Born in the neighbourhood of London in 1802 - parents moving in a respectable sphere of life - when six years old I was transferred to the care of my grandmother by her particular request, tho' not without great reluctance on the part of my mother. I remained happy under the care of my grandmother (going to school regularly until I was 12 years of age) and whose kindness you will find in the Sequel proved my ruin - at 12 years old I could write a tolerable hand and was pretty forward in arithmetic: but being punished by my schoolmaster for placing hair in his cane so that when he chastised any of us it would split up and cut his hand, and indeed to this day and through all my misfortunes and rambles the same propensity for mischief haunts me. So begins the life story of James Porter - convict, thief, sailor and scallywag - which he wrote on Norfolk Island in 1842 after a sentence of death, incurred for the piracy of the 'Frederick' from Macquarie Harbour in 1834, was set aside.