Uttering forged notes is a concept that sounds a bit foreign to modern ears. It’s the use of forged money with the intent to defraud, and my 5x great-grandmother was charged with it in 1823. According to the Bank of England Museum, use of forged notes increased in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and was a capital crime.

Margaret Boyle was 25, and the mother of two young children, when she was arrested. Her case was reported at length in the newspaper. It’s possibly the longest and most detailed report of one of my convict ancestors. The evidence against Margaret does seem rather damning, even allowing for bias and journalistic license.

FORGED HOLYWELL NOTES.

Margaret Boyle, 26, and Catherine Kewley, 28, were indicted for uttering a forged Holywell note for £1 with intent to defraud Messrs. Richard and Charles Sankey.

Mark Barlow, assistant to Mr. C_, draper, Liverpool, stated that the prisoner Boyle came to his master’s shop, and tendered a Holywell note in payment for some articles which she proposed to purchase. On examining it he perceived it was a forgery, and asked her where she got it? She said her husband travelled in Wales, and that he had taken it there. She added he was at the door, and she would call him; she then went out, and never returned, leaving the note in his hands.

William Lace, a man who was employed by the Liverpool police to purchase some notes from the prisoner, detailed a number of interviews which he had with her for that purpose; he obtained from her at different times ten or a dozen notes, for which he paid her 10s. each. The prisoner Kewley was present several times when these purchases were made, and took a part in the transactions. At last Mr. Miller gave him some marked money, with which he paid for his notes and Miller took her into custody with that money in her possession.

A woman named Parry, with whom the prisoners lodged, was called to confirm facts, but she contradicted him in several essential points.

Mr Justice Bayley put it to the Jury, whether they thought it worth while to hear any more evidence after these contradictions.

The Jury, after deliberating for a short time, expressed a wish to proceed.

Mr. Jones, who was Counsel for the prosecution, applied to his Lordship to be allowed to prove the examination of Parry before the Magistrates, in order to show that she then told a different story. The Learned Gentleman said he knew it was formerly held that the party who called a witness, must take him for better or for worse, and could not call evidence to contradict him, but he believed there had been some recent decisions to the contrary.

His Lordship, after taking Mr. Justice Holroyd’s opinion on the subject, decided that evidence was admissible.

The examination was then proved by Mr. Miller, and read. It was directly contrary to Parry’s present evidence, and fully confirmed Lace.

William Evans, a clerk in the Flintshire Bank, proved that the notes were forgeries. What purported to be the signature of Mr. Richard Sankey, was engraved, and afterwards traced over with a pen.

The prisoners called no witnesses, and the Jury found them both Guilty–Death. After the verdict was returned, his Lordship said, that, in his opinion, the Jury decided perfectly right. He was glad when he saw the evidence that they had not stopped the case at his suggestion.

– ‘Forged Holywell Notes’, Lancaster Gazette, 12 April 1823 p. 4.

Margaret was held at Lancaster Castle, with her initial commitment there in January, and the trial three months later. The gaol register records her as being born in Dublin, and that her husband was a travelling salesman. It also says one of her children was with her. This was probably her son Henry who was only a baby. The other child, toddler Sarah, was apparently in Liverpool, perhaps with her father or another relative.

Margaret’s death sentence was reprieved and became transportation. Along with other convicts she had to travel more than 250 miles from Lancaster Castle to Woolwich, where the convict ship Brothers was due to leave for New South Wales. She was put aboard the ship on 6 November 1823, a couple of weeks before it departed. Margaret’s children, Sarah and Henry who were both under five, are documented as travelling with her aboard ship. I can only imagine how difficult it was for them and their mother.

Social reformer, Elizabeth Fry recorded the experience of convicts, including those from Lancaster Castle transported to the Brothers in 1823, creating a vividly horrible picture of their circumstances.

