Dorothy Handland

She was 82 years old and a dealer in rags and old clothes

Dorothy Handland sentenced on the 22 Feb 1786 at the Old Bailey for Perjury to 7 years transportation: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17860222-131-person1292&div=t17860222-131#highlight At 82 on arrival per the Lady Penrhyn at Port Jackson NSW with the First Fleet, she was the oldest convict in the fleet. Robert Hughes author of The Fatal Shore credits Dorothy with being the first suicide in Australian settlement history. Quoting from page 73 of The Fatal Shore. "The oldest convict was Dorothy Handland, a dealer in rags and old clothes who was 82 years old in 1787. She had drawn 7 years for perjury. In 1789 a fit of despair she was to hang herself from a gum tree at Sydney Cove, thus becoming Australia's first suicide." A brick cairn in the town of Coomba Park on the foreshore of Wallis Lake mentions Dorothy Handland as one of the areas early Pioneers on a plaque. Official government records show a different story: On the alphabetical indents for the first fleet Dorothy Handland was given permission to leave the colony at the end of her sentence "left the colony June 1793 per Kitty for England" Lieutenant Colonel of Marines, David Collins 1756-1810: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/collins-david-1912 wrote of Dorothy Handland in his book: An Account Of The English Colony In New South Wales. Lt Col Collins mentions that Dorothy left the colony of Sydney on the 4 Jun 1793 on board the "Kitty" bound for England with other time expired elderly convicts, 2 of them being Henry Barnett and John Turner.

Dorothy was charged with perjury in connection with the evidence she gave in the trial of William Till. Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 12 July 2020), December 1785, trial of WILLIAM TILL (t17851214-47).