Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

· 6 min read
Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict

In her lifetime, her family had grown to include five generations and over three hundred descendants.  Now, Mary’s descendants number in the tens of thousands, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia. Months earlier Mary, , had been arrested and found guilty of stealing another child’s clothes. Her death sentence, commuted to transportation for life, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows but would never see her family again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous conditions at Newgate Prison.

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  • This M'Killan, and this little girl, came to my house about a quarter past ten last Saturday night, and M'Killan telling me the story she has related, I said, are you sure you are right; she said I will shew you.
  • Her scientific legacy is wide and varied and reflects an academic rigour applied to a very wide group of fossils.



As far as the records show, she was the youngest female to be transported to the Antipodes. She sailed with the Second Fleet, on the Lady Juliana, a ship comprised entirely of women convicts. It had been noted by the authorities that the colony was in ‘great need of women.
- Nobody advised me to go, and nobody told me; but the woman that took the cap off her head, that little one, robbed her of every thing she had; and Mrs.  mary wade  took the cap off the little one's head, and said she would ask the gentlewoman. I know Mrs. Matthews; she did not advise me to tell the woman in Charles-street. When I came home from my labour, on Friday, I enquired for my child, and a boy told me he sent her to the Treasury for a bottle of water; that was the 5th of this month. I came home at half after five; I live inCharles-street, Westminster; the child was not at home.
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Dr. Mary Wade spent much of her life hunting dinosaurs. She was 11 years old when tried and convicted of violent theft and highway robbery at the old bailey on the 14 Jan 1789. If you have more hunting to do, try a new search or browse the convict records. If Mary Wade was the person you were looking for, you may be able to discover more about them by looking at our resources page. Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.
She gave birth to another 10 children but only 6 of them survived infancy . Her 7 surviving children lived through better times than Mary and had 54 children of their own. Mary Wade was 13 years old when she was sentenced to hang for highway robbery in Westminster, London. Her death sentence was later commuted to transportation for life and she was instead banished to Australia.
She arrived in Sydney Cove in June 1790 and was then sent to Norfolk Island. Mary established a relationship with a fellow convict, Teague Harrigan. Teague disappeared on a whaling expedition in 1806. Mary then established a relationship with Jonathon Brooker and married him in 1817. By then she had gained her Certificate of Freedom . The family, like many of the ex-convict families in colonial New South Wales, struggled to make a living, but make a living they did.

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She also excavated specimens of the giant pliosaur Kronosarurs, and relocated the site and collected the remains of Australia's only Jurassic sauropod Rhoetosaurus, lost since the 1920's. Late in the 1970's and 1980's Dr. Wade continued to recover remains of dinosaurs, describing in detail the anatomy of these giant creatures of the ancient inland sea of western Queensland. During the next few years, she explored areas of western Queensland , studying the fossil remains of early nautiloid molluscs.

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Then the little one said, I was in a good mind to have chucked the child down the necessary; and I wish I had done it. To relieve the pressure on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip sent many new arrivals including Mary, to a place described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave birth to a daughter. She had two more children with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was living in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Harrigan joined a whaling ship but never returned.

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The project purpose was to transform Juniperina Juvenile Justice Centre to Mary Wade Maximum Security Female Remand Centre in Lidcombe. A right to use a part of land owned by another person for a specific purpose. The most common forms of easements are for services, such as water, electricity or sewerage.
She was one of a boatload of female convicts sent on the Lady Juliana to the fledgling colony of New South Wales in July 1789. In what was one of the longest recorded convict voyages Mary finally arrived in Sydney Cove as a 14 year old in June 1790 having spent more than 10 months at sea. Rapidly developing an affinity for the Queensland Outback, she established many local contacts and through teir assistancew collected new dinosaur remains in the Winton district.
It is believed the inmates allegedly used aluminum from their lunch trays to ignite the flames, causing a frantic emergency that could have killed dozens. "There was so much smoke in here, you couldn't see and then I saw the inmate run out of the cell and she came and collapsed," he said. "We weren't really thinking these are inmates, we were thinking these are two human beings that need to be rescued," Mr Boan said today.
Her trial was held on 14 January 1789 at the Old Bailey, where she was found guilty and was sentenced to death by hanging. When Mary died on her birthday in 1859 at the age of 84, she had over 300 living descendants and was considered one of the founding mothers of Australia. Tens of thousands of Australians, including the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, trace their lineage back to that little convict girl, Mary Wade. This M'Killan, and this little girl, came to my house about a quarter past ten last Saturday night, and M'Killan telling me the story she has related, I said, are you sure you are right; she said I will shew you.
Mary was one of fifty women fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor lavatories. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her situation improved. All convicts were reasonably fed and given warm beds. Only five women and two children died during the eleven month voyage and the condition of those who arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.
This led her to describe a completely new group of fossil molluscs. At Christmastime in 1789, ten year old convict Mary Wade was facing an uncertain future. Today, she is recognized as one of Australia’s founding mothers. We want it to contain the stories of family members, where we can share information, and one giant Family Tree that includes as many of Mary's descendants as want to claim their heritage. Today, quite a few of us keep in touch and share family trees through Genes Reunited and Ancestry.com.
Mary Wade Correctional Centre is a minimum-security works release centre for men. Mary Wade Correctional Centre is located in Lidcombe, 19km west of Sydney central business district. Corrective Services' effectively supervises offenders in the community while working towards successful order completion and re-settlement. Along with Dr Tony Thulborn, Dr Wade described the world's only known dinosaur stampede atLark Quarry, 115 km southwest of Winton, in the late 70s and early 80s. The trackways are exposed in a small quarry, and include over 3000 footprints made by at least 150 individual dinosaurs million years ago.
They are all the things that she lost that night. In the way you carry on that business, it is a very dangerous one to the publick; your house may become the repository of all the stolen goods in the town. - I have known the little one a twelvemonth, and the other about ten months.
On 11 March 1789, King George III was proclaimed cured of an unnamed madness; it is assumed that he suffered from porphyria, a degenerative mental disease. Five days later, in the spirit of celebration, all the women on death row, including Mary Wade, had their sentences commuted to penal transportation to Australia. She spent 93 days in the Newgate Prison before being transported on the Lady Juliana to Australia, which was the first convict ship to hold a cargo made up entirely of women and children. After an 11-month voyage across the ocean, the ship arrived at Sydney on 3 June 1790 and Wade was sent on to Norfolk Island aboard the Surprise, arriving on 7 August 1790. On 5 October 1788, Mary with another child, Jane Whiting, 14 years old, stole the clothes from Mary Phillips, an 8 year old, who at the time was collecting water in a bottle at a privy. Mary was reported by another child to an Officer of the Law who later found the tippet in Mary’s room whereupon she was arrested and placed in Bridewell Prison.