PROLOGUE
Eyewitness description of an early flogging at Bathurst court house in Alexander Harris, Settlers and Convicts, or Recollections of Sixteen Years’ Labour in the Australian Backwoods, C Cox, London, 1847 at <http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/harsett.pdf>, accessed March 2017.
INTRODUCTION
John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, Debrett, London, 1790, entry for 29 January 1788, <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301531h.html>, accessed April 2017.
1 UNPROMISING BEGINNINGS
TROUBLE ON THE WAY
John Easty, Memorandum of the Transactions of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay, 1787–1793: A First Fleet Journal, Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 1965, p. 7.
Annual Register, October 1790, p. 220.
David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1, T Cadell Jun. and W Davies, London, 1798, p. 294 at <http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/colacc1.pdf>, accessed May 2017.
Old Bailey Proceedings 10 January 1787, online at <www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=s17870110-1>, accessed March 2017.
THE HUNGRY LAND
John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, London, 1790, entry for 2 February 1788, <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301531h.html>, accessed April 2017.
THE ORGY THAT WASN’T
Arthur Bowes Smyth (Smythe), ‘A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China. 22 March 1787–12 August 1789’, at <http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.ms-ms4568, transcript at http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1085.html>, accessed July 2017.
See Grace Karskens, ‘The Myth of Sydney’s Foundational Orgy’, 2011, at the Dictionary of Sydney <http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_myth_of_sydneys_foundational_orgy>, accessed August 2016.
ENCOUNTERING OTHERS
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, p. 2.
If the date is correct, this may have been the first execution in the colony, though that is usually said to have occurred more than a week later. See ‘A Practical Problem’.
Bowes Smyth, pp. 107ff.
Ralph Clark, The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark 1787–1792, entry for 7 February 1788 at <http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/clajour.pdf>, accessed November 2016.
A PRACTICAL PROBLEM
Though Bowes Smyth gives the date as 26 February, James Scott gives the 27th, see NSW Capital Convictions Database at <http://research.forbessociety.org.au/record/1>; also John White, Journal, entry for 27 February 1788 at <https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/white/john/journal/chapter2.html>, accessed May 2017.
Bowes Smyth, pp. 107ff.
John White, Journal, entry for 30 February 1788 at <https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/white/john/journal/chapter2.html>, accessed June 2017.
Transported Convicts to Australia, <https://sites.google.com/site/transportedconvictstoaustralia/home/7-the-convict-hangman>, accessed March 2017.
Available at <https://gallery.records.nsw.gov.au/index.php/galleries/50-years-at-state-records-nsw/1-3/>, accessed February 2017.
National Museum of Australia <www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/irish_in_australia/exhibition_overview/arriving>, accessed March 2017. A commemorative plaque marks the spot on the corner of Essex and Harrington Streets where Barrett was hanged and probably buried.
THE LURE OF GOLD
London Chronicle, 4 June 1789, in Various, Unknown, ‘Early News From a New Colony: British Museum Papers’ at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300291h.html>, accessed February 2017.
Charles White, Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, Free Press Office, Bathurst, 1889, chapter 5, <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1204081h.html>, accessed March 2017.
THIS SOLITARY WASTE OF THE CREATION
Letter from a female convict, Port Jackson, 14 November 1788 in Public Advertiser, 14 June 1793, Historical Records of New South Wales vol. 2, pp. 806–07, quoted in Hugh Anderson, Farewell to Judges and Juries, Red Rooster Press, North Melbourne, 2000, p. 216.
FREE BY SERVITUDE
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, p. 240; <www.geni.com/people/Joseph-Smith-convict-Neptune-1790/6000000010898484697>, accessed November 2016.
A MEEK AND TENDER WIFE
The proceedings of the Old Bailey: London’s Central Criminal Court, 1647 to 1913, online at University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute at <www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18120701-10&div=t18120701-10&terms=Susannah_Lalliment#highlight>, accessed June 2017.
Vasco de Sousa, ‘Then She Stole the Sailor’s Heart’ at <http://ptara.co.uk/2012/02/14/then-she-stole-the-sailors-heart/>, accessed April 2017, referencing the journal of Judge Jeffery Hart Bent, travelling aboard the Broxbornebury to take up a judicial appointment in the colony of New South Wales.
Hawkesbury on the Net: Cemetery Register at <www.hawkesbury.net.au/cemetery/walters/sawf001.html>, accessed April 2017. The cemetery is on private land.
