People Australia

Richard Podmore (c.1773-1843) was a private in the New South Wales Corps when he arrived at Sydney in February 1792 aboard the Pitt. He was sent to Norfolk Island on the Supply in November 1794 and left a year later also on the Supply. Phoebe Flarty was on the ship with her two young children. The couple lived together at Port Jackson and had at least five children between 1799-1815.

Podmore returned to Norfolk Island with Flarty, her son and their daughter in February 1801 (Flarty's first daughter, born in 1795, had died in 1797). The family returned to Port Jackson in 1805 where Podmore was discharged from the NSW Corps on 24 February 1805. He worked as a shoemaker in that year and in 1809 was approved to hold a wine and spirit licence. In 1810 he was granted 100 acres at St George, Botany Bay. He married Flarty on on 30 July 1810. Following his wife's death in 1817, Podmore's young son Richard, born in 1808, was admitted to the Male Orphan School in 1819.

Podmore left for Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1823 but had returned to Sydney by 1825 and in 1828 was working as a shoemaker for A. Hamilton.

Richard Podmore died at Liverpool, NSW, on 13 February 1843; his age was given as 77 and his occupation as shoe maker.

information from

• Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 128-29
• Cathy Dunn, 'Phoebe Flarty, Convict, Prince of Wales 1788', HMS Sirius 1786-1790, https://hmssirius.com.au/phoebe-flarty-convict-prince-of-wales-1788 — accessed 15 September 2020