The life of Rebecca Furness.
Transported to Australia for life at the tender age of
18, Rebecca Furness' experience as a convict represents a classic example of how
a person's experience as a convict resulted in significantly improved
circumstances. She was able to transform herself from a petty criminal in
Norwich into the matriarch of a pioneering Australian family. Her punishment -
a death sentence commuted to transportation for life - was, in fact, an
opportunity for her to build a better life. This improvement in circumstances
is not something that happened for most convicts, and in that respect she
represents a small, yet significant, minority.
Like many people born over 200 years ago, Rebecca's
origins are a little murky. Baptised in St Augustine's in the centre of Norwich
in 1805, parish records record her birth date as 7 November 1805.[1] Many
of her convict records indicate a birth date of 1803 or 1805, and on a memorial
plaque her birth year is given as 1804. Her parents, Matthew Furness and Mary
Tucker, are not well documented other than on the parish baptism register. Her
family name is variously spelled and transcribed as Furnace, Furniss and
Furness, and her given name is listed as Elizabeth in her baptismal record.
Despite these variations, as a convict she was known as Rebecca Furness with an
alias of Elizabeth, and for the purpose of this study that is name being used
in conjunction with her birth date of 7 November 1805.
Little is known of Rebecca's activities between her birth
and arrests. It is unlikely she attended any formal education, as she was
unable to write, and there were no universal education laws applicable in
England during her childhood. In April 1821, she was committed to the Norwich City
Gaol under suspicion of stealing a cotton gown from Maria Fairweather.[2]
The outcome of that charge is unknown, but on 9 January 1822, Rebecca was again
remanded to the City Gaol in Norwich.[3]
She was indicted for two crimes - one in conjunction with another young woman
Mary Callow (alias Barker). [4] They
were jointly accused of stealing from the dwelling house of Robert Murrell:
·
three printed
cotton gowns
·
a cotton table
cloth
·
a cotton shawl
·
a linen apron
·
a cotton
handkerchief
·
a cloth shawl
Additionally, Rebecca was accused of committing the capital
crime of housebreaking, and stealing a variety of items from Elizabeth Deynes
in Tombland, including:
·
a silk umbrella
and case
·
three tea chests
·
a silver spoon
·
two metal sugar
bowls.[5]
At the Norwich Assizes on 5 August 1822, Rebecca was
sentenced to death, although the judge then reprieved her before leaving the
city. Rebecca was held in gaol at Norwich until 8 May of 1833, she (along with
her co-conspirator Mary Callow) was removed from the Norwich City Gaol to the
convict ship Mary at Woolwich,
London.[6]
Rebecca's voyage to Australia on the Mary was a little different from the
average convict voyage. The Mary left
Woolwich on 10 June 1823 under the command of Captain J.F. Steel, with 126
female convicts, a number of their children and some other passengers aboard.[7]
The ship's surgeon, Dr Harman Cochrane, kept a very extensive journal in which
he documented the various illnesses afflicting women and their children - six
of the convict's children died on the voyage.[8] A
distinguishing feature of Rebecca's voyage was that some of Mary's human cargo was disembarked at
Van Diemen's Land, while the remainder was taken further north to the colony of
New South Wales. Having arrived at Hobart Town direct from London on 5 October
1823, 67 convicts and their children were disembarked - some taken straight to
hospital. Rebecca, 58 of her peers and 29 of their children arrived at Port
Jackson on the Mary on 18 October
1823.[9]
Few of the specific details of Rebecca's life as a
newly arrived convict are documented. Her indent, which would have been taken
when she arrived at the Parramatta Female Factory, describes her as being a
nursery maid, five feet and one half an inch tall, with black hair, dark brown eyes
and pockmarked skin.[10] A
smidge shorter than the average height of five feet one inch, there is also a
specific note that she was unmarried with no children.[11] By
1825 she had been appointed to Mr Shepherd at Parramatta - as she had absconded
from her place of employment by September 1825.[12]
The next appearance Rebecca makes as a convict is in
her permission to marry. In 1827, Rebecca was recorded as being on a bond, and
applied for permission to marry Daniel Packer, a former convict on a ticket of
leave.[13]
Rebecca and Daniel were married at Wilberforce on 3 July 1827 by Revered
Matthew Devenish Meares.[14]
They settled at Kurrajong where they had nine children:
·
Amelia - 1828
·
Jonathan - 1830
·
Daniel - 1834
·
Henry - 1836
·
William - 1838
·
Richard - 1840
·
Sydney - 1843
·
Eliza - 1846
·
Albert - 1849.[15]
Having that many children was unusual for a former
convict - although convict women from New South Wales have not been so
extensively studied as Tasmanians, marriages with convict women in Tasmania
produced an average of only 0.9 children.[16] Of
course, Rebecca was only quite young when she arrived in Australia, and was 23
when she married, leaving many child bearing years. She was 44 years old when
her youngest child was born.
