People Australia

Mary Lawrence (c.1750-1804), a married woman, was found guilty on 26 May 1784 at the Old Bailey, London, of stealing a silver spoon and tongs from the house in which she had worked as a servant. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, she arrived at Sydney aboard the Lady Penrhyn in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet.

Lawrence disappears from the records after being victualled at Port Jackson in 1788. It has been suggested that she was the woman who married William Worsdell at Sydney Cove on 31 May 1788, signing the register as Maryan Hoffman (both women were near the same age and no convict named Maryan Hoffman appears in any other First Fleet records). If they are the same woman, Lawrence was buried at Sydney as Mary Ann Wosdall on 17 May 1805; she had no recorded children.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 215