Octavius Ryland (c. 24 June 1800 – 8 May 1886) 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 w ...

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 ...

, who later became 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. Born in London in 1800 and

baptised Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

on 24 June of that year, Octavius Ryland was the eight son of Richard Ryland and Harriet Croft, daughter of Sir Archer Croft, baronet. Ryland married Mary Ann Muggeridge on 27 September 1826. By 1850, he was widowed with two children, and working either as a

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

dealer; these are alternative transcriptions of the handwritten records. That year, he was tried at the

Old Bailey The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The s ...

for extortion,The Times, Thursday, 13 June 1850, p. 7 and on 10 June was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude. He spent two years at the Newgate Jail, including nine months of solitary confinement. He was then transported to Western Australia, arriving at

Fremantle Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australian vernacular diminutive for ...

on board the '' William Jardine'' on 1 August 1852. He gained 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 ...

on 4 October 1854, and received a conditional pardon on 21 January 1860. He then became a schoolteacher, teaching at Upper Swan in 1864, then Upper (South) Greenough until 1869. After a short stint in Dongara, he taught at Serpentine from 1870 to 1880, and again in 1884. He was also postmaster of the district from 1870 to 1885. Erickson (1983) writes "he had a reputation of being a bitter man, harsh with his pupils". He spent the final years of his life at the Mount Eliza Depot, a home for "old or incapable paupers", dying there on 8 May 1886.

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ryland, Octavius 1800 births 1886 deaths Convicts transported to Western Australia Australian schoolteachers