George Barrington was an Irish-born pickpocket, popular London socialite, Australian pioneer, and author. His escapades, arrests, and trials were widely chronicled in the London press of his day. For over a century following his death, and still perhaps today, he was most celebrated for the line "We left our country for our country's good." The attribution of the line to Barrington is considered apocryphal since the 1911 discovery by Sydney book collectorAlfred Lee of the 1802 book in which the line first appeared.
Barrington was born at Maynooth in County Kildare, son either of a working silversmith named Waldron, or of Captain Barrington, English troop commander. At some point in the 1785–1787 period he married and the couple had a child, but the names of the wife and child, and their eventual fates, are not known. While enjoying the beginnings of his prosperity in Australia, Barrington romanced and cohabited with a native woman, Yeariana, who soon left him to return to her family. Barrington said that Yeariana possessed "a form that might serve as a perfect model for the most scrupulous statuary."
Career
Pickpocketing
In 1771 he robbed his schoolmaster at Dublin and ran away from school, becoming a member of a touring theatrical company at Drogheda under the assumed name of Barrington. At the Limerick races he joined the manager of the company in picking pockets. The manager was detected and sentenced to transportation, and Barrington fled to London, where he assumed clerical dress and continued his pickpocketing. At Covent Garden theatre he robbed the Russian Count Orlov of a snuffbox, said to be worth £30,000. He was detected and arrested but, as Count Orlov declined to prosecute, was discharged, though subsequently he was sentenced to three years' hard labour for pocket-picking at Drury Lane theatre. On his release, he was again caught at his old practices and sentenced to five years' hard labour, but influence secured his release on the condition that he leave England. He accordingly went for a short time to Dublin, and then returned to London, where he was once more detected pocket-picking, and, in 1790, sentenced to seven years' transportation.
One account states that on the voyage out to Botany Bay a conspiracy was hatched by the convicts on board to seize the ship. Barrington disclosed the plot to the captain, and the latter, on reaching New South Wales, reported him favourably to the authorities, with the result that in 1792 Barrington obtained a warrant of emancipation, becoming subsequently superintendent of convicts and later high constable of Parramatta. Barrington died at Parramatta in 1804.
Latter-day renown
Whatever doubts may exist about the authorship of the "Prologue," its most famous line has become an iconic part of Australian culture. It begins:
