One final mystery in gallows-to-glory tale

It was the near-gallows-to-glory, rags-to-riches true-life tale of Ann Inett, a country girl from just outside Worcester, who was sentenced to death at the City Assizes on a charge of burglary, but was reprieved and transported to Australia, where she was eventually to make her fortune.

I related Ann Inett's truly remarkable story 18 years ago but consider it well-worth telling again here today.

And by breathtaking coincidence I was contacted by three descendants of Ann Inett just days after I had put the finishing touches this summer to the revision of the Memory Lane article I had compiled on her in the mid-1980s.

The wealth of information they have since kindly sent me has enabled today's significant update of the Ann Inett story, making it even more comprehensive, compelling and precisely detailed.

Ann was born at Abberley, in 1754, the youngest of four children of Samuel and Mary Inett. As a young woman, she made her living from dress-making and had two illegitimate children - Thomas, in 1778, when she was aged 24, and Constance, in 1781, when she was 27. Both were christened at Bayton Church, near Rock.

Then came the events of 1785 and 1786 which so dramatically changed Ann's life and could have seen her execution on the gallows at Red Hill, Worcester.

At the age of 31, she was, for some unknown reason, driven into crime. Berrow's Worcester Journal of July 14, 1785, first reported: "The dwelling-house of Susannah Brookes in Grimley has been broken open and several articles of her wearing apparel taken thereout."

The same edition also carried a public notice offering a reward to anyone giving information leading to the conviction of the house-breaker involved.

And the following week's Berrow's Journal was able to report that "Ann Inett, late of the Parish of Grimley" had been apprehended for the crime and taken into custody.

However, she was to remain in prison for more than seven months until making her appearance in the dock at the Worcester Assizes in the Guildhall, on March 11, 1786.

She was led up from the Guildhall's basement cells to face the charge that she did "with force and arms, break and enter the house of Susannah Brookes" and steal a petticoat, two aprons, a pair of shoes, three muslin handkerchiefs, a silk hood, a gauze cap, a linen gown, cotton stockings, and a muslin cap, all to the value of 21 shillings.

It was a capital crime carrying the death penalty, so there could be no surprise when the judge sentenced Ann to be executed.

That day, 16 other prisoners were also ordered to suffer the same fate - three for burglary, two for theft, three for robbery on the highway, three for sheep-stealing, one for horse-stealing, and four for robbery.

However, exactly a month later, Ann escaped the rope when she was reprieved and had her sentence commuted to seven years transportation "beyond the seas".

Not so lucky were at least seven of the other prisoners who had been in the dock at the Worcester Assizes the same day as Ann. Berrow's Journal reported chillingly that within days of their sentencing "Gough, Johnson, Prosser, Watts, Neale, Moule and Cooke were executed on the gallows at Red-hill."

Ann was kept in prison for months, but eventually taken by waggon to Gravesend, Kent, to embark on the Lady Penrhyn, a 338-ton ship specifically designed to carry female convicts to Botany Bay, as part of the First Fleet.

However, she and 100 other women prisoners were to remain on board the ship in harbour at London, and Portsmouth, for another four months until the Lady Penrhyn eventually sailed on May 13, 1787 - almost two years after Ann's original arrest and more than a year after her trial at Worcester Guildhall.

Ann had to leave behind in Worcestershire her two illegitimate children, Thomas, then nine, and Constance, six, but who looked after them and brought them up is not known.

The First Fleet of 11 ships, including the Lady Penrhyn, was commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, who described his first inspection of the women convicts thus: "The condition in which the magistrates sent the convicts on board the Lady Penrhyn stamps them with infamy. They are almost naked and so very filthy that nothing but clothing them could have prevented them from perishing. This could not be done in time to prevent a fever which is now on board the ship where there are also many venereal complaints, and several of the women are with child."

Ann and the other 100 women convicts on the Lady Penrhyn were to endure a long and terrible voyage lasting 258 days before the ship finally anchored in Port Jackson (today, Sydney Harbour) in late January 1788.

Many times during the voyage the ship was battered by severe gales which made the conditions below decks even more intolerable for the women prisoners.

In fact, "during a dreadful period of violent storms, most of the women were on their knees in prayer".

