People Australia

Charlotte Ware (c.1762-1839) was found guilty on 10 December 1783 at the Old Bailey, London, of stealing five pairs of worsted stockings from a shop. She had previously been twice whipped for theft and in 1781 had been sent to the House of Corrections for three months for theft. Ware was among the prisoners who mutinied on the convict transport Mercury in April 1784. Recaptured, she was sent to the Dunkirk hulk in June 1784. She was discharged to the Friendship in March 1787 and transferred to the Prince of Wales at the Cape of Good Hope in October 1787. She arrived at Sydney in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Ware was ordered (as Charlotte Keane) 30 lashes on 9 February 1789 for beating Ann Thornton and a further 20 for insolence to her. She was sent to Norfolk Island on the Sirius in March 1790. By mid-June she was in a relationship with John Hayes, a marine; the couple were married in a mass wedding ceremony on the island in November 1791.

Charlotte and John Hayes left Norfolk Island for Port Jackson on the Daedalus in November 1794; they were childless. John left the colony for England in 1800. In the 1806 Muster Charlotte's marriage status was listed as 'concubine' but no name for the male was given. She was a landholder at Liverpool by 1814 with one assigned servant. By 1828 she had one assigned servant and two free men working for her.

Described as a pauper, she died (as Charlotte Weare) on 18 February 1839 at Campbelltown; her age was given as 67. 

information from

• Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), pp 371-72
• 'Charlotte Ware, Convict, Prince of Wales 1788',  HMS Sirius 1796-1790, http://hmssirius.com.au/charlotte-ware-convict-prince-of-wales-1788 — accessed 13 August 2020