THE LAST FIRST FLEETERS
There is another story that she was serving as a maid to the wives of these officers. The ladies were concerned at having to wade through the shallows in their dresses and so Betty was carried ashore as a demonstration that there was no danger. Reg A Watson, ‘Betty King: First White Woman in Australia’, Tasmanian Times, 27 January 2014, <http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/article/betty-king-…-first-white-woman-in-australia>, accessed April 2017.
Fellowship of First Fleeters, <www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/elizabeth_king.htm>, accessed November 2016.
Charles White, Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.
A SIGHT TRULY SHOCKING
The writer arrived on the Lady Juliana and wrote this letter in July 1790, in Morning Chronicle, 4 August 1791.
This and other extracts from Johnson’s correspondence compiled in George Mackaness (comp and ed), Some Letters of Rev. Richard Johnson, B.A. First Chaplain of New South Wales, Part 1, vol. XX (New Series), D. S. Ford, Printers, Sydney, 1954.
IRISH REBELS
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 2 October 1803; Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. IV; Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Vol. II, pp. 128–31.
THE FEVER SHIPS
Redfern’s report was part of the despatch between Governor Macquarie and the Commissioners of the Transport Board, 1 October 1814, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Vol. 8, pp. 274–92.
ATTACKED BY AMERICA
Charles Taylor, The Literary Panorama and National Register, Vol. 2, 1815, p. 487 (though Taylor seemed to think the story was a hoax).
Sydney Gazette, 12 August 1815, p. 2.
The Caledonia Mercury, 27 February 1815, p. 2.
Nile’s Weekly Register Supplement to Volume VIIIr, pp. 172–3, <https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_ekMAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA407&dq=vittoria+convict+ship&lr=&as_brr=1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=vittoria%20convict%20ship&f=false>, accessed March 2017.
THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN MUTINY
‘DREADFUL Mutiny on board the Chapman Convict ship’, broadside in Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Ferguson) 673a, evidence of Michael Collins, convict.
For an analysis of this case, see Susan Ballyn, ‘Brutality versus Common Sense: The “Mutiny” Ships, the Tottenham and the Chapman’ in Anna Haebich and Baden Offord (eds), Landscapes of Exile: Once Perilious, Now Safe, Peter Lang, Bern, 2008.
A MELANCHOLY MYSTERY
From the Hobart Town Courier, 17 April 1835, p. 2 and Hobart Town Courier, 24 April 1835, pp. 2–4.
Hobart Town Courier, 8 May 1835, p. 4.
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, p. 156 from a broadside (Ferguson 1954).
See <www.mmnet.com.au/australian_landscape_photos/writer/Shipwreck.html>, accessed February 2017.
Monuments Australia, <http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/disaster/maritime/display/70866-%22george-iii%22>, accessed February 2017.
SKELETON ISLAND
The Sydney Monitor, 18 July 1835, p. 2.
Victor Malham, <http://malham-rennie.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html>, accessed February 2017.
Tamara Glumac, ‘Seaweed from 1835 convict shipwreck site transformed to remember lives lost’, ABC News, <www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-09/seaweed-1835-shipwreck-site-transformed-to-honour-lost-convicts/7312804>, accessed February 2017.
Kevin Todd, ‘Locating the Neva: Art and History, Double Dialogues, Issue 13, 2010 at <www.doubledialogues.com/article/locating-the-neva-art-and-history/>, accessed February 2017.
3 THE CONVICT UNDERWORLD
WIFE FOR SALE
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, p. 58; Bruce Kercher, Debt, Seduction and Other Disasters: The Birth of Civil law in Convict New South Wales, Federation Press, Sydney, 1996 pp. 66–7; ‘Wife Selling’, Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 390.
CONVICT MAGIC
Ian Evans, ‘Seeking Ritual in Strange Places: Dead Cats, Old Shoes and Ragged Clothing. Discovering Concealed magic in the Antipodes’, 2015, <www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/Global/Development/Heritage/Absence%20of%20the%20Document%20copy%202.pdf>, accessed February 2017.
Ian Evans, ‘Defence Against the Devil: Apotropaic Marks in Australia’, <www.academia.edu/4148179/Defence_Against_the_Devil_Apotropaic_Marks_in_Australia>, accessed February 2017.
MRS GRAVY’S HUSBANDS
A broadside from The Australian of 1826 reproduced in Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, p. 104.
SPECIAL TREATMENT
Sydney Gazette, 9 December 1826, p. 3.
Michaela Ann Cameron, ‘Parramatta Female Factory’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015 at <http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_female_factory>, accessed March 2017.
Claire Smith, ‘Doing Time: Patchwork as a tool of social rehabilitation in British prisons’, V&A Online Journal No. 1, 2008, <www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-01/doing-time-patchwork-as-a-tool-of-social-rehabilitation-in-british-prisons/>, accessed August 2016.
