48. Alexander Harris, Settlers and Convicts, p. 35.
49. White, Australian Bushranging, vol. 1, pp. 102–3.
50. See Russel Ward, “Felons and Folksongs,” passim.
CHAPTER EIGHT Bunters, Mollies and Sable Brethren
1. Lloyd L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia, pp 77–78.
2. Ibid., Appendix 4, table 4(0), p. 187
3. Shaw CC, p. 164.
4. Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, p. 286 Summers attributes the emblematic phrase “damned whores” to Lieutenant Ralph Clark of the First Fleet, who allegedly uttered it on seeing the Lady Juliana, female transport of the Second Fleet, sail into Sydney Harbor in June 1790. “No, no—surely not! My God—not more of those damned whores! Never have I known worse women.” A sharp-eyed fellow, for at the time of Lady Juliana’s arrival he was actually a thousand miles away, stranded on Norfolk Island.
5. Sydney to the Treasury Commissioners, “Heads of a Plan,” Aug. 18, 1786, HRNSW 1:18. One may note, without dwelling on it, the sense of Pacific geography implied by Lord Sydney’s notion that New Caledonia and Tahiti were “contiguous” to New South Wales.
6. Before he sailed for Australia, Phillip briefly considered a scheme of licensed prostitution in New South Wales. “The keeping of the women apart merits great consideration, and I don’t know but it may be the best if the most abandoned are permitted to receive the visits of the convicts in the limits allotted them at certain hours, and under certain restrictions, something of this kind was the case in Mill Bank formerly The rest of the women I should keep apart.” (“Phillip’s Views on the Conduct of the Expedition and Treatment of the Convicts,” HRNSW 11:52.) Maybe the general promiscuity of the early settlement made this idea unnecessary. On Phillip’s policy of encouraging convict marriages—most of which lasted—see HRNSW 11:52; and Watkin Tench, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, p. 63 “To prevent their intercourse was impossible, to palliate its evils only remained. Marriage was recommended, and such advantages held out to those who aimed at reformation, as have greatly contributed to the tranquillity of the settlement.”
7. Thomas Watling, Letters from an Exile at Botany-Bay, pp. 18–19. Does his “whore and rogue together” indicate a reading of Dean Swift?
Under an Oak, in stormy weather,
I put this Whore and Rogue together:
And none but Him Who rules the thunder
May put this rogue and whore asunder.
8. Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, pp. vii–xi. Mayhew conflating promiscuity with prostitution: see Mayhew and Hemyng, “The Prostitution Class Generally,” in Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 4, cit. in Sturma, “The Eye of the Beholder,” p. 6.
9. Sturma, ibid., pp. 8–10.
10. For a discussion of Marsden’s Register and the effects it had on the perception of colonial “immorality,” see Portia Robinson, The Hatch and Brood of Time, vol. 1, pp. 75–77.
11. Ralph Clark, Journal, June 23, 1787.
12. Ibid., June 28, 1787.
13. Ibid., July 16, 1787.
14. “Ten thousand times worse” ibid., May 16, 1787. “I would have flogged the four whores also”: ibid., June 19, and July 3, 1787.
15. Ibid., July 18, 1787.
16. “Surely an angel”: ibid., Dec. 9, 1787. “If they were to lose anything”: ibid., Oct. 11, 1787. “I was going down to Tregadock” ibid., Nov. 20, 1787. “She was better than half dead”: ibid., May 24, 1790. “I wish the almighty” June 21, 1790.
17. For Nicol’s account of women convicts on the Lady Juliana, see John Nicol, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, pp. 111–23.