Daniel Packer died in 1880, and Rebecca in 1888, aged
around 83.[17]
She lived to an advanced age - average life expectancy for women at the time in
England is not readily available, but from 1841 the average life expectancy for
women was 42, which Rebecca almost doubled.[18]
Other than their death certificates, there is no record of either Daniel or
Rebecca's deaths in digitised publications. A memorial plaque was erected at
their graves in the St Phillips cemetery in North Richmond, New South Wales by
their descendants in 1990.
From an event-filled youth, Rebecca Furness moved from
being a teenaged criminal in her home city of Norwich to a respectable married
mother of a large family in New South Wales. On the surface, her life story
including transportation sounds rather pedestrian, but digging into the details
it is evident that this young English woman was truly fortunate to have escaped
capital punishment and instead make a new life on the other side of the world.
Jillian
Watts 12 July 2019
Word
count - 1095 words.
Bibliography.
Bury and Norwich Post
Hobart Town Gazette and Van
Diemen's Land Advertiser
Jackson, R.V., 'The Heights of Rural-Born English
Female Convicts Transported to New South Wales' The Economic History Review,
New Series, Vol. 49, No. 3 (August 1996) pp 584-590.
Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish, 'Marriage, Migration, and
Family Formation', HAA105, Module Five, Chapter One, Accessed 11 July 2019.
Medical journal of the Mary, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England, ADM 101/51/3,
Norwich Chronicle
Office Copies of Printed Indents (NRS 12189 - Reel
2662), State Records Authority of New South Wales
Office for National Statistics 'How has life
expectancy changed over time?', 9 September 2015, ons.gov.uk, Accessed 11 July
2019.
Packer family memorial, image held in personal
collection Jillian Watts Victoria Australia
Registers of convicts' applications to marry.
Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia: State Records Authority of New South
Wales. Series 12212
Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages New South
Wales
St Augustine's parish Norwich, Norfolk, England, Norfolk
Record Office, Norfolk Baptisms
Sydney Gazette and New South
Wales Advertiser
[1] Baptism
of Elizabeth Furnace, baptised 24 November 1805, St Augustine's parish Norwich,
Norfolk, England, page 7, Norfolk Record Office, Norfolk Baptisms, Archive
reference PD 185/7, findmypast.co.uk accessed 11 July 2019.
[2] 'News', Norfolk Chronicle, 14 April 1821, p2.
[3] 'News' Norfolk Chronicle, 12 January 1822, p2.
[4] 'Norfolk Assizes - City', Norfolk Chronicle, 10 August 1822, p2.
[5] 'Multiple News Items', Bury and Norwich Post, 24 April 1822,
u.p.
[6] 'News', Norfolk Chronicle, 17 May 1823, p2.
[7] 'Ship News', Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen's Land Advertiser, 11 October
1823, p2.
[8] Medical journal of the Mary, female convict ship from 12 April
to 3 November 1823 by Harman Cochrane, surgeon and superintendent, The National
Archives, Kew, Surrey, England, ADM 101/51/3, 'UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals,
1817-1857', Ancestry, Accessed 11 July 2019.
[9] 'Ship News', The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 23 October 1823,
p2.
[10] Rebecca Furness, Mary 3, 1823,
Office Copies of Printed Indents (NRS 12189 - Reel 2662), State Records
Authority of New South Wales, findmypast.co.uk, accessed 11 July 2019.
[11]
R.V. Jackson, 'The Heights of
Rural-Born English Female Convicts Transported to New South Wales' The Economic
History Review, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 3 (August 1996) pp 584-590.
[12] 'Principal Superintendant's Office,
Sydney, September 13, 1825', The Sydney
Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 15 September 1825, p3
[13] Daniel
Packer and Rebecca Furnace, Registers of convicts' applications to marry.
Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia: State Records Authority of New South
Wales. Series 12212, Ancestry.com, Accessed 11 July 2019
[14] Marriage Certificate for Daniel
Packer and Rebecca Furnace, married 3 July 1827, Wilberforce New South Wales,
Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages NSW, 216/1827 V1827216 11
[15] Memorial to Daniel and Elizabeth
Rebecca Packer at St Phillips Cemetery, North Richmond New South Wales, image
held in personal collection of Jillian Watts.
[16] Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, 'Marriage,
Migration, and Family Formation', HAA105, Module Five, Chapter One, Accessed 11
July 2019.
[17] Death
Certificate for Daniel Packer, died 12 November 1880, Registry of Births,
Deaths and Marriages NSW, 9874/1880; Death Certificate for Elizabeth R Packer, died
17 October 1888, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages NSW, 10122/1888
[18] 'How has life expectancy changed
over time?' Office for National Statistics, 9 September 2015, ons.gov.uk,
Accessed 11 July 2019.
