People Australia

Lydia/Letitia Munro (c.1770-1856) and Ann Forbes were found guilty on 2 April 1787 at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, of the theft of ten yards of printed cotton. Munro's death sentence was commuted to 14 years transportation (and Forbes to 7 years transportation) on 16 April 1787. The women were moved on the 26th April from Southwark Gaol to Newgate Gaol, London, and embarked for New South Wales on the Prince of Wales in May 1787, arriving in Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

On 12 September 1788 Munro narrowly escaped being raped by William Boggis, a convict, when she was on her way to bathe with Elizabeth Cole. She was rescued by Daniel Gordon who struck Boggis with a stick. Boggis was sentenced to 100 lashes but his punishment was 'forgiven' by the court.

Munro married Andrew Goodwin on 2 March 1790. The couple and their young daughter left for Norfolk Island two days later on the Sirius. The couple left the island for Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on the Porpoise in December 1807 with seven children. They had another daughter Letitia in Hobart.

Goodwin died at Hobart on 29 June 1856; her age was given as 85, her cause of death as 'decay of nature'.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 258