18. Ibid.
19. Lord Auckland, draft of letter, Aug. 25, 1812, in Auckland Papers, BL, Add. Ms. 34458, pp. 382–84.
20. John Capper to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 77.
21. S. Hutchinson to J. Foyle, Sept. 5, 1798, letter at Ab. 67/15, ML.
22. Thomas Robson to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 52.
23. William Bligh to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 32.
24. T. W. Plummer to Macquarie, May 4, 1809, HRA vii:120.
25. Castlereagh to Macquarie, May 14, 1809, HRA vii:84.
26. G. H. Hammersley, “A Few Observations on the Situation of the Female Convicts in NSW,” ca. 1807, in Hammersley Papers, A 657, ML.
27. The opinion of the Atrevida’s lieutenant is given in Crowley, Doc. Hist., vol. 1, p. 57.
28. Michael Hayes to his sister Mary, Nov. 2, 1802, ML, Sydney.
29. Ibid.
30. Bigge NSW, p. 20.
31. Ibid.
32. For general descriptions of the Female Factory in 1815, before its reconstruction by Greenway, see Samuel Marsden, “An Answer to the Calumnies of the Late Governor Macquarie’s Pamphlet” (1826), p. 18ff. (Marsden Papers, ML, Sydney), and (for the Factory in 1820) Bigge NSW, pp. 68–74. For regulations of the Female Factory and classification of its inmates, see “Rules and Regulations for the Management of Female Convicts at the New Factory at Parramatta,” Sydney 1821, ML, Sydney.
33. Anon., in HRA ix:198–99. Macquarie to Bathurst, Dec. 4, 1817.
34. Rev. Samuel Marsden, “An Answer,” pp. 23–24.
35. R. Dune to J. T. Campbell, Mar. 3, 1811, NSW Col. Sec. in-letters bundle 5, Nos. 1–64, pp. 99–100, ML, Sydney.
36. Thomas Reid, Two Voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, cit. in Margaret Weidenhofer, The Convict Years, p. 77.
37. J. F. O’Connell, A Residence of Eleven Years in New Holland, p. 54, cit. in Crowley, Doc. Hist., vol. 1, p. 310.
38. Mellish, A Convict’s Recollections, p. 54.
39. Summers, Damned Whores, p. 281.
40. J. E. Drabble to J. Lakeland, Hobart, May 1, 1827, CSO 1/324:1704, TSA, Hobart.
41. Sydney Gazette, Oct. 31, 1827, cit. in Summers, Damned Whores, p. 285.
42. Peter Murdoch to SC 1837–38 (ii), Minutes, p. 118.
43. Robert Jones, “Recollections of 13 Years Residence on Norfolk Island,” Ms. in ML, Sydney.
44. James Mitchell, memorandum ca. 1815, typescript Ms. 27/c. in Stenhouse Papers II, ML, Sydney.
45. Joseph Holt, “Life and Adventures of Joseph Holt,” Ms. A2024, ML, Sydney.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. James Mitchell, Ms. memorandum in Stenhouse Papers II, Ms. 27/c, ML, Sydney.
50. Jones, “Recollections”
51. Lepailleur’s journal, covering the years 1839–44, is in the Archives Nationales de Québec; a translation is expected for publication by F. Murray Greenwood of the University of British Columbia. On Lepailleur and his comrades in Australia, see Beverley D. Boissery, “French-Canadian Political Prisoners in Australia, 1838–39” (Ph.D. diss.), and Beverley D. Boissery and Murray F. Greenwood, “New Sources for Convict History.”
52. Lepailleur, “Journal.”
53. Bishop William Ullathorne, Autobiography, p. 152.
54. Caroline Anley, The Prisoners of Australia, cit. in Crowley, Doc. Hist, vol. 1, p. 461.
55. The Australian, Apr. 7, 1825.
56. For one chronicler of homosexuality in Australia, this promise of fierce punishment was “evidence” of Phillip’s own homosexuality, it was, he claimed, meant to deflect attention from “rumors” of his own supposed “interest in young seamen.” (Martin Smith, “Arthur Phillip and the Young Lads,” p. 15.) This is wishful thinking. No jot of evidence suggests that the pater patriae was homosexual, or that such rumors existed. All military governors of Australian colonies found homosexual prisoners utterly repugnant; Arthur, for instance, called one pair of convict lovers “horrible beasts” (Jan. 27, 1832, CSO 1/572.12924).
