Community & Business
2 June, 2026
Horse Thief Convict to Sydney’s First Female Tycoon
Molly Haycock, better know as Mary Reibey, overcame the 'convict taint,' to become a property and shipping tycoon in the early days of the Sydney Colony.
Molly was born in Lancashire England in 1777 but was orphaned at a young age when both parents died and she was raised by her maternal Quaker grandmother.
At the same time her sister was adopted by her paternal Catholic grandparents and the religious differences determined the two girls never saw each other again.
Life had begun badly for the young girl but it was about to become worse when her grandmother died and she was taken to an orphanage.
Charles Dickens wrote extensively about the living conditions in children’s orphanages in novels such as Oliver Twist.
Molly experienced the same cramped living conditions, squalor and poor food of Dickens’ novels and at age thirteen she decided it would be better to live on the streets.
When a young boy, James Burrow, died in the orphanage from starvation, thirteen years old Molly decided to steal his clothes and escape, dressed as a boy.
Molly’s decision to escape gives an insight to her character as she was obviously courageous and determined to improve her position in life.
Two months after leaving the orphanage in 1791 she stole a thoroughbred horse and, dressed as a boy, attempted to sell it in a neighbouring town.
Unfortunately for Molly her young age aroused suspicion and she was arrested, still dressed as a boy, using the name James Burrow.
In gaol she still attempted to act as a boy possibly to avoid the dangers of sexual predators common among jailers.
Her real gender was eventually discovered and she faced the judge as Molly Haycock and as horse stealing was considered a major crime she was sentenced by the judge to be hanged.
Her sentence was eventually commuted to transportation for seven years to the penal settlement at Sydney Cove and in 1792 she arrived aboard the convict ship Royal Admiral.
At age fifteen she found herself in a brutal, savage penal settlement where food was in short supply and starvation was a possibility.
Molly now experienced a change of luck when government officials saw she signed her name rather than with an ‘X’ used by most illiterate convicts.
Because she could write Molly was assigned to the easy-going Major Francis Grose and his wife Elizabeth to act as a nursemaid to their children.
This position was certainly better than life in the Female Factory where she would have been paired by the matron with man to be his ‘wife’.
Good fortune continued to go Molly’s way when a young sailor, Thomas Reibey spotted the attractive fifteen year old and attempted to start up a friendship.
Before Thomas could take the friendship further he signed on as crew for a voyage to India but on return he went looking once again for Molly.
Thomas was twenty-five years old and very soon he asked Molly to marry him.
At first Molly turned him down but Thomas was persistent and eventually she agreed.
By this time Major Gross was acting Governor of the colony after the early departure of Arthur Phillip, and his consent was required before they could marry.
Major Gross gave his consent and the couple were duly married in 1794 at St. Phillip’s church, a simple building of mud walls lined with rough timber.
She was seventeen years of age but in marrying a free settler she regained her freedom and the marriage seems to have been a successful one.
In a sign she wanted to escape the ‘convict taint’ she signed the marriage certificate as Mary rather than Molly and so became Mary Reibey.
As a free settler, Tom Reibey was able to obtain a substantial land grant on the Hawkesbury River near Windsor.
Land along the Hawkesbury River was certainly more fertile than land around Sydney Cove but unfortunately, it was also prone to extreme flooding.
The only thing the colony had plenty of was land, even if that was disputed by the Aboriginal peoples, and free settlers such as Tom relished the opportunity to become a land owner.
Life had definitely changed for the better for the young girl since arriving in the colony.
Tom Reibey had no farming experience but was not afraid of hard work and he quickly cultivated his land and planted a crop.
His enthusiasm was however dampened by the frequent flooding of the river and he decided to return to a line of work where he had experience.
Tom purchased a fourteen ton boat, he called the Raven, and began transporting grain, coal and cedar along the Hawkesbury to Sydney and Newcastle.
This proved to be a good decision on Tom’s part and Mary was now left to run the farm.
Mary’s courage, determination and willingness for hard physical work was now put to the test but she thrived as she worked to make a success of the farm.
In 1796, aged nineteen, Mary bore their first son, Thomas, and two years later, James, their second son was born.
Tom’s boat transport business was proving to be successful but when the Hawkesbury flooded three times in four months Mary worried about the safety of her children and insisted they return to Sydney.
The timing of the Reibey’s move to Sydney was fortunate as the once small penal settlement was now growing rapidly as trading vessels entered Sydney Cove on a regular basis.
Convicts, emancipists and free settlers roamed the pebble-stone streets of Sydney at night frequenting the legal and illegal bars, eating places and brothels.
