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Saya pernah dikisahkan yang Australia ni dulu nya menjadi tempat buang banduan dari UK.. tapi tak berapa ingat... ada sesiapa yang boleh kisahkan? |
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Western Australian Convicts 1850-1868
Western Australia began its life as a free colony in 1829 and it was not until its 21st birthday in 1850 that the convict labour it sought to bolster its flagging economy finally arrived. The 18 year history of its convict past between 1850 and 1868 may be given most attention by historians, but it is important to note that its first taste of convict life was really in 1827 when a small party of soldiers and convicts arrived from Sydney to establish a British presence in the region amidst fears of French occupation. It is even possible that some of the New South Wales convicts found themselves further north in the Swan River Settlement in the years that followed.
As with Tasmania, New Zealand and Victoria, Western Australia also received a number of convict boys from Parkhurst Prison during the 1840s. They had been rehabilitated in England and arrived as free settlers destined for apprenticeships with local settlers and their convict past is often forgotten.
Rottnest Island to the west of Fremantle, had been used for local colonial offenders since 1838, but 1850 marked a major change in policy when the first 75 convicts arrived from England aboard the Scindian.
In all, around 9,720 British convicts were sent directly to the colony in 43 ships between 1850-1868. Thirty seven of the voyages carried large numbers of prisoners from England, although one voyage actually collected her load in Bermuda. The remaining six ships brought smaller cargoes of military prisoners from amongst the ranks of British troops serving in India.
Modern historians are now putting forward alternative theories, but the traditional reason why Western Australia elected to change its status from a free colony to a penal colony was that local settlers needed a supply of cheap labour to help develop the region. The decision also came at a time when the eastern states were shutting down their penal settlements and once again Britain found herself without an offshore dumping ground for her convicts, just as had happened 65 years earlier after the American War of Independence.
Interestingly though, and possibly out of necessity, Britain was also re-assessing her criminal system and beginning to keep more of her lesser offenders at home. That being the case, it is not surprising to find that many of Western Australia's convicts were the more hardened criminals who were convicted for more serious crimes than stealing sheep and picking pockets, especially as the Western Australian chapter drew to a close.
Western Australia's convicts were sentenced to terms of 6, 7, 10, 14 and 15 years and some reports suggest that their literacy rate was around 75% as opposed to 50% for those sent to the eastern states. About a third of the convicts left the Swan River Colony after serving their time but many were also re-convicted locally for later offences. There are also four instances of prisoners escaping and being sent out again after being re-captured.
The following series of pages contain passenger lists for the 43 convict transports sent to Western Australia. They are an amalgum of information extracted from several sources and in the process every attempt has been made to correct the various anomalies, omissions and typographical errors which were encountered.
This presentation has been compiled in good faith, but as always, cyber-tourists are urged to treat the information with caution and refer to primary sources for confirmation and further research. Some readily available secondary sources are listed at the foot of each page and they will provide much more information about individual convicts, their pensioner guards and the ships which brought them to Western Australia.
A more recent resource which has yet to be fully transcribed is a series of lists compiled and published by the original Convict Establishment of Western Australia. It lists convicts in registration number order, not only as they arrived, but also as various prisoners were re-convicted locally, or as local offenders joined their ranks.
This new resource primarily deals with the convicts' physical appearance but full trial dates are also given on the later lists. Unfortunately the listings only exist in the form of a photocopy of a rather tattered original document held in the Battye Library in Perth, Western Australia, but a sample of what can be found on them can be seen on this sample page for the first voyage of the Pyrenees in 1851. We plan to transcribe the rest as time goes on.
reference: Western Australian Convicts 1850-1868. Convicts to Australia: A Guide to Researching Your Convict Ancestors. Retrieved 2006, Aug 5, from the World Wide Web: http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/con-wa.html |
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Convict Ships to Australia
Charles Bateson's "The Convict Ships 1787-1868" is regarded as the definitive guide to Australia's period of transportation. Information is given about the voyages to New South Wales, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. It ranges from the life on board for both crew and convict, right through to records of deaths, numbers of convicts and the length of each voyage. A comprehensive index of the convict voyages has been extracted from Bateson's text and is presented on our convict shipping pages.
Apart from describing each ship, the index gives the dates of each voyage, the ports they travelled between, the number of male and female convicts embarking and disembarking at each port and the route they took. Discrepancies between the number who embarked and disembarked were often due to deaths on board, transfers to other ships en route, or landing at other ports.
Transported convicts were handed over to the master of a ship at the beginning of the voyage and formally transfered into the custody of the Governor of the colony who was receiving them. Indents, or Indentures, were the documents used to record the transaction on arrival.
