Susannah Holmes: the convict mother who would not leave her child

The most famous thing Susannah Holmes ever did was refuse. In the autumn of 1786, on a wharf at Plymouth, she was told to board a prison hulk and leave her baby behind, because the child had no papers and no place on the ship. She would not. What she did instead set off a chain of events that reached a London newspaper, a government minister, and in the end the deck of a First Fleet transport bound for Botany Bay.

She was born about 1763 in Norfolk, from the same corner of England as Henry Kable. In March 1784 she was convicted at Thetford of stealing clothing, silver spoons and household linen — goods valued at around fifty shillings, enough in that era to carry a death sentence. Like Henry’s, her sentence was commuted to fourteen years’ transportation, and she was sent to Norwich Castle Gaol.

A child born in gaol

Prisoners at Norwich moved about the castle freely by day, and it was there that Susannah and Henry’s son was born, on 17 February 1786, inside the walls. Because his parents were not married, he was entered under his mother’s name — the ship’s papers would later list him as Henry Holmes. The family called him Harry. You can read his own life on the Henry Kable Junior page.

The gaoler who walked to London

Later that year the women were ordered to a hulk at Plymouth. When the captain would not take the baby, Susannah is said to have threatened to take her own life rather than be parted from him. In the end she handed the child back to the gaoler, John Simpson, with words that have stayed in the record ever since: do what you will.

Simpson — by every account a decent man — did something remarkable. He carried the baby to London himself and petitioned the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, for the family to be kept together. An innkeeper’s wife minded the child while he pressed his case. When the Norfolk Chronicle printed the story on 11 November 1786, the public took it up; a subscription of about £20 was raised, and Lord Sydney arranged not only for Harry to be returned to Susannah but for Henry to travel with them. The Kables never forgot the gaoler. One of their later sons was named John, for John Simpson.

Australia’s First Couple

The family sailed on the Friendship and reached Port Jackson on 26 January 1788. On 10 February, Susannah and Henry were married by the chaplain Richard Johnson — the first recorded European wedding in the colony. At the bicentenary in 1988 the Sun-Herald called them Australia’s “First Couple”, and in 2006 The Bulletin placed Susannah among the hundred most influential Australians — a striking place for a woman who had arrived a convict.

She and Henry had eleven children and built a life on the Hawkesbury. Among those children was Diana Kable, whose marriage to William Littleton Gaudry begins the family line that leads to Tony Gaudry, the author of Son of the First Fleet. Susannah died on 8 November 1825, aged about sixty-three, and was buried at St Matthew’s, Windsor; the Sydney Gazette marked her passing two days later. Her wider family is set out on the Kable family history page.

Further reading: People Australia and the Henry Kable entry on Wikipedia, which also covers Susannah.