Join us on Tuesday 4th February 2025, From 12pm for the APC Proclamation Day Luncheon.

Ticket price: $95pp

“Henry and Susannah Kable and the first civil law case in Australia”

In October 1786, Susannah Holmes and three other female convicts at Norwich jail were assigned for transhipment to Botany Bay. Letters were subsequently written to Lord Suffield and Evan Nepean requesting that her five-month-old child and husband be allowed to join her. However, when the turnkey of the prison delivered her to the hulk, the captain refused to accept the child until instructions were received from the minister. The turnkey, John Simpson was then left with the child and took it upon himself to travel from Plymouth to London with young Henry to seek the required permission from Lord Sydney. On seeing Lord Sydney on the stairs, he appealed to his humanity to allow the child and the father to join Susannah on the hulk, which for humanitarian reasons was then approved.

Before Henry and Susannah had sailed, the publication of their plight and of their devotion to each other resulted in the public subscribing £20 to buy them goods, which the master of the Friendship, Duncan Sinclair seized during the voyage.

Henry Kable, Susannah Holmes and the young Henry Kable, departed Portsmouth on May 13, 1787, with Commander Arthur Phillip and the rest of the ships of the First Fleet and after stopping in Cape Town and Botany Bay, the fleet entered Port Jackson and anchored in Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.

On 1st July 1788, the first civil action brought in Australian legal history began. Henry and Susannah Kabel initiated an action against Duncan Sinclair, master of the Alexander, following his inability to produce the parcel assigned to his care by the charitable people of London. This case had tremendous ramifications for the future development of the colony. In allowing felons to bring a case to court, Judge-Advocate Collins ignored the English common law rule of felony attaint. Under that rule, a person sentenced to death for a felony was unable to hold property, give evidence, or sue in court. Thus, an ambivalence between Australian and English common law began with this very first case. Perhaps, because it was Governor Phillip’s view that convicts had rights and that the colony should evolve into a free society.

The Court found a verdict for the Plaintiff, to the value by him in the Complaint.
David Collins, Judge Advocate

Over the next twenty years, Henry and Susannah became prosperous, accumulating land, animals, shops and ships, and their lives were emblematic of the new society that would develop in New South Wales.



Guest Speaker
Ian Burnet

Ian Burnet grew up in South Gippsland, Victoria, and has a degree in Geology and Geophysics from Melbourne University. He has spent more than thirty years living, working, and travelling in Indonesia, and his books show his fascination with the diverse history of the vast archipelago to the north of Australia.

Ian is the author of seven books that relate to maritime history, the spice trade and the Indonesian archipelago. These include Spice Islands, East Indies, Archipelago – A Journey Across Indonesia, Where Australia Collides with Asia – The Epic Voyages of Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and the Origin of On The Origin of Species, The Tasman Map – The Biography of a Map, Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages -Tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River, and his latest book Dangerous Passage – A Maritime History of the Torres Strait.

Details can be found on his website – www.ianburnetbooks.com