People Australia

Benjamin Fentum (c.1760- ) was found guilty on 4 June 1783 at the Old Bailey, London, of highway robbery, committed with his brother or father John, and a third man who was acquitted. John Fentum was hanged. Benjamin's death sentence was commuted to 7 years transportation on 12 September 1783. He was ordered to the Censor hulk on 4 October 1783, where he remained until he embarked for New South Wales on the Scarborough in February 1787, arriving in Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Fentum was sent to Norfolk Island on the Atlantic in October 1791 and left the island on the same ship in September 1792. There are no further colonial records for Fentum. As his sentence had expired he may have returned to England.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 125