Catherine Hounsum

46

Heather Stevens on 4th June 2020

Birth About 1760. [Digital Panopticon has birth 1760 (age 28 at trial, source 'HISCO 9') https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpt17880507-25-defend209] Tried at Old Bailey, London 7th May 1788. Occupation Servant. Accused of grand larceny (feloniously stealing, on the 24th of April, a silver table spoon, value 10 s.). Found guilty. Sentenced to transportation seven years. CATHERINE HOUNSUM, Theft grand larceny, 7th May 1788. 355. CATHERINE HOUNSUM was indicted for feloniously stealing, on the 24th of April , a silver table spoon, value 10 s. the property of Henry George Little , Baronet . BENJAMIN NICHOLSON sworn. I am butler to Sir Henry George Little ; the prisoner was a servant in the house, assistant to the cook; she was dismissed the 24th of April; I believe the day she went away, I missed two table-spoons. How soon did you hear of them? - Not till Mr. Muncaster brought them to our house. JAMES MUNCASTER sworn. I am a pawnbroker, in Chandler-street, Grosvenor-square; on the 26th of April, the prisoner brought a silver table-spoon to me to pledge; by some questions I put to her, and her answers, I suspected it was not her own; she said, she bought it of a dustman for seven shillings; upon enquiry, I found she had lived at Sir Henry Little's; I went and found they had lost the spoon. (The spoon was produced in Court and deposed to by Nicholson.) PRISONER's DEFENCE. The spoon fell out of a dust cart; I took it up, and told the dustman of it; he said, I might take it to eat my porridge with. GUILTY . Tried by the first Middlesex Jury before Mr. RECORDER.[https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17880507-25-defend209&div=t17880507-25#highlight] Catherine was transported on the Lady Juliana which departed Portsmouth on 29 July 1789, and arrived in Port Jackson on 3 June 1790. Marriage to Thomas Daveny 17 July 1791 Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia, by Richard Johnson who entered in the register of St John's, Catherine 'Honsom' (she marked), Thomas signed 'Thomas Daveny'. Thomas Daveny, also known as Thomas Daveney had been a seaman on the HMS Sirius in the First Fleet and had been appointed superintendent of convicts at Toongabbie in April 1791. Thomas and Catherine's infant son Thomas died in November 1791. Burial register of St John's Parramatta 25 November 1791: 'Thomas the son of Thomas & Catherine Daphney buried'. His headstone is in St John's Cemetery Parramatta. 1795 Death of her husband Thomas Daveny. He was buried at St Johns Cemetery, Parramatta on 11 July 1795. After he died, Thomas Daveny's 'flock of goats, consisting of eighty-six males and females, [was] sold by public auction for three hundred and fifty-seven pounds fifteen shillings'. David Collins wrote that Catherine 'had for several years been deranged in her intellects'. However, she continued to run the farm after her husband's death, and four years later Collins gave her as a example of a successful Parramatta farmer in 1799, with fifty acres in wheat and twenty-three in maize. Land transaction in Old Registers 10 May 1801: Catherine Daveney sold Daveney Farm and premises.