Margaret Catchpole

Margaret Catchpole (14 March 1762 – 13 May 1819) was a Suffolk servant girl, chronicler, and deportee to Australia. Born in Suffolk, she worked as a servant in various houses before being convicted of stealing a horse and escaping from Ipswich Gaol. Following her capture, she was transported to the Australian penal colony of New South Wales, where she remained for the rest of her life. Her entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography describes her as "one of the few true convict chroniclers with an excellent memory and a gift for recording events". Early life Catchpole was reputedly born at Nacton, Suffolk, the daughter of Elizabeth Catchpole and according to one source of Jonathan Catchpole, head ploughman. Catchpole had little education and worked as a servant for different families until being employed in May 1793 as under-nurse and under-cook by the writer Elizabeth Cobbold at her house on St Margarets Green in Ipswich. Cobbold's husband was a brewer and member of the prosperous Ipswich Cobbold family. Here Catchpole was virtually part of the family and was responsible for saving the lives of children in her care three times. She also learned to read and write here. According to the 1949 Dictionary of Australian Biography (DAB1949), not be confused with the Australian Dictionary of Biography, she once rode bareback into Ipswich as a child to fetch a doctor, guiding the horse with a halter. The source also states that she had fallen in love with a sailor named William Laud, who had joined a band of smugglers; later, he was pressed into service in the Royal Navy. And that Laud was trying to persuade Catchpole to travel in a boat with him when another admirer of Margaret, John Barry, came to her assistance, and a fight ensued; Laud shot Barry. Barry recovered, but a price was put on Laud's head.