Catherine White

60

Eric Harry Daly on 8th January 2013

Catherine White, sentenced to 7 years transportation for stealing £65 in notes at Maidstone Kent in Mar 1789. Mentioned in the Diary of Ralph Clarke, and officer of the Marines Stationed on Norfolk Island 1791-1792: On the 2nd May 1791 Mary and Catherine White were caught stealing corn. Walked out to Charlotte Field, now called Queensborough, when Mr. Doidge caught Catharen White and Mary Higgins stealing the corn out of the Public Fields – I ordered him to put them in irons and to be confined in the Jail. Katy White was ten years younger than Mary but she was quite a gal. ‘A good looking woman but a great thief,’ Ralph Clarke noted in his diary. Mary and she met on the ‘Lady Juliana’, spent eighteen months together on that boat, lived through it all side by side. The two women got on like a house on fire. Mary could see a bit of herself as a young woman in Katy – she liked her fiery temper and refusal to be cowed. They were street sisters, both from the same rough world so there were no recriminations when the two of them spent a long, uncomfortable night together in Clarke’s new jail. They were both professional, copped their fair due with stoicism and a certain grandeur. They had been caught doing what they had been doing for weeks. It’s a numbers game, stealing, sooner or later you’re going to get caught. They both knew that feeling. The irons weighed their limbs down as they tried to sleep, but neither of them could achieve any more than the briefest nap. The long night was spent in whispered conversation and occasional laughter, bravado mixed with fear. Clarke had been apoplectic when Dodge reported the breach of rules. He’d had enough. It was time for action. He’d snarled the order for the irons, found a use for his new jail and carried on quite enough to force another few hours of work out of the rest of the women before he stormed down the track to Kingston, Dodge at his side, to report this latest catastrophe to the Governor. Everything was personal to Clarke, each infringement a direct blow at his credibility. The poor tragic little sod minged and grizzled to the Governor over dinner, and between them these two great men determined an example must be made. Each congratulated the other on their strength and fortitude, joined hands in a pact of mutual self-satisfaction and retired to their beds. Mary and Katy lay in the dirt at Queensborough and waited for the dawn.