Australian Historical Medals

Lot 633    Session 3 (2.30pm Tue 23 Nov)    Australian Historical Medals

Estimate $7,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $7,000

CONVICT LOVE TOKEN, (on a cartwheel penny?), obverse, the stippled portrait of a young man identified by the legend as `W VALE.23.DEATH RECORDED 1828', reverse, stippled inscription `WHEN / THIS. you .SEE / REMEMBER. ME / WHEN. BANISHED / FROM. My. COUNTR(Y) / A. PRESENT. FOR / ANN CARRIER / AGED 19 / 1828'. Holed for suspension, good fine and rare, one of only a few surviving convict tokens relating to women.

Ann Carrier was described as a housemaid and nurse at her trial in Warwick, England on the 9th August 1828. However, she obviously had other means of income as she was convicted of stealing in Birmingham `from the person in a house of ill-fame'. According to the author Babette Smith in her book `A Cargo of Women', in which Ann has several mentions, it was not an uncommon crime for working women to be convicted of stealing money from their clients when they were in a vulnerable state. She arrived in Sydney on the `Princess Royal' in May 1829 and was assigned to Sarah Wyer before being transferred to M. Smith and then later to Captain H Steel. Ann's English boyfriend (W Vale?) was long dead, buried and forgotten when in 1831 she applied to marry John Ward, however this union did not proceed. But in April 1833 she successfully married Peter Tyler a convict printer employed by the Sydney Monitor and who had earlier been caught up in a bitter campaign against the unpopular Governor Darling. Records show that Peter Tyler died in Sydney in July 1842 but Ann's later years remain a mystery.