Convict Queen

by Marina Oliver

  'Hang? But they can't! That's not right! Isn't anyone speaking for them?'

  Thomas shrugged. 'They don't say, but I doubt it.'

  'Then I will!'

  'How? And what good would it do?

  'I'll find a way.'

  *

  Before dawn the following day Molly was riding along some of the tracks the aborigines used, heading south. She had two blankets strapped behind her saddle, and packets of cold meat, bread and cheese in a bag in front, enough for three days. Her sturdy cob was more akin to a cart horse than a lady's riding mount, and she knew she could not expect him to cover more than about forty miles a day. She dared not overtire him, or let him, through weariness, grow lame. Sleeping rough for a couple of nights was no hardship.

  Thomas had tried to dissuade her, had even offered to go in her place, but she refused the offer.

  'I'll be more able to see Governor Brisbane, and when I do I'll be better able to help them,' she said.

  'What if the natives catch you?'

  'They won't harm me. Not after I treated that young lad with a broken arm.'

  'They might be another tribe.'

  'Thomas, love, stop fretting. You don't realise how fast the gossip spreads. It doesn't matter what tribe I might meet, they'll all know about me, and that my old cabin is a rough sort of hospital where they can get help. I don't care if they are sending raiding parties down the valley. They won't harm me.'

  Molly treated anyone for simple injuries, cuts and bites, the odd broken bones, and she helped women in labour. Sometimes there were fevers, and Molly managed to persuade the rest of the settlers to build another small hut where these sufferers could be kept apart. She didn't know how these illnesses spread, just that they did, and it seemed common sense to try and isolate those who were ill.

  Thomas had to let her go, but she promised to be back within ten days.

  'While I'm there I may call on a few old friends,' she said.

  'Not that fellow you used to live with?'

  'No. He wouldn't want to see me, he'll have some other woman now.'

  'Then who?'

  'If I've time to go to Parramatta I'll go and see Clara. She was one of my best friends. And as I'll be passing nearby, I'll have a look at this Camden Park Macarthur's been given. They say it's five thousand acres. Big enough for any number of sheep he cares to have!'

  'Are these new sheep of his so much better than the rest?'

  'They say the wool is finer.'

  'I'm wondering whether we could buy some. Just a few.'

  'If you'll look after them. I was never fond of sheep, they're silly animals.'

  Thomas laughed. 'The cows aren't clever.'

  'Better than sheep.'

  Molly was thinking of this conversation as she rode along through the forested landscape. She hadn't been this way before, but as long as she kept to the tracks and headed south, she'd come to Sydney. She just hoped she wouldn't be too late to plead for the two men sentenced to hanging.

  That night she slept beside a small stream, under an old cedar tree. In the silence, broken mainly by her horse as he chomped on grass, she could hear insects and night birds. She wished she could identify the various calls.

  She awoke at dawn and looked up to see a kangaroo a few feet away, watching her warily. He was a big one, taller than a man, but he seemed curious rather than harmful, and when he saw her beginning to stand up he loped away into the bushes.

  The second and third days were slower, over rougher ground, and she had to ford several rivers. She saw no natives, though she was certain some were watching her from concealment in the thick bushes. It was getting dark when she finally reached Sydney, but she left her horse at an inn and went at once to Government House. There was no time to lose.

  *

  There was some function on, and they didn't want to let Molly in. Wryly, she accepted that she looked somewhat bedraggled and unkempt after her three days in the saddle and two nights sleeping rough.

  'I must speak to Governor Brisbane,' she insisted. 'It's really important. At least someone go and tell him Molly Morgan is here to speak to him.'

  That name, she reckoned, would be known to him.

  The guards on the door looked dubious, then one of them shook his head. 'Molly Morgan? From Wallis Plains?'

  'Yes.'

  'I hear they're calling it Molly Morgan Plains now.'

  'Look, that's not important. I have to speak to the Governor.'

  'Why don't you come back in the morning? He'll be in his office then.'

  'It may be too late. I can get into the ballroom through one of the windows if I have to. If there are a lot of people here they'll have opened some.'

  'They're guarded.'

  'Then do as I ask and go and tell him I'm here.'

  It took considerable persistence, but eventually one of them shrugged and said he'd go and tell someone. Molly sighed with relief, accepted the chair the other guard offered, and sat down to wait. She was weary, hungry for a hot meal after all the cold food she'd been eating, and in need of a tot of rum or some ale.

  The soldier came back after what seemed like an hour to Molly. He gestured to her.

  'This way. He'll see you in his study.'

  'Thank you.'

