Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
DATE: 31 May 1845
POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
TUESDAY.
MARY LAWRENCE (bond) was brought before the Bench under the following circumstances. MARY being laundress in the establishment of Mr. WM BYRNES [WILLIAM BYRNES], and consequently given to get soapy, whenever opportunity occurred, availed herself of one offered at an early hour on Saturday morning, by going out before the inmates of the house were up, and on returning home, at half-past seven, was found to have got most thoroughly soaked—but not by the rain alone—when she proceeded to enact certain freaks, which, although highly diverting to herself, were anything but amusing to her employers. Betaking herself first to the laundry, where there was a basket of clean clothes—it and its contents were flung into the yard, and having surveyed them and seen that they were thoroughly dirtied to her satisfaction, she proceeded to any inner apartment of the laundry to enjoy retirement after her “spirited” exertions, and having locked the door, resolved her flare-up should be completed by burning down the place, with which view burning logs were taken from the fireplace and placed on the middle of the floor. Although this was, in one respect, a light offence, the worthy owners of the building not wishing to be guilty of having a conflagration of Parramatta laid to their charge, considered MARY as coming it rather too strong, in being thus desirous of being chronicled as the Parramatta “Swing,” and sent for the assistance of the police to throw cold water on her “ardent” feelings, who having, with some little difficulty, got access to where this interesting female was, she endeavoured to realise the old adage, that—beauty when unadorned is adorned the most—by tearing her clothes, so that she might go before the Bench, as she stated, in a condition of “naked purity.” She was, however, at length conveyed to durance vile by the help of two of the protective force—but her master had to provide a carriage for her, as she peremptorily refused walking, and the peculiar garments worn by females prevent their being, as with male offenders, quartered by four constables taking either a leg or arm a piece, when their victims are obstroperous [sic: obstreperous].
From the deposition of her master, it also appeared that the prisoner was as great in eloquence as in action, as she had assailed her mistress with a torrent of compliments, which were of that character that they would not bear repetition.
In defence, LAWRENCE made an oration about “all things and something besides,” the whole tenor of which was, that she was the best servant in the colony, and MR. BYRNES the worst possible master; but the Bench refusing to believe this assertion, sent her two months to the 3rd class.
CITATION
Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of MARY LAWRENCE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18450531, accessed [insert current date].
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