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The missionaries who had shared the journey to Australia and who remained close in the
new colony, had long hoped that Thomas Hassall would marry Sarah Henry, they being the two
eldest children of the mission. In fact Sarah Henry had been sent to the colony with William
Shelley in 1814 to stay with the Hassalls until she could find board because her father thought she
should have a change of climate as she had elephantiasis in the legs.120 Thomas did propose to her
but she rejected him and married Dr William Bland, a marriage which was not happy as she was
very soon unfaithful to her husband who sued an officer of the East India Company for damages.121
She was described by a fellow missionary, Henry Bicknell, as a ''drunk and horrid blasphemeer
as if she had been used to it for 50 years. She wishes the bible in the fire and all of us in hell...She
also plays the whore in her father's house''. Sarah Bland left the colony and returned to England
where it was thought she became a prostitute - altogether a most unsuitable person to have been
considered by Thomas Hassall.

Thomas Hassall's religious interests increased under the influence of Reverend Samuel
Marsden and he decided to enter the Anglican ministry. There was nowhere for this first Australian
candidate for ordination to study except in England so he was given an advance of £100 per year
from the London Missionary Society to help with his education there.122 Other expenses were paid
by his father and brother, Samuel Hassall, who looked after Thomas Hassall's small stock in
Australia and forwarded money to him through Thomas Hancox, a London relative who also acted
as agent for Hassall affairs in England especially in receiving their wool for sale in London.

In 1817 he sailed in the Kangaroo, for which he was provided with a passage but was very
clearly not to be victualled at the expense of the Crown,123 to return to the land of his birth. It turned
out to be an arduous trip which took ten months to reach England and during the voyage one of the
passengers, E. Flood's wife and family in Ireland.124 By the time the ship got to Batavia Thomas Hassall
was writing to his father about the tedious voyage in which there were no suitable companions on
board and that, although he was in good health, he was getting fat and his clothes did not fit.125
Because members of the crew contracted yellow fever there was an enforced wait of three months
at Batavia. There was a long stay at Rio and a call to St. Helena. He took with him 400 letters to
be delivered to various addresses from friends and family in the Colony.

His departure on 17 March had been the scene of a farewell gathering at his parents' home
in the orchard where ''Not a dry eye could be seen in the whole assembly'', his father wrote. Mrs
Marsden was so overcome that she left in a hurry and her daughter, Anne, who was later to marry

120 Hassall Correspondence, CY 860, Vol II, p.61.
121 Cobley, John, ''Bland, William (1789-1868)'', Australian Dictionary of Biography 1788-1850, Vol I,
p.112.
122 Hassall Correspondence, A1677-4, pp.70-71.
123 Colonial Secretary's Correspondence, Reel 6005, 4/3495, p.100.
124 Hassall Correspondence, A1677-4, pp.1597-9).
125 Ibid., CY 860 Vol. II, p.157.

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