Convicts in Australia

• 1. Origins of Transportation Policy

  ›

  Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. After trans-Atlantic transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, authorities sought an alternative destination to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook had charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Great Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Great Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony. In 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay. They arrived on the 20th of January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent.

  According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, began rising considerably after 1740. By the time of the American Revolution, London was overcrowded, filled with the unemployed, and flooded with cheap gin. Poverty, social injustice, child labour, harsh and dirty living conditions and long working hours were prevalent in 19th-century Britain. Crime had become a major problem. In 1784, a French observer noted that from sunset to dawn the environs of London became the patrimony of brigands for twenty miles around. Each parish had a watchman, but British cities did not have police forces in the modern sense. Virtually all malefactors were caught by informers or denounced to the local court by their victims. Pursuant to the so-called Bloody Code, by the 1770s some 222 crimes in Britain carried the death penalty. Almost all of these were crimes against property, including such offences as the stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, the cutting down of a tree, the theft of an animal, even the theft of a rabbit from a warren.

  Because the Industrial Revolution economically displaced much of the working class, there was an increase in petty crime. The government was under pressure to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded gaols. The situation was so dire that hulks left over from the Seven Years' War were used as makeshift floating prisons. Four out of five prisoners were in jail for theft. In the 1800s the Bloody Code was gradually rescinded because judges and juries considered its punishments too harsh. Since lawmakers still wanted punishments to deter potential criminals, they increasingly used transportation as a more humane sentence to execution.

• 2. The First Fleet and Early Settlements

  ›

  On the 18th of August 1786, the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military, and civilian personnel to Botany Bay under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, who was appointed as Governor of the new colony. There were 775 convicts on board six transport ships. They were accompanied by officials, members of the crew, marines, the families thereof, and their own children who together totaled 645. In all, eleven ships were sent in what became known as the First Fleet. Other than the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three storeships. The fleet assembled in Portsmouth and set sail on the 13th of May 1787.

  The eleven ships arrived at Botany Bay over the three-day period of 18, the 20th of January 1788. It soon became clear that the bay would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony due to the openness of this bay, and the dampness of the soil, by which the people would probably be rendered unhealthy. Phillip decided to examine Port Jackson, a bay mentioned by Captain Cook, about three leagues to the north. On the 22nd of January 1788 a small expedition led by Phillips sailed to Port Jackson, arriving in the early afternoon. There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent, within New South Wales, on the 26th of January 1788. This date is celebrated as Australia Day.

  Initially the members of the first fleet suffered a high mortality rate, due mainly to starvation from shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. There were an insufficient number of skilled farmers and domesticated livestock to achieve this. The colony had to await the arrival of the Second Fleet. The Memorandoms by James Martin provide a contemporary account of the events as seen by a convict from the first fleet. The second fleet was a disaster and provided little in the way of help. In June 1790 it delivered additional sick and dying convicts, affected by the rigors of the lengthy journey. The situation worsened in Port Jackson.

• 3. Regional Penal Colonies Expansion

  ›

  Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824. Western Australia , established as the Swan River Colony in 1829 , initially was intended solely for free settlers, but commenced receiving convicts in 1850. South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, officially remained free colonies. However, a population that included thousands of convicts already resided in the area that became known as Victoria.

  In 1803, a British expedition was sent from Sydney to Tasmania to establish a new penal colony there. The small party, led by Lt. John Bowen, established a settlement at Risdon Cove, on the eastern side of the Derwent River. Collins considered the Risdon Cove site inadequate, and in 1804 he established an alternative settlement on the western side of the river at Sullivan's Cove, Tasmania. This later became known as Hobart, and the original settlement at Risdon Cove was abandoned. Collins was appointed as the first Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land. When the convict station on Norfolk Island was abandoned in 1807, 1808, the remaining convicts and free settlers were transported to Hobart and allocated land for resettlement. However, as the existing small population was already having difficulties producing enough food, the sudden doubling of the population was almost catastrophic.

  The Macquarie Harbour penal colony on the West Coast of Tasmania was established in 1820 to exploit the valuable timber Huon Pine growing there for furniture making and shipbuilding. Macquarie Harbour had the added advantage of being almost impossible to escape from. Most attempts ended with fugitive convicts either drowning, dying of starvation in the bush, or turning cannibal. In 1830, the Port Arthur penal settlement was established to replace Macquarie Harbour, as it was easier to maintain regular communications by sea. Although known in popular history as a particularly harsh prison, in reality, its management was far more humane than Macquarie Harbour or the outlying stations of New South Wales.

• 4. Life Conditions and Punishment Systems

  ›

  If a convict was well behaved, the convict could be given a ticket of leave, granting some freedom. At the end of a convict's sentence, seven years in most cases, the convict was issued with a Certificate of Freedom. He was free to become a settler or to return to England. Convicts who misbehaved, however, were often sent to a place of secondary punishment, such as Port Arthur, Tasmania, or Norfolk Island, where they would suffer additional punishment and solitary confinement.

  Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke was the ninth Governor of the Colony of New South Wales, serving between 1831 and 1837. Appalled by the excessive punishments doled out to convicts during their imprisonment and work assignments, Bourke passed The Magistrates Act, which limited the sentence a magistrate could pass to fifty lashes. Previously there was no such limit. Bourke's administration was controversial. Furious magistrates and employers petitioned the crown against this interference with their legal rights, fearing that a reduction in punishments would cease to provide enough deterrence to the convicts. Bourke continued to combat the inhumane treatment of convicts, and limited the number of convicts assigned to each employer to seventy. There was limited oversight of treatment of assigned convicts. Bourke granted rights to convicts who were freed after serving their sentences, such as allowing them to acquire property and serve on juries.

