A West African by birth, James arrived in Hobart on board the John in December 1833. He told the Muster Master that, as a child, he had been taken into slavery from the Congo River, sold to a Spanish slaver and later released in Sierra Leone. From there he became a servant to an Irish trader. Brown remained a prisoner in Van Diemen's Land from 1833-1844, incurring a number of additional punishments.
(Source: '"Stated This Offence": High-Density Convict Micro-Narratives' by Ian Duffield in Chain Letters : Narrating Convict Lives, 2001)
