GGGG Grandmother Mary PILES

Mary Pile [sic] was popularly known as "the female highwayman" when she was tried by the first Middlesex Jury before Mr. Baron Eyre, the session beginning on the 6th April 1785. At a previous trial in January 1783 she had been fined one shilling and sentenced to one year in the House of Correction, Clerkenwell, for the theft of clothing at the Plow Inn from a waggoner and servant girl. This time she stood accused of stealing 29s. 6d. which belonged to one Abraham Abbott in a dwelling house owned by William Webb at five o'clock in the night of the 22nd January 1785. She was found guilty of stealing but not of burglary and sentenced to seven years transportation. Mary Piles was sent to the Lady Penrhyn on 6th January 1787 where she was recorded as being 20 years old. She married Ottiwell Hindle (qv) on the 14th September 1788 in St. Phillips church, Sydney where she signed her own name and then on the 5th July 1789 a son John by John Chew (qv) a marine private was baptised. On the 4th March 1790 Mary, her husband Otawel Ingle (Hindle) and their son were all sent to Norfolk Island by Sirus where she lived on an allotment belonging to Ottiwell Hindle at Phillipsburg. They all left Norfolk Island by Atlantic on 21st September 1792. Mary Piles was recorded as living with William Browning (qv) in 1806 at Seven Hills to whom she had borne a son Francis who was baptised on the 27th July 1794. She was later described as the wife of William Edwards in 1822 and 1825 living in the Liverpool district.