Susannah Cable

Susannah Cable was a convict whose transportation to New South Wales became part of a family struggle against separation and legal exclusion. Her case helped expose a sharp divide between British law, under which convicts had almost no civil rights, and the emerging colonial practice: after the Cables’ charitable parcel went missing, an Australian court heard their claim and ordered the ship’s captain to pay them.

Conviction and Transportation

Susannah had been found guilty of stealing and sentenced to death. Her sentence was commuted to fourteen years’ transportation to the American colonies, but that destination ceased to be available after the United States won independence. In Norwich Castle Jail she met Henry, a fellow convict, and the two fell in love and married. By the time Susannah was selected for transportation to Australia in 1787, they had a young son, also named Henry.

The decision initially sent Susannah away without her husband. She was moved to a prison boat on the Thames while Henry was not included in the transportation plan. Their impending separation became known beyond the prison, reaching Lady Cadogan, a philanthropist who organized a successful campaign to reunite the family. Henry was then to be transported with Susannah and their child. The change was a practical reprieve from separation, but it did not remove the family’s status as convicts or the vulnerability that status carried.

The Voyage and the Missing Parcel

The Cables sailed aboard the Alexander, one of eleven ships carrying convicts to Australia under Captain Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay, where the first fleet established its settlement in January 1788. Lady Cadogan had also raised £20 to buy goods for the family to receive in Australia. The parcel was meant to provide clothing and other articles suited to their circumstances, but on arrival it had disappeared—or, as the ship’s captain, Duncan Sinclair, claimed, could not be found.

The loss mattered because the goods were not simply a private convenience. They had been collected and bought through charitable contributions for the use of Henry, Susannah, and their child. A writ later described repeated applications to obtain the parcel from the Alexander, which was still in port, and reported that only a small portion—some books—had been delivered. The remainder, described as considerably more valuable, was still aboard. The Cables’ effort to recover it turned a missing consignment into a test of whether transported convicts could make a claim against someone who knew the law left them exposed.

A Claim Against the Law

In Britain, convicts had practically no rights: they could not own property, sue in court, or give evidence there. Sinclair knew the limits of their legal position and, the book suggests, probably took the parcel. Though he did not admit to stealing it, he boasted that the Cables could not sue him. Under British law, that boast was substantially correct; the dispute would have ended there.

In the colony, however, the writ reached David Collins, the judge advocate. It called Henry and Susannah “new settlers of this place,” rather than identifying them as convicts. The phrase was crossed out later, probably by Collins, and the account suggests that someone had chosen it because describing the couple as convicts might have doomed the case before it could proceed. The Cables could not sign the writ: both were illiterate, and each put a cross at the bottom. Their marks and the contested description make visible the narrow means available to people who could not speak for themselves in the court system but whose claim was nevertheless put before it.

The Verdict and Its Significance

Collins convened the court rather than dismissing the case. Its jury consisted entirely of soldiers, the very kind of guards sent to Australia to oversee convicts such as the Cables. The setting gave the proceeding an unmistakable imbalance: the plaintiffs were transported prisoners, the defendant was the ship’s captain, and the jury came from the military establishment responsible for guarding convicts. Sinclair contested the case on the ground that the Cables were criminals, but the verdict stood. He was ordered to pay fifteen pounds.

The book identifies this as the first civil case adjudicated in Australia and says Collins did not apply British law; he ignored it. The judgment did not erase the Cables’ convict status or establish that convicts had broad rights. Its importance lies in the concrete departure: a court in the new colony entertained a claim that British legal rules would have shut out and awarded the Cables compensation. Their case thus became an early example of Australia diverging from Britain in civil and criminal law, as well as in its wider political and economic institutions. Susannah’s story is not presented as a full account of her later life; it ends, in the evidence available here, with a family reunited, a parcel contested, and a colonial verdict that British law would not have allowed.