Infamous figure’s life brilliantly reexamined

THIEF, CONVICT, PIRATE, WIFE

Jennifer Ashton

By JIM SULLIVAN

Charlotte Badger has appeared in any number of articles and history books, and no wonder. A thief transported to Australia and a member of a mutinous crew who sailed to the Bay of Islands, there to marry a Maori chief and earn the distinction of perhaps being the first white woman to live in New Zealand.

As an historian, Jennifer

Ashton is not at ease with the news stories and novels which Badger’s life inspired, nor do the respected historians who have covered Badger’s exploits escape her criticism.

In a tour de force of detective work Ashton has established what can be known with certainty from the sparse mentions of Badger in official records, but to have relied on those sources exclusively would have led to a slim volume. Instead, voracious reading (online sources have provided material denied to earlier writers) and a careful selection of background information have fleshed out Badger’s story so well that the reader will know all that can probably be known about

Charlotte Badger. “Probably” and “possibly” appear often in the text but, overall, the “probables” soon outweigh the “possibles”.

Badger was in New Zealand only briefly and, as Ashton admits, “this is a story of doubt. It is a story of people who left little trace” but by placing the story within the verifiable facts of Badger’s environment we gain much more than the imagination of the novelist can offer.

For Badger’s days in England, local histories and Old Bailey proceedings establish a detailed background, contemporary accounts of life in Botany Bay and convict records do the same for the New South Wales days. For Badger’s life as a “mutineer” sailing to the Bay of Islands and as a white woman living among Maori, records are scant and sometimes confusing but by judicious interpretation of what sources are available a thoroughly believable account has emerged. Her life as an army wife has been reconstructed from reports and memoirs of how the British army was run and what life was like in Sydney more than 200 years ago.

While Badger’s life was remarkable to say the least, her story as told here provides a stage to portray colonial days from a wealth of viewpoints. Convict life, the struggles of women of lower class, the transtasman life of Maori before the Pakeha settled — these are just some of the themes that touched Badger’s life.

Much of her as an individual emerges from all this, but knowing about her as a person may be less useful than what Jennifer Ashton describes as an ability to

“interpret her life in ways which help explain our own lived experiences.”

In an attractive and highly recommended book crafted by an historian, Thief, Convict, Pirate, Wife offers a more satisfying read than a novel ever could.

Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer