People Australia

Sarah Wise (1769–1850) was born around 10 April 1769 at Ampney St Mary, Gloucestershire, England, the fifth of seven children born to John Wise and Mary (nee Eldridge).[1] The family was beset by much tragedy: her mother died when Sarah was under five years old, four of her siblings died quite young, and her father died a pauper.[2]

Wise’s indictable offence of grand larceny was brought to the Gloucestershire Assize Court at her trial on 22 July 1795. She had been charged on oath of the gentleman/yeoman victim, Daniel Millet, from the Parish of Rockhampton.[3] He decried that she had ‘feloniously and burglariously’ entered his property ‘in the night time between the 21st and 22[n]d days of May’, ‘stealing and taking away’ from him ‘one cheese and part of another, and a fillet of veal’, totalling a cost of ‘seven shillings’. Further, he claimed that ‘a shift, a check apron, a pair of pattens, a pair of shoes, and a linen gown’ was taken from ‘his servant Hannah Jones’, also to the value of ‘seven shillings’. Twenty-three old Wise was subsequently found guilty, sentenced within a group of similarly convicted persons, and ordered to be transported ‘beyond the seas for seven years’.[4] The ensuing judgement of the Assizes confined her in the penitentiary and therewith she was sent to be transported.

On 5 November 1795 Wise began her journey as a criminal upon the Indispensable. Departing England under the direction of the ship’s master William Wilkinson, it sailed via Rio de Janeiro and arrived in Port Jackson on 30 April 1796.[5] On board were 131 women, two of which died en route.[6]

As part of the call up of the British Admiralty, John Roberts, a young fourteen-year-old marine cadet, had previously traversed a similar transformational journey. Leaving on the Britannia from Portsmouth England on 27 March 1791 as part of the eleven vessels of the Third Fleet, Roberts was ‘shackled…in fate’ and ‘vanishment’ with the accompanying convicts, arriving in the Sydney Penal Settlement on 14 October 1791.[7] John Roberts became part of the contingent ordered to supervise convicts at the first penal settlement on Norfolk Island prior to Wise’s arrival in the colony.[8] She appears to have then ‘caught John’s eye’  upon his transitory return to Sydney in 1796. Wise was permitted to undergo a ‘second transportation’ to Norfolk Island along with Roberts and their two eldest children in 1801.[9] This move appeared to consolidate their relationship.

Life on Norfolk Island under Lieutenant Governor Foveaux was based on the agricultural needs of the Sydney colony.[10] Sarah may also have been kept quite busy washing for the marines and axiomatically providing care and attention for her growing brood.[11] Yet, under the King’s rule of Norfolk Island, convict women had considerable agency and as a military family they were ‘on and off stores’ at this time.

In 1810 Roberts, now a lieutenant, was transferred back to Sydney and granted a veteran’s pension and land commensurate with the times.[12] Wise received her certificate of freedom shortly afterwards on 1 March 1811.[13] Although they never married, according to Samuel Marsden’s prescribed tenants, history records the family as ‘Australian Royalty’.[14] Perhaps as Robert’s partner and mother to his children, Wise was afforded a ‘moral aurhority’ that would have been ‘otherwise unattainable’.[15] Despite newspaper reports mentioning Roberts being reprimanded and receiving ‘two hours in the stocks’ for being ‘drunken and disorderly’ and also being recognized as ‘Roberts the flogger’, his standing in the community as a veteran appears to have been beneficial to his family.[16]

However, it is perhaps Wise’s legacies in caring for and modelling values towards her family, and her apparent innate ability to rise above her situation to see the good in others, that is of most significance. Sarah was recognized in a court case as being a consecrated women who was willing to give Mary Callerford, a servant girl, the benefit of the doubt for absconding from service. Wise perhaps empathised with the girl and recognised in Mary something of her own younger convict self.[17]

Wise died in 1850 and was buried in her daughter-in-law’s grave in the old Devonshire Road Cemetery, Sydney. Her inscribed surname on the epitaph was ‘Roberts’, denoting she was a ‘Mrs’ and no longer had to ‘pretend to be married’.[18] While not considered ‘pure merinos’ Sarah’s ten children married well and served in the community. Her daughter Mary went on to be the first matron in the Hobart School and was mourned by the whole community at her death.[19]

[1] W Tanford, Curate, Church of England, Parish of Ampney-St Mary, Gloucestershire, England, Bishop’s Transcripts for Ampney-St Mary, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1608-1812, Gloucestershire City Library, England, Microfilm Record 315569, Familysearch.org, accessed 24 April 2024 and Microfilm Record 008080961, Image 323 of 451, Familysearch.org, accessed 3 July 2024. 

