Ann Inett escapes the gallows and

becomes an Australian colonial success

story ... and disappeared when she
returned to England ... But we think we've
found her gravesite in London!
And what happened to the descendants of this convict
'Founding Mother' of New South Wales ...? Well, we've got
some of the answers ...!

ANN Inett, a First Fleet convict dressmaker who narrowly avoided

dangling daintily from the gallows in her native Worcestershire,
later mothered two sons by a future Governor of New South
Wales, Philip Gidley King.
Those two boys, Norfolk (born 1789) and Sydney (1790), were
taken back to England by their father and found midshipmen
places in the Royal Navy.
Norfolk, born on the lonely Pacific island after which he was
named, died in Stepney, London, in 1839, aged just 50.

And we think Ann was buried in 1827 a short walk from

Norfolk's London home!

Some descendants of Sydney (named after the convict town of his

birth) quietly re-migrated from England to Rockhampton
(Queensland) in 1885 and established his and Ann's line in an
Australian family today!
But back to 1786 ... Ann had already had two children out of
wedlock when she was hauled before the Worcester City Assizes,
aged 31, on 11 March that year, charged with stealing a nice outfit
with spares, to wit, a petticoat, two aprons, a pair of shoes, three
muslin handkerchiefs, a silk hood, a gauze cap, a linen gown,
cotton stockings, and a muslin cap, all to the value of 21 shillings.
This was the wearing apparel of Susannah Brooks, whose house
had been entered forcibly in July, 1785.
Ann was arrested in Worcester a few days later and a search of
her lodgings revealed most of the booty sewn into a mattress.

Coincidentally, about the time of her arrest, a 15-year-old

servant, Sarah Bellamy, was found guilty at Worcester
Assizes of stealing fifteen pounds from her employers.
Eventually, she was a shipmate of Ann's on the First Fleet to
New South Wales and became another of Australia's
Founding Mothers.

Ann was sentenced to death, commuted to seven years'

transportation when the value of the goods was sensibly reduced
to the non-terminal sum of 12 shillings.
She sailed to Sydney on the Lady Penrhyn on 13 May, 1787. At
least seven of Ann's fellow convicts that day before the Assizes
were hanged,
We assume her parents, Samuel and Mary Inett, took care of her
children, Thomas and Constance, aged nine and six when she
sailed. The family lived in the village of Abberley, near Worcester,
where Ann was born in 1754 (baptised 25 August), and there are
still Inetts in the district today.

Our relentless editor, Patricia Jennings, has been sifting

through old Worcester newspaper reports ... stand by for
her latest news!

