Jane Barry

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Robin Sharkey on 18th November 2025

Having got Jane off the Lady Shore and into the longboat, it is to be hoped Murchison got Jane back to England with him. Or, that if he didn’t take her to the Cape, that at Rio de Janeiro he gave her the funds for her own berth back to England. Murchison may have provided her with cash since he had funds to secure his own passage to Cape Town. The reality is that an officer such as Murchison and a convict such as young Jane, with no background and nothing to recommend her, would not have been accepted back in naval society in England. As well, Jane would always be subject to being transported to NSW again once it was discovered that her criminal sentence hadn’t been served. Her seven years wouldn’t expire until 28 October 1802 – five more years away. Continuing both his romance with Jane, and his naval career, were an impossibility for Murchison. The reality was that their romance would be unsustainable in these circumstances. This truth may have become clear to Simon Murchison when he reached Rio de Janiero with Jane. It’s far more likely that at this place he said goodbye to her, and went off to Cape Town on his own adventure, unencumbered. The longboat could have been a source of money since the mutineers had created a certificate stating it was in the joint ownership of the two senior naval officers (Murchison and Black), and the convict Semple. The longboat was sold at Rio Grande and the proceeds kept by these three men, although army Ensign Minchin challenged their right to retain the proceeds. He’d agreed with them that they could hold on to the money until at Rio de Janeiro when they would find an English official to adjudicate on the issue. [See HARDIE, at pp 68-69] The outcome of this disagreement hasn’t been found in the current research. However, it’s highly possible Murchison could have provided for Jane this way, eased his conscience, and left her to her own future.

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Robin Sharkey on 17th November 2025

MORE DETAIL ON HOW MURCHISON LEFT From Rio Grande where the longboat came into safe harbour, most of the 29 passengers managed to get berths on four boats leaving for Rio de Janiero, after weeks of having to wit because of bad weather and then no wind. In early October the three ship captains carrying most of them all agreed they’d have to wait until the change of the moon before conditions improved. They arrived in Rio Grande in November. Simon Murchison left there in December, having got the only passage being offered on a whaler going to the Cape of Good Hope. Once there he wrote his own report of the mutiny for the local agent of the Transport Commission. In his official reports he did not mention his convict girl, Jane Barry. He then got another onward passage to England, and arrived four months later on the 17th of May. It was almost a whole year since the Lady Shore had left England.

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Robin Sharkey on 17th November 2025

GAOL AND TRANSPORT SHIP Jane Barry was Irish. Her trial had been held at the Old Bailey, in the sessions commencing 28 October 1795. For the seventeen months after her trial, she was held in Newgate Prison waiting to be transported to NSW. Then “ … on Saturday, 11th March 1797, thirty-five female convicts and one male (elderly Knowles) were removed from Newgate, and delivered on board the ship Lady Shore, lying off Woolwich, bound for New South Wales”. (Norfolk Chronicle, Sat 18 March 1797, p.4). Jane and the convict women were at anchor on Lady Shore for another month until the ship moved down to Portsmouth, arriving on 15th April 1797. Here the ship took on its full load – NSW Corps soldiers, ship’s officers and men, and Semple who was the second male convict. (per Hampshire Chronicle, 22 April 1797) While at Portsmouth Semple told the Captain about a plan by several Frenchmen on board to mutiny when at sea. These French had originally been captured as prisoners, since England and France were at war. Some had been very troublesome, often trying to escape from imprisonment. The English authorities made the strange decision to press them into service in the NSW Corps, to be disposed of there, instead of remaining as prisoners in England. The captain was worried, and complained to the Transport Board about the danger of proceeding to sea with such men having access to arms. The Colonel of the NSW Corps regiment was sent to investigate “but he, perhaps hesitating to give credit to Semple, and from the Benevolence of his own heart entertaining a better opinion of his men than they deserved, overruled Captain Wilcox’s desire.” (per Belfast Newsletter 4 August 1798). The ship sailed down to Falmouth on the Cornwall coast with the French still on board as NSW Corps soldiers where it again lay at anchor some weeks, and finally left England on 7 June 1797. ****************** JANE as SECOND MATE’S GIRL Many of the sailors, soldiers, and some of the officers, began relationships with the convict women on board. Some probably even started while the ship was still in England. The captain turned a blind eye, as was often done on voyages with convict women. Ensign Minchin, the most senior Officer of the NSW Corps (who had his wife on board), was offended and complained to the captain, who moved the women forward on the lower deck, and put a guard on the forward hatchway quarters. No sailor was to go there unless as part of his duties. So the women simply went to the men’s sleeping quarters or the officers’ cabins instead. The Captain’s action contributed to some resentment against him by his men. [Hardie, p40-41] JANE BARRY was taken up by the Second Officer, SIMON MURCHISON, as his girlfriend. Her status as the “Second Mate’s girl” was even noted on the list of transportees kept in the Ship’s Log and that publicly came to light two hundred years later with the papers of ship’s carpenter, Thomas Millard, in 2012 (London Daily Mail, 10 May 2012). ****************** MUTINY Inevitably, a mutiny was started by the French, aided by other foreign soldiers who’d been pressed into service, and by disaffected Irish & other sailors. It occurred eight weeks into the voyage in the early hours of 1 August when the ship was off the coast of South America. [per ‘The Naval History of Great Britain’ by William James, at p.1797] The First Mate was murdered on the watch, the Captain was wounded so badly by a bayonet that he died three days later. The convict women had no involvement in the mutiny despite a myth to the contrary that developed in NSW over the following decades. None of the first hand reports at the time, or that eventually came publicly to light, in any way indicated the women were in on the mutiny. [Hardie, p. 170-171] LONGBOAT ESCAPE JANE BARRY got off the ship and into a long boat that was put off to sea by the mutineers. The passengers on it included her boyfriend, the Second Mate, who had probably insisted of the mutineers that she be allowed to go with him. The longboat was launched fourteen days into the mutiny. The organisers were removing the threat of anyone else being able to navigate the ship, lightening the load of people to manage, and removing the unwilling from the ship. 29 people were put into it: senior officers from both the ship and the NSW Corp, the ship’s boy, some other soldiers, their wives and children, convict girlfriends of three of the men, and the male convict Semple. After 46 hours in dreadfully stormy, rough and gale-like conditions the longboat arrived in the harbour of Rio Grande with no loss of life. From there the 29 on board spread out by different means returning to England or going elsewhere. None of the various records that have come to light yet show if Jane Barry stayed in Rio de Janeiro or sailed away with her boyfriend, the Second Mate Simon Murchison. Once in Rio Grande, he sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. However, in 1804 Simon Murchison got married in London to a different woman – named Jane Stewart. They went to India where Murchison became a wealthy indigo planter, and later an exporter of the dye the plant produced, especially back to England. He died in India in 1815. So far, no more is known of Jane Barry.

