John Haydon and Simon Burn were found guilty on 11 August 1783 at Exeter, Devon, of highway assault and the theft of a tin box, other goods and £1/11. Haydon's death sentence was commuted to seven years transportation to America. On 26 March 1784 he was embarked on the Mercury transport. On 13 April he was captured by Helena at Torbay after the convict mutiny on the Mercury and returned to Exeter gaol. He was sent to the Dunkirk hulk at the end of June 1784. Embarking on the Charlotte in March 1787, he arrived in Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.
At Port Jackson Haydon, along with five others, was charged with the theft of pease from the storehouse on 30 April 1788; all were acquitted. In January 1789 he was ordered to receive 100 lashes for being absent from work for three days. He was sent to Norfolk Island on 4 March 1790 on the Sirius. By July 1791 he was living on a Sydney Town lot having cleared 65 rods and felled 30 rods of timber.
There is no further mention of him in colonial records.
* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 167-68
'Haydon, John (1756–1831)', People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/haydon-john-29855/text36954, accessed 13 October 2024.
23 January,
1831
(aged ~ 75)
England
Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.
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