Convictism in Australia
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries large numbers of convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government. One of the primary reasons for the British settlement of Australia was the establishment of a penal colony to alleviate pressure on their overburdened correctional facilities. The last convicts to be transported to Australia arrived in Western Australia in 1868.
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Reasons for transportation
- Main article: Penal transportation
The industrial revolution saw an increase in petty crime in Europe due to the displacement of much of the population, leading to pressures on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded gaols. The situation in Britain was so dire in fact, that derelict ships known as hulks were used as makeshift floating prisons. Transportation was a common punishment handed out for both major and petty crimes in Britain from the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth century. At the time, it was seen as a more humane alternative to execution, which would most likely have been the sentence handed down to many of those who were transported, if transportation hadn't been introduced. Around 50,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the American Revolutionary War brought an end to that means of disposal, the British Government was forced to look elsewhere. After Captain Cook's famous voyage to the South Pacific in which he visited and claimed Australia in the name of the British Empire, he reported his findings to the government, and the British, for the first time, became aware of the existence of the continent of Australia.
New South Wales
Main article: History of New South Wales
Alternatives to the American colonies were investigated and the newly discovered and mapped East Coast of New Holland was proposed. The details provided by James Cook during his expedition to the South Pacific in 1770 made it the most suitable. The term 'Australia' was first used by Matthew Flinders about 1800, derived from the ancient mythological reference to 'Terra Australis', the Great South Land.
On 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military and civilian personnel to Botany Bay. 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 totalled 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 13 May 1787.
The fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. It soon became clear that it would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony, and the group relocated to Port Jackson. There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent, New South Wales, on 26 January. The area has since developed into Sydney. This date is still celebrated as Australia Day.
There was initially a high mortality rate amongst the members of the first fleet due mainly to shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. Unfortunately, there were insufficient skilled farmers and domesticated livestock to do this, and the colony waited on the arrival of the Second Fleet. The second fleet was an unprecedented disaster that provided little in the way of help and upon its delivery in June 1790 of still more sick and dying convicts, which actually worsened the situation in Port Jackson.
Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke was the ninth Governor of the Colony of New South Wales between 1831 and 1837. Appalled by the excessive punishments doled out to convicts, 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 and 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, however, was not dissuaded from his reforms and continued to create controversy within the colony by combating the inhumane treatment handed out to convicts, including limiting the number of convicts each employer was allowed to seventy, as well as granting rights to freed convicts, such as allowing the acquisition of property and service on juries. It has been argued that the abolishment of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840 can be attributable to the actions of Bourke.
If a convict was well behaved, the convict could be given a Ticket of Leave granting some freedom. At the end of the convict's sentence the convict was issued with a Certificate of Freedom. Convicts that misbehaved, however, were often sent to a place of secondary punishment like Port Arthur, Tasmania where they would suffer additional punishment and solitary confinement.
Tasmania
In 1803, the first British expedition was sent from Sydney to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) to establish a new penal colony there. The small party, led by Lt. John Bowen, established a settlement at Risdon Cove. From this location a second expedition was sent to locate other suitable locations, and in 1804 the settlement at Sullivan's Cove, Tasmania was founded by Captain David Collins. This latter became known as Hobart, and the original settlement at Risdon Cove was abandoned.
Starting in 1816, free settlers began arriving from Great Britain and on 3 December 1825 Tasmania was declared a colony separate from New South Wales.
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 ship-building. Macquarie Harbour had the added advantage of being almost impossible to escape from, most attempts ending with the convicts either drowning, dying of starvation in the bush, or (on at least two occasions) turning cannibal. Convicts sent to this settlement had usually re-offended during their sentence of transportation, and were treated very harshly, labouring in cold and wet weather, and subjected to severe corporal punishment for minor infractions.
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. Experimentation with the so called model prison system took place in Port Arthur. Solitary confinement was the preferred method of punishment.
Many changes were made to the manner in which convicts were handled in the general population, largely responsive to British public opinion on the harshness or otherwise of their treatment. Until the late 1830s most convicts were either retained by 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, then were freed to work for wages within a set district.
Transportation to Tasmania ended in 1853 (see section below on Cessation of Transportation).
Queensland
Main article: History of Queensland
In 1823 John Oxley sailed north from Sydney to inspect Port Curtis and Moreton Bay as possible sites for a penal colony. At Moreton Bay he found the Brisbane River which Cook had guessed would exist and explored the lower part of it. In September 1824, he returned with soldiers and established a temporary settlement at Redcliffe. On December 2 1824, the settlement was transferred to where the Central Business District (CBD) of Brisbane now stands. The settlement was at first called Edenglassie. In 1839 transportation of convicts to Moreton Bay ceased and the Brisbane penal settlement was closed. In 1842 free settlement was permitted and Britons began to colonize the area voluntarily. On 6 June 1869 Queensland became a separate colony from New South Wales.
Western Australia
Main Article: Convictism in Western Australia
Transportation of convicts to Western Australia did not begin until 1850 and lasted until 1868. During that period, over 9,000 convicts were transported to the colony, on 43 convict ships.
The first convicts to arrive in what is now Western Australia were convicts transported to New South Wales, sent by that colony to King George Sound in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish a settlement at King George Sound. Lockyer's party arrived on Christmas Day, 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for nearly four years; in November 1830, control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts withdrawn.
In April 1848, Charles Fitzgerald was appointed Governor of Western Australia. He petitioned Britain to send convicts to Western Australia for labor. Britain had refused to send convicts for a fixed term, but offered to send out first offenders in the final years of their terms.
