Harriet Sampson is somewhat of an enigma. Her appearance in official records and newspapers is substantial, yet some details remain remarkably difficult to pin down. According to convict records made in Australia, she claimed her native place to be Inverness, but no record has been found of her in that region. There are however records of her life and alleged crimes in England’s capital city where she has family roots.

Harriet was accused of feloniously stealing in London in September 1811, but acquitted when her accuser and witnesses did not appear. Less than four months later she married James Sleigh at Christ Church Greyfriars, and by April 1813 had two sons.

Just days before Christmas 1816, Harriet was arrested for stealing fifteen yards of poplin from a haberdasher on Grafton Street. Reporting the arrest, one newspaper described her as “a genteel young woman”.

She appeared at the Old Bailey on 15 January 1817, where the shop man and constable gave evidence. Despite begging for mercy “not for myself, but for two fatherless children”, Harriet was found guilty. It’s believed her husband wasn’t dead, but that he had abandoned his family.

Newgate and Elizabeth Fry

On 8 March, Harriet’s death sentence was respited to transportation for life, and for the next year she was confined to London’s Newgate prison. There Harriet came into contact with social reformer, Elizabeth Fry who formed the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate, and made a significant difference to the prisoners’ conditions and behaviour. A memoir about Elizabeth, written by her daughters, provides plenty of information about her endeavours and references pertinent to Harriet’s life.

When it came time for female convicts, including Harriet, to be transferred to the convict ship Maria (I), Elizabeth Fry accompanied them in a hackney coach. She secured patchwork supplies to provide occupation on the voyage and potential sales in the colony, and organised a school for the children on board. On her final visit to the ship before leaving the convicts to their fate, Fry read aloud from the Bible and prayed for them. It was reported her actions and leave-taking moved the women to tears, and attracted attention from the crew and those on surrounding ships.

It was some weeks after boarding the ship at Deptford on Saturday 21 March 1818, that the ship sailed bound for New South Wales on a relatively uneventful journey. At sea, on Saturday 8 August, Harriet was examined by the ship’s Surgeon Superintendent, when she suddenly became ill and vomited some blood. She saw him again the following day, complaining of “great weight [and] oppression at the stomach”. It seems she recovered, as he made no further record of examining her.

Arrival in the colony

The Maria (I) arrived in Sydney on 17 September 1818. Significantly, another convict ship, the Isabella (I), arrived three days earlier, and one of its prisoners was George Kenniwell, who would soon cross paths with Harriet. Harriet was one of 26 convicts who disembarked, and with her son James Edward who had travelled with her, was sent to the Female Factory at Parramatta. It’s not clear what had happened to her other son.

The first Female Factory was on the second floor of the gaol, close to the banks of Parramatta River, and under the supervision of local magistrate, Reverend Samuel Marsden. Referred to as the “Black Hole of Parramatta”, it housed women and children. It was their sleeping quarters as well as a wool and linen factory, with “an atmosphere reeking with the odour of greasy fleece”.

Harriet would have left before the 1821 completion of the new Female Factory building, designed by convict architect, Francis Greenway. However, when she arrived at the first Factory, conditions were bad and food limited; drunkenness, prostitution, and crime were high. It was at its most crowded, and many women were left to their own devices to find a bed wherever they could.

Strong circumstantial evidence suggests a letter to Elizabeth Fry, sent from Parramatta and dated 10 July 1820, was from Harriet. It offers thanks and lengthy explanation of how the moral and religious guidance of Fry and her Association, led Harriet to understand her wrongdoing and path to forgiveness.

Marriage and children

It was probably around this time, if not before, that Harriet met George Kenniwell, who arrived in Sydney the same week she did. On 7 May 1821, they petitioned the Governor for permission to marry, supported by Reverend Samuel Marsden, a vocal proponent of convicts marrying to combat “vice, idleness and depravity”. The petition was denied, and they tried again in October, when they received permission, but no marriage took place. This was possibly due to George’s son, Charles Hodges, being born to another convict, Rebecca Hodges, the same month.

Harriet and George applied for permission again and eventually married in December 1822. By that time Harriet had given birth to George’s daughter, Elizabeth. Just days after their marriage, George left on the Lady Nelson to continue serving his sentence at Port Macquarie, almost 400 km north of Sydney. Harriet was granted permission to travel with him, but didn’t make the journey until August 1823, after the birth of their daughter Sarah. Five more children followed, including my 3x great-grandmother Ellen, born 8 June 1824. Sometime after Ellen’s birth they probably returned to Sydney where George was assigned to Dr Short.