However, the ship's log also recorded that the high seas were "not so terrible as to reform the wicked because less than an hour after the storms had abated, they were uttering the most horrid oaths".

Not only did Ann Inett escape the gallows at Red-hill but also the real risk of perishing at sea.

Nevertheless, almost the very moment she set foot on Australian soil in February 1788, her fortunes began to change dramatically.

Because her behaviour had been "the least exceptional" during the voyage, she was selected to continue on from Botany Bay to Norfolk Island in the Pacific,1,000 miles north-east of Sydney, to become housekeeper to 30-year-old Lieut Philip Gidley King RN the Lieutenant-Governor of the island colony.

Clearly she could not have been without appeal to the handsome naval officer and was described as "an attractive woman, small framed, dark haired and with a neat and clean appearance."

She accepted Gidley King's offer to be his housekeeper and, according to records, proved to be "an industrious and accommodating woman, keeping all the public quarters clean and tidy as well as cooking Gidley King's food, keeping his home comfortable, and warming his bed at night."

As his mistress, Ann was to bear the Lieutenant-Governor two illegitimate sons - Norfolk King, born at Norfolk Island on January 8, 1789, and Sydney, born in Sydney, in July 1790.

That same year, however, Gidley King returned to England, leaving Ann in Sydney to continue serving her sentence and to look after her two illegitimate babies.

Back in England, Gidley King was promoted to Commander and married his cousin Anna Coombe, who was said to be "very understanding" with regard to Ann Inett and her two illegitimate boys.

Not surprisingly, therefore, when Gidley King and his wife, then eight months pregnant, arrived in Australia, in September 1791, they decided, with Ann's agreement, that both boys would be raised by them as part of their family, which was eventually swelled by five children of their own.

However, still as boys, Norfolk and Sydney King were sent to England by their father to be educated, and both went on to become distinguished Royal Navy officers.

Back in Australia, Ann Inett entered the next significant chapter of her life.

In November 1792, she was married at Sydney, to Richard John Robinson, another convict transported from England, having originally been sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for stealing a bay gelding.

He had spent two-and-a-half-years in Newgate Gaol "under a temporary respite from execution" before being reprieved and transported to Botany Bay.

Ann and her husband opened a hotel, the Yorkshire Grey and, a few years later, with her transportation sentence complete, Ann was granted 30 acres of land known as Pleasant Farm at Sydney Cove and also a large site at Pitts Row, Sydney - favours apparently bestowed on her by the newly-appointed Governor of New South Wales.

It's no surprise to discover that he was the man to whom she had been mistress and child-bearer - Commander Philip Gidley King!

Ann's husband was also pardoned and became a Government overseer of mills and later joint proprietor with Ann of an eating house and inn at Pitts Row, Sydney.

The couple were also given another 100 acres of land as reward "for working hard and leading a clean life" and thus became prosperous business and property owners in the fast-blossoming Australian city, employing servants and also farm workers to look after their substantial acreage and stock.

New South Wales Governor Gidley King was not to enjoy the same happiness and contentment. He was dogged by ill-health and returned with his family to England, in 1807, dying the following year at the age of 49.

With their fortunes made, Ann and her husband eventually sold up in Sydney and returned to England, Richard John Robinson in 1819, and Ann a few months later in 1820.

Ann, then 66, left the colony of New South Wales with her life totally transformed - from ignominy and disgrace to wealth and respectability!

But unfortunately for the completeness of the Ann Inett story and for her descendants, all trace of Ann and her husband is lost after their return to England.

No evidence has yet been uncovered of very vital pieces in the jigsaw - where they lived, when they died and where they are buried.

How the jigsaw came together

n THE help of readers is earnestly sought in the bid to fit the vital last pieces of the jigsaw into the remarkable story of Ann Inett.

What happened to Ann and her husband, Richard John Robinson when they returned to England, from Australia, in 1820?

There is some circumstantial evidence that Ann came to Worcester for church ceremonies at St John's involving her illegitimate children and their off-spring but, alas, no actual records have been found of where Ann and her husband lived on their return to England, nor of when they died and were buried.

These are the crucial key facts that three descendants of Ann Inett are desperately keen to discover to complete her life story and researches into their family tree.

It was just days after I had revised my original mid-1980s Memory Lane feature about Ann Inett that I was contacted by Dr Ron Edwards of Frodsham, Cheshire.

