People Australia

Humphrey Lynch (c.1763-1817), a tailor, was found guilty on 5 March 1785 at New Sarum (Salisbury, Wiltshire) of assaulting a wayfarer with a stick, intending to steal goods and money. His death sentence was commuted to 7 years transportation. Sent to the Ceres hulk later in the year he was dispatched to the Alexander in January 1787 and arrived at Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Lynch was sent to Norfolk Island on the Sirius in March 1790. By February 1791 he was subsisting two people on a Queenborough lot and sharing a sow with John Young and Mary Winspear. By October 1793 he had ploughed seven of his eight acres and was living with Ann Stokes; without children.

Lynch and Stokes left Norfolk Island for Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), without children, as a third class settler, on the Lady Nelson in November 1807, settling on 30 acres at Risdon, Clarence Plains.

Lynch tended a flock of sheep outside Hobart. He was reported missing on 31 December 1816 and was later found hanging from a tree. A coroner's inquest returned a verdict of suicide. A newspaper report said he left his sheep to a daughter living at Kangaroo Point — her identity is uncertain, it is thought she may have been Stokes daughter born in England.

information from

• Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 226
• 'Humphrey Lynch', HMS Sirius: 1786-1790, https://hmssirius.com.au/humphrey-lynch-convict-alexander-1788/ — accessed 21 January 2021

• Biographical Database of Australia — https://www.bda-online.org.au