The Fatal Shore

by Robert Hughes

  10. Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers p. 176.

  11. Ibid., p. 92.

  12. Jonas Hanway, The Defects of the Police, p. 224.

  13. On Jonathan Wild, see Christopher Hibbert, The Roots of Evil, pp. 47–50.

  Jonathan Wild’s career long predates transportation to Australia, but because of its effect on English views of the growth of crime it deserves a brief recapitulation here. Like thousands of other London toughs, Wild began as a pimp, but within a few years he had acquired two brothels and a circle of underground contacts—the human capital of the informer’s trade. Not content with managing whores and informing, Wild built a fortune on the insight, dazzling in its simplicity, that would make all magistrates regard him as a national treasure: Although it was illegal to act as a receiver of stolen goods (a “fence”), no law forbade you to tell owners where their stolen property was, or to share in a reward for that information. Thus Wild set up a profitable business in stolen goods without ever touching a stolen object. Instead of buying the candlesticks or watches, he took a list of the loot from the thief, item by item. He then went to the owner with the news that certain items had fallen into the hands of an “honest broker,” who had refused to buy them. The thief had fled, leaving the loot in the broker’s hands, and Wild had been designated to find the owner and arrange for their return—provided the fictitious broker were decently rewarded for his honesty and civic spirit. This suited the thieves well, as Wild paid better than ordinary fences who only gave about 10 percent of value on stolen goods. It satisfied the law, as he only shared in a legal reward, and the sketchiness of eighteenth-century records made it difficult to disprove the broker’s existence. It pleased the owners, because it was their one good chance of getting their property back. Most of all, it gratified Wild. He made £10,000 off it in fifteen years, the equivalent of a fairly large landed income.

  Parliament, startled by the sums he and others were pulling through this legal loophole, attempted to close it in 1718 with an act that made it a crime equal to theft to accept a reward for restoring goods without prosecuting the thief (4 Geo. I, c. 11, s. 4). In response, Wild merely shifted his tactics a little. He told the robbed householders who arrived in a daily stream at his office in Cock Lane to leave their money in cash in a designated place, and their possessions were returned to them the same day. Thus there was no record of Wild even handling the money, let alone the loot. Before long Wild had done business with thousands of criminals and knew them by name. He kept files on them, listing their specialties; with these, he boasted, he could hang any thief in London. His next step was to use his leverage as England’s top fence to shape the raw material of English crime, marshalling the scattered efforts of thieves, cut-purses and coiners across the nation into a corporate pattern. Starting with London, Wild organized gangs in every district of England. He had specialists trained in all kinds of theft and employed his own jewelers to melt plate and break up jewelry. He set up a rental service in burglars’ tools and ran stolen goods to Holland in his own cargo sloop. London was his hatchery, in it, he raised thieves like trout. There was little profit in turning in a young thief for petty pinching. Wild cajoled his recruits along, prodding them deeper into crime, appealing to their audacity until they matured as “forty-pound men,” criminals who would be worth handing over to the authorities. If anyone crossed him, Wild donned his role as thief-taker and haled him into court. It made no difference whether the charge was real or trumped-up, since Wild could produce as many witnesses as he wanted who would give whatever perjured testimony he needed. In the same way, he protected his friends by providing witnesses to swear to their innocence, retaining defense lawyers (there being no public defender) and, if necessary, bribing the more corruptible magistrates. He wielded his power with ruthless zeal, certain that the law was on his side. It was; for the authorities were more interested in the thieves he caught than the ones he raised, and as a thief-taker he was hugely successful. He boasted of sending seventy-two men to the gallows, and he secured the conviction of thousands of lesser fry. Despite its mock-official ring, the title he bestowed on himself—“Thief-Taker General of Great Britain and Ireland”—was not exaggerated: In the eyes of the London mob, the bourgeoisie, the magistrates and the penny press alike, Wild was the arm of the law.

  He went down at last, in 1725, convicted under the act which for the last seven years had borne his name. At Tyburn, the bellowing crowd that had gathered to watch him die pelted him with stones and slops, and his last act was to pick the hangman’s pocket.

  14. De La Coste,——Voyage Philosophique d’Angleterre Fait en 1783 et 1784, vol, 1, p. 12, cit. in Radzinowicz, A History of the English Criminal Law and Its Administration Since 1752, vol. 1, p. 724.

  15. Cit. in Shaw CC, p. 39.

  16. Radzinowicz, History, vol. 1, p. 27, note 87.

  17. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 77.

