People Australia

Thomas Bramwell was a marine in the 6th (Plymouth) Company when he arrived in Sydney aboard the Lady Penrhyn in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet. He served in Port Jackson in Captain James Campbell's company. He was ordered to receive 200 lashes (reduced to 100) on 11 February 1788 for beating Elizabeth Needham after she refused to go into the bush with him.

Bramwell was among those marines who said they would settle in the colony if they received encouragement. He left for Norfolk Island on the Atlantic in October 1791 and settled on 60 acres at Cascade Stream, Phillipsburg. He left the island for Port Jackson on the Kitty in March 1793 and enlisted in the NSW Corps on 25 March. He was discharged on 27 July 1798 from the company of Captain George Johnston and received a grant of 150 acres at Bankstown in May 1799.

In 1802 Bramwell was recorded as holding 30 acres at Mulgrave Place. He was still employed in the colony in 1806 and 1811. He is perhaps Thomas Brammer who was buried at St John's, Parramatta, on 31 August 1815, aged 62. Brammer was said to have been a convict who came on the Lady Tambareen. But there is no record of a convict or a ship of this name coming to New South Wales.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 45-46