57. George Lee, letter to Sir H. St. J. Mildmay, Jan. 24, 1803, Bentham Papers, Add. Ms. 33544, BL, pp. 14–15. Jeremy Bentham, draft letter re hulk conditions, ibid., p. 105ff.
58. See, for example, Backhouse and Walker, Ms. “Reports” in ML, at B706–7, i/27:23
1ff.
59. Ullathorne’s reflections on immoral Australia: William Ullathorne, The Catholic Mission in Australasia, p. iv.
60. John Stephen, Jr. to SC 1832. Minutes, p. 30 Allan Cunningham, ibid., p. 36.
61. Report of SC 1837–38 (11), Appendix 1/57, “Return of the Number of Persons Charged with Criminal Offences,” p. 317.
62. John Russell to SC 1837–38 (ii), Minutes, p. 60.
63. Ullathorne, Catholic Mission, p. 17.
64. Cook EL, pp. 19–20.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., p. 46.
67. Ibid., p. 41.
68. Ibid., pp. 174–75.
69. Ibid., p. 173.
70. Thomas Arnold to SC 1837–38 (11), Sept. 27, 1837, Appendix E/45. Robert Pringle Stuart, 1846 Report to the VDL Comptroller-General, reprinted in Eustace Fitzsymonds, ed., Norfolk Island 1846: The Accounts of Robert Pringle Stewart and Thomas Beagley Naylor, p. 46. Ullathorne to SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 25.
71. Thomas Beagley Naylor, “Norfolk Island, the Botany Bay of Botany Bay. A Letter … to the Rt. Hon. Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies” (1846). Original in TSA, GO 1/63, reprinted in Fitzsymonds, ed., Norfolk Island, pp. 17–18. The reports of both Naylor and Stuart were printed by the English Government in Correspondence Relative to Convict Discipline and Transportation, presented to both Houses of Parliament, Feb. 16, 1847. But both were heavily bowdlerized, all proper names were omitted, and all reference to homosexual practices was suppressed—either to protect the delicate sensibilities of Parliamentarians, or to minimize the damage to the already much-bruised name of the transportation system.
72. Stuart, Report, in Fitzsymonds, ed., Norfolk Island, pp. 45–46.
73. Ibid., p. 47.
74. George Ill’s instructions to Phillip: HRNSW 11:52.
75. C. D. Rowley, Aboriginal Policy and Practice, vol. 1: The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, p. 19.
76. J. Arnold, letter to his brother, Mar. 18, 1810, at A1849, ML, Sydney. P. G. King, “Observations on the New Zealand Natives,” HRA vi:7.
77. Macquarie to Bathurst, Oct. 8, 1814, HRA viii:369–70, and Mar. 24, 1815, HRA viii:467.
78. F. Debenham, ed., The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas 1819–1821, cit. in Crowley, Doc. Hist., vol. 1, p. 264.
79. Geoffrey Blarney, The Triumph of the Nomads, pp. 108–9.
80. Decision by J. Burton in Rex v. Jack Congo Murrell (1836), cit. in Rowley, pp. 15–16.
81. Proclamation by King, June 1802, HRA 111:592–93. Atkins to King, July 8, 1805, HRA iv:653.
82. William Walker to Rev. W. Watson, 1821, cit. in Jean Woolmington, ed., Aborigines in Colonial Society, 1788–1850, p. 86. “It was an observation of the Governor’s that will never lose its impression on my mind,” remarked the Wesleyan missionary in this letter to his colleague in London.
