The History of Margaret Catchpole, A Suffolk Girl is a biography by Richard Cobbold. Catchpole was a Suffolk servant girl, chronicler and deportee to an Australian penal colony, due to charges of horse theft.

Margaret Catchpole was born into a smugglers' world in Suffolk in the late 1700s. A spirited woman, she meets her match in Will Laud, 'hell-born babe' and wanderer, with an easy knack for evading the excise men. As the valued servant of a wealthy family and a friend of criminals, Margaret leads a double life that will inevitably bring about her downfall, and she is twice sentenced to hang - but she escapes the gallows and is transported with other convicts to Australia. A wonderful adventure story inspired by the real Margaret Catchpole - who was a slip-gibbet, a scapegallows.

Fictionalized account of the life of Margaret Catchpole, who was convicted of theft in England in 1797 and sentenced to transportation to Australia for life.

Margaret Catchpole was a fascinating real-life figure who was born in Suffolk and was later deported to Australia as a criminal. This fictionalized account of her life is a rip-roaring adventure from start to finish, detailing Catchpole's exploits as a horse thief, escape artist, and amateur historian and writer in her own right.