  18. For a discussion of the rituals of the Rule of Law, see Douglas Hay, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Albion’s Fatal Tree. Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and Edward P. Thompson, p. 17ff.

  19. Extract from Dorset County Chronicle [date unknown], 1831, incl. in Withers document file in TSA, Hobart.

  20. The ritual of the procession to Tyburn from Newgate lasted until 1783, and it appears to have been curtailed by the sheriffs of London and Middlesex for fear that the “mob” would take it over completely—a fear probably reinforced by the Gordon Riots of 1780. Hangings remained public for a while thereafter, but they were done in front of the entrance to Newgate. Michael Ignatieff (A Just Measure of Pain, pp. 88–90) compares this to the efforts of prison reformers to reclaim the subculture of prisons from the inmates, and to Colquhoun’s proposals for a metropolitan police force—“an attempt to establish state hegemony over collectivities of the poor whose defiance of public authority had long been tolerated or taken for granted.”

  21. J. P. Grosley, A Tour in London (London, 1772), vol. 1, pp. 172–73, cit. in Radzinowicz, History, vol. 1, p. 176, n. 50.

  22. Radzinowicz, History, vol. 1, p. 175, note 45.

  23. Text of the sexton’s prayer: Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, p. 175.

  24. The fullest eighteenth-century dictionaries of criminal slang and cant are Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, 1785) and Anon., A New Canting Dictionary (London, 1725). The indispensable modern guide is Eric Partridge’s monumental A Dictionary of the Underworld (3rd ed., London, 1971).

  25. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (Everyman ed., London, 1920), vol. 2, p. 447.

  26. Jonathan Swift, “Clever Tom Clinch Going to Be Hanged,” in Harold Williams (ed.), The Poems of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1937), vol. 2, p. 399.

  27. Anon., Hanging Not Punishment Enough (London, 1701), cit. in Radzinowicz, History, vol. 1, p. 235.

  28. F. Gemelli, Viaggi per Europa (1701), vol. 1, p. 328, cit. in Radzinowicz, ibid., vol. 1, p. 182.

  29. Peter Linebaugh, “the Tyburn not Against the Surgeons,” in Hay et al., eds., Albion’s Fatal Tree, p. 83.

  30. Figures from Radzinowicz, History, vol 1, p 190.

  31. On mercy and patronage, see Hay, “Property,” in Hay et al., eds., Albion’s Fatal Tree, p. 23.

  32. The source for these petitions, especially those relating to transportation, is in the Privy Council Papers in the Public Records Office, London, in-letters to the Home Office 1/67–92, covering the years 1819–44. I have quoted from a few of them in Chapter 5, but the immense wealth of information they offer on the social background, experiences and circumstances of individual convicts and their families awaits the attention of historians

  33. John Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, p. 12.

  34. Ibid., p. 9.

  35. Fielding, Enquiry, p. 214.

  36. Howard, State of the Prisons, p. 21

  37. Brisbane to Bat
hurst, Nov. 29, 1823, HRA xi:181.

  38. Samuel Johnson, Jan. 6, 1759, in The Idler, vol. 1, p. 38.

  39. In 1786 Pitt wrote to William Wilberforce, who was pressing him for penal reform, to say that “The multitude of things depending, has made the Penitentiary House long in deciding upon. But I still think,” he added vaguely, “a beginning will be made before the season for building is over.” No beginning was made and in the summer of 1788 Pitt reassured Wilberforce that penitentiaries “shall not be forgotten.” Although Sir Samuel Romilly urged the government to pursue the idea of a national penitentiary, it remained in limbo until 1812, when ground was broken at Millbank, on the Thames, for the biggest prison in Europe—seven pentagonal blocks holding 1,200 prisoners, clustered around a chapel. It was theoretically modelled on Jeremy Bentham’s scheme for a centralized Panopticon, but it turned out, in practice, to be an almost uncontrollable maze. The Millbank Penitentiary was never an effective substitute for transportation. It was demolished to make way for the Tate Gallery.

  40. Smith, Colonists in Bondage, p. 92.

  41. Ibid.

  42. The Correspondence of King George III, ed. J Fortescue, vol. 6, p. 415ff, cit. in Clark HA, vol. 1, p. 64.

  CHAPTER THREE The Geographical Unconscious

  1. On the dissemination of information in the eighteenth century, see Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, pp. 21–23.

