The Convict's Daughter

One wet autumn evening in 1848, fifteen-year-old Mary Ann Gill stole out of a bedroom window in her father's Sydney hotel and took a coach to a local racecourse. There she was to elope with James Butler Kinchela, wayward son of the former Attorney-General. Her enraged father pursued them on horseback and fired two pistols at his daughter's suitor, narrowly avoiding killing him. What followed was Australia's most scandalous abduction trial of the era, as well as an extraordinary story of adventur