House History Research

Whilst researching the history of an address in Berkshire, I stumbled across a case that pulled me far beyond deeds and census returns. The name that surfaced was Lydia Astell – born in Berkshire around 1796, the daughter of Ellick Etherington and Hannah Robley. Her story could not be neatly contained within four walls. Instead, it unfolded in the Assize courts, on the decks of a convict ship, and eventually in the raw new settlements of New South Wales. It is a reminder that behind every address lies a web of lives, some ordinary, some extraordinary, and some, like Lydia’s, filled with scandal, resilience, and reinvention.

By her early twenties, Lydia’s life had already veered far from the expected path of marriage and domesticity. The records describe her as a “dashing cyprian” – a phrase that hinted at beauty, charm, and a fall from grace. Drawn first into the orbit of soldiers billeted in Berkshire, and later to the temptations of London’s theatres and taverns, she became entangled in the dangerous world of banknote forgery.

Convicted of passing forged notes – a capital offence at the time – Lydia narrowly escaped the gallows. The jury, swayed by her youth, sex, and circumstances, chose exile over execution. Her sentence: fourteen years’ transportation to New South Wales, a penal colony on the far side of the world.

This is her story.

Part One: Early Beginnings

Lydia was born in 1796, the daughter of parents described as respectable – a word that, in the early nineteenth century, carried real weight. Respectability was measured not just by income, but by reputation, adherence to social norms, and distance from scandal. For a girl like Lydia, the expected path would have been marriage to a tradesman or farmer, followed by a life centred on household duties and the raising of children.

But England at the turn of the nineteenth century was not quiet. The Napoleonic Wars had filled towns and villages with troops, as regiments were billeted across the country. Soldiers passed through on their way to training grounds and camps, bringing with them bravado and the allure of a life beyond parish boundaries. Their presence unsettled the rhythms of ordinary life. For local young women, the sight of red coats in the street was both thrilling and dangerous: soldiers represented opportunity, flattery, and escape, but also instability and risk.

For Lydia, on the cusp of adulthood when the wars ended in 1815, the military presence seems to have been the turning point. Contemporary accounts suggest she was “seduced” and drawn away from the stability of her family home. In this period, when a woman’s virtue was tied so tightly to her social standing, such a fall could be irreversible. Yet it also opened the door to experiences that would take her far beyond the confines of her beginnings.

From here, Lydia’s path led away from the routines of provincial life and towards the energy of London, where dangerous new associations awaited her.

Part Two: London Life and the Lure of the Stage

Some genealogical records suggest that Lydia may have first married as young as fourteen, possibly even twice before the age of 18, though she was in the habit of using aliases and so details are blurred and difficult to verify. What is clearer, is that by her late teens, she was working as a shoebinder – a trade that tied her to London’s working poor. Shoebinders stitched and finished shoes for workshops, often in dimly lit rooms for low pay. It was honest work but precarious, leaving women like Lydia vulnerable to insecurity and dependence.

From there, she stepped into more ambiguous territory. Contemporary accounts describe her entering a period of concubinage – living with a man, and sometimes even his wife, outside the bonds of formal marriage. While unusual by modern standards, such arrangements were fairly common in Georgian London. Men of means often maintained mistresses, offering them financial support, fashionable clothes, or a roof over their heads in exchange for companionship. For women without family protection or steady wages, concubinage could feel like both risk and opportunity: a fragile route to survival and a glimpse of a better life.

It was also during these years that Lydia appeared on the stage at Astley’s Amphitheatre, a riot of equestrian stunts, comic songs, and pantomimes that drew crowds from across society. For a young woman, singing there meant visibility and escape, but it also carried social risks. Female performers lived on a knife edge: celebrated in one breath, suspected of impropriety in the next.

By the end of the decade, Lydia had entered the circle of what one newspaper called “a profligate jockey.” Sporting men lived extravagantly, gambling and spending with abandon. For a time, Lydia would have likely enjoyed the sheen of glamour that came with such company. Yet it was a dangerous tight-rope she was walking. By 1819, she was described as “figuring away in meretricious splendour” – dressed in fine black veils and fashionable gowns, living far above what a shoebinder’s wages could afford… so, how was she managing it?

Behind the illusion lay her entanglement in the forgery underworld, a shadowy network that drew in women to pass false notes through shops and inns. Whether she was coerced, complicit, or swept along by circumstance, Lydia was about to face the full weight of the law.

