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Australian PM Kevin Rudd "Descended from Convicts"
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by Christina 123 | July 31, 2008 at 03:34 pm
379 views | 22 Recommendations | 6 comments
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It has today been revealed that Australian Prime Minsiter, Kevin Rudd, can trace his descendants back to convicts.
This is no surprise, for Australia has its history as a British penal colony, and as from 1860, according to secret documents, was officially designated a "whites-only" penal colony with the aim of dispersing British stock around the empire. A large percentage of Australians may trace back their roots to transportation, a common form of punishment for the poor, political dissidents, the orphaned and the convicted.
Researchers looking into Mr Rudd's family history discovered that his fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Rudd, was transported to Australia in 1801 to serve a seven-year sentence for "unlawfully acquiring a bag of sugar".
However, his crime is eclipsed by that of the prime minister's paternal fifth great-grandmother Mary Wade, a London street urchin who made a pittance by sweeping streets and begging.
In 1788, aged 12, she and an older girl coaxed an eight-year-old girl into a toilet where they relieved her of "her dress, petticoats, a linen tippet, and a cap and absconded".
Wade was sentenced "to be hanged by the neck til she be dead" after a trial at London's Old Bailey in January 1789 but the sentence was commuted to transportation to the colony of New South Wales.
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Christina 123
LONDON, United Kingdom
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (6)
at 15:44 on July 31st, 2008
Christina 123, I like this story. It's good stuff. Like you said it was a penal colony like Georgia in the US. I am sure that a few AU are descendents of quite a few convicts. Is there a cionstitutional provision to not be the descendent of convicts?
at 15:52 on July 31st, 2008
Thanks politisite! Here in England, snobs like to claim they are descended from William the Conqueror (Normans) so I daresay it is inverted snobbery.
at 15:52 on July 31st, 2008
Does it matter if he is? I don't know, I'm just asking...
at 05:15 on August 1st, 2008
Christina 123, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 05:17 on August 1st, 2008
Christina 123, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 10:54 on August 1st, 2008
Thanks, Amyjudd, Johnny, Vinny & Rhonda. Of course it does not matter at all, it simply highlights that what we know of our forebears is dependent on how good public records were. In this case, the British - renowned for meticulously good records - meticulously recorded all those born to the landed gentry...and all those despatched to the colonies, as anyone caught returning after having been transported was hanged!