In Sydney, on 30 January, 1788, Ann was one of six women

selected by the 29-year-old Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to join
his party of Marines and convicts to colonise the uninhabited
Norfolk Island, in the Pacific, northeast of Sydney.
'He assured them they would not be hard work'd and wd. be
conveyed home to England if they chose it, upon expiration of
their sentences,' the ship's doctor, Arthur Bowes Smyth, wrote in
his journal.
One of the women was also from Worcestershire, Olivia
Gascoigne, 25, of the Parish of Severn Stoke. She was a servant
and stole 'with force of arms' £13/4/6 in coin and was sentenced to
hang, commuted, like Ann Inett, to seven years' transportation. On
Norfolk Island she married a convict London builder, Nathaniel
Lucas.
It is not known if she was acquainted with her fellow death
sentence recipient, Ann Inett. Both their crimes were opportunistic
and they were not members of some West Midlands Mob.
Indeed, in recent years, some family historians have even hinted
that Olivia might have had aristocratic blood. Heaven forbid!
She and Nathaniel had eleven children on Norfolk Island and two
more when they returned to Sydney in 1805. Four died in infancy.
In Sydney, he became one of the town's busiest builders, and
prospered even more from government tasks after John
Macarthur's Rum Corps seized power in 1808.
Nathaniel Lucas survived the return to normal government when
Governor Lachlan Macquarie swept away the Rum Corps in 1810,
but committed suicide by throwing himself into the Georges River
after an argument with Macquarie's favourite architect, Francis
Greenway, in 1818.
So Olivia went to live in Van Diemens Land with six of her children
and died there in 1830, aged 69.
But their story is a mere diversion from the events surrounding
Philip Gidley King and Ann Inett in 1788 ... King, according to a
contemporary, saw Ann as an attractive woman, small-framed,
dark-haired and with a neat and clean appearance.
When the party of twenty-three, including fifteen convicts, landed
at Norfolk Island on 6 March, 1788, from the HMS Supply, he
installed Ann as his housekeeper. Their first son, Norfolk, was
born on the island in January, 1789, and their second, Sydney, in
July, 1790, after their return to the mainland.
King was ordered by Governor Arthur Phillip to go to England that
year to report on the lamentable state of NSW. Ann stayed in
Sydney with the boys. Their irregular situation was unremarkable:
the cheerful Australian greeting, 'How are you, you bastard!' was
born about this time (and would become more popular with a
vigorous birthrate).
In London, on 11 March, 1791, King married the kind-hearted 26-
year-old Anna Josepha Coombe (on her birthday) and they sailed
for Sydney four days later so King could take up the appointment
as first Lieutenant Governor of Norfolk Island.
On arrival in Sydney, Anna was genuinely pleased to meet the
older Ann (of whom she had heard so much from Philip) and was
delighted to meet the littlies, Norfolk and Sydney, who would
eventually be added to her own family of five.
The Kings returned to England in 1796 and Norfolk and Sydney
went with them. The boys finished school there and entered the
Navy under the patronage of their father's friends.
What Ann thought about this gentle kidnapping of her
children is unknown.
But before that, Ann had met a 'respectable man' in Sydney,
Richard John Robinson, Superintendent of Government Mills. It
seems likely (particularly to enthusiasts for Georgian romances),
that this meeting was arranged by Philip Gidley King, ever-anxious
to do the right thing by the mistress who'd served him so well.
Robinson had come out on the Scarborough on the Second Fleet,
a hellish voyage controlled by grasping free enterprise contractors.
Of the 1017 convicts who left England, 267 died.
The couple married by special licence at St John's Church of
England, Parramatta, west of Sydney, on 18 November, 1792.
By the time King and Anna returned to NSW in 1800 in their vice-
regal role, Richard and Ann had a tavern in Pitt's Row, the
Yorkshire Grey, offering the finest fare. King had been appointed
Governor of NSW and had a devil of a time controlling the unruly
mercantile/political activities of John Macarthur and the Rum
Corps.
Ann was a free woman by now, an emancipated convict, and
although it wouldn't do for the Governor's Lady to entertain her, it
would be nice to think Ann popped into Government House by the
back door for the occasional natter, wouldn't it?
The Kings returned to England in 1806; he was in declining health
and died in 1808. In Sydney, the Rum Corps overthrew his
successor, William Bligh, in 1808, but Ann and Richard kept a low,
non-aligned profile throughout the troubled period of the John
Macarthur Dictatorship.
They probably enjoyed the period of the Macquarie era after 1810
that followed Rum Rule; the Governor and his Lady had a
deliberately-benign attitude towards emancipists, particularly those
who were in the blessed state of Holy Wedlock.
But by the end of the decade, when they were in their sixties, Ann
and Richard's thoughts turned to nostalgic retirement Back Home.
Richard went first.
A notice in the Sydney Gazette of Saturday, 29 May, 1819, under
Claims and Demands, said: 'Richard John Robinson intending to
proceed to England on the ship Surry requires claims to be
presented; and those indebted to settle their accounts. N.B. Mrs
Ann Robinson, wife of the Advertiser, remains in the Colony, with
full power to transact his business as though he himself were
present.' The Surry sailed on 31 July, 1819.
Ann left on the Admiral Cockburn at the beginning of March, 1820,
having finally disposed of their much-improved premises in Pitt
Row (which had become Pitt Street).
A notice in the Sydney Gazette of 8 January, 1820, said: 'To be
sold by private contract, all those extensive and well-known
premises, No, 105 Pitt Street, the present property and residence
of Mrs Ann Robinson, who is about to leave the Colony by the ship
Admiral Cockburn.
'These premises are desirably situate for Traders and Merchants,
having a house built of brick and stone, a well-accustomed
Butcher's Shop, an extensive garden well-stocked with Fruit
Trees, an excellent well of Pure Water, well-supplied all seasons;
also an extensive kitchen and Baker's Oven ...'
It sold quickly, worth millions and millions of today's dollars in the
heart of the Sydney CBD (a 111sq.m office suite, one of many in
the seven-storey building was offered for $635,000 in August,
2007. Downtown Duty Free and American Express Foreign
Exchange are on the ground floor!)
Ann boarded the Admiral Cockburn, having the care of the two
orphan sons of the well-known and dissipated Sydney solicitor,
Thomas Sterrop Amos, who had died, enormously wealthy, aged
43, in August, 1819. She was returning them to their grandparents
in London.
And guess who was among the passengers? Her old friend, the
wealthy Mary Reibey and her two daughters! They were bound for
a triumphant, boastful tour of the Old Country from which Mary
had been banished as a convict 27 years earlier.
What chats those rich lady lags must have enjoyed around the
captain's table!
Mary and her daughters returned to Australia (she was, after all,
the landlady of the Bank of NSW), but Ann and Richard remained
in England. Their movements are uncertain. Perhaps they went to
live in his native Yorkshire. Did they make contact with her earlier
children, now in their mid-forties and late-thirties? Did she meet
her sons by King: Norfolk and Sydney? She must have. Whatever,
Ann Inett licked the system! And so did Mary Reibey! What a
giggle!