Ann was his great, great, great grand aunt, and in recent years he has been in close contact with two other descendants of hers, Dr Edward Inett of Knowle, Warwickshire, and Mel Shaw of Stourbridge, West Midlands, both of whom have undertaken painstaking researches into the life of their colourful ancestor.

Dr Edwards asked if I would make an appeal again through Memory Lane for readers' help in providing the key information still missing about the final years of Ann and her husband.

He was agreeably surprised that I had already been poised to reproduce my Ann Inett feature again after a gap of 18 years.

Dr Edwards wrote: "Your original article From the Shadow of the Gallows was an excellent and complete account of the story of Ann and her husband, which ends abruptly with their return to England.

"In the intervening years since you wrote the article there has been a rapidly expanding interest in genealogy and tremendous advances in information technology. More and more people are adept at searching records which, in turn, have been widely copied and made available on fiche, film and CD. It would therefore seem to be an opportune time to make another attempt to find what happened to the Robinsons, who appeared to vanish without trace."

To this end, Dr Edwards has sent me lots of information about his forebear including a large booklet Ann Inett of Abberley, Worcestershire written by Dr Edward Inett. Many of the additional facts and information have been incorporated into today's feature.

Here are some of the other pieces of information which could offer clues to readers as to the last years of Ann Robinson (nee Inett).

Her illegitimate daughter Constance Inett, born 1781, was married to William Guy, a porter, at St John's Church, Worcester, on August 3, 1809, and went on to have six children, most significantly a girl born in 1820, who was christened Mary Ann Robinson Guy. The child's middle names were clearly those of her grandmother, just back from Australia.

It's fondly believed Ann Robinson may have been at the christening of her grandchild Mary Ann Robinson Guy at St Clement's Church, Worcester, on September 5, 1820. At the time, the Guy family's address was given as Turkey, Worcester - later Tybridge Street.

There's no evidence that Ann's other illegitimate child from her Worcestershire years, Thomas, born at Bayton, in 1778, survived until her return to England in 1820, and unknown too, is who brought up Tthe two children when their mother was transported to Australia. They would have been 42 and 39-years-old by the time of her return to England.

It is also highly probable that Ann Robinson was re-united - fascinatingly, again in Worcester - with one of her two illegitimate sons from her Australian years as mistress to naval officer Philip Gidley King.

Her second son from that relationship, Sydney King was married at St John in Bedwardine Church, Worcester, on March 15, 1825, to local girl Mary Butler, whose family lived in Henwick Road. Interestingly, Sydney gave himself the middle name Inett in signing the marriage register.

Berrow's Worcester Journal of March 17, 1825, recorded: "Marriage - On Tuesday at St John's by the Rev. B. Dent, Lt. Sydney King RN to Mary, third daughter of the late Mr R. Butler of that place."

What first brought Sydney to Worcester for his courtship of Mary Butler, and was his mother at the wedding?

By then, Sydney had enjoyed an illustrious career as a naval officer, having seen active service against the French through the Napoleonic Wars, being taken prisoner for a time in North Carolina, and serving as part of the naval guard on St Helena, when Napoleon was imprisoned there.

Sydney and his wife Mary went on to have six children, but the family moved around the country with his naval postings and also when he was appointed Chief Officer in the Revenue Coastguard based in Harwich, and then Southend. He died in 1841, aged 51, but his wife Mary long survived him, dying in London in 1880.

Sydney's brother, Norfolk King also pursued an illustrious naval career, seeing active service in the Dardanelles, in the Napoleonic Wars and in the Anglo-American War. He died at Stepney, London, in 1839, aged 50.

Richard John Robinson - Mary Inett's husband - was born in Hull, and was 61 when he returned to England, in 1819. Did he return to his native Yorkshire?

Do any of the fascinating facts outlined in the foregoing passages open up positive trails to Ann Robinson (nee Inett) or Richard John Robinson for people of today researching their family trees?

If so, please contact Michael Grundy at the Evening News. I would dearly like to hear from you, particularly on behalf of Ann's descendants.

Dr Ron Edwards suggests that 19th Century burial records and electoral roles for Worcestershire may also be potential sources of vital information, together with old newspaper archives and records of wills and letters of administration.