George Cribb

..across the lane from the Byrnes,a butcher named George Cribb was buying up a house and allotments from their defacto owners mostly women,..Eventually he owned the whole parcel,almost half the site.The lane that ran alongside his property became known as Cribb's Lane.He and his wives Fanny Barnett and Sophia Lett,and their children,were the bynes neighbours until 1827. The meat trade must have paid well in early Sydney,for George had only arrived a convict on the Admiral Gambier in December 1808.Six months later,still under sentence,he was already advertising"fine fresh pork" to the meat loving populace.He had probably bought some capital with him;how else to explaine the spree of land buying on the Rocks starting only nine months after arrival and not ceasing until 1813?Soon the purpose of aquiring so much land became clear:Cribb established a slaughteryard for his butcher's shop,behind his corner house and the various other houses and huts in Gloucester Street(in Sydney,the Rocks area)He married a convict woman named Fanny Barnett(spouse 2) who arrived on the Speke in 1808 and their 1811 wedding at St Philips was witnessed by their neighbours....(he then owned shops) By 1814 Fanny had left the colony and in 1818 he remarried (spouse 3) Sophia Lett.A month later gained licence of the Turk's Head Hotel,later known asBird-in-Hand.Shop and pub there until 1902.Today can walk on the stone flagged floor..arrested oct 1812 with attempting to smuggle 20 gallons bengal rum,charges not prove..pattern of insinuation continurd over the year..colonial secretaries papers..illegally hawking meat 1819..in 1823,both he and his nephew Thomas Cribb,a convict who had been assigned to him as a servant,werte implicated in the serious crime of cattle stealing and bribing a witness.In 1827 his premises were raided..again suspect of cattle theft..he remorgaged on his Rocks properties and his farms(he had been granted land in the Minto district in the south)several times over to various Sydney merchants for roughly 600 pounds each time..applications for a hotel licence for his house were refused..from 1821 involved in a number of civil suits and appears to have lost every one of them.his stock,tenements,yard and dwelling house were all advertised for auction by the Provost Marshall over the 1820's...to be continued in next submission by me the story of his public marriage breakup and return of his fist wife,Mary.!!and and children/stepchildren ..chez.I recommend the book INSIDE THE ROCKS-THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD by Grace Karkens..has photos,his details,layout of his house etc which the did an archaeology dig on,in the Sydney Rocks area in 1994...Chez

from submission (1).third spouse of George Cribb was Sophia Lett nee Blundell.They married Sydney,N.S.W 1818..bride was recently widowed..(late husband Stafford Lett).she was a capable,well-respected and propertied publican with 5 children..for her history and life saga refer to my other George cribb submissions and to find the fantastic reference book about them.

Salisbury George Cribb and Ann Cribb, charged with having uttered two forged notes, purporting to be Bank of England notes, of 2/- each, were found guilty and both sentenced to be transported for 14 years. Salisbury Journal, 16 Mar 1807 HO 9-9-1 Records of Laurel, Hardy and York Hulks, in Portsmouth Harbour, 1805-1831,page 20. Received from Sailisbury, 24 June 1807, (3 prisoners) George Cribb, age 30, convicted at Salisbury, 7 Mar 1807, for forgery, sentenced to 14 years transportation. Disd. June 1808.