People Australia

Phillip Farrell (c.1762- ), a former seaman, was found guilty on 15 September 1784 at the Old Bailey, London, of pickpocketing a handkerchief. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, he was sent to the Dunkirk hulk on 5 April 1785. Discharged to the Scarborough in February 1787 he arrived at Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Farrell received 24 lashes on 20 May 1787 for being one of the suspected ringleaders in an attempted mutiny on the Scarborough just after the Fleet sailed and was transferred to the Prince of Wales.

On 30 April 1788 Farrell was acquitted, with five other convicts, of theft from the storehouse. There are no records for Farrell after 1790 when he was the victim of a robbery. As a former seaman he would have had no trouble working his passage back to England on one of the Third Fleet ships arriving at the colony from July 1791.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 124