Convicts And Convict Ships...

If you're not too bored already, I found out more about the Australian convicts today...

When the women landed after their journey from Ireland and England they were lined up...the pretty girls were chosen as house servants for people like the Governor and his immediate staff...then the men who were already living in the colony walked down the line of women and when they saw a girl they liked they dropped a handkerchief at her feet...if she liked the look of the man she picked it up...then they were married as soon as possible.

The women worked in long sheds with a fire at one end for cooking food...they spun and carded wool with those as yet unmarried sleeping in the shed...sometimes the children they'd brought with them stayed with their mothers...some went to live in Orphanages...there doesn't appear to have been any hard and fast ruling.

I was a bit hasty saying Susan was a bigamist when I wrote yesterday...she was of course to us, but the Governors of the Colonies were keen to have as many married men as possible...they were less likely to run away into the bush and more likely to work harder once babies came. So officially both men and women needed to wait for a period of seven years if they'd left a spouse behind...then they could marry again and it would be considered a legal marriage...in reality seven years is a long enough time to wait...so the ruling was extremely slack and few people paid any heed to it.

The ships carrying the convicts were equally as awful as the Famine ships...one I read about was 117 feet long and carried 250 male convicts with 20 crew...the convicts were kept in the hold...sometimes they were shackled and others were in cells behind iron bars. Fresh water was strictly rationed and the food extremely basic...hard bread and dried meat.

The voyage took about four and a half months...most ships needed to stop in the West Indies for repairs and to take on more supplies...which was why prison guards were employed to accompany the convicts on the voyages...mainly to prevent them from jumping ship when the boat docked...the guards were also tempted by the promise of ten acres of land and convict labour to clear the land and to build the guards a house...

The stench in the holds must have been simply atrocious...unable to wash or have access to fresh air...probably suffering from bouts of sea-sickness and diarrhoea from the food...no toilets but for one or two buckets which were rarely emptied...

Some convicts died on the long voyage but not as many as you'd maybe think...the ship I read about lost three, which seems remarkable considering the conditions they were kept under.

By the mid-1880's times were changing and conditions on board ship were improving...now there was a Ships Surgeon on board every voyage and no-one was shackled or kept behind bars. Convicts were allowed on deck for fresh air and exercise and the mortality rate dropped slightly.

Some convicts ran away into the bush...a hostile environment for them with poisonous snakes and plants and little or no idea how to survive...a few were rescued by the Aboriginal people ...went on to become bandits and thieves...others died slowly from the heat and lack of food...one small group of escapees became infamous for resorting to cannibalism when they ran out of food...

By the end of the 1800's transportation had stopped...the death penalty wasn't administered as freely and prisons were becoming more humane in their treatment of wrong-doers...

People go to work in Australia now because it is reviving itself as a land of golden opportunity...just a little over one hundred years ago, it was a place to be dreaded and avoided.