Convicts and the Australian Identity

Irishman, Francis MacNamara, or “Frank the Poet” as he became known, was given a sentence of seven years transportation for stealing cloth. Upon learning of his sentence in the dock, he loudly declared: “My labours are over, my vocation is past, and ’tis there I’ll rest easy and happy at last.” This may have been said tongue in cheek for the recordings of his trial show he had a sharp wit, but for the following decade the repeat offender of various disruptions, disobeying orders, absconding, and intoxication would mean repeated floggings also as he began his sentence on Goat Island. This palatable depiction of a likeable rogue, which grew more legendary with time, would eventually replace that other term, ‘the stain’, once used synonymously with convict ancestry.  Historian, Graham Seal was of the opinion that if no such person as Frank ever existed, we would have invented him anyway. To draw a profile of the convict and a reason for their crimes, historians have offered varied opinions, from victims of a harsh penal system to career criminals requiring reform, against a backdrop of poverty, opportunity and overcrowding. With databases, personal observations, and a swag of conclusions, the nature of the convict has been reshaped to reflect an ever-changing social and political landscape and determined by the public’s willingness to accept their contribution as part of our Australian identity.  To those with a passing interest only, the unifying factor of convict transportation is that a crime was committed, and a sentence carried out; but to leave it there is to abandon a history of achievement and development that ironically unites us all.

There seems to be consensus about the conditions in Britain and the reason for a steady flow of candidates suitable for transportation. Historian, Mollie Gillen described such criminals as “raggle-taggle nobodies” and “idle and profligate persons”. Who better to also steer our early views on the character of criminals than those themselves. Notorious London pickpocket, George Barrington boasted that “more pickpockets succeed in making a comfortable living than in the whole of the rest of Europe.” In 1797, the police magistrate estimated a high number of thieves, swindlers, cheats, and other “loose and dissolute characters”, and historian, A.G.L. Shaw supports this in his summation that the lack of policing gave way to such crimes. According to the census data there was overcrowding and a spike in crime in England leading up to the Australian transportation era. Huge unemployment was in part due to mechanisation and soldiers returning from war with France and America. Observations throughout the mid to late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries highlight the living conditions that enabled the villainy to feed a new penal system. William Hogarth, artist and satirist, created visual images to set the scene with his drawing of Gin Lane depicting lawlessness, alcoholism, and neglect in the slums of London. During his first trip to England, Friedrich Engels described the slums and abject poverty and suggested that theft was “a primitive form of protest”. Novelist and social critic, Charles Dickens shone a light on the poverty also, with his bleak characters forced into an underworld: “Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may...”

In 1785, the House of Commons passed a bill entitled ‘An Act for the Effectual Transportation of Felons and Other Offenders’ for a reintroduction of transportation. With the loss of America as a colony to utilise, overcrowding in jails and hulks, and a riot in 1786, a decision and a destination was confirmed and the great migration to Australia would begin. The naysayers to such a form of punishment, such as Jeremy Bentham, believed transportation was neither a deterrent nor a reformative method, and the idea doomed to fail because of a disproportionate number of women and a sentence too lengthy. Writer, David Hill suggests that convicts thought along the same lines and were uncommitted to the construction of a new society, preferring to return to England after their return. Nevertheless, transportation was firmly implemented and would prove both effective and at times brutal. In a lecture in 1839, Herman Merivale, a professor of social economy, repeated the words of another observer who believed the system was failing with reform but successful in making “outwardly honest and converting vagabonds most useless in one country into active citizens of another”.