Conditions on Board
Convicts were housed below decks on the prison deck and often further confined behind bars. In many cases they were restrained in chains and were only allowed on deck for fresh air and exercise. Conditions were cramped and they slept on hammocks. Very little information seems to be available about the layout of the convict ships, but a few books do contain artists' impressions and reproductions of images held in library collections.
Although the convicts of the first fleet arrived in relatively good condition, the same cannot be said for those that followed during the rest of the century. Cruel masters, harsh discipline and scurvy, dysentery and typhoid resulted in a huge loss of life.
After the English authorities began to review the system in 1801 the ships were despatched twice a year, at the end of May and the beginning of September, to avoid the dangerous winters of the southern hemisphere. Surgeons employed by the early contractors had to obey to the master of the ship and on later voyages were replaced by independent Surgeon Superintendents whose sole responsibility was for the well being of the convicts. As time went on, successful procedures were developed and the surgeons were supplied with explicit instructions as to how life on board was to be organised. By then the charterers were also paid a bonus to land the prisoners safe and sound at the end of the voyage.
By the time the exiles were being transported in the 1840s and onwards, a more enlightened routine was in place which even included the presence on board of a Religious Instructor to educate the convicts and attend to their spiritual needs. The shipboard routines on some of the Western Australian transports during the 1860s have been transcribed and are worth reading.
Ship Naming Patterns
One thing that confuses many researchers is the naming of the convict transports. A system adopted by Charles Bateson is in common use today and makes provision for the multiple voyages made by some ships, the use of different ships with the same name, and the changing description of some ships after they underwent a refit. The shipping lists on these pages describe when the ships were built and where, their size and their type.
Name-wise, the Roman Numeral after the ship's name describes the individual ship, while the number in brackets describes which voyage the ship was making. As an example, three different ships called 'Mary' were sent to Australia with convicts and although the first two vessels only made one voyage each, the last one made five. In some cases, extra confusion arises when two ships with the same name were in active service at the same time.
Shipping Routes
Another point of confusion that often arises with convict voyages is the route they took. The convict shipping lists indicate if a ship travelled via other ports. That was especially so in the early days when ships were smaller, took longer and had to put in for supplies and repairs along the way. In later years, after other Australian settlements had been established, the transports often stopped at more than one destination to land convicts. From England the transports may have stopped off at Gibraltar, a port in the West Indies, South America, the Cape of Good Hope, and any one of the Australian penal settlements.
reference : Convict Ships to Australia. Convicts to Australia: A Guide to Researching Your Convict Ancestors. Retrieved 2006, Aug 5 from the World Wide Web: http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/ships.html |
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NSW Convict Women on Ships arriving from England and Ireland 1788-1828
On arrival, female convicts were sent directly to the Female Factory. Some did not live in the Factory, but were housed nearby and went to the Factory every day for work. Many only remained a day or so before they were assigned to settlers to work as domestic servants.
Many women were married soon after arrival. The idea was that any man wanting to marry one of the women would apply. They were lined up at the Factory and the man would drop a scarf or handkerchief at the feet of the woman of his choice. If she picked it up, the marriage was virtually immediate.
Although some convict women were classed as depraved and prostitutes, others had been in domestic service in England and were transported for stealing from their employers or shops. After arrival, though, many had to take up prostitution to survive and the system of selection of servants often meant that the gentry and officers would choose the pretty young convicts. Instead of Iron Gangs, troublesome and hardened female prisoners were sent to the Female Factory.
Children of convict women either stayed with their mothers or were moved to an orphanage. Young convict girls were also employed in the Female Factory.
The first Female Factory was built at Parramatta in 1804 and initially consisted of a single long room with a fireplace at one end for the women to cook on. Women and girls made rope and span and carded wool. Their accommodation was very basic and they slept on the piles of wool. A three-storey barracks and female factory was built in 1821 and was mainly used to house women who had committed local offences, convict women with children and convict girls who were unsuitable for work with the settlers. In time, the work done in the female factory became less difficult and needlework and laundry became the main duties. In later years, a Female Factory was also built in Hobart and women were either sent to Van Diemen's Land from Sydney or directly from England.
Quite a few married women were transported with their children and some shipping entries record their husbands' names as well. Divorce was not available to the common person until the late 1800s and was expensive and scandalous. Previously married convicts were permitted to remarry after seven years' separation as long as their spouse was abroad, even if they were still living. The Government encouraged marriage between convicts as it was seen as a means of rehabilitation and more desirable than a de facto relationship. Detailed lists of convict transports sent to New South Wales are presented on our shipping pages.
* Convict Ships to NSW 1788-1800
* Convict Ships to NSW 1801-1849
They show the dates of each voyage, the port of arrival and the number of male and female convicts landed at each port. Discrepancies between the number who embarked and the number who arrived were often due to deaths on board, transfers to other ships en route, or landing at other ports.