National Gallery of Victoria, ‘Making the Australian Quilt 1800–1950’, 2016, <www.ngv.vic.gov.au/wp>, accessed March 2017: <content/uploads/2015/12/AustralianQuilts_ArtworkLabels.pdf>.
NO COMMON CRIMINAL
Chief Justice Sir William à Beckett, quoted in Jill Eastwood, ‘Suffolk, Owen Hargraves (1830–?)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/suffolk-owen-hargraves-4665/text7713>, published first in hardcopy 1976, accessed June 2017.
The Times, 11 August 1868, p. 9.
David Dunstan (ed), Introduction to Owen Suffolk, Days of Crime and Years of Suffering, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2000.
Southern Argus, 3 October 1868, p. 4. Another version of the story in The McIvor and Rodney Advertiser, 2 October 1868, p. 4.
THE FLASH
Occurrence Book of York police lock-up, nd.
Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales, G. Nichol and J. Sewell, London, 1793.
James Hardy Vaux, Vocabulary of the Flash Language in or shortly before 1812 (published 1819).
Desidd, ‘Use of Flash Language in Australian English: Background and Evolution’, posted 23 April 2016, <https://desidd.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/use-of-flash-language-in-australian-english-background-and-evolution/>, accessed November 2016.
SKIN DEEP
Simon Barnard, Convict Tattoos: Marked Men and Women of Australia, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2016, p. 6.
David Kent, ‘Decorative bodies: The significance of convicts’ tattoos’, Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 21, Issue 53, 1997; James Bradley and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Embodied explorations: Investigating convict tattoos and the transportation system’ in Representing Convicts: New Perspectives on Convict Forced Labour Migration, Ian Duffield and James Bradley (eds), Leicester University Press, London, 1997, pp. 75–89.
THE JURY GUILTY FOUND HER
Charles Picknell, The Kains: Female convict vessel (Charles Picknell’s journal and Thrasycles Clarke’s notes), Sullivan’s Cove, Adelaide, 1989. Picknell’s journal kept aboard the Kains in 1830 includes a version of this song, though it is thought that it may have been added long after the journal was written, possibly the 1870s.
4 THE SYSTEM
THE HULKS
James Tucker, (‘Giacomo Rosenberg’), The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh: A Penal Exile in Australia, 1825–1844. First published in 1929, though thought to have been written in the 1840s.
A Complete Exposure of the Convict System. Horrors, Hardships, and Severities, Including an Account of the Dreadful Sufferings of the Unhappy Captives. Containing an Extract from a Letter from the Hulks at Woolwich, written by Edward Lilburn, Pipe-Maker, late of Lincoln, from a broadside in the Mitchell Library (Ferguson 3238).
Henry Mayhew, John Binny and Benno Loewy, The Criminal Prisons of London, and Scenes of Prison Life, Griffin Bohn, London, 1862, p. 200.
THE DOGLINE
Launceston Examiner, 19 April 1859, p. 2.
Although often told, documentary verification of this tale has not yet turned up.
Martin Cash (edited by James Lester Burke), The Adventures of Martin Cash: comprising a faithful account of his exploits, while a bushranger under arms in Tasmania, in company with Kavanagh and Jones in the year 1843. Mercury Steam Press Office, Hobart, 1870, pp 66-7.
CANARIES AND MAGPIES
Major George Druitt’s evidence to Commissioner Bigge, 1819 in Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales, The House of Commons, 19 June 1822, chapter V at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300181h.html#ch-02>, accessed June 2017.
W. Gates, Recollections of Life in Van Diemen’s Land, Lockport, New York, 1850, pp. 62–3.
Female Convict Research Centre, <www.femaleconvicts.org.au/index.php/convict-institutions/convict-clothing>, accessed February 2017.
J.C. Byrne, Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies, from 1835 to 1847, Richard Bentley, London, 1848.
James Mudie, The Felonry of New South Wales, self-published, London, 1837.
THE CONVICT’S LAMENT
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, p. 121.
This version of the song is from a manuscript collected in Queensland in 1916. See also J. Meredith & R. Whalan, Frank the Poet, Red Rooster Press, North Melbourne, 1979, pp. 31–8 and R. Reece, ‘Frank the Poet’ in Gwenda Davy & Graham Seal (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore, OUP, Melbourne, 1993.
THE IRONED GANG
John Hirst, Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s First Colony, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2008, pp. 27ff.
Woomera (edited by K. Delaforce), The Life and Experiences of an Ex-Convict in Port Macquarie, K. Delaforce, Sydney, 1984, p. 35 (first published 1900).
