REIBEY, MARY (1777-1855), née Haydock, businesswoman and trader, was born on 12 May 1777 in Bury, Lancashire, England. She was convicted of horse stealing at Stafford on 21 July 1790 and sentenced to be transported for seven years. When arrested she was dressed as a boy and went under the name of James Burrow, but at her trial her identity was disclosed. The whole episode which resulted in her conviction as a felon at the age of 13 and transportation to New South Wales was probably no more than a high-spirited escapade attributable to lack of parental control, for her parents were dead and she lived with her grandmother. She arrived in Sydney in the Royal Admiral in October 1792 and was assigned as a nursemaid in the household of Major Francis Grose. On 7 September 1794 she married in Sydney Thomas Reibey, a young Irishman in the service of the East India Co., whom she had met in the transport and who had returned to Sydney in the Britannia that year.
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Mary Reibey was orphaned as a girl and arrested in 1791 after disguising herself as a male, James Burrow, and attempting to sell a stolen horse. As James Burrow she was sentenced to seven years transportation and arrived in the colony on 7 October 1792. Through marriage to her husband Thomas Raby, with whom she had seven children, Mary grew wealthy. She continued to accumulate property after his death, though the family fortune was strained by the misadventures of two of her sons-in-law.
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