Part Three: The Horsham Trial

In March 1819, Lydia was in Horsham – but not for a Sussex countryside holiday. She was standing trial at the Lent Assizes for a serious offence. She faced the charge of passing forged Bank of England notes. At the time, this was considered one of the gravest crimes. The punishment was death, and many men and women alike were hanged for it.

Forgery was rife in the early nineteenth century. Banknotes were poorly designed and easy to copy, and organised gangs relied on women to pass the fakes. A well-dressed young woman could walk into a shop and hand over a note without raising suspicion. For some, it was a calculated risk; for others, it was a way to survive in a world that offered few safe options. Lydia, living far above what her trade as a shoebinder could provide, had been pulled into that dangerous circle.

Her trial could easily have ended with a death sentence. But the court noted what they called “her sex and peculiar circumstances” and chose a different path. Instead of the gallows, Lydia was sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to New South Wales.

It was a decision rooted in the attitudes of the age. Women were seen as more impressionable and easily led, and that weakness was sometimes used to argue for mercy. In a society where women had almost no rights and no movement like feminism to speak on their behalf, this paternalism could make the difference between life and death. For Lydia, it meant exile rather than execution – a reprieve that saved her life, but sent her to the far side of the world.

Part Four: The Voyage on the Janus

By the time she stood trial, Lydia was only 23. She had already lived a life more colourful than most: apprentice shoebinder, singer, mistress, and now convict. Yet her story was far from finished. Transportation didn’t close her life down – it gave her the chance, and perhaps the necessity, to reinvent herself once again.

Later that year she boarded the convict ship Janus, one of more than a hundred women bound for New South Wales. The ship sailed from Cork in December 1819, paused briefly at Rio de Janeiro in February 1820, and finally dropped anchor in Sydney Cove on 3 May 1820 – almost five months at sea.

The Janus would become infamous, not for disease or disaster, but for the scandal that followed it across the oceans. An inquiry in Sydney later revealed that “prostitution did prevail to a great degree on board,” and that the captain and officers had done little to prevent it. Women moved between the sailors’ quarters and the officers’ cabins with the knowledge of the ship’s surgeon and even the priests, who merely urged them to be “more circumspect.”

Lydia herself was pulled directly into the heart of the affair. On 24 June 1820, she gave sworn evidence before a bench of magistrates. She admitted she had “passed much of [her] time” in the cabin of John Hedges, the chief mate, and declared herself pregnant with his child. She described how women went openly between the decks, and how the surgeon and priests turned a blind eye so long as their own reputations were preserved.

For a young woman who had narrowly escaped the gallows only months earlier, this was a remarkable turn. Her testimony shows her not only as a convict but as a witness whose own words survive in the record. On a voyage where authority lay almost entirely with men, Lydia managed to assert her voice – however precariously – and carried her story forward into the raw new world of colonial Sydney.

Part Five: A Turbulent Beginning in the Colony

When Lydia stepped off the Janus in May 1820, she entered a world both strange and unforgiving. Convict women had little control over their circumstances, but Lydia wasted no time in trying to change hers. Within months she had applied for permission to marry a free man, James Nelson. The union never went ahead, but the attempt makes clear she was determined to take charge of her future almost as soon as she arrived.

Instead, by 1821 she had married Thomas Barnes, a fellow convict and a stonemason, who had arrived on the Coromandel, after being found guilty of stealing a quantity of beef and pork. Their marriage, however, was anything but straightforward – at least in the early years.

By 1823 Lydia was already in trouble. She was committed to the Parramatta Female Factory for twelve months, her offence recorded bluntly: “absent from her husband and at large without legal authority, a most notorious character.” Letters later written by her husband suggest that she may already have been living independently at this point in their marriage – perhaps even with another man.

The following year her defiance escalated. On 9 July 1824 she was again confined, this time for “attempting to stow away in the ship Rambler.” The intention was clear: she meant to leave the colony without permission. Her punishment was another sentence in the Factory, this time to remain there at the Governor’s pleasure. Later that year she petitioned the Colonial Secretary for leave to collect her belongings, but the reply was curt: “The leave to come to Sydney which you state in your letter of the 6th instant cannot be granted to you.”

By early 1825 Lydia was back in Sydney and openly defiant. This time, it’s clear she was having relations with another man. In March 1825, she entered into a formal co-partnership with Charles Williams at the Macquarie Tavern on Pitt Street. Weeks later she signed a rental agreement for a house on South Head Road. She was no longer merely absent from her husband – she was building a new life.

