Irish-born Australian criminal (c. 1810 – 1846)
Lawrence Kavenagh (c. 1810 – 13 October 1846) was an Irish-Australian convict bushranger who, with Martin Cash and George Jones, escaped from Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land, in late 1842. The three men took to bushranging for a six-month period, robbing homesteads and inns with seeming impunity. Kavenagh was tried for serious crimes on five separate occasions. He was executed in 1846 at Norfolk Island.
Biography.
Early life and transportation.
Lawrence Kavenagh was born circa 1810 in County Wicklow, Ireland. His birth-place was likely either Newbridge (now called Avoca) or nearby Rathdrum.
In 1828, Kavenagh and his sister, Catherine, were convicted of burglary in Dublin. They were both sentenced to death, commuted to transportation for life. Lawrence Kavenagh was transported to New South Wales aboard the "Fergusson" with 40 other convicts, arriving in Sydney on 26 March 1829.
When he arrived in the colony of New South Wales in 1829 Lawrence Kavenagh was assigned to work for Edward Reiley at Raby, in the Campbelltown area southwest of Sydney.
In February 1832 Kavenagh received forty lashes for insolence and disorderly conduct. From September 1832 he was assigned to road gangs, but soon afterwards Kavenagh was reported to have absconded from the No. 20 Road Gang.
On 8 February 1833 Kavenagh and Domick McCoy appeared before the Campbelltown Quarter Sessions, charged with assaulting Martin Grady with the intent to rob him. As reported, Kavenagh, McCoy and a third man had stopped Grady as he was driving his cart on the Liverpool Road and assaulted him "with sticks". Grady drew "a pair of sharp shears" from his pocket to defend himself. The unnamed assailant ran away and Grady managed to wound Kavenagh and McCoy before they "escaped into the bush". The pair were found guilty and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. Kavanagh was initially sent to the "Phoenix" prison hulk and then transported to Norfolk Island in March 1833.
Norfolk Island.
At Norfolk Island in May 1833 Kavenagh spent fourteen days in irons for "refusing to assist in getting up the Boats". In April 1834 he was sentenced to seven days in the cells for "rioting in Gaol". In January (year not recorded) he received 150 lashes for "attempting to run away".
Lawrence Kavenagh spent nine years at the Norfolk Island penal settlement on this first occasion. The last few years of Kavenagh’s incarceration on Norfolk Island was during the administration of Alexander Maconochie whose more benevolent methods of prisoner control focused more on prisoner rehabilitation than punishment. During Maconochie’s four-year term as Commandant of the penal settlement, over fourteen hundred doubly-convicted men were discharged from Norfolk Island. 
The precise date that Lawrence Kavenagh departed from Norfolk Island is not known. Some sources claim he escaped from the island, but this is unsupported by any evidence. A possible explanation for his appearance in Sydney in January 1842 is that he had been discharged under Maconochie’s regime, having served nine years of a fourteen-year sentence. An alternative explanation is that Kavenagh was transferred as a prisoner from Norfolk Island to the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.
Return to Sydney.
By January 1842, Kavenagh had returned to Sydney from Norfolk Island; whether he arrived as a free man or not, by mid-January he was incarcerated at the Hyde Park Barracks. By the 1840s the Hyde Park Barracks was being used for housing dangerous criminals. 
In 1842, the barracks were under the control of the notorious Deputy Superintendent, Timothy Lane, under whose watch the place "had descended into a dreaded place of brutality" where harsh punishment was the means of control and cruelty and corruption was entrenched among the convict officials. 
On 19 January 1842, Kavenagh received 36 lashes for "cutting his Irons". On 27 January Kavenagh and another convict, Thomas Brown, escaped from the watch-house at the Hyde Park Barracks. On the evening of the escape the two men reached Double Bay and stole a fishing boat, in the process "threatening the life of a female" who sought to prevent them from doing so. The focus of the search for the escapees then shifted to the North Shore and the vicinity of Broken Bay. The next day it was reported that Kavanagh and Brown had robbed the house of Mrs. Reibey, Captain Innes’ mother-in-law, at Lane Cove where they stole various items including a musket. 
The colonial government offered a reward of ten pounds for the apprehension of either of the two convicts by "any free person"; for the apprehension of either absconder "by a prisoner of the crown" the reward offered was "the allowance of a conditional pardon. The published description of Lawrence Kavenagh was: height, 5 feet 7½ inches; complexion, "ruddy fresh"; brown hair, blue eyes and a "flat nose"; missing his "right little finger", "small scar on back of left hand, and on centre of forehead". Kavanagh and Brown established a base on the North Shore of the harbour where they concealed the articles they had "obtained by plunder". The bushrangers, during their brief period of “committing depredations in the neighbourhood of Sydney” moved freely from one side of the harbour to the other.
On February 11 the Colonial Secretary, Edward Deas Thomson, Captain William Hunter, Edye Manning and Dr. Dobie were riding together along the beach at Rose Bay. Suddenly three men emerged from the bush at the edge of the bay, one of them (later identified as Kavenagh) holding a musket, prompting the riders put their horses into a canter to more quickly escape. One of the men cried out to Hunter: "If you don’t stop, by God we’ll shoot you". When Captain Hunter showed no sign of stopping Kavenagh fired two shots at him, both missing their target.
