James Tucker (convict)

James Rosenberg Tucker (1808-1888) was an Australian convict and author from Bristol, England.[1]

Copy of letter James Tucker sent to his cousin

Under the pseudonym Giacomo di Rosenberg, Tucker wrote his autobiographical Ralph Rashleigh; or, The Life of an Exile in 1844. It was published in a heavily edited form in 1929, and his original manuscript was published in 1952.[2]

Tucker was convicted at the Chelmsford Spring Assizes on 3 March 1826 of blackmailing his cousin, James Stanyford Tucker. He was tried before Sir William Alexander, C.B., "On an indictment for sending a threatening letter...accus[ing] of an infamous crime" and sentenced to transportation for life. He was 18 years old at the time. The next year he was put aboard the convict ship Midas, which sailed for Sydney Cove.[3] He arrived in Sydney in 1827 and worked at Emu Plains, New South Wales. Still a convict, he was sent to Port Macquarie in 1844. He was in Goulburn from 1849 to 1853.[4]

References
  1. Australian Dictionary of Biography. 1967.
  2. Tucker, James (1844). Ralph Rashleigh; or, The Life of an Exile.
  3. Crown cases reserved for consideration and decided by the judges of England. From the year 1824, to the year 1837. William Moody of Lincoln’s Inn, Esq; Barrister at law. Volume 1, 1839. J. W. Johnson, law booksellers.
  4. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Oxford, Melbourne, 1994, p. 760.


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