LONDON – On August 19 1845 the Morning Post reported that the convict transport Mayda was lying at Woolwich, with 197 prisoners on board. They had been brought down the Thames from the Millbank Penitentiary and were to be taken to Norfolk Island, the harshest penal colony
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METHOD IN A MOTHER’S MADNESS In December 1841 a shabby, careworn woman entered a London shoe shop, brazenly picked up several items and walked out. It was a theft that made no sense at all; she had taken a random couple of boots and a single clog!
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My interest in John Mortlock was aroused when I discovered that his journey as a convict paralleled that of my own relatives, the Shadbolts. WHERE THERE’S A WILL…… John Frederick Mortlock was born in Cambridge on August 8, 1809. His father, Frederick Cheetham Mortlock, had been a
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LINDEN SHADBOLT – the child who stayed behind The following is a continuation of my convict ancestors’ story The Exoneration of Solomon Shadbolt. The first piece was prompted by what I saw as an unfair representation of my three times great-grandfather, in the late Maurice Shadbolts’s memoir
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A STORY ABOUT MY G-G-G-GRANDFATHER When Australian author Kate Grenville was researching her convict ancestor for the novel Secret River, she admitted to feeling slightly anxious about the nature of his crime. Theft was one thing, but what if he had been transported for something really serious;
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