Nineteenth century observers had presented the convicts as two classes: those ‘deserving’ poor through no fault of their own, and those ‘undeserving’ poor who put themselves there by choice; the undeserving being the more popular opinion during this time. Writers throughout this period continued to shape our early views on the character of convicts, many of whom were painted negatively. Journalist, Henry Mayhew described them as “sneaksmen”, those who plundered by stealth. Ship surgeon, Peter Miller Cunningham wrote in 1828: “The cockneys are, of course, beyond all dispute the worst.” John Dunmore Lang, historian in 1837, looking to rid the colony of vices, had blamed drunkenness as a chief character and wrote about the colony as licentious and lawless. The descriptions of repeated punishments gave an image of someone unable to rehabilitate. Writer, Alexander Marjoribanks reported about the ‘iron gangs’ as a ghastly punishment that could see a convict in leg irons for a year, locked at night in a stockade, working long hours in hard labour, and on low rations. A convict described in gruesome detail the flogging of another prisoner name Maurice Fitzgerald sentenced to receive 300 lashes: “I never saw two threshers in a barn move their flails with more”. Images and stories of floggings, lashings, and other harsh treatments would have been fed to Britain and Ireland; and a likely deterrent for some that Bentham did not foresee. Similar opinions continued into the twentieth century. Manning Clark suggested that the prisoners were not victims of a social and economic crisis but permanent outcasts scorning any attempt to reform. Historian and lecturer, Lloyd Robson posited a lack of parental control and moral destitution as the cause of juvenile criminals; as recorded in Birmingham in 1852, prospective criminals were orphaned, illegitimate or poor. Robson put the convicts into two classes, the ‘village Hamdens’ and the ‘ne’er-do-wells’, the latter considered the greater of the two.    

After the conclusion of this great migration experiment, a more objective examination of the nature of the convict was pursued by some. Wood wrote that the Sydney colonists were not especially bad, but “men who had all suffered”.  Shaw, reflecting on the inevitability of crime, suggested that while the convicts weren’t necessarily slum-dwellers, they were poor people who seized the opportunity to thieve. Transcripts gave more first-hand insight into the prisoners’ fears and experiences. Margaret Catchpole had her sentence of death commuted to transportation and described her new abode in Australia as: “The wickedes [sic] place I ever was in all my life”. She wrote in letters about half-starved convicts, ground that burned her feet, and the murders committed by natives. Writers continued to feed the imagination and evoke sympathy also. Marcus Clarke’s novel in 1874, For the Term of His Natural Life, told of another kind of convict that could easily be overlooked; those who may have been convicted unfairly.

A certain sympathy and recognition of the convict participation was emerging throughout the twentieth century; for all their flaws, they had not been spoken about nor treated as men and women but as indispensable and inhuman. While in the sixties, A.G.L. Shaw’s overall view of the convicts as petty thieves in a class of disrepute, forced into crimes by social conditions and a non-existent family life, he argued they were “criminals not underserving of punishment as our grandfathers like to insist but not deserving brutal ill-treatment.” The convict nature was sometimes determined by other factors also. History Professor, Ernest Scott in 1916 believed that alcohol in the early colonial era formed a period of degradation by both soldiers and convicts that bore further crime, outrage, disease, and rebellion. In 1988, the curator of Macquarie University's Australian History Museum, Valda Rigg described the first settlement on Norfolk Island as homogenous with a wide mix of reasons for being there, that included priests and “gentlemen” convicts. During the second settlement, however, punishments were far more severe and inmates worse behaved.  Their responses and reactions during this period, such as absconding or rioting, may well have been determined by the harsh treatments imposed.

For some, the initial criminal facts that led to this mass migration grew more distant and the convict appeared more human, and more like us. A less critical evaluation of these early colonists, which for the most part had been dismissed, went as far back as 1820. Governor Macquarie wrote favourably of the convicts versus the free settlers who challenged his autocracy: “…these are the people who have quietly submitted to the laws and regulations of the colony. . . These are the men who have built houses and ships, who have made wonderful efforts, considering the disadvantages under which they have acted…” This quote was read out during a speech by historian, Professor Wood who shared similar thoughts, but whose sentiments were also rooted in anti-monarchic leanings. He described the transportees as “important hard-working victims”, social reformers seeking to abolish aristocratic rule, founders of democracy, and “innocent and manly”, encouraging his students and readers to look beyond the crimes themselves.  Wood, more so a one-sided idealist, was outspoken on the subject, rallying against the authorities and those who did not treat his position with the respect he desired. He argued that the “true villains” remained in England.  Nevertheless, judging by the evidence of the many who rehabilitated, there was probable truth in his words. Much has been written about the ‘criminal class’ of individuals that was considered separate from the working class, an idea that was supported by many historians and writers for much of the previous century. Historian, Stephen Nicholas rejected this idea using census data from 1841 that showed the skills of convicts were consistent with those in trades and other occupations. Manning Clark, who had somewhat softened his early views, conceded also that the laws about exile and forced labour were draconian, and that inequity and poverty had caused crime to flourish.