Most convicts in Western Australia spent very little time in prison. Those who were stationed at Fremantle were housed in the Convict Establishment, the colony's convict prison, and misbehaviour was punished by stints there. The majority of convicts, however, were stationed in other parts of the colony. Although there was no convict assignment in Western Australia, there was a great demand for public infrastructure throughout the colony, so that many convicts were stationed in remote areas. Initially, most convicts were set to work creating infrastructure for the convict system, including the construction of the Convict Establishment itself.
In 1852 a Convict Depot was built at Albany, but closed 3 years later. When shipping increased the Depot was re-opened. Most of the Convicts had their Ticket-of-Leave and were hired to work by the free settlers. Convicts also manned the pilot boat, rebuilt York Street and Stirling Terrace; and the track from Albany to Perth was made into a good road. An Albany newspaper noted the convict’s good behaviour and wrote, "There were instances in which our free settlers might take an example".
Western Australia's convict era only came to an end with the cessation of penal transportation by Britain. In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866 and 1867, after which transportation would cease. In accordance with this, the last convict ship to Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.
Victoria
It was not until the Henty brothers landed in Portland Bay in 1834, and John Batman settled on the site of Melbourne, that the Port Phillip District was officially sanctioned (1837).The first immigrant ships arrived at Port Phillip in 1839.
Between 1844 and 1849 about 1,750 convicts arrived there from England. They were referred to either as "Exiles" or the "Pentonvillians" because most of them came from Pentonville Probationary Prison. Unlike earlier convicts who were required to work for the government or on hire from penal depots, the Exiles were free to work for pay, but could not leave the district to which they were assigned. The Port Phillip District was still part of New South Wales at this stage. Victoria separated from New South Wales and became an independent colony in 1851.
Cessation of transportation
With increasing numbers of free settlers entering New South Wales and Van Diemens Land 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 Congregation 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. The anti-transportation movement was seldom concerned with the inhumanity of the system, but rather the hated stain it was believed to inflict on the free (non-emancipist) middle classes.
Transportation to New South Wales ended in 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 Diemens Land.
The continuation of transportation to Van Diemens Land saw the rise of a well-cordinated anti- transportation movement, especially following a severe economic depression in the early 1840s. Transportation was temporarily suspended in 1846 but soon revived with overcrowding of British gaols and clamour for the availability of transportation as a deterrent. By the late 1840s most convicts being sent to Van Diemens Land (plus those to Victoria) were designated as "exiles" and were free to work for pay while under sentence. 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 10 August 1853 Jubilee festivals in Hobart and Launceston celebrated 50 years of European settlement with the official end of transportation.
Transportation continued in small numbers to Western Australia. The last convict ship to arrive in Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.
Legacy
The history of convictism in the British Australian colonies is etched into the minds of most Australians even today. The lasting effects of the long dead practice are still felt in some areas of life. Many Australians can accurately trace their lineage back to colonial times, and most cases being related to one of the original British convicts invokes a sense of national pride.[citation needed] It should be remembered that these convicts were, for the most part, not violent criminals, but rather petty thieves, other non-violent offenders or supporters of Irish independence. This attitude is, however, a relatively new phenomenon in Australia. Until after the Second World War most Australians felt a sense of shame about the existence of British Convicts in what is now Australia, and many did not even attempt to investigate their families' origins for fear that they could be descended from criminals. This is known as the Convict Stain attitude. This makes the research today all the more difficult.
British and Irish convicts and ex-convicts, became an important class in Australian society, because they were the most significant source of labour until the mid-19th century.
Not all Australian settlements were official penal colonies and most were established by free settlers, looking for opportunities. Examples of free settlements are: Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, Gold Coast, Cairns, Melbourne, and Alice Springs.
Famous convicts transported to Australia
- Esther Abrahams - one of the few Jewish convicts.
- Billy Blue - established a ferry service.
- Mary Bryant - famous escapee.
- William Buckley - famously associated with natives.
- Martin Cash - Famous escapee.
- Margaret Dawson - First Fleeter, "founding mother".
- Francis Greenway - famous Australian architect.
- Mark Jeffrey - wrote famous auto-biography
- Lawrence Kavenagh - notorious bushranger
- Francis McNamara, aka 'Frank the Poet' - composer of various oral convict ballads, including The Convict's Tour to Hell
- John Boyle O'Reilly - Famous escapee and writer; author of The Moondyne
- William Redfern - one of the few surgeon convicts.
- Mary Reibey - operated a fleet of ships.
- James Ruse - successful farmer
- Henry Savery - Australia's first novelist, author of Quintus Servinton
- D'Arcy Wentworth, highwaymen and father of [[William Charles Wentworth], who was born at Norfolk Island.
- Joseph Wild - explorer
References
- Alexander, Alison. Editor. The Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart, 2005. ISBN 1-86295-223-X
- Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, Sydney, 1974.
- Pardons & Punshments: Judge's Reports on Criminals, 1783 to 1830: HO (Home Office) 47, volumes 304 & 305, List and Index Society, The National Archives, Kew, England, TW9 4DU
- Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989.
- Gordon Greenwood, Australia: A Social and Political History, Angus and Robertson 1955.
- Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore, London, Pan, 1988.
- A Pictorial History of Australia, Rex & Thea Rienits, Hamlyn Publishing group, 1969.
- Robson, Lloyd. History of Tasmania, 2 Volumes.
- Edward Shann, An Economic History of Australia, Georgian House 1930.
- John West, History of Tasmania, 1852
See also
External links
Categories
Articles with unsourced statements | Convictism in Australia