British government transported over 160,000 convicted felons to Australia between 1788 and 1868; of which at least 20% were convict women. Australia seemed like the perfect place to relocate “the very worst of British womanhood,” so they loaded them up and sent “hordes of drunken prostitutes who proceeded to infect everyone in sight with their criminal tendencies” to Australia. Or at least this is what most Australian historiographies would have you believe! With a shortage of testimonies and information about these convict women, many historians tried to paint a picture of the experiences and challenges these women encountered upon their arrival in Australia. These convict women were described as ‘damned whores’ of an ‘incorrigible class’ …show more content…
Some would withdraw labour as a sign of discontentment whereas others would deliberately commit offenses in order to be sent back to the factory for reassignment. Many considered it to be the lesser of the two evils. With women constantly circulating through the factory, households that had unfavourable working conditions and difficult attitudes from masters and mistresses were quickly identified by the convict women and avoided as much as they could. However when the factory was changed into a convict invalid and lunatic asylum, it left women without husbands or masters defenceless with nowhere to go. These convict women now had to find a way to survive, some turned to prostitution and stealing and were seen by society as “more uncivilized than the savage, more degraded that the slaves, less true to all natural and womanly instincts…guilty of lying, theft, unchastity, drunkenness, …show more content…
One cannot argue that convict women made a vital contribution to the Australian colony without also acknowledging the behaviour of some of these women. A person should not be punished for acting on their natural instincts; however this was often the case for these convict women. While on assignment, few became pregnant or slipped out at night to meet a lover and were caught in compromising circumstances thus sent back to the factory for confinement where matrons tried to keep them inside to prevent them from “having any intercourse with the people of the town” before reassignment or marriage. These women tried everything to get out of the system thus many resorted to abortions to stay with their masters or convinced their lovers to get
An estimated group of ten men (both convict and ex-convict) worked on a neighbouring station 50km away from Myall Creek. On June 10th these ten men, led by John Fleming rode to Myall Creek where they planned to kill a group of Aboriginals, this was for no reason at all but to ‘teach the blacks a lesson.”
During World War 2, Australian’s were prisoners of war all over Europe. More than 30,000 Australian’s became prisoners between the years 1940 – 1945. These prisoners included airmen, soldiers of the 6th, 7th, and 9th division, and some nurses. They were prisoners of many countries. The main countries that captured Australian’s were Germany and Japan.
In order to acquire freedom, slaves sold and purchased “passes” to travel freely through the towns and villages. They were able to disguise themselves with the skills that they practiced under their former master. Some pretended to be apprentices to avoid suspicion. One thing interesting that is described by David Waldstreicher in his essay, Unfree Workers Take Advantage of Their Economic Experience to Free Themselves is that the owners were confused about the reasons that slaves with skills run away, and failed to describe the flaws in the characteristic of the runaways. Rather than providing details about the physical appearance of the runaways, the advertisements had more detailed description about the possible jobs the runaways could take up.
Transported for crimes that were so petty that ordinarily in a modern Australia or England they would not even see the inside of a courthouse, let alone those perpetrators receiving seven to fourteen years, or worse, a life of incarceration with severe physical punishment and a voyage of unimaginable horror, why the civil libertarians today would have an apoplectic fit. Therefore, with the vast open tracts of land available in NSW stocked with volumes of cattle and sheep that was enabling the birth of the new emerging Australian gentility. Men who were more at ease in the company of themselves and more tolerant of others and less pretentious, where over time even they would blur the origins of their arrival in the old penal colony. Furthermore, many of these old lags would go on to establish a more prestigious aristocrat with wealth more copious than some landed gentry in
She states that books are still being produced in this way of ‘history from below’ drawing on methods of positive social science to identify pattern using quantitative analysis to analyse and evaluate statistics of indictments, verdicts and sentencing. Walker however in her aims to focus on the individual sexes approach to crime and specifically gender she take a new approach of combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis of court records to produce a more unique and deeper understanding into criminality within England in the Early modern Period and how the importance of society thus impacted this. This is supported by Malcolm M. Feeley and Deborah L. Little who in their article The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687-1912 suggest a factor contributing to the decline of female involvement in crime was due to societal views on
Small acts could trigger these authorities, and that would result in painful repercussions. They lived in constant anxiety, waiting for punishment for anything. The female slave was the object of white men’s lust. They were expected to perform work and were punished just the same as the male slave. They often had to deal with the mistress’s resentment towards them.
