Folio(s) 497-504. Letter from Robert Joseph Flinn requesting help with regard to...

Folio(s) 497-504. Letter from Robert Joseph Flinn requesting help with regard to 12 year old Andrew Brennan, under sentence of transportation for life to Botany Bay and a relation of Flinn's wife. Flinn's father William Flinn, gamekeeper to Thomas Connolly, was known to noble characters in Ireland such as the Earl of Camden and Lord Castlereagh who would speak to the Home Secretary in the boy's favour if they were in London. The boy's widowed mother had also petitioned the Home Secretary.

Also letter [undated] from [Joseph Robert Flynn] stating that Captain Fitzgerald has granted Flynn permission to mention his name in support of the petition on behalf of 12 year old Andrew Brannan to serve his sentence in the Navy.

Also letter of 9 September from Flynn enclosing the petition to the Home Secretary of Andrew Branning (in his 12th year) and John Branning (in his 17th year), convicts on board the hulks, lying at Langston Harbour, near Portsmouth. The convicts were tried and convicted at the Old Bailey, Middlesex, in February 1801, for burglary of a silver spoon at the house of Sarah Dane in Oxford Road and were sentenced to death. This sentence was mitigated to transportation for life. The petitioners seek instead to be allowed to join the Navy, wherein they promise to work hard and to conduct themselves well. Mitigating circumstances are their previous good character, their young age, and their need to support their mother.