The other 'respectable' King family

Of course, Philip Gidley King had a second, 'respectable' family ...

and this is how they fared ...
In 1817, while the Robinsons were still publicans at the Yorkshire
Grey in Sydney, the British Admiralty decided to complete the
mapping of 35,000km of Australian coastline still uncharted by
Matthew Flinders in 1801-03.
And the man they chose to carry out the survey was none other
than Phillip Parker King, the Norfolk Island-born legitimate son of
Philip Gidley King and his wife, Anna Josepha.
On being told of the appointment, He hurried to Cornwall from
London and married Harriet Lethbridge, a pretty 20-year-old. It
was a match his late father had been promoting a decade earlier!
In 1827, another King sister, Mary, married Harriet's brother,
Robert Copeland Lethbridge and settled with him on her land
grant near Penrith, NSW.
All three King sons were RN lieutenants, but Phillip Parker
was the legitimate one with the better connections.
In Sydney, too, was his sister, Anna Maria, who, in 1812, had
married Hannibal Macarthur, wheeling-and-dealing nephew of the
former Rum Corps dictator, John Macarthur and no friend of
emancipated convicts, such as Ann Inett.
So, in 1817, with Phillip Parker King emerging as head of the
family, they were moving into the arms of the would-be 'Bunyip
Aristocracy' of NSW ... the 'Pure Merinos' unsullied by the convict
taint.
By the time Phillip Parker King retired from the navy and brought
his mother, Anna Josepha to Sydney in 1832, all memory of their
18th century convict associations were, quietly, forgotten.
Phillip Parker quickly immersed himself in the affairs of Australia's
first multinational company, the Australian Agricultural Company.
And generations of the family have prospered.

The 'illegitimate' Kings

And what of the Australian-born sons of Ann Inett, Norfolk and

Sydney?
In 1825, Lieutenant Sydney Inett King RN married Mary Butler,
'third daughter of the late Mr R. Butler' of Worcester! In that very
Midlands town. Had he met Mary while visiting his mother there?
According to a very reliable Worcestershire historian: 'By then,
Sydney had enjoyed an illustrious career as a naval officer,
having seen active service against the French through the
Napoleonic Wars, being taken prisoner for a time in North
Carolina, and serving as part of the naval guard on St Helena,
when Napoleon was imprisoned there.
Sydney and his wife Mary went on to have six children, but the
family moved around the country with his naval postings and also
when he was appointed Chief Officer in the Revenue Coastguard
based in Harwich, and then Southend. He died in 1841, aged 51,
but his wife Mary long survived him, dying in London in 1880. .
Sydney's brother, Norfolk King also pursued an illustrious naval
career, seeing active service in the Dardanelles, in the
Napoleonic Wars and in the Anglo-American War. He died at
Stepney, London, in 1839, aged 50.'
When King, 35, married Mary Butler, aged 30, in Worcester, he
had transferred to the Revenue Coastguard on England's east
coast, north of the Thames Estuary.
His task was to patrol the North Sea waters off Yorkshire, Norfolk,
Suffolk and Essex watching for smugglers from the Continent.
Often, he had information supplied to him by spies on fishing
boats or trading vessels.
With Mary and their growing family in their house in Spring
Street, in the port town of Whitby, this was fairly secure, if
monotonous, work ... but in 1828, an event happened which gave
him great prestige among the honest merchants who had to
compete with the smuggling trade.
The June, 1828, issue of the newspaper, Whitby Repository and
Monthly Miscellany reported: 'On Friday, May 9th, a small
smuggler called the Goede Hoop, Ostend, laden with contraband
goods was brought into Whitby, having been captured by Lieut.
King, Chief Officer of the Preventative Service, at Whitby, with
three men and two pilots.
'The cargo, which was immediately landed at the Custom House,
consisted of about 300 kegs of spirits, and 100 packages of
tobacco, snuff, tea etc.
'She had on board five men, and three men supposed to belong
to the same vessel were taken by two of the Preventative
Boatmen, on the preceding night, and they were landing out of a
boat near Upgang, about a mile and a half north of Whitby.
'It is generally reported in the town that Lieut. King was informed
by Jacob Coupland and Thomas Douglass, two of the pilots, that
the smuggler was in the roads.
'We think it bad justice to the two pilots, to inform our readers that
the report is without foundation, as the two men had no idea,
whatever, why they were called up until told by Lieut. King, and
previous to that time, they had not seen anything like a smuggler
in the roads.'
(The last paragraph may be an attempt by the two pilots to let
any smugglers know that they didn't sneakily inform on them. In
any case, there are no reports of pilots Coupland or Douglass
being found later in some Whitby laneway with their throats slit).
The Whitby Panorama had some more details of the contraband:
'The cargo ... consisted of 160 half ankers of Geneva, 40 ditto of
spirits, 114 ditto of brandy, one chest and two casks of tea, 65
casks of shag tobacco, 10 casks of twist ditto, and 10 chests of
snuff.'
The smugglers were fined one hundred pounds each (a huge
sum) and committed to York Castle in default of payment. They
were named as: Adrian Vron, Peter Arken, Masteal Duboes
Henderyk Vandierenson, Cornelius Remons, Daniel Busk, Peter
Cornou and Seavereus Antonius Dejaeyer.

(Whitby, coincidentally, was the place where the discoverer

of eastern Australia in 1770, Yorkshire-born James Cook,
began his career as a merchant naval apprentice in 1747.
And, by further coincidence, Cook named and explored
Norfolk Island during his second Pacific voyage in 1774.
It was probably Cook's reports on the island's valuable pine
{ships' masts} and flax {sails} which encouraged the British
Government's hasty settlement of the island in 1788.)

