Broad Street, Aberdeen (1833)
The crime of which the two young friends were accused was theft. They had stolen a bolster slip and gown from a haberdasher, and a cotton shawl and three silk handkerchiefs from a tenement. Mary Ann and Matilda’s high court charges were legally defined in Scots law as theft, ‘aggravated by habite and repute’. ‘Habite’ meant they had previously faced charges of theft and ‘repute’ meant already known as a thief. From 1811 to 1853, around two-thirds of Scottish women sentenced to be ‘transported beyond seas’ were sent to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
A brief account of their trial in a local newspaper detailed how: