Mary was baptised at St Leonard's Shoreditch, parents Robert and Mary SPRINGHAM of ye old artillery ground, in 1768. She was a hawker when she was convicted of stealing in 1787 and transported on Lady Penrhyn, one of the ships of the First Fleet, which arrived in New South Wales in 1788.
At Port Jackson she formed a relationship with William HAMBLY a carpenter's crew on HMS Sirius and they had a son William in 1790. They accompanied him to Norfolk Island on Sirius when it was wrecked in 1790. William chose to remain when the crew was relieved and returned to England. He farmed his land grant of 60 acres, supplying the government. Mary probably cared for the two breeding sows, six hens and one cock which they were supplied with, while her husband cleared the land and erected a hut, with the help of two assigned convicts. They had a daughter Elizabeth in 1794, and another Mary who died in infancy in 1795. Mary died in 1796, so her daughter probably did not remember her.
There is an old headstone on Norfolk Island with initials MH and a cross, which may have been Mary's.
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