1833: 375 Lashes and Still Running: The Convict Hanged at Hobart After One Final Burglary
Thomas Ansell was transported from London for petty larceny, but Van Diemen’s Land turned him into one of its most punished prisoners. In barely two years on road gangs he was flogged with 375 lashes for absconding, insolence and neglect, his sentence stretched again and again, and his body became so densely marked with tattoos, a sun, a moon, a mermaid, hearts and darts, that authorities used the ink to identify him on runaway notices circulated as far as London.
None of it stopped him. Ansell fell in with a bushranging gang operating near New Norfolk, breaking into the home of Robert and Mary Hatch and stealing what he could carry. Caught and convicted of burglary, he was hanged in front of the gaol at Hobart on 1 November 1833, aged twenty-four.
