Ann Owston

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Maureen Withey on 25th April 2020

National Archives. Ref: HO 47/6/73 Certificate/memorial of Henry Gould and William Kempe concerning several convicts attainted on the Home Circuit in 1787 for whom 'some favourable Circumstances' appeared on/after their trial and now recommended for mercy on the conditions set against their names: Surrey Assizes at Croydon on 8 August 1787 6. Ann Owston, for stealing goods, value £1:5:0, from the shop of William Baynes. 7 years transportation.

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Eric Harry Daly on 7th January 2013

Ann Owston was sentenced to death at the 9 August 1787 Croydon Surrey Assizes for the theft of eight yards of muslin from a shop in St. Georges parish, Southwark. She was reprieved soon afterwards to seven years transportation and was held in gaol until about April 1789, when she embarked upon the Lady Juliana, transport, age given as 33. Eight weeks after landing at Sydney Cove Owston was among mostly female convicts sent to Norfolk Island, arriving 7 August 1790. In July 1791 Owston was issued with a pig under Major Ross’s plan to encourage convicts to become self-sufficient. The First Fleet convict William Blunt (b. c. 1756, tried Old Bailey) received a pig on the same day. Her position on the list after his name indicates that their association dates about this time. In July Blunt was recorded supporting one other person on a one acre allotment at Sydney Town, the island’s main settlement. They were probably still subjected to convict discipline and required to devote part of their time to government tasks; but most convicts in this position were allowed a shorter working week to enable them to attend to their land. By the end of the year the couple had moved to a 12 acre farm at Grenville Vale lot no.20.In June 1794 they were described as a childless married couple; they had probably been among the many couples married by the Rev. Richard Johnson when he briefly visited the island in November 1791 with no record of the individual ceremonies surviving, Blunt was recorded as a constable in 1805 and died on the island in April 1807. The couple appear to have separated, however, and Owston returned to Sydney some time during the years 1797-1801. In 1806, she was reported as childless and a resident of New South Wales. She was living alone in a house in the Hawkesbury district when she signed a deposition with a mark X on 15 May 1810 stating that she had been raped by Lawrence Finland at her home. He was acquitted when she failed to appear at his trial at the Sydney Court of Criminal Jurisdiction. Her burial on 17 September 1811 was recorded in the register of St. Phillips, Sydney.