This section of the site has been devoted to the women who were transported to New South Wales during the first forty years of the settlement. Many did not remain in Sydney for long and researchers will have to look for them in outlying districts and other colonies.
The information posted on these pages is all that we have available and we are unable to help with further research. Much of the data was extracted from The Women of Botany Bay, by Portia Robinson and her book contains more information about individual convict women and the life they led in New South Wales between 1788 and 1828.
reference: NSW Convict Women on Ships arriving from England and Ireland 1788-1828. Convicts to Australia: A Guide to Researching Your Convict Ancestors. Retrieved 2006, Aug 5, From the World Wide Web:http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/confem.html |
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Convicts in Australia
May Lee '97 (English 73, 1995)
In Great Expectations, the man behind all of Pip's expectations and many of Pip's troubles is Magwitch, the convict a seven-year-old Pip aided in the marshes. Nine years later, Magwitch's money, earned through years of honest labor, sends Pip to London to realize his dream of becoming a gentleman. How Magwitch could have gone from a life sentence to become a prosperous Australian colonizer is an interesting, and apparently controversial, aspect of the British colony Australia. An article in the June 1841 The London Quarterly Review addresses some of the objections concerning transportation, and L.L. Robson's book The Convict Settlers of Australia provides a good background on the convicts that were transported between 1787 and 1852.
Although the Dutch discovered the Australian continent in 1770, the first ship of English convicts bound for Australia did not leave England until 1787, after the British lost the American colonies and decided to use Australia as a penal colony. "Transportation" as a punishment had been established in 1717, when most felons sentenced to transportation were sent to the American colonies.
When Australia became a penal colony, prisoners were sent either to New South Wales (as Magwitch was) or to Van Diemen's Land. As capital punishment became less popular in England, more and more prisoners faced sentences of transportation, in most cases for seven years, but sometimes for life. What generally happened was that a criminal, charged with anything from pickpocketing to murder and most likely a repeat offender, was convicted and sentenced to either a prison term, transportation, or death (which usually was commuted to transportation). Those sentenced to transportation were taken to a Hulk, where chances of actually being sent to Australia depended on previous record and behavior. In general, approximately one third of those on the hulks actually went to Australia. For the safety of the hulks, usually those guilty of the most violent crimes were actually transported. Typically, they were young, from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin, and Liverpool, and had been punished before.
Once in Australia, the convicts were assigned to either the government or to traders as labor, under the assignment system in place until 1840. Under this system, their master could not punish the convict himself but could charge him and send him to a magistrate who would hear the case and decide the punishment. After 1840, the convicts followed a probation system instead, where they were assigned to a probation station, and depending on their behavior, advanced through the different stages of probation. Usually, those sentenced to seven years could apply for a ticket-of-leave much sooner than those with life sentences, who had to serve eight years before being eligible for the ticket-of-leave.
The London Quarterly Review published an article in its June 1841 issue discussing the convict situation in Australia.
There are two points of grievance of which we think the colonists may well complain. Just at the moment when this dispersion is spreading to an unlimited degree, Lord John Russell, as we have seen, has not only put a stop to transportation, but has stopped the beneficial system of assignment; thus cramping both the grazing and agricultural interests. The second grievance is the check that has been thrown upon emigration ... But the intention which his lordship announced in the House of Commons, of shutting up all convicted felons in penitentiaries at home, did, we confess, greatly surprise us ... Lord John Russell said something about the prison or convict mark still set upon them (59).
The article cited another penal colony critic:
Captain Maconochie condemns the whole of the penal institutions of the colonies, and says that the bad state of society may be traced directly to their pervading and demoralising influence; he complains that physical coersion (by which he means flogging) is resorted to upon every little breach of regulation, &c. &c.; in short, he says, in so many words, that the settlers who have convicts assigned to them are slave-holders, and the assignees slaves. (62).
In response to these objections, the author pointed out the savings in cost incurred by transporting convicts as opposed to keeping them in penitentiaries, costs of ?787,380 for keeping 38,305 convicts in New South Wales as opposed to costs of ?1,679,000 per year for the same number in penitentiaries. He also argued that
It has added to the strength and commercial interest of the mother-country; it has mainly contributed to the prosperity of the colonies; it has brought many thousands from a state of misery and degradation into that of comparative happiness and affluence, and given them at the same time a station in society which obtains respect. ... (59).
