Robert Mewburn

Robert Wilkinson Mewburn^[1] (c. 1827 – 1891) was a convict transported to colonial Western Australia, who later became one of the colony's ex-convict school teachers.

Mewburn was born in about 1827, he lived at Stockton on Tees, Durham, and worked as a printer and clerk, but was convicted of "stealing boots and larceny" and sentenced to seven years' transportation. He arrived in Western Australia on board Pyrenees in May 1853.^[2] He received his ticket of leave on arrival in the colony, and was issued with a conditional pardon the following year. He worked for Thomas Peel at first, and later ran a general store at Mandurah. He also acted as a lay preacher in the area.

Mewburn apparently began also began informal school teaching, and on 16 March 1870 he married one of his students, fifteen-year-old Emma Eacott, with whom he would have seven children. In 1872 he organised a petition for a regular teacher in the Mandurah area, and this resulted in him being appointed government schoolmaster. He then built his own school, and taught there until his death in 1891.