[2] Sarah Wise, Mercer Family Tree, Melbourne, Victoria, accessed 27 May 2024.

[3] Entry for Sarah Wisse, Name, Age, Cause of Commitment, &c., Gloucestershire, England, Prison Records 1728-1914, Berkeley, Cirencester, Northgate (Gloucester), Lawfords Gate (Bristol) and Winchcombe 1789-1814; Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay, 383; Sarah Wisse, Gloucester, England Prison Records, 1728-1914, Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England, Reference no. Q/SG2/1789-1814, Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024; The National Archives Catalogue, Sarah Wise, 1790-1795, The National Archives, Assizes: Oxford Circuit: Indictment Files, ASSI 5, pp. 1-5, 8 May 2024.

[4] Entry for Sarah Wise, Calendar of Prisoners, Gloucestershire, England, Prison Records 1728-1914, Berkeley, Cirencester, Northgate (Gloucester), Lawfords Gate (Bristol) and Winchcombe 1789-1814.

[5] Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 2nd edn, (Glasgow: Brown, Son & Ferguson, Ltd., 1985), 147.

[6] Convict Records, Indispensible Voyage, accessed 13 June 2024 https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/wisse/sarah/82916, The National Archives (TNA): HO 11/1, pp. 203-208 as cited online at Claim a Convict: Details for the Ship Indispensable (1796), https://www.hawkesbury.net.au/claimaconvict/shipDetails.php?shipId=33,  accessed 13 June 2024.

[7] Michael Bogle, Convicts: Transportation & Australia, 2nd ed. (Sydney: Historic Houses Trusts of New South Wales, 2008), xii, 5, 29; Cathy Dunn, ‘John Roberts, NSW Corps, Brittania, 1791’, Australian History Research, http://www.australianhistoryresearch.info/john-roberts-nsw-corps-brittania-1791, citing Rev Fulton, Norfolk Island: Baptisms, Burials and Marriages 1801-1806, Ancestry.com, accessed 25 May 2024; Bateson, The Convict Ships, 132, 139, 145; Brittania, 1791 (Convict Ship) Third Ship (England to New South Wales), My Heritage family Tree, myheritage.com citing from Geni.com, accessed 13 June 2024; Free Settler or Felon; Convict and Colonial History, Convict Ship Brittania, (1) 1791,https://www.freesettlerorfelon.com/convict_ship_britannia_1791.htm

[8] Bogle, Convicts, 61; Cathy Dunn to Susan Mercer [email], 4 July 2024, original online, https://blog.une.edu.au/convicthistory/2023/10/12/norfolkisland_firstsettlement_directory/; Babette Smith, Defiant Voices: How Australia’s Female Convicts Challenged Authority, 1788-1853(Canberra: National Library of Australia, , 2021), 95.

[9] Smith, Defiant Voices, 83, 97, 135; Dunn to Mercer [email], 4 July 2024.

[10] General Orders, (re Lt Governor Foveaux), Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 2 Oct 1803, 1; Smith, Defiant Voices, 95.

[11] Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2009), 322–24; Smith, Defiant Voices,  73, 76, 78.

[12] Dunn to Mercer [email], 4 July 2024.

[13] New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1814, 1827-1867, NRS 12208, Registers of Certificates of Freedom, 4 Feb 1810-26 Aug 1814, Ancestry.com, accessed 25 May 2024; All New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave, 1834-1859, Ancestry.com accessed 25 May 20204; Certificate of Emancipation for Sarah Wise, Indispensible, Convicts Index, 1791-1873, Museum of History New South Wales, Citation: [4/4427: COD 18, Real 601, p. 292-293], https://mhnsw.au/indexes/convicts/convicts-index; accessed 13 June 2024.

[14] Dunn to Mercer [email], 4 July 2024.

[15]  Bogle, Convicts, 78; Purnell, Australian Royalty, accessed 13 June 2024; Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay, 257.

[16] Police Reports, Sydney, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 12 August 1826, 3; Supreme Criminal Court, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 13 September 1826, 3.

[17] ‘Police Report’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 10 May 1841, 3.

[18] Smith, Defiant Voices, 159, 220, 227.

[19] Cemeteries - St David’s Cemetery, Hobart, Tasmania, image Ancestry.com, accessed 25 May 2024; The Hobart Town Courier, 7 June 1833, p 3 and 2 and 9 August 1833, p 3, Trove image cited in Ancestry.com, accessed 25 May 2024.