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Mary Lawrence: Gun-toting Granny

 

Mary Lawrence was a Dorset born granny who sometimes carried a gun. A servant she was wrongly found guilty in 1813 of stealing a gold watch, valued at over two pounds,  from T Coorton Esq of Weymouth. Mary Lawrence was sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol. Yet according to her gravestone in Yass, Australia, Mary Lawrence lived to be 113 years old - leaving children to the fourth generation said to number 600.

Instead of facing the gallows, Mary Lawrence was transported to Australia for a period of seven years leaving Dartford on the convict vessel Broxbournebury in February 1814. After Mary had served four years of her sentence, the news arrived in Australia that someone in Weymouth had admitted, on their death bed, to have stolen the gold watch. As a result, Mary Lawrence was granted a full pardon and awarded sixty acres of land at Yass by the Governor as compensation. She was said to be the first white woman in the ‘Outback’.

Mary had married ex-convict George Davis on 3rd February 1818 and they had six children. The couple opened a pub, the ‘Sawyer’s Arms’ where they distilled rum and brewed their own beer. It was said Mary could brew a mean pint. This was a wise decision as the inn was the last stopping place on the road between Sydney and Melbourne. Her husband had arrived in Sydney on the convict vessel ‘Earl Spencer’ in 1813. George Davis, described as a boatman, had been found guilty of theft at Maidstone Assizes in Kent. 

In her later years, ‘Granny Davis’ became something of a legend holding off bandits by threatening them with an old gun. She was carrying £700 in cash, proceeds from wool sales in Sydney. Then another time, she cheated robbers by hiding her money under her hat.

Mary Davis Lane in the Australian capital, Canberra is named after her. She died in 1889. Whether she was or was not 113 is almost impossible to verify! It is said during her life she was scarcely a day ill.

(Illustration believed to be photograph of Mary Davis - formerly Lawrence.)
(Credit: Wyke Register Magazine.)

                                        Mary Davis Lane, Canberra, Australia.








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