  2. Luis de Camoens, Os Lusiadas, vol. 10, p. 139.

  3. On the Tordesillas line, originally meant to divide the Atlantic only but soon extended into a great meridian around the world dividing Luso-Castilian zones of influence in seas as yet unknown, see O. H. K. Spate, The Pacific Since Magellan, vol. 1: The Spanish Lake, pp. 25–29. On the Dieppe maps, and presumed Portuguese encounters with the eastern coast of Australia, see Russel Ward, Australia Since the Coming of Man, pp. 21–26, and K. G. McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia.

  4. There is some evidence, not conclusive, of Chinese contact with Australia in the fifteenth century. See D. G. Mulvaney, The Prehistory of Australia, pp. 41–44.

  5. William Dampier, Dampier’s Voyages, ed. John Masefield, vol. 1, pp. 350–51.

  6. Cook’s instructions from the Admiralty on the Southern Continent. James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyage of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, vol. 1, pp. 279–84, and J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook, pp. 147–49.

  7. On the doings of the Endeavour’s men two centuries ago at the now hopelessly corrupted paradise of Matavai Bay on Tahiti, the literature is vast. A summary is given by Beaglehole, Life of Cook, pp. 172–95.

  8. Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768–1771, ed. J. C. Beaglehole.

  9. Banks, Journal, April 25, 1770. Thus the image of sterile Australia—the “old Cow” of a continent—makes its appearance at the very moment of contact.

  10. Cook, Journals, vol. 1, p. 399.

  11. Alan Frost, Convicts and Empire: A Naval Question, 1776–1811, p. 135.

  12. John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, vol. 1, p. 405. In 1781–85 Britain’s exports to the East Indies were worth less than £1 million and its imports a little more than £2 million. The corresponding figures for the Atlantic countries (Caribbean, North America, Newfoundland, Africa) were £4 million and £3.5 million.

  13. Harris to Carmarthen, Aug. 19, 1785, cit. in Frost, Convicts and Empire, p. 99.

  14. Harris to Carmarthen, Mar. 7, 1786, cit. in Frost, Convicts and Empire, p. 104.

  15. Admiral Hughes on spar shortage in India cit. ibid., p. 66.

  16. Phormium tenax, the New Zealand flax plant which grew on Norfolk Island, superior in tensile strength and fiber to Gymnostatus anceps, the wild flax plant of the mainland coast, figured in the royal instructions to Phillip on the First Fleet, which mentioned its “superior excellence for a variety of Maritime purposes” and the prospect that it “may ultimately become an Article of Export.” Phillip was enjoined to “particularly attend to its Cultivation, and … send home … Samples of this Article.” Phillip’s Instructions, Apr. 25, 1787, HRNSW 11:89.

  17. James Mario Matra’s proposal, Aug. 23, 1783, HRNSW 11.1–6.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Addition to Matra’s proposal, Aug. 23, 1783, HRNSW 11:7.

  20. Howe to Sydney, Dec. 26, 1784, HRNSW 11:10. “The length of the navigation,” Admiral Howe remarked discouragingly, “subject to all the retardments of an India voyage, do [sic] not, I must confess, encourage me to hope for a return of the many advantages in commerce or war which Mr. M. Matra has in contemplation.”

  21. Young to Pitt, enclosed in Pepper Arden to Sydney, Jan. 13, 1785, HRNSW ii:11. Young stressed the possible revenue from trade in Australian products, mainly spices, “fine Oriental cotton,” sugar cane, coffee and tobacco. His main subject of enthusiasm, however, was Phormium tenax, “that very remarkable plant known by the name of the New Zealand flax-plant,” which Young believed could be grown in limitless quantities. “Its uses are more extensive than any vegetable hitherto known, for in its gross state it far exceeds anything of the kind for cordage and canvas, and may be obtained at a much cheaper rate than … from Russia.”

  22. John Call to Pitt [?], ca. August 1784, HO 42/7:49–57, cit. in Frost, Convicts and Empire, p. 203.

  23. Alexander Dalrymple, “A Serious Admonition …,” cit. in David Mackay, A Place of Exile: The European Settlement of New South Wales, p. 33.

  24. Shaw CC, pp. 46–47.

  25. For Rolle’s pressure on Pitt to transport the felons accumulating in the Devon hulks, see Mackay, Place of Exile, p. 21.

  26. Clark HA, vol. 1, p. 67.

  27. For King’s continuing interest in Norfolk Island flax, sustained in the face of discouraging indifference from his government, see Mackay, Place of Exile, p. 95.

