RUSE, JAMES (1760-1837), pioneer and smallholder, was born at Launceston, Cornwall, England. At the Cornwall Assizes in 1782 he was convicted of burglarious breaking and entering; his capital sentence was changed to transportation to Africa for seven years. During the next five years while the government was searching for ways of solving the convict problem Ruse spent much of his time in the hulk Dunkirk at Plymouth. When it was decided to establish a penal settlement in New South Wales he was sent out in the First Fleet in 1787 in the Scarborough. In July 1789 he claimed that his sentence had expired and soon afterwards he asked for a land grant, inspired by the desire to take up farming, an occupation to which he had been bred. Lacking evidence that Ruse was entitled to his freedom, Governor Arthur Phillip did not at once give him a grant, but in ...

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Australian Dictionary of Biography