Mary Bryant was born Mary Broad in the tiny fishing village of Fowey in Cornwall, England in 1765. She was the daughter of a sailor. Mary like thousands of others in England at the time moved to the city to look for a better life. She went to Plymouth the biggest city in Cornwall and base for the Royal Navy's western fleet.
Mary found that life in the city wasn't as easy as she had imagined. Hundreds from all over Cornwall had gone there like herself to find work and a better life. Either unable to find or keep a job, she turned to stealing. For young women in her position there wasn't much choice between prostitution and stealing and both had many dangers.
The British government of the time was particularly harsh with petty thieves, it carried the death penalty for men, women or children. But it was not generally carried out for petty thieves, particularly first offenders. Their death sentences were usually commuted and they were transported overseas to penal settlements in the colonies.
In 1786 Mary Broad with two accomplices was caught stealing a silk bonnet and jewellery. She was sentenced to hanging but it was commuted to seven years transportation.
At this time the British Government had a serious problem with the large number of convicted felons. Since the American Revolution the American colonies were closed to it as a destination for transportation.
While the British Government was pondering the problem, convicts sentenced to transportation were housed in hulks, old warships moored in rivers and the ocean. The conditions on most of these were atrocious.
Mary was sent to the Dunkirk, a hulk moored at Plymouth.
On the Dunkirk she met William Bryant, a 27 fisherman from Cornwall convicted of receiving smuggled goods. He became her lover and later her husband. Smuggling was rife amongst the coastal villages of Cornwall, particular alcoholic beverages from France to avoid the excise taxes.
The British Government, after considering such places as the West Indies and parts of Africa as new destinations for convicts and then rejecting them as unsuitable, decided to set up a new colony with mainly convicts in Botany Bay in New Holland as Australia was then known.
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