People Australia

Jane Dundas (c.1758-1805) was found guilty on 18 April 1787 at the Old Bailey, London, of stealing linen tablecloths and napkins. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, she arrived at Sydney aboard the Prince of Wales in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Dundas was sent to Norfolk Island on the Atlantic in October 1791 as a servant in the household of Philip Gidley King when he went to the island as lieutenant governor. She may have returned with his family to England in 1796. She was certainly serving in his household at the end of 1800. She had been in King's employment for 15 years when she died at Sydney on 22 December 1805. She was given a public funeral, attended by (then Governor) King, his family, 'several Officers and persons of the first respectability'.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 110-111