Regenerated by Al – the N.Wales convict shipped to Oz for drinking from a cow

AN AI-GENERATED reconstruction of an Anglesey woman is claimed to be one of the most realistic ever portrayals of a 19th Century convict shipped to Australia.

- By ANDREW FORGRAVE Countryside and Tourism Editor

Ann Williams, from Llanfechell, was deported to Tasmania in 1842 after stealing milk and women's clothes.

New research has now shed light on this lowly maid and the way she regularly thumbed her nose at authority. Like many of the 1,000 deportees from Wales, she was convicted and jailed for petty offences.

Even after being transported to Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was then called, she continued defying her “superiors”.

Subsequent offences included being “covered by a man”.

She was one of five former inmates of Beaumaris Gaol whose faces have been reconstructed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) by researchers in Australia. Unlike the other four - all men - her likeness was compiled using photos of living and deceased descendants.

This produced an image billed as the “closest we'll ever see” to what she looked like.

With light brown eyes and dark hair tied back, the most notable feature is her pockmarked face - the legacy of suffering smallpox as a child.

As well as her facial image, Ann's life was reconstructed. What she got up to before deportation was researched by Roger Vincent, a Beaumaris Gaol volunteer guide whose curiosity initiated the remarkable Al project.

“Ann was already in trouble with the law before deportation,” he said. “She was previously done for stealing milk. Not from a churn but from a cow! She'd taken a bucket into a field to milk the cow and began drinking it” Ann, then 17, had also helped herself to a pint of milk from the cow’s owner, Ebenezer Williams.

Not long after, she was back in the dock again, this time for stealing two cotton gowns, a pair of stays, a silk handkerchief and several other items of women’s clothes from a house in Llanfechell. It wasn’t a difficult crime to solve: Ann, now 18, was caught wearing one of the gowns three days later.