Harriet first applied for a ticket of leave in 1825. She eventually received it in December 1828, ten years after she arrived. Her application included a letter of recommendation which described her as “an honest, sober, and industrious character”, and summarised her assignments with Mrs Shelley and Mr James Larra, both of Parramatta, and Mr Alex Warren of Sydney.

A court case

In early 1836, Harriet and George were witnesses in a high profile Supreme Court case of libel brought by their local magistrate and sometime landlord, John Wighton. An extensive, front-page newspaper report described events in the Hunter Region’s William’s River, including cattle stealing, illegal alcohol, bribes, and disputes between the plaintiff and various witnesses. Interestingly, one of the Kenniwell’s sons, born three years earlier, was named Alexander Wighton Kenniwell.

Involvement as a witness in the case doesn’t appear to have significantly affected Harriet’s application for a conditional pardon, approved in 1837, when she was the mother of nine children. Five years later George was killed in a drunken argument with another convict. The loss of her husband was surely difficult for Harriet, and changed her life circumstances again.

Legacy

Despite being only four feet and nine inches tall, Harriet must have been a formidable woman to have survived the poor conditions of Newgate prison, the trials of a four-month journey on a convict ship, and motherhood and conditions in the harsh world of the early colony.

Living out her life in New South Wales, Harriet died in Maitland on 4 October 1849, her age given as 59. She left a family whose descendants are numerous.

Selected references

‘Tuesday’s Post’, Bury and Norwich Post, 25 December 1816, p. 2, FindMyPast.co.uk, accessed 22 May 2021.

Trial of Harriet Sampson, 18 September 1811, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (t18110918-107), accessed 22 May 2021.

Trial of Harriet Slea, 15 January 1817, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (t18170115-25), accessed 22 May 2021.

England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935, FindMyPast.co.uk, accessed 28 April 2021.

Fry, Katharine & Rachel Elizabeth Cresswell (eds), Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry: With Extracts From Her Journal and Letters, John Hatchard & Son, London, 1847.

Harriet Sleigh, Maria (I), 1818, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825, NSW State Archives, Reel 6010, 4/3507 p.13.

George Kenniwell, Isabella (I,) 1818, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825, NSW State Archives, Reel 6019, 4/3864 pp.26-27, 380-281.

Harriet Sleigh, Maria (I), 1818, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825, NSW State Archives, Reel 6011, 4/3509 p.103.

Harriet Sleigh, Maria (I), 1818, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825, NSW State Archives, Fiche 3249, 4/1874 p.122.

‘The Convict Press’, The Colonist, 24 March 1836, pp. 1-3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31717817.

‘Coroner’s Inquest’, The Hunter River Gazette; and Journal of Agriculture, Commerce, Politics, and News, 8 January 1842, p. 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article228140773.

Harriet Sleigh, Maria (I), 1818, Conditional Pardon, NSW, Australia, Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, 1791-1867, NSW State Archives, 39/144, Ancestry.com, accessed 28 April 2021.

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Assignments, NRS 12194, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 May 2021.

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842, Ancestry.com, accessed 28 April 2021.

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, 1791-1867, Ancestry.com, accessed 28 April 2021.

New South Wales, Australia, Tickets of Leave, 1824-1867, Ancestry.com, accessed 28 April 2021.

Thomas Prosser, ‘Surgeon’s Journal of Her Majesty’s Female Convict Ship Maria’, 7 March – 25 September 1818, UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1857, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England, ADM 101/49/1, Ancestry.com, accessed 22 May 2021.

Barker, Geoff, ‘The First Female Factory, Prince Alfred Square, 1803-1821’, Parramatta History and Heritage, 2015, https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/blog/2015/08/12/the-first-female-factory-prince-alfred-square-1803-1821, accessed 22 May 2021.

Damousi, Joy, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997.

Female Factory Online, ‘The Factory Above the Gaol: Australia’s First Female Factory’, https://femalefactoryonline.org/about/history/the-factory-above-the-gaol/, accessed 22 May 2021.

Pollon, Frances, Parramatta: The Cradle City of Australia: Its History From 1788, The Council of the City of Parramatta, Sydney, 1983.