  Molly followed him into the Governor's study, and sat down. The soldier stood on guard at the door, and Molly suppressed a grin. Was he expecting her to try and steal something? Or, more likely, to try and read some of the papers spread on the Governor's desk. As she waited she tried to recall all she knew of this Governor.

  A Scot, he was a soldier, or had been, a Major-General who had fought under Wellington in the Peninsula, and in America in the war of 1812. He was known to be devout, but tolerant of all faiths, which did not endear him to Samuel Marsden, the rabble-rousing Minister she'd known at Parramatta. She'd heard that John Macarthur and Henry Douglass, the Assistant Surgeon, had both quarrelled with him. He had tried to reform the currency, and he changed the system of land grants, mainly, she suspected, so that people did not get too much land and become too powerful.

  She'd heard he did not get on with his Colonial Secretary, Frederick Goulburn, who was, according to Thomas, supposed to do the administrative work. There was far more of it than there had been in the early days.

  The guard suddenly stood to attention and Governor Brisbane came into the room and dismissed the guard. Molly, stiff from her long ride, struggled to her feet and tried to curtsey, but he trod towards her and gently pushed her down into the chair.

  He was tall, thin-faced, and handsome. He had a delightful smile and he was gentle with her.

  'Molly Morgan? I remember you, didn't I see you once at Newcastle?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'You're farming now, I suppose? So how are you managing?' he asked, and went to sit behind the desk.

  'Well, sir, but I came on a special errand. There are two convicts I know, from Wallis Plains, who have been condemned to death for stealing some fruit. It was my fruit, just a handful of raspberries. They'd never tasted them before.'

  'I see.'

  'If they had asked, I'd willingly have given them twice as much! It's wicked, to hang them for such a small thing!'

  'The Court has set the punishment.'

  'But you can reprieve them, sir! You've reprieved, forgiven, men for much worse things, real crimes, not just a sudden whim! Or they've been kept in prison, but not killed!'

  'What are these men to you?'

  'They've worked well for me. And I know what it's like to be accused of something I didn't do, like the first time I was sent here.'

  'Tell me. Why were you accused?'

  Molly explained, and he nodded. 'You said the first time?'

  'I went back,' she said quietly. 'I escaped on a ship. Then I was falsely accused again of theft.'

  'Would you go back to England if it were possible? I believe you could afford the passage.'

  'My life's here now,' she said. 'I've done well, I'm m
arried again, and there's little left for me in England. My daughter has vanished, my son is in the army, my father is dead. My brothers are ashamed of me, even if I'm proved innocent. It was all so long ago.'

  'How did you come here today?'

  'I rode, along the trails the natives use. It took three days, and I'm praying I'm not too late.'

  'For these men. They are fortunate to have your support. Very well, I'll let them go. But you must take them back to Wallis Plains and be held responsible for them.'

  Molly almost wept. She gave a big sigh, and tried to say her thanks, but was unable to speak.

  'Have you somewhere to stay?'

  She nodded.

  'Good, then I will have them ready to go with you the day after tomorrow. How will you manage?'

  'I'll buy two more horses,' Molly said, her spirits suddenly rising. 'I could do with one that's not such a slug as the one I have! And I can sell the others. And thank you, sir! They say you're a kind man, and now I see how truly they spoke.'

  *

  On the following day Molly went by river to Parramatta. Clara and her husband, she was told, had been given a grant of land on the Hawkesbury. She nodded her thanks to the woman who told her, and wandered round the growing town, admiring the new buildings, Government House, the church, and others. Elizabeth Farm appeared to be in the middle of more changes. She saw several people she knew, and they all wanted to stop and talk, ask her what she was doing, whether they should ask for grants of land in the Hunter Valley.

  'Yes, there are more settlers all the time,' Molly told them. 'It's good land, like the Hawkesbury lands, and I've heard they are planning to build a road to make the journey from Sydney easier.'

  On the following day she and the rescued convicts set out on the return journey. They were profuse in their thanks, and said they would do anything she wished. Thomas greeted her with relief when they finally rode into Wallis Plains. All was well there, and Molly resumed her normal life. More rum shanties and more acres were acquired. There were more settlers, and some children, and in a few years people began to talk about the need for a school.

  'Why? What do the children want wi' schoolin'?' one of the drinkers asked when Molly was serving in a rum shop.

  'I'd never have got so far without my schooling,' Molly said. She thought back to the small school adjacent to the churchyard in Diddlebury. 'My teacher was clever, and his wife one of the kindest women I knew. She taught me a lot too.'