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Robin Sharkey on 8th November 2025

JANE BARRY was another girl charged with stealing clothes from a dwelling house and found guilty. She was 19 years old. The items that the owner claimed she stole, and the value the owner put on them, were extensive: • two black silk cloaks, value 1l. 10s. • a black stuff petticoat, value 10s. • two silk gowns, value 2l. • four linen shirts, value 8s. • seven linen clouts, value 7s. • two linen shirt sleeves, value rs. • a linen apron, value 3s. • a pair of black silk gloves, value 1s. • a pair of black silk stockings, value 2s. • seven pair of men's cotton stockings, value 14s. • seven yards of printed cotton, value 1l. 1s. • seven yards of silk, value 7s. • five yards of linen, value, 3s. • two linen pillow cases, value 2s. • a linen sheet, value 2s. • four linen childrens caps trimmed with lace, value 2s. • a child's linen bed gown, value 1s. 6d. • and a one-guinea. Jane was found GUILTY, Of stealing to the value of 5s, and received sentence fo 7 years' transportation. WHAT WERE THE CIRCUMSTANCES? Eleanore Froggatt was a widow who rented out rooms in her lodging In Market-court, by Oxford-market. The prisoner was a lodger in the front of the house, And Jane Birch (wife of William) rented the back one pair of stairs room from Mrs Froggatt. On the last day of August she went away for four days, Mrs Froggatt having told her to quit the house because Mrs Froggatt was tired of the woman leaving a blind child in her care while she, Birch, went away for days at a time to see her husband. When Jane Birch returned from her last tryst away before she had to leave the lodgings for good “when I went in at my door, the first thing I see was, my pocket book, which I found broke-open, and the guinea gone; the next I found was two boxes broke open.” Her child’s clothes were all over the room. “My three drawers lay in different parts of the room but when she left they “had stood one on another in the room”, and they’d been stripped of everything except one blanket. Sarah Benson, soldier’s wife, also lodged at Mrs Froggatt. The prisoner had given her a written duplicate (for the receipt) for a cloak that she had left in pawn at Mr Jones’s in Tottenham Court Rd and told Sarah to go and sell the cloak to him. But Mr Jones refused to buy it. Sarah went back and told Mrs Froggatt what the cloak at the pawnbroker’s had looked like. The next morning, Sarah got from the prisoner all the remaining duplicate copies for receipts for pawned goods and took them to the constable, Mr Kennedy, in Marlborough St office. After this, he went and took Jane Barry into custody. The jury found Jane Barry guilty. But although there were so many clothes and items claimed to be missing the jury only place a total value of 5 shillings on them. This got Jane transported for seven years (and not the death sentence if the goods had ben worth 40s and more).

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Penny-Lyn Beale on 2nd August 2023

UK Criminal Registers - Criminal Entry Records. Ship; Lady Shore No; 21 Trial; 28 October 1795 Age; 19 years. [born abt. 1778] Place of Transportation; Beyond the Seas.