Bella's Journey into History

In Melbourne I belong to the GSV Writers Circle and occasionally we practise the writing of a meaningful excerpt of our family history in a word-limited story. It certainly helps focus the mind on content and pace. We try to avoid wandering off the highway and down narrative byways. Here's an example of such an exercise - a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, told in approximately 350 words. It's a concentrated taste, a short-form version, of the adventures of Isabella Ramsay, a key character in my latest book Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter.

In May 1790 16-year-old Bella stole a man’s coat, a checked apron and red duffle cloth from a farmer’s wife, her former employer. Found guilty at the Carlisle Assizes and incarcerated in the Carlisle Citadel, she soon heard about a new British government policy requiring women prisoners of child-bearing age to be sent to New South Wales.

She was moved to the assembly point at Newgate Prison in London. 

On 14 February about 70 female prisoners were moved onto two lighters lying off Blackfriars Bridge. A vast crowd of curious Londoners gathered on that cold winter’s morning to watch them set off down the Thames towards Woolwich, where the transports bound for Botany Bay were moored.

Bella was loaded aboard the Mary Ann, stripped of her clothing, shaved of her hair and issued with a woollen cap, a jacket and a petticoat of blue baize. 

Next day the Mary Ann set sail. She made a fast voyage, anchoring in Sydney Cove at 2pm on Sunday 9 July 1791, ahead of the main Third Fleet ships.

A grim fate now awaited Bella, not yet eighteen years of age. Marines, soldiers and settlers crowded aboard the Mary Ann, keen to have first pick of prospective servants and ‘wives’. Women not selected were permitted to go with any man they chose, or else become hut-keepers for from two to ten men. For a virtuous woman, the available options were highly disagreeable. Paraded before the ogling men, Bella was selected by James Manning, a former First Fleet marine. They lived first in the barracks in Sydney, then on a farm near Parramatta.

Sydney in 1791, looking westwards towards Parramatta,
from David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales
Aborigines are standing near today's southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Women, being so scarce in the colony, were able to wield some power of their own. Within two years Bella chose a male partner more to her liking. With industrious Robert Forrester, a former First Fleet convict, she had nine children before her death in 1807, thereby becoming a founding mother of modern Australia.

Bella made a mark during her short life in Australia. She's been nominated for inclusion in the Australian Dictionary of Biography's 'Colonial Women' project. Read her full story in Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter, available online through BookPOD.