People Australia

Thomas Finicy/Fillesey/Tillesey (c.1758- ), indicted as Tillesey but more often recorded as Finicy in the colony, was found guilty on 29 April 1783 at Bristol, England, of stealing shoe buckles. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, he was sent to the Dunkirk hulk some time in 1784 and was discharged to the Alexander in January 1787. He arrived at Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Finicy was ordered 50 lashes on 9 February 1789 at Port Jackson for absenting himself from work for three days. On 3 October 1789 he was reprimanded (as a first offender) for stealing a pair of shoes belonging to Richard Partridge: he said he'd done it as a joke. On 7 November 1789 he received 100 lashes for attempting to break open a box belonging to George Fry. On 16 February 1790 he received 25 lashes for neglect of work.

Finicy was sent to Norfolk Island on the Sirius in March 1790. On 15 May he and John Robins ran into the woods to escape punishment for the theft of a cabbage from Lieutenant John Creswell's garden. His weekly flour ration was cut from three pounds to two for ten weeks and he was ordered to work in irons.

By 1 July 1791 Finicy was subsisting himself on a Queenborough lot with 66 rods cleared and shared a sow with William Davis and Jane Reed. Finicy left Norfolk Island on the Atlantic in September 1792. He was marked off stores at Port Jackson on 24 October 1795. He has not been found in any later colonial records.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 126