Martha Bayford

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Robin Sharkey on 3rd June 2020

On 30 April 1830 at the Old Bailey, Martha Bayford was sentenced at age 18, together with her friend Mary MAREN aged 19. Both got seven years’ transportation and were sent on the “Mellish” to Hobart, Tasmania, arriving in September 1830. They’d been in a drapers’ shop together where they stole ribbon. (Old Bailey trial report 15 April 1830). In Tasmania, Mary Maren did her time hard, getting in trouble regularly for drunkenness, leaving her master’s service etc. earning her solitary confinement or laundry service in the Hobart Female Factory. But Martha Bayford’s convict life was uneventful and in 1831, just a year after arrival when she was assigned at New Norfolk, she married another convict, James Wright. __________ LONDON CRIME The two women had gone into the shop of silk mercers & haberdashers named George Drake SEWELL and Thomas CROSS, in Compton Street, Soho, today called “Old Compton Street”. In 1828 this shop was at 40-42 Compton St. ( https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols33-4/pp193-201) They asked to look at ribbons. Another visitor in the shop warned the “young man” serving them to “take care they don’t rob you”. He then went to a more senior employee named Noble Hall, who searched them in the dining room. Martha Bayford was said to have been “very violent, she took up a knife, and threatened to stab the officer, and said she would rip his bl - y guts out; he was forced to use great violence to defend himself – “. Fifteen yards of ribbon were found on them. It was claimed in court another woman had seen Mary Maren drop the ribbon. They were held in Newgate and departed only two months later on the “MELLISH”, in June 1830. IN TASMANIA Martha Bayford stated to authorities on arrival (Tasmanian Convict CONDUCT RECORD CON40/1/1 ) that she was single, and had once been a month in the House of Correction (in London) for vagrancy. Her conduct record (for poor conduct) is blank. About a year after arriving she was living in the New Norfolk area (on assignment) when she and recently emancipated convict John Lightfoot (per Lady East) applied to marry. [CON 45/1/1]. John, who had reported on arrival that he was a farm labourer, ploughman and could shear sheep, already had a wife and young child back in Kingsley village, Cheshire, who did not come to Tasmania. Martha and John married on 15 November 1831 at New Norfolk. John Lightfoot was from Glenorchy parish and Martha was from new Norfolk parish. [Marriages, Richmond, 1831 RGD36/1/2 Image 26] They built a new life and John was described as a farmer when he died twenty years after his marriage. In the 1842 Tasmanian Census, they lived at King’s Marsh in a rented timber house. He and Martha were the married couple living there, with two children, a boy and girl both aged between 7 and 14 years. There were three other adult males, one a Ticket of Leave servant and two who were emancipated convicts. John Lightfoot died of dysentery aged 49 years, on 26 April 1850, at Richmond, Tas. The informant was “William Plummer, farmer of Native Corner, Richmond”. Martha senior didn’t actually collect her free certificate until 4 January 1852 (aged 40) (Conduct record)although her sentence had expired in late April 1837. Her daughter with John, also named Martha Lightfoot, married at Richmond on 26 April 1852, being of full age (i.e. 21 or more), to Thomas Birch, farmer.