While I was looking for eighteenth century Moncurs I came across George and Thomas Moncur, who were convicted in 1799 at the Perth Court of Justicary in September 1799 and transported to Australia on board the Glatton arriving in 1803.

This is unusual in two ways – firstly, relatively few Scottish convicts were transported to Australia, and secondly, people brought before the Court of Justicary were guilty of doing seriously bad things – murder, rape, sedition, counterfeiting, violent robbery and the like.

Now, in 1798, there were various demonstrations in Scotland inspired by the rebellion of the United Irishmen, as well as other radical demonstrations following on from the failed insurrection in 1797, so at first I wondered if there was any connection, given that the Justiciary court was reserved for serious crimes.

Well as always the truth was rather more mundane. George and Thomas were thugs and tried for robbery with violence, as in this account from the Scots Magazine of 1799:

However, they didn’t hang for their crime – again from the Scots Magazine:

The fact that one of them fainted somehow makes them more real …