83. Economic warfare by Aborigines: Reynolds, Other Side, p. 121.
84. Aboriginal perception of white settlement and land ownership: Reynolds, Other Side, p. 64ff.
85. Benjamin Hurst to Latrobe, July 22, 1841, BT Box 54 in ML, Sydney, cit. in Woolmington, ed., Aborigines, p. 38.
86. Edward M. Curr, cit. in ibid., pp. 63–64.
87. Reynolds, Other Side, pp. 121–24.
88. E. Deas Thomson to James Dowling, Jan. 4, 1842, HRA xxi:655–56. SMH, Dec. 26, 1836, cit. in Woolmington, ed., Aborigines, p. 54.
89. The Colonist, June 20, 1838, cit. in Woolmington, ed., Aborigines, pp. 55–56.
90. Thomas Holden, letter to his wife, ca. 1815, DDX 140/7:18, LRO.
91. James Gunther, Journal, Dec. 30, 1837, cit. in Woolmington, ed., Aborigines p. 69.
92. The most famous of these was William Buckley (1780–1856), an English militiaman from Cheshire who stood 6′6″ in his bare feet and had been transported for life, in 1802, for receiving stolen cloth. He absconded from the tiny settlement on Port Phillip in Victoria in 1803 and had the luck to run into an aboriginal tribe, the Watourong, who mistook him for the reincarnated spirit of their dead chief. (It was an almost universal belief among Aborigines, irrespective of tribe, that the spirits of the dead returned in the form of “peeled” men, ashen white or gray. The color white was associated with death and resurrection.) Thus, in the guise of an enormous spirit, Buckley lived with the Watourong for thirty-two years before giving himself up. The sheer improbability of this gave rise to an Australian expression that still survives: “Buckley’s chance,” meaning no chance at all.
93. On the conditions of inland life, and the attitudes of lower-class settlers to aboriginal tribes on the frontiers of settlement in penal New South Wales, see David Denholm, The Colonial Australians, p. 37ff.
94. Wentworth, in the SMH, June 21, 1844.
CHAPTER NINE The Government Stroke
1. For a critique of the idea of penal Australia as a “slave society,” see John B. Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies, esp. pp. 21–25, 31, 82.
2. Robert Gouger [pseud. of E. G. Wakefield], A Letter from Sydney, pp. 12–13. Wakefield had not visited Sydney, and his views on the difficulties facing the uninitiated settler in an economy where land was given away were meant as propaganda for his “sufficient price” emigration scheme, whereby the price of Australian crown land was raised so that only substantial colonists could afford it. However, his sketch of this fictional servant carried a nugget of truth.
3. Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery, p. 43. For a contrary view on the efficiency and adaptability of southern slave labor, which argues that southern slave agriculture was 35 percent more efficient than northern family farming, see William Fogel and Stanley Enderman, Time on the Cross (New York, 1974].
4. Hirst, Convict Society, p. 65.
5. Gouger (Wakefield], Letter, p. 37.
6. E. G. Wakefield, The Art of Colonization, pp. 176–77.
7. King to Castlereagh, HRA v:748–49.
8. Meredith to Burnett Dec. 30, 1828, in Meredith, Correspondence, p. 8, cit. in Shaw CC, p. 218 On the proportion of assigned “mechanics” in Van Diemen’s Land under Arthur, see Shaw CC, p. 217.
9. Murray to Darling, Jan. 30, 1830, HRA xv:351ff.
10. “In what can Britain show”: anon. article in Virginia Gazette, May 24, 1751, cit. in Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage, p. 130. John Pory, cit. in ibid., p. 13.
11. Smith, Colonists, p. 13 For a discussion of the legal differences between the old, American system of indenture and the new, Australian assignment system, see Murray to Darling, Jan. 30, 1830, HRA xv:351ff.
12. King, General Order of Oct. 31, 1800, in NSW General Orders and Proclamations, Safe 1/87, ML, Sydney, cit. in Crowley, Doc. Hist., pp. 97–98.
13. King, General Order published in Sydney Gazette, Jan. 14, 1804.
14. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, p. 11.
