Elizabeth Callaghan
(1803-1852)
Elizabeth Callaghan (1802–1852; also Eliza Thompson, later Elizabeth Batman and Sarah Willoughby) was a convict born in Ireland in 1802 and shipped to the penal colony in New South Wales at the age of 17 for passing a counterfeit bank note for £1 with intent to defraud the Bank of England. She travelled with 103 other convicts on 6 June 1821 and arrived in Hobart on 7 January 1822. The town of Mount Eliza near Melbourne is named after her.
Early life
Callaghan had roots in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. She worked as a servant. It has been said that her family of origin were land owners and her grandfather of exceptional wealth. There appears to be some separation of Elizabeth’s father from her grandparents and suggestions that her father was a very unhappy man. Her mother was an elegant, learned and strong lady of exceptional character. The family struggled, and Callaghan was sent on her way at just seventeen. Beautiful, elegant, fiery and learned – her mother was confident that she would easily find her place in the world.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth Callaghan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.