the proceedings of Simon Burn’s trial, which would contain further details of the crime but, due to COVID-19, I have not been able to obtain a copy of these in time for publication. See New South Wales Government, “Simon Taylor: Offence: Murder of Ann Smith otherwise Ann Taylor, 17 May 1799,” in Criminal Court Index 1788–1833: Appendix A: Schedule of Prisoners Tried, 1788–1815 – Court of Criminal Jurisdiction: Minutes of Proceedings, 1788–1815, NRS: 2700; Item: [X905]; Reel: 2651, p. 199, https://records-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ebnd1l/INDEX92528, accessed 27 October 2020; New South Wales Government, “Simon Burn: Offence: Murder of Ann Smith otherwise Ann Taylor, 17 May 1799,”  in Criminal Court Index 1788–1833: Appendix D: Indictments, Informations and Related Papers, 1796–1815 — Court of Criminal Jurisdiction: Informations, Depositions and Related Papers, 1796–1824, NRS: 2703; Item: [5/1145]; Reel: 2392, p. 65, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia), https://records-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ebnd1l/INDEX94841, accessed 27 October 2020.

[11] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[12] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), pp. 311–2.

[13] “ANNE SMITH per Sugar Cane (1793),” New South Wales Government, Indents First Fleet, Second Fleet and Ships, NRS: 1150; Item: [SZ115]; Microfiche: 623, (State Library of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia); Irish Convicts to New South Wales, 1788–1849 (http://members.pcug.org.au/~ppmay/cgi-bin/irish/irish.cgi, 2011), ANNE SMITH, http://members.pcug.org.au/~ppmay/cgi-bin/irish/irish.cgi?requestType=Search2&id=27249, accessed 27 October 2020.

[14] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), pp. 311–2.

[15] The Sugar Cane would subsequently serve as a slave ship transported African slaves from West Africa to the Americas a few years later.

[16] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 311.

[17] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 311.

[18] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 311.

[19] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), pp. 311–2.

[20] “Marriage of ANNE SMITH and SIMON TAYLOR, 31 May 1794,” Parish Marriage Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[21] “SIMON TAYLOR per Matilda (1791),” New South Wales Government, Indents First Fleet, Second Fleet and Ships, NRS: 1150; Item: [SZ115]; Microfiche: 621, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[22] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 171.

[23] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 171.

[24] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 172.

[25] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 172.

[26] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 174.

[27] James Lind, A Treatise on Scurvy: In Three Parts, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure, of that disease: together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject, (The Strand, London: A. Millar, 1757), p. 116.

[28] James Lind, A Treatise on Scurvy: In Three Parts, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure, of that disease: together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject, (The Strand, London: A. Millar, 1757), p. 116.

[29] James Lind, A Treatise on Scurvy: In Three Parts, containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure, of that disease: together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject, (The Strand, London: A. Millar, 1757), p. 116.

[30] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1798), p. 172.

[31] Statistics from Michaela Ann Cameron, St. John’s Online, burial database (2020).

[32] Statistics from Michaela Ann Cameron, St. John’s Online, burial database (2020).

[33] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[34] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[35] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[36] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[37] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[38] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[39] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 203.

[40] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 209.

[41] The first Parramatta gaol was located in present day Prince Alfred Square, Parramatta. A second gaol would be built there after arsonists set the log prison alight in December 1799 — eight months after Simon Taylor was detained there. Michaela Ann Cameron, “Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta,” Dictionary of Sydney, (2015), http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/prince_alfred_park_parramatta, accessed 27 October 2020; Terri McCormack, “Parramatta Gaol,” Dictionary of Sydney, (2008), http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_gaol, accessed 27 October 2020.

[42] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Richard Partridge: The Left-Handed Flogger,” St. John’s Online, (2016), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/richard-partridge, accessed 27 October 2020.

[43] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 209.

[44] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. II, (The Strand, London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1802), p. 209. See also George Barrington, The History of New South Wales, (London: M. Jones, 1802), p. 316.

[45] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Richard Partridge: The Left-Handed Flogger,” St. John’s Online, (2016), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/richard-partridge, accessed 27 October 2020; “Sudden Death,” Sydney Monitor (NSW: 1828-1838), Saturday 28 May 1831, p. 2.

[46] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Richard Partridge: The Left-Handed Flogger,” St. John’s Online, (2016), https://stjohnsonline.org/bio/richard-partridge, accessed 27 October 2020; “Sudden Death,” Sydney Monitor (NSW: 1828-1838), Saturday 28 May 1831, p. 2.

[47] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[48] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[49] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[50] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[51] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[52] “Domestic Intelligence,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW : 1824 – 1848), Tuesday 25 November 1834, p. 2.

[53] Anne Taylor’s headstone still stands in Right Section, Row 15, Memorial I (R.15.I), St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta. Transcription sourced from Judith Dunn, The Parramatta Cemeteries: St. John’s, (Parramatta, NSW: Parramatta and District Historical Society, 1991), p. 132. “Burial of ANN TAYLOR, 6 April 1799,” Parish Burial Registers, Textual Records, St. John’s Anglican Church, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

[54] Vernon W. E. Goodin, St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta: Monumental Inscriptions and Key to Graves, (Sydney: Society of Australian Genealogists, 1964).

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