Depraved and Disorderly

Trying to find material to add authenticity to the story is not as difficult as you might think. Several books have been written about the life of a convict woman. Joy Damousi's Depraved and Disorderly, has given me some valuable insights into the life women who are exiled from their homes.

Finding where Mary came from, her roots did bring some surprises. Her Huguenot lineage explained her employment as a silk spinner. Family documents gave me an idea of where she lived. Most of the information came from Ancestry and digging about in the UK National Archives. The French connection was stumbled upon following a conversation with a distant cousin who had results from an Ancestry DNA test. My own venture into DNA is in the mail.

Today I am interested in Mary as an alcoholic. Gin was the go-to drink of the day. Hogarth's Gin Lane 1751 famously captured the evils of the gin trade. Tracking down the gin connection required a bit of sleuthing.

Mary's father is listed as a beneficiary in her grandmothers' will. On his marriage certificate, he is a weaver. In the will, his occupation states he is a victualer. On his marriage certificate, he is a weaver. This is a broad term and can mean an innkeeper or the owner of a gin establishment. In the will John Davis the husband of Sarah Abercom lived in Hunt Street.

When Mary was arrested she was outside a gin shop inviting people in. The man she lured in and later stole from was Samuel Marshal. He said he was "On the 11th of April, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, I was on the Pavement, Moorfields, opposite to Albion chapel, and saw the prisoner there - she asked me to give her a glass of gin; I took her into a watering house opposite the chapel, gave her a glass of gin, and desired her to go about her business; I was sober; ".

Perhaps it was her father's gin house she was trying to lure him into. This is where the edge between fact and fiction begin to blur. Looking at contemporary maps is thanks to the internet, relatively easy. All I had to do is find a connection between Hunt Street and a watering hole opposite the chapel.

Alas, there is no link - Albion Chapel was a Scots Presbyterian Church, close by Finsbury Circus. To get there Mary would have an hours walk from Hunt St, Bethnal Green. Its already clear that Mary would have trouble making ends meet. It is not surprising she is out on her own, one in five women were working as prostitutes to supplement their meagre earnings. Tough choices.

Which brings me back to gin. At 18 years old, Mary was in goal and later, her Convict Records show she was often drunk and disorderly. This is not uncommon, most of her fellow transportees were "under the influence" at the time of their crime, and suffered numerous punishments as convicts for being drunk. Life was tough and probably easier to cope with through a fog of alcohol. Damousi's book is full of examples of women who rebelled after fuelling up on alcohol. Both men and women in Tasmania seemed to be heavy drinkers, not that I am able to throw stones at that flaw of character.

While Mary does not produce an address at Court, she does not admit to being "on the Town" as in having no place to live as was the case for a number of her comrades in the dock. When I think of the destitution and poverty these women came from and the lives they endured I am amazed at their endurance. Their resilience. Their livers must have been pretty robust as well.