People Australia

Thomas Kidner (indicted as Kidney) was found guilty on 30 October 1782 in Bristol, England, of stealing four pieces of Irish linen valued at £6. He was sentenced to 7 years transportation. He remained in gaol at Bristol until being transferred to the Ceres hulk in early 1786. He arrived in Sydney in January 1788 aboard the Alexander as part of the First Fleet. In July 1789 he was sentenced to receive 150 lashes for buying 'necessaries' from a marine.

Kidner was sent to Norfolk Island in November 1789 on the Supply. In July 1791 he was subsisting himself on a Sydney Town lot. He shared a nine month old sow with Robert Nunn and Mary Carter. He was settled on 15 acres in mid 1792 and had married Julie Whiting in a mass wedding ceremony in the colony on 5 November 1791.

Kidner left Norfolk island with his wife and two children on HMS Buffalo for Port Jackson in October 1805. On 25 May 1806 he left the colony for Van Diemen's Land. By April 1809 he held 22 acres at Brown's River; on 20 September 1813 he was holding 30 acres at Queenborough and 60 acres at Sussex. 

He had died before August 1827 when a deed of sale for his grant mentions that he was deceased.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 205