15. Margarot to SC 1812, Appendix 1, Minutes, p. 54.
16. SC 1812, Report, p. 4.
17. Bligh to SC 1812, Appendix 1, Minutes, p. 43.
18. Richardson to SC 1812, Appendix 1, Minutes, p. 57. King to Portland, Dec. 31, 1801, HRA iv:655–56.
19. Thomas Holden, letter in LRO, DDX 140/17:18.
20. Bigge NSW, p. 77.
21. Bligh to SC 1812, Appendix. 1, p. 46.
22. John Palmer to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 61. George Johnston, ibid., p. 73.
23. Campbell to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 68ff.
24. Brisbane to Undersecretary Horton, Nov. 6, 1824, HRA ix:414–15.
25. John Broxup, Life of John Broxup, Late Convict at Van Diemen’s Land, p. 11. Addition (by scribe) to letter from Richard Dillingham, Sept. 29, 1836, in Harley W. Forster, ed., The Dillingham Convict Letters.
26. Brisbane to Bathurst, Nov. 6, 1824, HRA ix:413–14.
27. John Rule, The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century English Industry, p. 201.
28. Macquarie to Castlereagh, Apr. 30, 1810.
29. Mellish, A Convict’s Recollectio
ns of New South Wales, p. 51.
30. Macquarie, General Order, Dec. 15, 1810, in NSW General Orders and Proclamations, safe 1/87, ML, Sydney. The towns in question were Windsor, Richmond, Wilberforce, Castlereagh and Pitt Town, Macquarie’s decision to name a town after William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery leader, reflected a mutual admiration between the two men.
31. See M. H. Ellis, Francis Greenway; J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, pp. 30–41; and Morton Herman, Early Australian Architects and Their Work, passim
32. Macquarie to Bathurst, Sept. 1, 1820.
33. Appendix to Bigge NSW, cit. in Shaw CC, p. 92.
34. Macquarie to Bathurst, Dec. 4, 1817, HRA ix:507–9.
35. M. M. Robinson, “Ode for the Queen’s Birthday, 1816,” in Brian Elliott and Adrian Mitchell, eds., Bards in the Wilderness, p. 12.
36. J. D. Lang, “Colonial Nomenclature,” in ibid., p. 29.
37. Figures from Shaw CC, pp. 98–99.
38. R. B. Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia, 1788–1851, pp. 30–32.
39. Macquarie to Bathurst, Mar. 24, 1819, HRA x:88.
40. Mar. 18, 1825, HRA xi:549.
41. Bathurst to Bigge, HRA x:4ff.
42. Margarot to SC 1812, Appendix 1, p. 54.
43. Petition of Robert Townson, NSWA, Mechanics’ Bond Accounts 4/4525, 4/1775, p. 173.
44. Gipps to Glenelg, HRA xix:604–5.
45. Bourke to Goderich, HRA xvi:625, cit. in Bigge NSW, p. 75.
46. Bigge NSW, p. 75ff.
47. Goderich to Bourke, Aug. 22, 1831, HRA xvi:330. Bourke to Goderich, May 4, 1832, HRA xvi:640.
48. Darling to Goderich, July 14, 1831, HRA xvi:299.
49. W. C. Wentworth to Committee on Police, 1839, pp. 88–96, cit. in Hirst, Convict Society, p. 185.
50. Bourke to Goderich, Apr. 30, 1832, HRA xvi:624–26.
51. The clothing issue was fixed at three shirts a year, two sets of jacket and trousers (wool for winter and light wool or cotton duck for summer), and a strong pair of leather shoes. The weekly food ration was 12 lb. wheat (ground by the convicts themselves, in small iron handmills), 7 lb. fresh beef or mutton, two ounces of salt and two of soap. When grain or fresh meat were short, the master could substitute maize flour and salt pork. It will immediately be seen that, though monotonous and lacking in vegetables, this was a solid diet; no one could starve on a pound of meat a day. “They can make a meal”: Broxup, Life, p. 7.
The Fatal Shore Page 92