Convicts that were leased to plantations experienced much of the same conditions they were subjected to during enslavement. “The prisoners ate and slept on the bare ground, without blankets or mattresses, and often without clothes.” They were forced to live in their own filth, bloodied floors and vermin infested quarters. Punishments were usually carried out with lashings, however, they were subjected to “natural punishments” such as exhaustion, pneumonia, heatstroke, dysentery, malaria and frostbite. Convicts were more vulnerable than free workers, and paid a greater price.
… in those nations where slaves were utilized, free work would be generally productive. " This free work was gainful and to a great degree beneficial in light of the fact that the slave was bought once and utilized for their life. This feeling of subjection was cruel as they took these individuals from their nation of origin unwillingly. These individuals were stacked into water crafts like sardines in a can for a considerable length of time. To
The early convicts were all sent to the colony, but by the mid-1800s they were also being sent directly to destinations such as Norfolk Island, Van Diemen 's Land, Port Macquarie and Moreton
For Ben Hall a young man, the evolving and progressive society of Australia presented an opportunity for the adventurous to have ago and to build a solid foundation for the future without the social judgments that long been a handicap for those of limited means and wherein some sections of Australian society there still retained the structured aristocracy of the old country where title and inherited wealth determined a path of diversity for those that were termed privileged, this, of course, excluded Ben Hall. It was for those in Australia with courage and determination that the land could offer them that same opportunity of position in the new aristocracy of the colony which was being forged out of the criminals of England who had been bound down by iron chains and where the land for those ex-convicts presented a new wealth for men marked long ago and sent to this penal land for crimes that were so petty that in a modern Australia or England would not ever see the courthouse let alone seven to fourteen years incarcerated with severe physical punishment.
Australia was a racist and bigoted nation. Commonly referred to as ‘Australia for the white man’, society was dominated by colonisers
Life as a convict at Port Arthur was neither easy or pleasant. Getting to Port Arthur was difficult, the journey from England was long and hard, some men didn't make the trip. The food they had to eat and the clothes they were made to wear was a punishment within itself. It was hard to get through one day in the jail let alone years for some. The punishments inflicted were harsh and cruel and were a high part of convict life.
Often prisoners and wrongdoers were sent to workhouses as punishment. The poor and old feared the workhouse because for them it meant the end of the line. People incarcerated in workhouses had to survive harsh punishments, daily routines, and possible death. Orphans were subjected to child labor inside of workhouses.
The asylums would not examine the family situation in the weeks before the arrival of the inmates, but a lot of the women who entered the asylums were unmarried mothers, victims of sexual abuse, rape or incest (Smith 2007). In the 19th century the inmates were the ones that decided if they stayed, they were allowed leave at any time (Luddy 1995). Magdalen asylums became a last resort as the 19th century ended (Smith 2007). Before 1900 around forty percent of the women that entered the institutions, did it on their own accord and were not sent there by others (Smith 2007). A lot of women were left with the option of the workhouse or else the magdalen asylum so it was a choice for those who entered the asylum (Smith 2007).
The second posed question in this section is “Do I believe that this philosophy explains the cause of criminal behavior in women?” Gilfus (1992), analyzed life history interviews with incarcerated female offenders. She found that the women’s childhoods and adolescence were plagued with abuse and neglect and many had run away from home in response to this. Once on the streets, an “onset of drug use, truancy and stealing followed, with a large minority entering into juvenile prostitution as a survival strategy. Illegal work was done simply to survive, but further enmeshed the young women in criminal networks.