Mary established a general store in what is now known as The Rocks area and her entrepreneurial skills quickly became evident.
The Reibey general store soon expanded to include a ship’s chandlery and Tom began buying more ships as he began trading with Fiji and other Pacific Islands.
They invested their profits into buying four houses along George Street which they converted into shops with living quarters.
As their business activities thrived the Reibeys eventually moved into a large stone mansion on Macquarie Place they called Entally.
By 1810 Mary and Tom had been married for sixteen years and now had seven children.
They were asset rich and at thirty-three years of age Mary was one of the wealthiest women in the colony and well known for her business acumen.
The married couple should have been able to look forward to many more years together enjoying their financial prosperity but this did not eventuate.
In October 1810 Tom returned from a trading voyage to India infected with a fever from which he died six months later.
Mary, now a widow with seven children, set about re-organising her business and family situation.
She sent her sons, fifteen years old Thomas and thirteen years old James, off to England to finish their education.
Mary successfully managed the family businesses alone until the boys returned years later from England.
She then decided to move out of the Macquarie Place mansion and into smaller house in George Street.
Mary leased Entally House and it eventually became the headquarters of the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) in which Mary would become a major shareholder.
Despite Mary’s success in her business dealings she was always aware she carried the ‘convict taint’.
Therefore when Governor Lachlan Macquarie invited her to Government House she was thrilled as it was uncommon for emancipated convicts, especially women, to be honoured in this way.
Governor Macquarie held a very progressive view regarding acceptance of emancipists and he later gifted Mary a large land grant at Camden close to John and Elizabeth Macarthur’s estate.
However, the ‘convict taint’ was something Mary was conscious of and well aware of how she and her daughters were ostracised by Sydney’s elite society.
As her attractive daughters approached marriageable age Mary realised they would be unlikely to marry into the elite of Sydney society.
In 1820 Mary sailed for England with seventeen years old Celia and fifteen years old Eliza with the aim of sending them to the best finishing schools.
Here they would become sophisticated women by learning how to speak French, play the piano, sing and dance, all in a lady-like manner.
This was the age of Jane Austen novels where young girls dreaded the thought of being ‘left on the shelf’.
In 1821 Mary and her daughters returned to Sydney and within two months seventeen years old Eliza announced her engagement to English born, Lieutenant Thomas Thomson.
Two years later Celia, aged twenty, married John Wills a childhood friend.
It seems Mary’s plans for her daughters had been successful.
During Mary’s absence in England her sons Thomas and James had moved to Tasmania to run the family shipping interests there and had even extended their business interests into banking.
Mary’s other daughters Jane Penelope and youngest daughter Elizabeth Anne also married well connected husbands during the 1820s, thus leaving Mary free to take life a little easier with her business dealings.
However, life did not become easier for Mary as family tragedies struck over the next few years.
Just one year after her wedding Celia died during childbirth and next her youngest son George was accidentally killed while duck shooting.
Mary then had to deal with an irresponsible and drunken son-in-law with a gambling addiction.
She solved the problem by buying him off but not before he was ‘encouraged’ to sign over the family
home and guardianship of their children to his wife.
These actions were not common at the time, when women separated from their husband normally lost all assets and children.
Tragedy struck again in 1842 when eldest son Thomas died aged only forty-six and a year later Mary lost her other son James.
Mary had lost a husband three sons and a daughter during her lifetime and at age sixty-five she decided to gradually retire from running her various businesses.
She bought a small cottage near Sydney’s Tank Stream and kept herself busy with charity work for churches and schools.
Mary lived comfortably from her investments and rents from her various properties.
The elderly former convict became a common sight on Sydney’s streets driving her own carriage with a team of white thoroughbred horses as she collected her rent money.
Considering she had been transported as a convict for stealing a thoroughbred horse, this was a strange irony.
Her wealth and her convict past had turned her into a legend in her own lifetime.
Mary Reibey died in 1855 surrounded by her daughters and grand-children.
She was seventy-eight years of age.
Arriving in the early days of the penal settlement as fifteen years old convict Molly Haycock, she was witness to the transformation of the struggling settlement to the thriving coastal trading port of Sydney.
Mary Reibey played an important role in this grand transformation and helped Sydney society to overcome its prejudice against those who carried a ‘convict taint’.
Twenty-one years after her death, her grandson another Thomas Reibey became Premier of Tasmania.
Next week the Clifton Courier begins a new series on historic shipwrecks along the Queensland coast, beginning with the loss of the passenger ship SS Quetta off Cape York in 1890.
