Mary Bryant

Mary Bryant (c. 1765 – after 1794) was a Cornish convict sent to Australia in 1787 with the First Fleet. In 1791, she became one of the first successful escapees from the fledgling Australian penal colony alongside her husband William Bryant, their two children, and seven other transportees. Her group sailed for sixty-nine days by boat to Kupang on Timor, where they were detained by Dutch authorities and handed over to the British for trial in London. She was represented by the biographer and lawyer James Boswell, who was able to avoid the typical death penalty for such cases and sentenced to serve the remainder of her sentence in Newgate prison. She was pardoned and released in 1793 and returned to Cornwall.