DAVID KILPACK - SCARBOROUGH

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David Kilpack was tried by the Middlesex Jury at The Old Bailey at the sessions which began on the 26 January 1783. Found guilty of feloniously stealing on 18 January 1783 poultry to the value of 7/6 from Charles Pratt and sentenced to transportation for seven years. On his way to his uncle's home at Greenwich, Kent, he was passing through Back Lane Clapton from his mother's home and while "making merry" he had been caught. By the time of his trial he was too hoarse from jail fever to read his own defence.

Kilpack, sentenced to be transported on Swift, embarked on l6 August 1783 for America. The prisoners mutinied after 13 days and rowed back to England, so that on 10 September 1783 he was before the jury for a second time and found guilty of returning from transportation and found at large on 1 August 1783 without any lawful cause and sentenced to death with the other mutineers of Swift. His sentence was rescinded on condition of transportation for life. He was lodged in Censor hulk before sailing to the Colony aboard Scarborough.

In the Colony he gave evidence at a number of trials. In one, on 24 October 1789, he told the magistrates how he had given a young pig to William Hamly, a carpenter's mate from Sirius in return for a silk handkerchief and a bottle of liquor. Hamly indicated that he hadn't realised that the giving away of liquor was an offence — as it was so often done by others. Hamly was confined to his ship for so long as it remained in port.

Kilpack married in Sydney on 15 June 1791 Eleanor McDonald, a convict who arrived on Lady Juliana.

In 1794 he was granted 30 acres at the Field of Mars and 50 more on 21 July 1795. The grant is now bounded on the east by Pennant Hills and subdivided by Carlingford Road. He was also employed by June 1797, as an overseer by John Macarthur.

David Kilpack died on 30 November 1797 aged 40 years. His only son, David, died three months later on 23 February 1798, aged 15 months. His widow married Thomas Higgins on 31 January 1799 (he had arrived on Surprise in 1790) and they had at least one son. Eleanor died on 28 September 1835, aged 81 years, and is buried with her first husband.