MORLEY
Our ancestor James MORLEY, was born in England, about 1793. According to some records he was born in London, but it is possible he was instead born in Sutton on the Hill, Derbyshire. James married Ann WILLIAMS at St Marylebone, London in 1809, and commenced a family.
James seems to have been a professional pickpocket working the London streets. A real "Artful Dodger". He was sentenced to transportation for life at the Old Bailey in 1814 for stealing a silk handkerchief. James arrived in Sydney, New South Wales aboard the convict transport Indefatigable in 1815.
James's wife Ann followed her husband out to Australia, gaining free passage for herself and two little children aboard a female convict ship, the Northampton, in 1815. James was assigned to his wife, so that he could support her, and a further seven children born in the colony. He made a living as a brickmaker, moving from Sydney to Newcastle about 1820. James died there in 1832.
Ann was left to bring up a large young family. She remarried in 1835 at Newcastle to James WELLS, a convict, and had a son, Benjamin WELLS, in 1837. Ann died at Honeysuckle Point, in the heart of Newcastle, in 1858.
These characters appear in the story of The Artful Dodger
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