Anywhere else it would be a cause of embarassment, if not a modicum of shame. But to a country where a convict ancestry gives you aristocratic status, the revelation that the Australian Prime Minister is descended from not just one felon but six is a source of delight.

Kevin Rudd has already boasted of having convicts on both sides of his family - "an absolute pedigree" as he has called it.

But there's no higher pedigree than counting in your ancestry a thief, a forger and a highway robber - aged 11.

The 'highway robber' was an eighteenth century street urchin called Mary Wade who was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1789 of violent highway robbery. The previous year she and her friend Jane Whiting, 13, had lured a younger girl into a public lavatory and stripped the little girl of her dress, cap and petticoats. The victim, eight year old Mary Phillips, had gone out to fill a bottle with water for her mother. After the older girls had stripped her, they pawned her dress for 18 pence.

In the court transcripts held in the Old Bailey archives, it is revealed that Mary had no remorse for her crime, telling a friend that she was in a "good mind to have chucked the child down the necessary (the privy) and I wish I had done it."

Unimpressed the judge told her that "the act of stripping her does seem to me to be equivalent to holding a pistol to the breast of a grown person" and, with the mercilessness typical of 18th and early 19th century courts, he sentenced her to "hang from the neck until she be dead".

However a year later Mary's sentence was commuted to one of transportation and she travelled to Australia on the Lady Juliana convict ship, one of the five vessels that comprised the second fleet to sail there. Freed in 1812 she became a grand Australian matriarch, living on a 60 acre estate in New South Wales, and having a total of 21 children before finally dying at the age of 80.

Mary's story, and that of Mr Rudd's other convict ancestors has been collated into two leather-bound volumes by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which has the largest collection of such books in the world. Elders from the church presented the books to the Prime Minister in a private ceremony on Thursday

The church began working on the Prime Minister's history in March last year. Elder Terry Vinson, who presented the volumes to Mr Rudd at Kirribilli House, his official residence, said : "People need to know where they come from so they can better understand who they are."

The five other convicts revealed by the history include Thomas Rudd, Mr Rudd's paternal 4th great-grandfather, who was transported to Australia in 1881 for stealing a bag of sugar. (He said he was innocent, having been in the Angel and Porter pub at the time). Rudd was transported in chains below the deck of a ship half the size of a Sydney ferry. He married fellow convict Mary Cable, who had stolen a bolt of cloth, before completing his sentence.

Another ancestor stole 200 pounds of glue and Mr Rudd's great grandmother was convicted of forging coins.

About 160,000 convicts were deported from Britain to Australia between 1788 and 1868, often for relatively minor offences, and their role in the development of the country is now embraced with a rebellious pride. It is estimated that more than two million Australians are able to boast of at least one convict ancestor - and it is such a badge of honour that not having a convict in the family is now a source of embarassment.

The volumes of Mr Rudd's criminal lineage will be kept in the National Library in Canberra

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