Convict women in Australia
Encyclopedia
Penal transportation
Transportation or penal transportation is the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between...
during the 18th and 19th centuries to carry out their sentences in what is now Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
Transportation to the penal settlement in Australia was an alternative for other harsh punishments such as death by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
. The poverty stricken female convicts were viewed as prostitutes when compared with the upper class women in Britain. Although many women were driven to prostitution during the hard convict life in Australia, none were transported for the transgression from Britain because it was never a transportable offence. During the long voyage from Britain to Australia and upon arrival, many women took advantage of their sex as a way of improving their situation. Those convicts who were not given assigned work were sent to factories to carry out their sentences.
Background
18th century Britain experienced a huge gulf in economic wealth, with the vast majority of the country living in extreme povertyPoverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
. The rift between rich and poor led to a high crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
rate. The prisons in England were overcrowded, there was no attempt to segregate the prisoners by their offence, age or sex.
In response to growing crime, the British government began to issue harsh punishments such as public hangings or exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
. During the 18th and 19th centuries many prisoners were transported to Australia to carry out their sentence, a relatively small percentage of whom were women (between 1788 and 1852, male convicts outnumbered the female convicts six to one). Convict women varied from small children to old women, but the majority were in their twenties or thirties. The British Government called for more women of “marriageable” age to be sent to Australia in order to promote family development for emancipated convicts and free settler
Settler
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it, as opposed to nomads...
s.
Despite the belief that convict women during the transportation period were all prostitutes, no women were transported for that offence. The majority of women sent to Australia were convicted for what would now be considered minor offences (such as petty theft), most did not receive sentences of more than seven years. Many women were driven to prostitution upon their arrival in Australia as means of survival because they were often required to house themselves or buy clothing and bedding on their own.
Convict population of New South Wales during the period
| Year | Males | Females | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1788 | 529 | 188 | 717 |
| 1790 | 297 | 70 | 367 |
| 1800 | 1,230 | 328 | 1,558 |
| 1805 | 1,561 | 516 | 2,077 |
| 1819 | 8,920 | 1,066 | 9,986 |
| 1828 | 16,442 | 1,544 | 17,986 |
| 1836 | 25,254 | 2,577 | 27,831 |
| 1841 | 23,844 | 3,133 | 26,977 |
| Total | 78,077 | 9,422 | 87,099 |
Voyage
The First FleetFirst Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
was the first set of ships to transport convicts to Australia, it sailed in 1787. Ships continued to transport convicts to Western Australia until 1868. The beginning of the transportation years brought ships at inconsistent times and the death rate on these ships remained high; in the Second Fleet
Second Fleet (Australia)
The Second Fleet is the name of the second fleet of ships sent with settlers, convicts and supplies to colony at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, Australia. The fleet comprised six ships: one Royal Navy escort, four convict ships, and a supply ship....
, 267 out of 1,006 prisoners died at sea. However, at the peak of transportation, the death rate was a little more than one percent.
Ralph Clark, an officer on board the Friendship
Friendship (ship)
Friendship was an Australian First Fleet transport ship, built in Scarborough, England, in 1784.A brig of 278 tons, she was among the smallest of the transports. Her master was Francis Walton and surgeon Thomas Arndell. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying seventy-six male and twenty-one...
in the First Fleet, kept a journal of his journey to Australia. He described the women on board as "abandoned wenches" and continually expressed a negative attitude towards them (common for men of Clark’s social standing). When four sailors on board the Friendship were caught with four female convicts, the captain of the ship had the sailors flogged. In Clark's journal he confesses, "If I had been the Commander I would have flogged the four whores also." Ralph Clark fathered a child with a convict woman named Mary Branham in July 1791.
Despite the critical attitude towards the female convicts, some seamen developed relationships with the women whilst on the voyage. Women often used their bodies as a way of bettering their conditions. On the Lady Juliana, a ship in the Second Fleet, female convicts began to pair off with the seamen, which mirrored the arrangement in subsequent voyages. John Nicol, a Scottish steward recalled, "Every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath." These relationships were not always exclusively sexual. Nicol himself expresses his desire to marry and bring back to England his convict "wife", Sarah Whitlam, after her release.