  'Well, we can't afford ter build a school,' the objector said.

  'Of course we can. I'll give a hundred pounds to start a fund. Who else will give some?'

  No one else matched this amount, but Molly was by now probably the richest settler in Wallis Plains. People listened to her, and one day she heard someone saying Wallis Plains was now known at Molly Morgan Plains.

  She shook her head. 'That's daft.'

  'But you're famous. Didn't you see that letter in The Australian?'

  'That free newspaper? Governor Brisbane said they could print what they liked, and this is some fairy tale.'

  'Like that rumour John Macarthur is goin' out of 'is mind?'

  'Is he?'

  'They say so.'

  Molly forgot the rumour. So much was happening. The Great North Road was built by convicts, but soon it was easier to go to Sydney by boat. A paddle steamer now served the Hunter river, and steamers went between Newcastle and Sydney. A town was being built at the junction of Wallis Creek and the Hunter, to be called Maitland. Molly built a new inn there. And all the time she was buying land, including some at Anvil Creek, further up the river.

  'You goin' ter build a palace there?' one of her neighbours asked.

  'A palace? No, just a house where I can retire one day.'

  'You'll never retire. You're known at the Queen of Hunter Valley.'

  'Me? A Queen? Are you all going to bow down to me?' She laughed. 'Not bad for a Shropshire lass!'

  ***

  THE END

  EPILOGUE

  Molly died in 1835 at Greta, Anvil Creek, aged 74.

  William Morgan died about 1828.

  Their son James became a Chelsea Pensioner and lived in Northumberland.

  Donald Traill was privately prosecuted for murder, but acquitted.

  John Macarthur was declared insane in 1832 and died two years later. He, and more importantly, his wife Elizabeth, started and promoted the Australian woollen industry.

  ***

  Historical Note

  Molly existed, and many details of her life can be verified by searching original sources. Parish Registers give certain dates and names, and so on, but even these can be not entirely accurate. They do not, for example, specify to which families with the same names people belong, so I have had to make a 'best guess' based on probability and incomplete information.

  Bare facts are like a skeleton, there is no flesh to portray the real body, but from the bones some things can be deduced, such as the height, age, former injuries. From the facts we can verify we can make some assumptions, but the rest must be fiction, guesses and conjectures.

  Inevitably there are gaps in the story, and the bare details give little indication of character or emotions. The basic facts can be interpreted in different ways. Was Molly an unregenerate, promiscuous and bigamous thief who deserved transportation, or was she innocent and wrongly accused?

  The first interpretation is supported by her subsequent second conviction and transportation for theft, the 'marriage' to Thomas Mare when William Morgan was, for all she knew, still alive, and her later acquisition of government cattle when she had become a landowner herself.

  She could equally have been innocent, perhaps only of the first charge of theft, and afterwards taken to a life of crime in order to survive in a difficult world. She was clearly attractive to men, and in those days and with the atrocious conditions on board selling their bodies was often the only way women convicts could survive. Women on the Neptune were treated as concubines for the crew. Her actions in giving money and helping other convicts and settlers, and her final reputation as the Queen of Hunter Valley tend to indicate some innocence, or a belated conversion to honesty.

  I am indebted greatly to Frank Mitchell, headmaster of Diddlebury School, who wrote about her history. His account was the first I read, and as he had access to many of the original documentary sources, and those I have checked have almost all been accurate, I trust his version rather more than some of the fanciful 'biographies' to be found on the Internet.

  He says her sister Ann died aged six, but I found no register entry to support this. There was an Ann Jones who died aged sixteen, so this could be a misprint.

  He did not know where Molly had been put on the Neptune, suggesting Portsmouth or Plymouth. According to the records (which are admittedly not accurate as several women were listed on more than one ship) most of the women were embarked in the Thames, some from Newgate, the rest from county gaols. The places where they were convicted were mainly in South Wales, the Midlands and the North. Roads from these places would be better to London than to Portsmouth, and Plymouth would have involved a much longer journey. That so few of the female convicts on the Neptune came from the southern counties inclines me to believe they were embarked in London. It suits my plot to have this so, as so many things happened between this embarkation on November 11th and the start of the journey on Jan 19th.

  While incorporating much I have been able to discover of the facts, the interpretation is my own, and the gaps have been filled by invention. I have tried to imagine how Molly would have felt, and what her reactions would have been in the early years, given what we know of her actions in later life.

  ***

  Marina Oliver has written over 75 novels, all are now available as Ebooks.

  For the latest information please see Marina's web site:

  http://www.marina-oliver.net

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