For Thomas, her husband, the humiliation was acute, and he seemingly retaliated in an effort to have Lydia brought back “under control.” On 29 April 1825 he wrote to the Colonial Secretary to report her elopement, warning she was preparing to abscond from the colony with Williams:

“…eloped with a man who… now keeps a Beer Licence in Pitt Street. Memorialist being very credibly informed that this Man and her are on the eve of leaving the Colony, he is determined to bring her away at any rate… she told her Husband and your Memorialist that she cares not for him, or for your Honor, that she is a free Woman and as such shall remain.”

The authorities investigated, and indeed recorded her as living with Charles Williams while still legally married to Thomas Barnes. Lydia was sent back to the Factory yet again.

Thomas, possibly feeling guilt or desperation over his wife’s situation, wrote again to the Colonial Secretary on 11 May 1825. This time the tone was different:

“…your Memorialist most humbly prays that as he has got good employment and is capable of maintaining her, your Honor will be pleased to grant her into his care, as he hopes in future to prevent her falling into the like errors again, having been seduced from him as she has been.”

The authorities were unmoved by his plea: Lydia remained in the Factory.

These first years in New South Wales show Lydia was still as restless and rebellious as she had been prior to her life in the colony. To the officials who recorded her every misstep, she was a scandal. But looked at another way, they reveal a young woman determined to seize independence in a world built to deny her any.

Part Six: Building a Life Together

Despite the upheaval of 1823–1825, Lydia and Thomas found a way forward. The records fall quiet for a time, but by 1827 their first daughter, Lydia, was born – a sign that the marriage had been rebuilt after years of strain. More children followed, including John Thomas in 1829 and Hannah in 1831.

In 1828 Lydia received her ticket of leave, which permitted her to remain in the Bathurst district. Thomas, by then, was working steadily and even served for a time as a gaoler at Bathurst before turning to farming. For Lydia, who had spent her early years in the colony battling the system, the ticket of leave marked a turning point: she was no longer just surviving, but beginning to settle.

By 1833 she had secured her certificate of freedom, formally ending her sentence. Indeed it had been around 14 years since she had been back in Horsham, faced with an uncertain future. With Thomas, she moved further westward into the developing districts, at Kelso and Meadow Flat, where their younger children were baptised. Records suggest that Lydia may have re-pursued her interest in running taverns and inns – with the Trafalgar at Meadow Flat and later the Golden Fleece at Kelso mentioned. These establishments would have placed her at the heart of colonial frontier life.

The decades that followed brought stability. Thomas received his conditional pardon in 1834 and later purchased land at Roxburgh, where he farmed until his death in April 1859. Just seven months later, in November, Lydia too passed away at Goulburn, aged 63.

They were buried together beneath the same headstone, alongside their infant grandson. Thomas is remembered as a “faithful friend, a father dear, a loving husband,” and Lydia as “the beloved wife of the above.” For all the turmoil of their early years – the Factory sentences, the petitions, the attempted escapes – their story ended with reconciliation, permanence, and the kind of respectability Lydia had once seemed destined to lose forever.

Part Seven: Reflections

Lydia’s life is a reminder of what house history can uncover. When we trace the history of an address, we often begin with deeds, census returns, and the quiet details of everyday life. But sometimes a name surfaces that leads far beyond the walls of a single home. Lydia’s story took me from court records in Sussex to convict ships bound for New South Wales, and from the walls of the Parramatta Female Factory to the inns of the colonial frontier.

Her journey was anything but ordinary: rebellious, scandalous, and yet ultimately marked by reinvention. To her contemporaries she was a problem, a woman unwilling to be contained. To us, she stands as proof that behind every address is the possibility of an extraordinary life – one that history very nearly forgot.

We often think of the Georgian era as a time of well-behaved women, especially in small parishes and in families described as “respectable.” Personally, when I picture life then, I struggle to believe that women were as compliant as history tends to suggest. Lydia’s story is a reminder that beneath the veneer of respectability there were women living boldly, making choices, and refusing to be invisible – even when the price for doing so was high.

Every home has its stories. Some are quiet, others as dramatic as Lydia’s – but all are worth uncovering. If you’d like to know what history might be waiting behind your own address, that’s exactly what I can help you discover.

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