Female factories
Female factories in Australia housed convict women who were awaiting assignment, pregnant or undergoing punishment. They were called factories because the women were expected to work and because they also employed free working women. Task work was established in female factories in 1849, requiring the occupants to do chores, needle-work and washing. If extra work was done, the convict's sentence might be shortened. Punishments for misconduct in the factories were often humiliating, a common one was to shave the woman's head.Conditions in these factories were miserable. In the Parramatta female factory
Parramatta female factory
Australia's first Female Factory, the Factory above the Gaol was located in what is now Prince Alfred Park, Parramatta, New South Wales. It was a simple log walled and thatched roof construction built in 1796 and used primarily as a place of confinement for convict re-offenders. The original...
the occupants were not given mattress
Mattress
A mattress is a manufactured product to sleep or lie on, consisting of resilient materials and covered with an outer fabric or ticking. In the developed world it is typically part of a bed set and is placed upon a foundation....
es or blankets to sleep on and the social conditions inside were indecent.
Parramatta female factory
The Parramatta female factory was the first built in Australia and was located in Parramatta, New South Wales. The factory had room for only a third of the female prisoners, the rest had to find lodgingLodger
Lodger may refer to:* Lodger , a 1979 art rock album by David Bowie* Lodger , a Finnish indie rock band* Lodger , a short-lived supergroup comprising members of Powder, Supergrass, and Delicatessen...
s with the local settlers at some cost (usually about four shillings a week). Many women could only pay for this cost by offering sexual services. Their customers were usually the male convicts who came and left the factory as they pleased.
In 1819 Macquarie
Macquarie
Macquarie is a commonly encountered name for geographical and business entities in Australia, all of which are directly or indirectly named after Lachlan Macquarie, early colonial administrator and governor of New South Wales.Macquarie may refer to:...
county had ex-convict Francis Greenway create a new design for the factory. This new design had the inmates divided into three categories: the "general", "merit" and "crime" class. The "crime" class women had their hair cropped as a mark of disgrace and were the incorrigibles. The "merit" or first class comprised women who had been well behaved for at least six months and women who had recently arrived from England. These girls were eligible to marry and eligible for assignment. The second or "general" class was made up of women who were sentenced for minor offences and could be transferred to the first class after a period of probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
. This class consisted of many women who had become pregnant during their assigned service. The factory at Parramatta was a source of wives for settlers and emancipated convicts. With a written permit from the Reverend Samuel Marsden
Samuel Marsden
Samuel Marsden was an English born Anglican cleric and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society, believed to have introduced Christianity to New Zealand...
and a written note to the matron
Matron
Matron is the job title of a very senior nurse in several countries, including the United Kingdom, its former colonies, including the Republic of Ireland, although the title Clinical Nurse Manager has become acceptable as an alternative.-History:...
, a bachelor
Bachelor
A bachelor is a man above the age of majority who has never been married . Unlike his female counterpart, the spinster, a bachelor may have had children...
could take his pick of a willing "factory lass."
Family and marriage
MarriageMarriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
between male and female convicts and raising a family was encouraged because of the government’s intentions of developing a free colony. It was the objective of the British government to establish a colony
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
in Australia rather than have it remain as a penal settlement. This compelled the government to send more women to Australia as a way of establishing a native population. On the arrival of 'female' ships, colonists would swarm to the dock to bargain for a servant. High ranking officers had first pick. Some women were taken as mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
es, others as servants. There were no legal ties for these assignments, so a settler could dismiss a convict woman freely. When this did occur, it created a class of woman who often resorted to prostitution in order to feed and house themselves properly.
The Reverend Samuel Marsden categorized the women convicts into being married or prostitutes. If a woman were to have a relationship out of wedlock
Wedlock
Wedlock may refer to:* Marriage* Wedlock , an album by Sunburned Hand of the Man* Wedlock , directed by Lewis Teague* Billy Wedlock, an English footballer* Fred Wedlock, an English folk singer...
, Marsden considered this whoredom. Many couples lived and cohabited
Cohabitation
Cohabitation usually refers to an arrangement whereby two people decide to live together on a long-term or permanent basis in an emotionally and/or sexually intimate relationship. The term is most frequently applied to couples who are not married...
together monogamously
Monogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
without being officially married, yet these women were recorded as being prostitutes. The women were scarred from being convicted and could not redeem their status because it differed so greatly from the British ideal of a woman, who was virtuous, polite and a woman of the family.