There is no accounting sometimes why children turn out they do. Isabella Dixon came from a modest but respectable family. Her father, a career soldier with the prestigious Royal Life Guards, had served in the Peninsular Wars as well as the Battle of Waterloo. While all her siblings lived predictable ordinary 19th century English lives, Isabella herself had been on the street since the age of sixteen. After she racked up three progressively longer jail sentences (14, 20, and 21 days) for drunkenness, an Old Bailey larceny conviction at the age of nineteen, England’s draconian laws of the time, ultimately sealed her fate. That conviction would earn her transportation and banishment to Australia for a period of seven years.
As my first cousin four times removed, Isabella Dixon was born in Knightsbridge Barracks on March 7, 1817, the second eldest child of James Dixon and Diana Calvert. Her father was in turn the son of another James Dixon who had elected to immigrate to Canada in 1818. Eventually all of James Senior’s nine surviving children born in England would join him there save eldest son James who was contracted to serve as a career soldier. The fate of daughter Isabella Dixon had always been something of a blank slate until an archival discovery about her one way trip to Van Diemen’s Land as Tasmania was then known in 1836.
Isabella’s conviction for larceny at London’s Old Bailey Court was recorded on June 13, 1836. An account of her trial shows that she and a friend had been charged following the theft of a cheque for 20 shillings from an inebriated stranger in a pub. In the words of the victim, “the prisoner Dixon came and forced herself upon our company --- she asked me for some beer ---I gave her some --- I was a little tipsy --- she sat quite close to me, near enough to take anything from my pocket --- I got home about nine o’clock --- I missed the order when I got home to my lodgings …”. Although a friend of the victim had been present to witness the theft, he was unable to make the victim understand at the time because he was “in liquor”. The next day, however, now sober, he and his friend were able to locate Isabella who promptly chose to stow herself in a privy in a futile attempt to avoid arrest. When eventually apprehended, Isabella admitted that, after stealing the cheque, passing it on to her twenty-nine year old male accomplice who later tried to cash it. Following conviction for theft in the case of Isabella and possession of stolen goods in the case of her by the accomplice, each of them received a seven year sentence to be served in Australia where they were to be banished.
During the period between 1788 and 1868, England transported about 164,000 men and women to Australian colonies for various crimes. Isabella would be one of about 12,500 female convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land during the period from 1803 to 1853 for what were mostly crimes of theft. From reasonably detailed convict records, one is able to assemble a mental picture what our errant Isabella Dixon looked like. Described as a nineteen year old 5’ 3” pockpitted house servant originally from Knightsbridge, she also had the following descriptors: Complexion – Fresh, Head – Round, Hair – Dark Brown, Visage – Oval, Large, Forehead – High, Eyebrows – Light Brown, Eyes – Dark Grey, Nose – Medium, Mouth – Wide, Lips – Thick, Chin – Medium.
Following her conviction, Isabella likely languished in Newgate Prison until she set sail from Woolwich, England on August 9, 1836 on the transport ship Westmoreland. She was one of 185 female convicts on board, one of whom died en route, before the ship arrived in Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land almost four months later on December 3, 1836. In a report compiled by the surgeon on the ship, Isabella is described as “very bad, very troublesome”. During her first three years of banishment, her conduct would more than prove the surgeon right.
Seemingly having some freedom and employment outside of prison, possibly as a house servant, we find Isabella on December 28, 1836 being returned to the House of Correction for further assignment on account of neglect of duty and insolence. After an apparent period of good behaviour over the next two years, she then once again lapsed on account of having been absent without leave. For that infraction she was ordered on February 8, 1839 to be employed in the prison laundry for 14 days and to sleep in a cell at night. Barely over a month later on March 13, 1839, she was then ordered, on account of being disorderly and insolent, to spend seven days in a cell on bread and water and “returned to the services of the Crown”.
Shortly after this last lapse, Isabella seems, however, to have settled down. Given permission on May 24, 1839 to marry a free settler she had met by the name of Joseph Williamson, the two wed in Hobart on July 29, 1839. Technically still serving her seven year sentence, she then, after receiving her Certificate of Freedom in 1843, moved with husband Joseph to Geelong, Victoria in 1847 where she bore eight children over eleven years. If marriage and children brought Isabella happiness, it was to be short lived. After an eventful earlier life due a lack of judgment and a harsh judicial system, a reformed Isabella died at Birregura, Victoria on November 25, 1858.
Isabella Dixon, the ancestor about whom once so little was known, has now been tracked down. Although she clearly deserves no credit for her earlier life of public drunkenness and thievery which resulted in her banishment to Australia, in the end, however, she managed to rehabilitate herself and found some measure of stability. She has also managed to add some cachet to our family which can now claim Australian convict ancestry.
David Arntfield
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