This smuggling event of 1828 event might have remained in

obscurity had it not been the generosity in 1980 of an
anonymous donor, who gave some items of Sydney King
memorabilia to the State Library of NSW.
The items included a painting of Sydney King RN, several
photographs ... and 'Silver snuff box inscribed ''Presented by the
Preventive Crew at Whitby to Lieut. S. King. in token of respect &
for his great exertion in capturing the Smuggler Goede Hoop of
Ostend, 9th May 1828''.'
Goede Hoop (Good Hope, as in Cape of) was a common name
given to Dutch/Belgian sailing ships of the period. This particular
Goede Hoop was a small cutter of smuggling notoriety, based in
the Belgian port of Ostend, opposite the English coast.
When Sydney King died in 1841, his widow, Mary, took the family
to live in the modest south London district of Camberwell.
It is supposed that their circumstances became financially
straightened after the untimely death of the family bread-winner.
Mary died there aged 84.
But who was this anonymous donor, supposedly a
descendant of King's, and what was he/she doing in Sydney,
Australia, nearly 30 years ago?
The donor was, in fact, Sarah Luita King, great-great
granddaughter of Ann Inett and Philip Gidley King!
She was known as Luita and was part of a branch of the family
which had been living, quietly, in Australia since 1884/85!
Luita, who never married, was 82 when she presented her
material to the library. She said she was the last member of the
Ann Inett/Philip Gidley King line in Australia to bear the King
name.
Luita died in retirement in 1987 at Bateau Bay, on the NSW
Pacific Central Coast dreaming, we fancy, of Norfolk Island,
beyond the horizon.
Her parents, Robert Colston King and Annie Edith King, (née
Docwra), came to Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, in
1885.
Robert Colston King (b. Peckham, Surrey, 20 June, 1860) was
the son of Sydney Inett King's son, also Sydney, and his wife,
Adelaide Jemima, who was named, like the Australian city,
after the beautiful German Hanoverian princess who married
King William IV.
(Father Sydney was born in Whitby in 1827 and was sent to
the Royal Naval School, in St Giles, Camberwell, a charitable
private institution founded by old sea dogs for the sons of
Naval and Marine officers who couldn't afford to give their
boys decent education.
When Sydney King RN died in 1841, Mary and the family went
to live near Sydney Jr, the hope of the family, who was a 14-
year-old scholar at the Royal Naval School.
In the English Census of 1881, Robert Colston, was listed as
single and living at home with his family at 66 Asylum Road,
Peckham.
The head of the household was his father, Sydney King (jr),
who had made the best of his schooling and was listed as an
'actuary and accountant'.
But it was a family whose fortunes were in decline.
Robert and Annie's (b. London, 29 August, 1864) marriage in
the south London suburb of Camberwell was registered in the
first quarter of 1884.
Robert Colston and Annie Edith King's children were:
Twins, Annie Daisy (b.13 June, 1884, in London, England, d.
4 October, 1884 in London), Beatrice Violet (b. 13 June 1884
in London, England, d. 4 August 1916, in Rockhampton, Qld).
She married Frederick Church, in Rockhampton.
Edith Adelaide (b. 7 March,1888 in Rockhampton, Qld, d 21
January, 1934, Rockhampton). She married Charles Thomas
Johnson.
Gertrude King (b. 21 January, 1890 in Rockhampton, d. 2
February, 1977 in Umina, NSW).
Lesley Elizabeth (b. 11 May, 1892 in Rockhampton, d. 26
August, 1969, Biloela, Qld). She married George McAdam.
Sydney (another daughter) (b. 6 April,1894, Sydney NSW, d.
23 November, 1953, in Sydney NSW).
Mary Eleanor (b. 19 December, 1895, in Sydney NSW, d. 1
February,1977, Sydney NSW). She married Fred Hook.
Sarah Luita (b. 19 January, 1898 in Rockhampton, d. 1
March, 1987, Bateau Bay, NSW).
Phyllis (b. 27 December, 1903, Rockhampton, Qld, d. 29
December, 1903, Rockhampton).
Alfred Docwra (b. 20 February, 1907, Rockhampton, Qld, d.
30 December, 1976, Sydney, NSW).
But what took Robert and Annie and their infant daughter,
Beatrice, from the austere comforts of southeast London to
the relative wilds of tropical Rockhampton, 600km north of
Brisbane, in 1885?
Perhaps it was the fantastic reports of the discovery of rich
gold and copper deposits at inland Mount Morgan in 1882.
This was the new Eldorado, drawing immigrants from all over
the globe.
Some members of their extended family believe they came to
Australia under the Bounty Scheme in which the fares of
assisted immigrants were paid out of the sale of Crown Land.
Robert Colston King told the Queensland immigration people
in London he was a carpenter, a very desirable occupation
under the scheme.
He was, in fact, a 'mercantile clerk' ... and lost a finger as a
carpenter soon after arriving in Rockhampton.
Whatever, they had none of the advantages of their 'legitimate'
King associates.
Eventually, the growing family settled in a house in Weinholt
Street, Rockhampton, and Luita, born in 1898, trained in the
glamorous new career of stenographer.
By the late-1920s, with the Great Depression looming and
many businesses facing ruin, there were only four members
of the King family living at Weinholt Street: father Robert,
mother, Annie, Luita, who was still described as a
stenographer (and known as 'Aunt Louie' to her extended
nieces and nephews), and her sister, Sydney, a woman
chosen to carry the famous family name!
Sydney's job was 'home duties', a task she would perform
tirelessly until her death in 1953.
But in the late-1920s, the Kings decided to move again. This
time, it was 1500km south to the Sydney suburb of Concord.
Robert, Annie, Luita and Sydney bought a house in Tremere
Street, near the small peninsula jutting between Canada Bay
and Exiles Bay, in western Sydney Harbour,
(Concord is the place where the British Government detained
a group of French-Canadian political exiles in the 1840s, after
convict transportation to NSW had ceased, officially. The
Canadian Exiles enjoyed much sympathy from the local
people.)
Father Robert ('Bob', he was called) died in 1938, mother,
Annie, in 1947, and sister, Sydney, in 1953.
Only Luita was left.
In 1980, she presented herself at the State Library of NSW, in
Macquarie Street, and said words to the effect: 'I am the last
of a line of the Kings.'
And this descendant of First Fleeters handed over her most
precious mementos to be looked after forevermore.

ENDS