After this incident parties of soldiers, mounted police and constables were sent off "in various directions to scour the bush". On the following day one group of four mounted police and an aborigine searching in the vicinity of Watson’s Bay discovered footprints and traced the bushrangers to a small cave where they managed to capture Kavenagh and Brown, as well as another man named Joseph Johnstone and "a woman dressed in man’s clothes" (a runaway assigned servant of Mr. Nalder named Elizabeth Kelly). The four captives were taken to Darlinghurst Gaol. Kavenagh told Captain Innes that during his period of freedom "he had prowled about" the Hyde Park Barracks Watch-house, armed and disguised with glasses and wearing a white hat, hoping to "have a shot at" the Deputy Superintendent, Timothy Lane.
On 12 April 1842 Lawrence Kavenagh, Thomas Brown and Joseph Johnson appeared before the New South Wales Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Burton, charged with illegally possessing firearms and having feloniously shot at William Hunter "with intent to murder him". The men pleaded not guilty. After the prosecution had presented its case, Lawrence Kavenagh spoke in his own defence. He claimed "he had never intended to do acts of personal violence when he took to the bush", but he was compelled to do so "by the tyranny he had experienced whilst in Hyde Park Barracks", adding that the tyranny he had endured at Norfolk Island "was nothing to that which he had experienced in Sydney". The jury returned guilty verdicts "without leaving the box". The three convicted men were sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land for life.
On 30 May 1842 Lawrence Kavenagh, along with forty-two other prisoners of the Crown (including George Jones), was transported from Sydney to Van Diemen’s Land aboard the schooner "Marian Watson", arriving at Hobart on 8 June, from where he was taken to the Port Arthur penal settlement.
Escape from Port Arthur.
Towards the end of 1842, while in a work gang carting stone from the Port Arthur quarry, Kavenagh met two other convicts, George Jones and Martin Cash. The three convicts had a common interest: "a strong inclination to abscond". Cash had made a previous attempt at escaping from Port Arthur, being captured within a mile of the mainland near East Bay Neck. They discussed a plan of escape, and agreed to make the attempt on the afternoon of Boxing Day as the carts came up to the quarry for the first load. 
On Boxing Day, 26 December 1842, the escape occurred as planned. In Martin Cash’s words: "I walked deliberately over to where ["Kavenagh and Jones"] were at work; fixing my eyes on them for a moment, they both instantly dropped their picks, and springing on a steep bank, were lost in a minute in the scrub, I soon following their example". Kavenagh took the lead, directing the others to where he had previously stashed a quarter of a loaf and some flour. Then the three convicts headed for the thick scrub at the foot of Mount Arthur. They decided to remain hidden in the bush for the next three days, expecting that the soldiers "would relax in their vigilance, under the impression that we had made our escape".
On the night of their third day of freedom they left their hiding place, keeping to the bush and flanking the coastline to their right. Near Long Bay they crossed a road and continued north-west through the bush to the side of Signal Hill, where they rested until morning. Cash made a "charcoal fire" in a hollow tree and cooked a damper for breakfast. The three convicts continued on through the thick scrub until dusk when they came in sight of Eaglehawk Neck where they could "see the line literally swarming with constables and prisoners". Realising that crossing the Neck was impossible they decided to swim past it. 
Eaglehawk Neck is a narrow isthmus connecting the Tasman Peninsula (where Port Arthur was located) with the Forestier Peninsula. Across the neck were placed guards, lamps and chained guard-dogs, some of them on stages set out in the water. To the west of the Neck was the narrow Eaglehawk Bay and on the eastern side was the much wider expanse of Pirates Bay. Following Cash's lead the escapees chose the longer swim on the eastern side, about half a mile in width and the same route that Cash had taken on his first escape attempt. Moving stealthily through the bush in darkness they reached the water-line along the arc of Pirates Bay and started swimming with their clothes bundled above their heads. With a strong wind blowing, waves crashed against the swimmers and carried away their bundles, so each of the men arrived naked on the other side.
Finding themselves at the base of steep and scrubby hill the three convicts advanced up the slope and rested near the top until daybreak. Martin Cash knew of the location of a hut near the road connecting Eaglehawk Neck and East Bay Neck, normally occupied by a road-repair gang who had nearly completed their sentences. In their naked state and without shoes or food, the three convicts decided to take the risk of raiding the hut. They rushed through the door, Kavenagh holding an axe he had found outside, to find it occupied by only one man, the sub-overseer of the work gang. The man was tied to a post and clothes, boots and a quantity of food were procured.
Realising that, upon discovery of their raid on the road-gang’s hut, the focus of those engaged in the pursuit would shift to the Forestier Peninsula and the East Bay Neck, the escapees decided to remain hidden for a few days more. At the northern end of the peninsula they considered swimming to the mainland (which was half the distance of their previous swim), but with a strong current flowing both Kavenagh and Jones expressed disquiet. Kavenagh told the other two "that he had a very narrow escape from drowning when crossing at the Neck, at one time giving himself up for lost, observing that it was nothing short of a miracle that he had reached the land". Deciding to attempt a crossing by land at East Bay Neck, the three convicts waited for nightfall and, by stealth, managed to evade the sentries and then crawled through a field of wheat until they were a safe distance from the military barracks. A quarter mile further on they came to dense bush where they could momentarily relax, having "escaped the sharks by land and water".
Bushranging.
Travelling north-west after their escape to the mainland from Port Arthur the three escaped convicts