WLL: Hannah Rigby - The Last Convict Woman of Moreton Bay

Hannah Rigby was the only convict woman to remain in Moreton Bay when the penal establishment closed. She was also notorious for being sentenced to transportation three times – once to New South Wales, and twice to Moreton Bay.

The biographies of convict women are mostly limited to the few who became successful and rich, but what of the majority of those exiles, the women like Hannah, whose whole lives were plagued by relentless hardship?

Hannah was a Liverpool seamstress transported for larceny; she was typical of women of her time struggling against poverty and gender inequality, and yet her story was largely undocumented. Jane Smith’s presentation about Hannah Rigby will reveal the new information about this remarkable woman as celebrated in her biography One Free Woman.

Jane Smith is a Toowoomba librarian/archivist, author and freelance editor who loves researching and writing stories from the past. She has written more than twenty books, fiction and non-fiction, for all ages. Four of her books have been short- or long-listed for literary awards, including Ship of Death: The Tragedy of the ‘Emigrant’, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize. Jane received a Visiting Fellowship with the Harry Gentle Resource Centre (Griffith University) in 2024 to write One Free Woman: The True Story of Convict Hannah Rigby, published by Big Sky Publishing in January 2025.

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Host or Publisher The Royal Historical Society of Queensland