With 90% of records available of some 162,000 prisoners transported to Australia to NSW, Tasmania, Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay and Western Australia, from the years 1788 to 1868, we can draw with more certainty a picture of those who set the groundwork for the Australia we know today. Roughly 80% of convicts were male, and we know that while there were a number of violent offenders, the majority of crimes were stealing, from petty theft, to poaching, to break and enters. We have ascertained from embarkation and arrival records that they held previous occupations such as farm labourers, carpenters, ploughmen, shoemakers, house servants, laundresses, and errand boys to name a few. A small, educated group of transportees included professionals and merchants. According to indents, 75% of convicts arriving in New South Wales held some level of literacy. 83% were aged between 16 and 35. Nicholas maintains that the majority were physically fit and strong enough to endure a four-month voyage and the forced labour ahead, and as fit as any British working class. A small percentage of children under the age of 16 were transported, the youngest being nine.

Most English convicts came from London, Middlesex, and the industrial regions of Lancashire. There were roughly a thousand political prisoners transported throughout the period. Those Irish who were tried in their own territory were mostly countrymen; a fifth came from the cities, and a number were nationalists rebelling against British dominion. To some degree, these offenders struggled to assimilate into the colony amongst their fellow detainees, their Catholic masses deemed unlawful. We know that most convicts were Protestant, roughly a quarter were Catholic, and a small number were Jews and “pagans”. Researchers have also established that 70% were English, 25% Irish, and 5% were Scottish, and the majority of town dwellers outnumbered agricultural workers four to one. Records show that most of the Scottish, 60% of the English, and just over half of the Irish transportees held previous convictions. Whether for reasons of century-old rivalries, religious or political, or simply the fact that many of the Scottish had a proportionately high number condemned for murder and assault, stereotypes based on countries of origin emerged from observers. The Reverend John West in Van Diemen's Land in 1852 saw the Irish as useless and the Scots as cunning.Author and traveller, Alexander Marjoribanks concurred that Scottish prisoners were the worst, and priest and essayist, Archibald Allison had deemed the same group as “irreclaimable”.

Historians continue to fill in the blanks with diary entries, letters, and observations. From these and transportation records we know that some men and women were well behaved, a great number tried to abscond, and some like Frank the Poet were serial shirkers. Frank eventually gained his ticket of leave, worked in the goldfields, and died shortly after of alcoholism. It is a brutal tale like many, and half a century after the final shipment of prisoners, Australians failed to identify with a civilisation born from criminals. Robert Hughes noted in The Fatal Shore that prior to WWII convict ancestry was a stain and a social embarrassment. Researcher, Alison Alexander found that for Tasmanians growing up in the 1920s and 30s, their convict history seemed almost forgotten. Somewhere around the sixties and seventies there appears to be a shift in perceptions as an appreciation of the country’s origins, a certain prestige, and a rediscovery of ancestors gained favour. In 2009, historian, Babette Smith acknowledged the convicts for their contribution and rehabilitation, which she believed had been largely ignored and censored. There should be no attempt to hide those isolated instances of prisoners who terrorised, raped, or murdered innocent settlers, but such stories about a few often attract more interest than those of the many who served their sentence well and went on to create farms, build shops and infrastructure, and raise families peacefully. These mostly unseen, unheard convicts, buried under other histories deemed more relevant to the Australian identity, were largely responsible for the development of towns, roads, agriculture for the supply of meat, corn, and wool, and greatly contributed to culture, art, and social progress.

We can better draw an image of the convict from a wide pool of sources that historians have provided. We can picture the men and women who took the opportunity to steal perhaps with a feeling that they were unlucky or deserved of something better. We imagine the Irish rioters against laws decided by foreigners. We can see the misfortune and the poverty and an instinctive means to survival, and we can also admit there were those with premeditated and unscrupulous reasons for crimes. We can recognise, too, that the prisoner may also have dodged a death sentence, some making the most of this second chance when their sentence was completed and some of them falling back into old patterns. Victim is perhaps too blunt a term when attempting to understand the nature of the convicts and one likely rejected by those original, now silent injured parties who were on the receiving end of crime in Britain, Ireland, and the new settlements from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries. A not-all-that-bad person down on their luck, a rural knockabout, a toiler, and a likeable larrikin may also be seen as idealised attempts to repackage these characters in our early history; but with these such features, Australians are more likely to claim the convicts as their own.

Gemma Liviero
10 August 2023

Share on X