Cornelius William John Hardy (or Hardey) (born 1831 or 1833, date of death unknown) was a

convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convict ...

transported ''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln. It is considered a lost film. Plot In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she wou ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, later to become one of the

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

's ex-convict school teachers. Cornelius Hardy was born in the early 1830s. Erickson claims 1831, but other records state that he was 23 years old in 1856. In that year, he was working as a

clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...

in the General Post Office when he and two other clerks were caught stealing money from letters. On 9 March 1856, Hardy was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. He arrived in Western Australia on board the ''Nile'' in January 1858. After receiving his

ticket of leave A ticket of leave was a document of parole issued to convicts who had shown they could now be trusted with some freedoms. Originally the ticket was issued in Britain and later adapted by the United States, Canada, and Ireland. Jurisdictions ...

, he was employed as a tutor by another convict, Frederick Morrell, before being appointed government schoolteacher at Northam in 1865. Attendance at the school dwindled and the school was eventually closed. Hardy then found other work in Northam, and was later elected to the committee of the Northam Mechanics' Institute.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hardy, Cornelius 1831 births Year of death unknown Convicts transported to Western Australia Settlers of Western Australia Australian schoolteachers Place of birth missing Place of death missing