WHEN you next think of blaming Australia for cultural disasters such as Dame Edna Everidge, binge drinking of the amber nectar or beating us at cricket, pause a while. Because Worcestershire has a lot to answer for when it comes to the land Down Under.

Way back in January 1788, eight young women from Worcester Gaol were deported on the female convict ship Lady Penrhyn to become the founding mothers of Australian families.

They formed part of the first white settlement and earned their place in history as the ‘First Fleet founders of Australia’.

Their ship landed at Sydney Cove on January 26, a date now celebrated throughout the land as Australia Day.

The eight women, all of childbearing age, were sentenced to seven years’ transportation at Worcester Assizes for cases of theft between 1783 and 1786.

They were sent from Worcester Gaol in Castle Street to Southwark Gaol to be delivered to the First Fleet transports, which sailed with 1,500 people from Portsmouth on May 13, 1787.

They were Olivia Gascoigne, aged 24, a servant from Severn Stoke; Ann Innett, 30, a mantua-maker from Grimley; Mary Abell, 30, a servant from Hanbury; Mary Turner, 19, a servant from Holy Cross parish in Pershore; Sarah Bellamy, 17, a servant from Belbroughton; Sarah Davies, also known as Sarah Ashley, 23, a glove maker from Oldswinford and two women from Worcester – Mary Cooper, 36, a charwoman, and Susannah Huffnell, 21, whose occupation was not given.

Interestingly, they were the only convicts selected from the county.

No males were chosen, supporting the view that the selection of convicts to transport on the First Fleet to the proposed colony in New South Wales (NSW) was not solely based on emptying Britain’s over-crowded prisons.

There was the birth and building of a new nation to consider.

Soon their number was to be increased. Kezia Browne, 19, another young woman from Severn Stoke parish, was banished to Australia on the Neptune and arrived in Sydney on the Second Fleet on June 28, 1790.

Kezia was baptised in Severn Stoke on March 10, 1771, the daughter of Aaron Browne and Mary Farley. Her parents and grandparents are buried in the churchyard of St Denys in Severn Stoke. At the age of 18, she was sentenced to seven years’ transportation at the October 1789 Gloucester Quarter Sessions for the theft of a black silk cloak, several petticoats, shifts and aprons from James Wheeler, a gardener of Gloucester. Shortly after her arrival in Sydney, Kezia Browne began living with First Fleet convict William Roberts. They married and had 10 children. She died at Richmond in NSW on June 22, 1894, and her descendants are estimated to number more than 10,000.

The crimes the women had committed were mostly theft and some were considered serious enough to warrant the death penalty.

Olivia Gascoigne, for example, was held in the cells at Worcester Guildhall accused of stealing various amounts of money, including 13 guineas and a silver dollar with a value of 13 pounds, 13 shillings and four shillings and sixpence belonging to Edward Griffith from the dwelling house of his father George Griffith at Griffith’s Close in Severn Stoke.

Her trial took place at Worcester Assizes on March 5, 1785. Olivia was the second of the prisoners on the trial docket to climb up the stairs from the cells to the dock to face the judge and jury in a crowded court room.

After all the evidence had been heard the verdict was delivered – “Guilty to be hanged, no goods.”

However, in some ways, it was her lucky day. At the end of the Assizes the presiding judge His Honour George Nares, who was retiring, requested clemency from King George III to commute her sentence to seven years’ transportation as his final act on the bench.

In fact, life in Australia didn’t turn out too badly for Olivia. On the eight-month voyage on the Lady Penrhyn she formed a lasting friendship with Ann Innett and the pair were among six women selected for their “vocation and behaviour” to go with Lieutenant Governor Philip Gidley King and nine male convicts to create a settlement on Norfolk Island on February 14, 1788.

Olivia married Nathaniel Lucas, a carpenter from Thames Ditton, transported on the Scarborough in the First Fleet, and bore him 13 children. She died at Port Dalrymple in Tasmania and was buried there on June 12, 1830, her age given as 69.

Ann Innett, who, like Olivia, had originally been sentenced to death for stealing clothing valued one pound and sixpence from the house of spinster Jane Brookes, fared even better.

She became housekeeper and mistress to Governor King on Norfolk Island and bore him two sons Norfolk (born January 8, 1789) and Sydney (July 9, 1790). After they returned to Sydney she married convict Richard John Robinson at Parramatta on November 18, 1792.

She left the colony in March 1820 on the Admiral Cockburn and returned to Worcestershire as a wealthy woman to see the daughter she had left behind when she was transported to Australia.

As Crocodile Dundee might say, now THAT’S a life.