  28. In Convicts and Empire, Alan Frost claims a place in the Napoleonic Wars for the infant colony of Sydney. “It is one of history’s niceties,” he claims, “as it is a tribute both to their percipience and their political longevity, that those who in the mid-1780s created [the colony as strategic outlier] called it onto the stage of war with the Emperor Napoleon.” Yet Australia’s “role” against Napoleon consisted of a passing thought by Pitt, in 1804, that Valparaiso might be attacked by a trans-Pacific expeditionary force from Sydney, and of Grenville’s unexecuted plan to attack Chile, Peru and Mexico with a force that included men from the New South Wales Corps and “100 convict pioneers … seasoned to work in the sun.” Nothing came of either. Australia’s “role” in the struggle against Bonaparte was nil.

  29. Nepean, CO 201/2:15 and HO 42/724.

  30. In preparing the “Heads of a Plan” for announcement by Lord Sydney, Nepean leaned heavily on the argument and phrasing of Matra’s 1783 proposal for the Botany Bay settlement. The “Heads of a Plan” on flax in 1786: “The threads or filaments of this New Zealand plant are formed by nature with the most exquisite delicacy, and may be so minutely divided as to be manufactured into the finest linens.” Matra on the same, in 1783: “The threads or filaments of this plant are formed by nature with the most exquisite delicacy, and they may be so minutely divided as to be small enough to make the finest Cambrick.”

  31. “Phillip’s Views on the Conduct of the Expedition and the Treatment of Convicts,” 1787, HRNSW 11:53.

  32. Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, pp. 96–98.

  33. Phillip to Nepean, Mar. 18, 1787, HRNSW 11:58.

  34. Phillip to Nepean, Jan. 11, 1787, HRNSW 11:46

  35. Philip Gidley King, The Journal of Philip Gidley King, Lieutenant, R.N., 1787–1790, p. 6.

  36. Phillip to Sydney, Feb. 28, 1787, HRNSW 11:50.

  37. Phillip to Sydney, Mar. 12, 1787, HRNSW 11:56–57.

  38. Phillip to Nepean, Mar. 18, 1787, HRNSW 11.59.

  39. The basic source for the identity of the First Fleet convicts is a thorough compilation from sessions papers and assizes records published by Dr. John Cobley in 1970, The Crimes of the
First Fleet Convicts. Defects and ambiguities in the records make it uncertain how many prisoners actually were shipped on the First Fleet. Cobley’s figure is 778, both male and female, Crowley’s (in A Documentary History of Australia, vol. 1) is 736; Lieutenant King’s count, before sailing, was 752; and so on

  40. “Botany Bay: A New Song” is in Ballads collection, ML, Sydney

  41. [Alexander Dalrymple], A Serious Admonition to the Publick on the Intended Thief-Colony at Botany Bay.

  42. Whitehall Evening Post, Dec. 19, 1786, cit. in C. M. H. Clark, Sources of Australian History, pp. 75–77.

  43. “Memorial from the Marines,” written on Scarborough, May 7, 1787, HRNSW 11:100–101.

  44. Phillip to Sydney, June 5, 1787, HRNSW 1:107.

  45. Watkin Tench, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, p. 3.

  46. Ralph Clark Journal, May 13–14, 1787, Journal and Letters, 1787–1792 (Sydney, 1981).

  47. Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America, vol. 1: The Southern Voyages (New York, 1974), p. 222.

  48. Tench, Narrative, p. 19.

  49. John White, Journal, July 1787, p. 39.

  50. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

  51. Clark, Journal, July 3, 1787.

  52. Phillip to Nepean, Sept. 2, 1787, HRNSW 11:112.

  53. White, Journal, p. 45.

  54. Arthur Bowes Smyth, Journal, Nov. 12, 1787.

  55. Ibid., Dec. 10, 1787.

  56. Ibid., Jan. 10, 1788.

  57. White, Journal, Jan. 1788, p. 113.

  58. Ibid., p. 114.

  CHAPTER FOUR The Starvation Years

  1. The prepossessing description of Botany Bay was given by Capt. James Cook in his Journal, Mar. 1, 1770. Joseph Banks, in his summary of the New South Wales coast written aboard Endeavour in August 1770 (Banks, Journal, ed. Beaglehole, vol. 2, p. 111ff.: “Some Account of that part of New Holland now called New South Wales”), was much more skeptical. “Barren it may justly be call’d and in a very high degree.… [U]pon the Whole the fertile Soil Bears no kind of Proportion to that which seems by nature doomed to everlasting barrenness. Water is here a scarce article.… [A]t the two places where we filld for the ships use it was done from pools not brooks. Cultivation could not be supposed to yeild much towards the support of man.”