  Until the late 1830s, most convicts were either retained by the Government for public works or assigned to private individuals as a form of indentured labour. From the early 1840s the Probation System was employed, where convicts spent an initial period, usually two years, in public works gangs on stations outside of the main settlements. They were then freed to work for wages within a set district.

• 5. Demographics and Social Dynamics

  ›

  Convicts were made up of English and Welsh (70%), Irish (24%), Scottish (5%), and the remaining 1% from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong, and slaves from the Caribbean. Once emancipated, most ex-convicts stayed in Australia and joined the free settlers, with some rising to prominent positions in Australian society. However, convictism carried a social stigma and, for some later Australians, being of convict descent instilled a sense of shame and cultural cringe. Attitudes became more accepting in the 20th century, and it is now considered by many Australians to be a cause for celebration to discover a convict in one's lineage. In 2007, it was estimated that approximately four million Australians were related to convicts that were transported from the British Isles to Australia.

  Approximately 3,600 political prisoners were transported to the Australian colonies, many of whom arrived in waves corresponding to political unrest in Britain and Ireland. They included the First Scottish Martyrs in 1794; British Naval Mutineers from the Nore Mutiny in 1797 and 1801; Irish rebels in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1868; Cato Street Conspirators in 1820; Scots Rebels in 1820; Yorkshire Rebels in 1820 and 1822; leaders of the Merthyr Tydfil rising of 1831; the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834; Swing Rioters and Luddites between 1828 and 1833; American and French-Canadian prisoners from the Upper Canada rebellion and Lower Canada Rebellion

• 6. Political Prisoners and Resistance Movements

  ›

  in 1839; and Chartists in 1842.

  William Cuffay helped to form the Metropolitan Tailors' Charter Association in 1839. He was elected first to the Chartist Metropolitan Delegate Council in 1841 and onto the National Executive in 1842. At a meeting on August 13, Cuffay was appointed secretary, but later that day, betrayed by a government spy, Cuffay was arrested and accused of conspiring to levy war against Queen Victoria. Cuffay was convicted of preparing acts of arson, intended as a signal for the planned armed uprising. Cuffay was sentenced to 21 years penal transportation. Thomas Muir was convicted of sedition for advocating parliamentary reform. He escaped from New South Wales and after many vicissitudes made his way to revolutionary France.

  With increasing numbers of free settlers entering New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) by the mid-1830s, opposition to the transportation of felons into the colonies grew. The most influential spokesmen were newspaper proprietors who were also members of the Independent Congregational Church such as John Fairfax in Sydney and the Reverend John West in Launceston, who argued against convicts both as competition to honest free labourers and as the source of crime and vice within the colony. Bishop Bernard Ullathorne, a Catholic prelate who had been in Australia since 1832 returned for a visit to England in 1835.

• 7. Abolition and Colonial Opposition

  ›

  While there he was called upon by the government to give evidence before a Parliamentary Commission on the evils of transportation, and at their request wrote and submitted a tract on the subject.

  Transportation to New South Wales temporarily ended 1840 under the Order-in-Council of the 22nd of May 1840, by which time some 150,000 convicts had been sent to the colonies. The sending of convicts to Brisbane in its Moreton Bay district had ceased the previous year, and administration of Norfolk Island was later transferred to Van Diemen's Land. Opposition to transportation was not unanimous; wealthy landowner, Benjamin Boyd, for reasons of economic self-interest, wanted to use transported convicts from Van Diemen's Land as a source of free or low-cost labour in New South Wales, particularly as shepherds. The final transport of convicts to New South Wales occurred in 1850, with some 1,400 convicts transported between the Order-in-Council and that date.

  In 1850 the Australasian Anti-Transportation League was formed to lobby for the permanent cessation of transportation, its aims being furthered by the commencement of the Australian gold rushes the following year. The last convict ship to be sent from England, the St. Vincent, arrived in 1853, and on the 10th of August Jubilee festivals in Hobart and Launceston celebrated 50 years of European settlement with the official end of transportation.

  In 2010, UNESCO inscribed 11 Australian Convict Sites on its World Heritage List. The listing recognises the sites as the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts. Convict George Barrington is perhaps apocryphally recorded as having written the prologue for the first theatrical play performed by convicts in Australia, one year after the First Fleet's arrival. It is known as Our Country's Good. The poems of Frank the Poet are among the few surviving literary works done by a convict while still incarcerated. His best-known work

• 8. Cultural Legacy and Historical Memory

  ›

  is A Convict's Tour of Hell.

  Perhaps the most famous convict in all of fiction is Abel Magwitch, a main character of Charles Dickens' 1861 novel Great Expectations. The most famous convict novel is Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life published in 1874, followed by John Boyle O'Reilly's Moondyne in 1879. Thomas Keneally explores the convict era in his novels Bring Larks and Heroes in 1967 and The Playmaker in 1987. Kate Grenville based the novel The Secret River in 2005 on the life of her convict ancestor Solomon Wiseman. Along with bushrangers and other stock characters of colonial life, convicts were a popular subject during Australia's silent film era. The first convict film was a 1908 adaptation of Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life, shot on location at Port Arthur with an unheard-of budget of £7000.