In 1821, this 'school of correction and reform,' ... had 'produced 3478 families of emancipated convicts, having 7212 children, in possession of 251,941 acres of land in pasture, 34,769 acres in cultivation, 244 horses, 5946 head of horned cattle, 168,960 sheep, 25,568 swine, 3778 houses, 15 decked vessels, ?300,000 vested in trade; the estimated value of their entire property being ?1,562,201 sterling,' - all this twenty years ago, and now at least trebled, the creation and fruit of the skill and industry of emancipated convicts. (62)
Basically, those who favored trying to reform convicts felt that they would be better off in England; those who saw convicts filling a much-needed labor supply in Australia as both beneficial to England and to the convicts supported transportation as a punishment. Despite debates in the journals about the advantages and drawbacks of transportation and what opportunities that afforded, daily life for the convict in Australia was harsh. Convict discipline was severe, and many convicts found solace in alcohol. Punishment by the lash, a cat-o'-nine-tails, generally served to degrade convicts' characters permanently after a flogging, as did the placing of convicts in chain-gangs.
Of the total number of convicts transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's land, approximately fifteen percent of them were women, mostly young repeat offenders. Common offenses included absence without leave from work, drunkenness, misconduct, stealing, and prostitution. Considering the disproportionately high numbers of men in these penal colonies, marriage rates were not high, although approximately eleven percent of the women in Van Diemen's Land had illegitimate children. In general, marriage was not very common, and when marriages did occur, there was likely a large age difference or two relatively old people getting married.
The difference between the New South Wales and the Van Diemen's Land colonies' establishments led to differences in the growth of the two colonies. Van Diemen's Land appears to have become the penal colony for the worst offenders, but was initially established only as a supplementary island colony to the mother colony after New South Wales's establishment. Since the mother colony had more time for the convict population to establish money-making enterprises before free immigration, there were many more success stories among its emancipated convicts. Records show that about half of the men from New South Wales at around 1821 did establish themselves as landholders or tradesmen. In Van Diemen's Land, however, the emancipated convicts for the most part stayed small farmers. While the increase of worldly wealth may have been less common than the author of the London Quarterly Review essay believed, it was, nonetheless, quite possible for Magwitch to have accumulated the small fortune necessary to fund the making of Pip into a gentleman.
reference : Convicts in Australia. Lee May. Retrieved 2006, Aug 5, from the World Wide Web: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/australia/convicts.html |
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Prisoner Ships of Early Australia
by Jim Schneider
 Captain Arthur Phillip (1786 portrait by Francis Wheatley, National Portrait Gallery, London)
In 1770, Captain James Cook began the daunting task of mapping the east coast of Australia. Up until that time, that section of Australia was unknown to the European world. In fact, during his travels, Captain Cook not only began mapping the area, but he claimed eastern Australia for King George III on August 22, 1779.
So with this beginning, the First Fleet was dispatched. It comprised of 11 ships and over 1,300 people. In January of 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip and his cargo of British prisoners, landed at Port Jackson, site of the what is now Sydney.
Until the U.S. War of Independence, England had sent their prisoners to America. American independence halted that and Britain decided to begin the practice of sending their prisoners to Australia. So, the 11 ships under the command of Captain Phillip had their hulls brimming with English convicts.
Since the new settlers had little knowledge of the land or climate and how to survive on it, they found themselves grossly unprepared for life there. They knew nothing of the plant or animal life. Also, they had to contend with the hostile Aboriginal population.
As a result of an unknown and hostile environment, and due to poor soil conditions in the area, food shortages were severe. These early pioneers had to contend with near starvation issues and everyone eagerly awaited the arrival of the Second Fleet.
The Second Fleet arrived in 1790. Although it provided some badly needed food and supplies, the Second Fleet also brought with it problems of its own. The First Fleet had some 48 people who died on the voyage. This number rose to 278 on the voyage of the Second Fleet.
In fact, since sickness and disease were so prevalent on the Second Fleet, it became known as the "Death Fleet". The horrible conditions onboard the ships were largely due to the lack of safeguards which had been in place for transporting prisoners to America were absent on the long voyage to Australia.
Although the British government did have regulations for the transport of convicts, these regulations were mostly ignored. Prisoners were to be fed, given access to fresh air, cleaned and fumigated daily, but due to either ignorance or inefficiency on the part of the crew, the precautions were neglected.
Upon the ships return to England, an inquest into the treatment of the prisoners was held to determine who was to blame for the high rate of death on the voyage. Although charges were brought against the ships' masters and surgeons, only Donald Trial, master of the ship Neptune and his chief mate were ever tried. All of the other culprits disappeared before any arrest could be made.
In spite of these and other problems, however, the small settlement which was to become Sydney grew and prospered. Australia Day is celebrated on January 26 to commemorate the founding of what is now Australia.
reference : Prisoner Ships of Early Australia. Genealogy and How. Retrieved 2006, Aug 5 from the World Wide Web: http://www.genealogyandhow.com/lib/australia/prisoner-ships.htm |
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Post time 5-8-2006 09:02 AM
