People Australia

Family history sources suggest that Catherine Connelly was the daughter of George Clarke and Mary Brown, although no records of her birth or baptism have been found. She was born in Sydney, probably in 1805 and arrived at Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on the Governor Brisbane in September 1822, probably as a servant or protege of Mary Reibey, who returned to Sydney leaving Catherine in Launceston.

Catherine married Peter Fowlser on 13 July 1823 at the Catholic Church in Hobart. Their son Frederick was born in 1824. Following Fowlser's death in 1826 Catherine married John Connelly on 22 October 1829 at St John's Church, Launceston; they had three children: Charles, John and Thomas Brown Connelly. The couple ran a hotel, the Currency Lass, in Launceston.

In 1836 Catherine and John were charged with receiving stolen goods. Both were convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation. Catherine was pardoned and John was assigned to a road gang to serve his sentence working as a labourer in rural VDL. Catherine continued to manage the Currency Lass (though George Best held the licence) until 1839 when she and John sold the freehold; John later claimed that she did not pay him all the proceeds of the sale. Catherine then left for South Australia at the end of May 1839 with her two youngest children, John and Thomas Brown, and seems to have worked as a housekeeper until she returned to VDL in 1848.

After regaining his freedom in 1843, John snr resumed his trade as a publican and, describing himself as a widower, bigamously married Mary Ann Fox, in 1846. In 1850 he left for Melbourne with Mary Ann and their children and took over the Flemington Hotel, on the road to the diggings. Later, he bought the hotel and adjacent shops and cottages in Flemington.

Catherine Connelly followed him to Melbourne and, in 1852, secured a maintenance order as a deserted wife for 30 shillings a week from the Victoria Police Court. Her claim exposed him as a bigamist and he lost his innkeeper’s licence. Their son John Jr took over the management of the Flemington hotel. John Connelly at first paid the maintenance but increasing debts, and various lawsuits, led to him withdrawing payment in December 1853. Catherine took him to court. He argued that he could not afford to maintain two wives and that Catherine had not given him all the money from the sale of his hotel in 1839. He lost his case and was ordered to pay her maintenance or face gaol. By September 1854 he was in arrears again and the court ordered him to be imprisoned until the outstanding debt was paid.

John Connelly offered to pay Catherine a substantial cash settlement to settle the claim provided she return to Van Diemen's Land but in the end offered her only £2. Catherine again sought redress and John fled to the Victorian goldfields; he was also being pursued by creditors. He was arrested in Ballarat in early 1855 on a charge of failing to pay maintenance. In June 1855, after almost three years of intermittent litigation, John Connelly made a final appearance in court to dispute Catherine’s right to a deserted wife’s stipend. He attacked her on two fronts. He said that she had stolen the proceeds of their sale of the Currency Lass and he promised to call a witness, another innkeeper, Thomas Dudley, who would testify that he and Catherine had lived together as husband and wife. His defences failed. The evidence that she had stolen his money was equivocal and Dudley, the other innkeeper, did not appear in response to John’s summons. Catherine had won a final and comprehensive victory. John was threatened with gaol after asserting that he would sweat it out and suffer to be hanged before he would pay maintenance. Catherine returned to VDL and died soon after in Hobart on 13 January 1856; her age was given as 51 and cause of death as dropsy.

sources

• Bourchier Steve and Leader-Elliott, Ian, ‘John Eddington and John Connelly: stepbrothers of uncertain degree’, Papers and Proceedings: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Vol 43, no 3, Dec 2025, pp 42-56
• Ian Leader-Elliott and Steve Bourchier, ‘Catherine Connelly: Convict, Innkeeper and Litigant’. This is a substantially revised version of a paper originally published in proceedings of the FCRC Autumn Seminar, 2015: ‘Succeeding in the regular economy: the aftermath of convict sentences’. The most significant revision is a correction of errors in the original paper relating to the parentage of John Connelly, Catherine’s husband. He was the son of Charles Connelly, a Fortune convict and an unknown mother, born in Sydney c1810
  https://femaleconvicts.org.au/docs/seminars/IanLeader-Elliott_session2_May2015_BourchierV2026.pdf