Harriot Wray

71

Robin Sharkey on 6th December 2016

Four of the five women taken out of Newgate for the Royal Admiral were: Harriet Wray, Mary Graham, Elizabeth Powell and Elizabeth Terry. All were young women - Harriett 17, Elizabeth Terry only 15 and married, Elizabeth Powell 19 and married, and Mary Graham aged 27.

71

Robin Sharkey on 6th December 2016

Harriet Wray was transported on “Royal Admiral’ convict ship arriving October 1792. She was 17 years old. Tried at the Old bailey on 28 March 1792 for assaulting a man in the street and stealing his watch. Harriet Wray was probably a prostitute. The evidence from the Old Bailey was that she was obviously destitute, and at the age of 17 had claimed she already had two children. Her poverty was so extreme that she had no money to pay for a bed in a lodging house (which were very cheap anyway), that after several days she had not eaten for two days, hat even the lodging house keeper took pity on her, loaned her 2 shillings and allowed her to sleep, and that the Bow St runner who found her to arrest her said in evidence that she was “in a deplorable state”. Poor Harriet. During the day of the events that got her transported, Sunday 11th march 1792, she was looking for a lodging and approached Ann Smith, a keeper of a lodging-house at 7 Cockpit Alley, off Drury Lane. Ann Smith told her she couldn’t trust her (i.e. to pay for the lodging) so Harriet said she would pawn something on Monday morning, the next day. That night Harriet was out on Great Russell Street as was a tailor named Lawrence Goodwin who had been to dinner in Stanhope Street with a friend, drinking freely. There were two versions of what happened next: Lawrence Goodwin admitted in evidence that had seen Harriet several times before in Russel-Street, but had never spoke to her; that she might have asked him for something to drink. He claimed that at about eight o’clock on the Sunday night he came across Harriet together with two other girls, that they rumbled him on Great Russell Street and stole items from him - his hat, neckcloth and pocket handkerchief, a pair of gloves, penknife and monies, but most valuably, his silver watch. He claimed Harriet laid hold of him first and that it was definitely Harriet who took his watch. He claimed he laid hold of Harriet and then one of the other girls came and stuck her nails into his hand; that also Harriet had fast hold of him by the breast, and that the girls threw him down off the pavement and ran off. Harriet claimed in her defence that Lawrence Goodwin “was very much in liquor”, that he asked her to take him home (for sex) but that when they got there he said he was a married man and known in the neighbourhood and so did not like to go upstairs. Instead he gave her 3s 6d “to have connections in the passage”. By implication, this is what then happened, because Harriet claimed that “when she went to go” [out of the passageway] she kicked something and on stooping to pick it up found it was a watch. True to her word, Harriet gave the watch the next morning to Ann Smith to pawn as security for her board at the lodging house, asking Smith to pawn it for one guinea. She told Ann Smith she had two children by a young man and that it was he who owned the watch (the claim of the two children may have been untrue). Smith took the watch to Collins the pawn-broker in Wild Street. On the Thursday, Harriet went back to Ann Smith’s telling her she had not eaten for two days and Ann Smith took pity on her, lent her two shillings and let her go to bed. It was then that Harriet let her have a duplicate of the watch. Ann Smith then pawned this duplicate to a different pawnbroker - Richard Rozell. Clearly, Smith was canny and was not going back to the same pawnbroker. Lawrence Goodwin went to the Bow Street officers and complained of robbery, obviously identifying Harriet Wray. However, he must not have complained for some days because Harriet was at least at Ann Smith’s, sleeping, the next Thursday. No evidence is reported about this delay. Roger Gastrell, one of the Bow St runners gave evidence that “I went after the girl, “AND FOUND HER IN A DEPLORABLE STATE” (emphasis added); she said, you are come about the watch; I told her she had better tell the truth: she said the watch was pawned in Wild-street, at Collins’s” Harriet Wray was found guilty of stealing only, but not of stealing violently from the person as charged, as this would have brought the death sentence. She was sentenced instead to seven years’ transportation. Kentish Gazette Tuesday 10 April 1792 p3 Wednesday, the Recorder made his report to the King in Council of the Prisoners in Newgate capitally convicted in January and February Sessions, when the two following were ordered to be executed on Wednesday next, viz Twenty were reprieved during pleasure. … SO HARRIET WRAY WAS NOT YET REPRIEVED. Taken by Lighter up the Thames to the convict chip: Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette - Thursday 17 May 1792 page 2: “Friday, 54 transports, of whom five were women, were removed from Newgate on board a Lighter, to be conveyed to the Royal Admiral, lying at Gravesend, and bound for Botany Bay. “It is hoped the above transports may be useful hands in the whale fishery of New South Wales." June 1801 - was living on Norfolk Island. Her own sentence should have expired and she should have been free. 26 June 1801 Was witness to marriage of William Hutchinson (per ‘Hillsborough’) to Mary Cooper alias Chapman (per ‘Brittannia 1798). Name recorded as Harriet “Ray”. 2 April 1802 - Departed Norfolk Island 24 July 1802 - returned to Norfolk island, free woman sentence expired. Re-victualed as a free woman 1805 Muster, listed as convict on stores, Norfolk Island DIED 3 December 1807, Norfolk Island.