Convicts in Australia
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, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land 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.
Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly in the following decade, as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.
Most convicts were transported for petty crimes, particularly theft: thieves comprised 80% of all transportees. More serious crimes, such as rape and murder, became transportable offences in the 1830s, but since they were also punishable by death, comparatively few convicts were transported for such crimes. Approximately one in seven convicts was female. Political prisoners who had been convicted of no crime were also transported. 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. The convict era has inspired famous novels, films, and other cultural works, and the extent to which it has shaped Australia's national character has been studied by many writers and historians.
Reasons for transportation
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. Dickens's novels perhaps best illustrate this; many government officials were horrified by what they saw. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general laws against child labour passed in the United Kingdom. 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. Jeremy Bentham strongly promoted the idea of a circular prison, but the penitentiary was seen by many government officials as a peculiar American concept. 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. Transportation had been employed as a punishment for both major and petty crimes since the 17th century.
About 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the terms of the Transportation Act 1717. Transportation to the Americas ceased following Britain's defeat in the American Revolutionary War. The British American colony of Maryland received a larger felon quota than any other province.
Penal settlements
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.On 18 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 13 May 1787.
The eleven ships arrived at Botany Bay over the three-day period of 18–20 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 22 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 26 January 1788. The area has since developed as the city of Sydney. 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.
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. 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, however, was not dissuaded from his reforms. He 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. It has been argued that the suspension of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840 can be attributed to the actions of Bourke and other like-minded men, such as Australian-born lawyer William Charles Wentworth. It took another 10 years, but transportation to the colony of New South Wales was finally officially abolished on 1 October 1850.
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.