The mode in which they were brought on board, long continued to be highly objectionable; they arrived from the country in small parties, at irregular intervals, having been conveyed on the outside of stage coaches, by smacks, or hoys, or any conveyance that offered, under the care of a turnkey [who would] come alongside … with a group of unfortunate creatures under his charge; wayworn, and ill; or perhaps a solitary outcast brought upon deck, lamenting her misfortunes in the broad dialect of some far distant county; a small bundle of insufficient clothing being frequently the only preparation for the long voyage before her. In some instances, their children, equally destitute as themselves, accompanied them; in others, their sufferings were increased by sudden separation from their young infants. Often did [Fry and her colleagues] quit these scenes, in which they had passed nearly the whole day not to return to their homes, but to go to Whitehall, to represent such case; that the necessary letters should be dispatched without the lost of a post, ordering the restoration of these poor nurslings to their mothers, before the ship should sail.

In addition to these evils, the women were almost invariably more or less ironed, sometimes cruelly so …. There is in existence a list of the names of women, received in irons, on board the Brothers, which sailed in 1823; it was taken down at the time, by direction of Mrs. Fry, in order that a representation might be made upon the subject to the Government. By this list, it appears that twelve arrived on board handcuffed. Eleven women were sent to the ship “iron-hooped round their legs and arms, and chained to each other. The complaints of these women were very mournful: they were not allowed to get up or down from the coach without the whole being dragged together; some of them had children to carry, they received no help or alleviation to their suffering.” A woman from Cardigan travelled with a hoop of iron round her ancle, until she arrived at Newgate, where the sub-matron insisted on having it taken off. In driving the rivet towards her leg to do so, it gave her so much pain, that she fainted under the operation. She stated, that during a lengthened imprisonment, she wore an iron-hoop round her waist; from that a chain connected with another hoop round her leg; above the knee, from which a second chain was fastened to a third hoop round her ancle: in the hoop that went round her waist were, she said, two bolts or fastenings in which her hands were confined when she went to bed at night, which bed was only of straw.

– Excerpt from from: 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, pages 443-445.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly given Margaret reportedly said she received the forged bank note from her husband, within months Richard Boyle was arrested in Liverpool and found guilty of uttering base silver, meaning coins. Richard was transported to New South Wales on the Speke, and is recorded in various convict and colonial records as Richard Boyle, John Boyle and John Doyle.

It’s unlikely Margaret and Richard Boyle reconnected in the colony. Both went on to marry again, Margaret in 1825 to sail maker William Thurgate, and Richard to Elizabeth Byron in 1837.

Margaret and William Thurgate had several children together, and their eldest daughter, Mary Jane Thurgate, is my 4x great-grandmother. Sometime following William’s death in Sydney in 1846, Margaret re-located to the Sassafras Range near Shoalhaven, closer to her children. She died there in 1857.

Selected references

‘Forged Holywell Notes’, Lancaster Gazette, 12 April 1823, p. 4.

People’s Collection Wales, ‘Holywell Bank one pound note, 6 November 1820’, https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/7002#, accessed 13 November 2024.

Bank of England Museum, ‘Counterfeit and imitation notes’, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/museum/online-collections/banknotes/counterfeit-and-imitation-notes, accessed 13 November 2024.

Bank of England, ‘Freshfields Prison Correspondence 1781-1840’, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/freshfields-prison-correspondence-1781-1840, accessed 13 November 2024.

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.

Register entry for Margaret Boyle, Lancaster Gaol Lancashire Register Of Crown Cases 1820-1826, UK Prison Commission Records 1770-1951, Ancestry.com, accessed 15 November 2024.

Convicts under sentence of transportation, A calendar of the crown prisoners confined in HM Gaol at Lancaster Castle, August 1823 – August 1829, Lancashire Record Office, Australian Joint Copying Project, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2123101633, accessed 15 November 2024.

Entry for Margaret Boyle, Muster of Brothers Convicts 8 May 1824, Australia, List of Convicts with Particulars, 1788-1842, Ancestry.com, accessed 15 November 2024.