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, p. 160. This account was presented as propaganda in favour of ending transportation, but the details are accurate.
THE INNOCENCE OF THOMAS DREWERY
Dorothy Small, ‘An Innocent Pentonvillain: Thomas Drewery, Chemist and Exile 1821–1859’, The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 14, 2015, <http://prov.vic.gov.au/publications/provenance/provenance2015/an-innocent-pentonvillain>, accessed February 2017.
‘THE MOST ABSURD, PRODIGAL, AND IMPRACTICABLE VISION’
The Bee, October 1791 at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300291h.html>, accessed March 2017.
Dublin Chronicle, 1 December 1791 at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300291h.html>, accessed March 2017.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June, p. 2, and 19 June 1849, p. 2.
J. Syme, Nine Years in Van Diemen’s Land: comprising an account of its discovery, possession, settlement, progress, population, value of land, herds, flocks etc.; an essay on prison discipline; and the results of the working of the probation system; with anecdotes of bushrangers, self-published, Dundee, 1848.
HANGED THREE TIMES
Sydney Gazette, 2 October 1803, p. 2 giving the name as Samuels, though some sources give Samuel. See also Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, pp. 27–8; 261. Some sources give different weights for the rope testing.
THE LASH
George Barrington, A Sequel to Barrington’s Voyage to New South Wales, C. Lowndes, London, 1801 at <http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/barsequ.pdf>, accessed July 2017.
THE TREADMILL
Sydney Gazette, 21 July 1825 in Max Howell and Lingyu Xie, Convicts and the Arts, Palmer Higgs, Vic., 2013, np.
Similar, if cruder, devices had been in use since the sixteenth century, see J. Thorsten Sellin, Slavery and the Penal System, Quid Pro Books, New Orleans, 2016, p. 82.
Hyacinthe de Bougainville, The Governor’s noble guest: Hyacinthe de Bougainville’s account of Port Jackson, 1825, translated and edited by Marc Serge Riviere, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1999.
John Briscoe, A letter on the nature and effect of the tread-wheel, as an instrument of prison labour and punishment, addressed to the Right Hon. Robert Peel with an appendix of notes and cases, Hatchard & Son, London, 1824.
The Australian, 13 January 1825, p. 3 at <www.jenwilletts.com/convict_ship_minerva_1824.htm>, accessed June 2017; the same incident reported in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 13 January 1825, p. 2.
THE IRON COLLAR
The Sydney Monitor, 26 January 1833, p. 2, ‘Ordered to be Printed by the House of Commons’.
WHIPPING BOY
The Sydney Monitor, 9 October 1830, p. 3.
Charles White, Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, Free Press Office, Bathurst, 1889, chapter 21 at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1204081h.html>, accessed March 2017.
THE HANGED BOY
The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 6 April 1844, p. 3; Inquirer (Perth), 10 April 1844, p. 2.
Excerpt from Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, chapter fifteen. First published in serial form between 1870–72.
TO PLOUGH VAN DIEMEN’S LAND
This version was collected by folklorist Lucy Broadwood in England around the early twentieth century, though there are many printed broadside versions from at least the 1830s. One appeared in The Launceston Advertiser, 21 November 1839. See also Hugh Anderson, Farewell to Old England: A Broadside History of Early Australia, Rigby, Adelaide, 1964, p. 82.
6 TROUBLEMAKERS
BOTANY BAY HERO
Stephan Williams (ed), A soldier’s punishments, or, autobiography of a Botany Bay hero by Michael Keane & two other tales of 1826, Popinjay Publications, Woden ACT, 1994. Keane’s Autobiography of a Botany Bay Hero, was first published in The Australian, 11 November 1826, p. 4.
THROWN UNPITIED AND FRIENDLESS UPON THE WORLD
George Loveless was separated from the group and later sent to Van Diemen’s Land.
James Loveless, James Brine, John Standfield (a Dorsetshire Labourer.), Thomas Standfield, A Narrative of the sufferings of J. Loveless, J. Brine, and T. & J. Standfield, four of the Dorchester Labourers; displaying the horrors of transportation, written by themselves, John Cleave, London, 1838.
THE BEAST OF GOAT ISLAND
From Meliora, vol. IV, 1862 at <https://archive.org/stream/meliora04lond/meliora04lond_djvu.txt>, accessed January 2017. This account is based partly on Anderson’s own testimony. Today, visitors to Goat Island can see the scooped-out rock where Anderson is said to have been chained.
NYMPHS OF THE PAVE
Based on T.C. Creaney, The Huddersfield Four, Female Convicts Research Centre, 2015 at <www.femaleconvicts.org.au/docs/convicts/TheHuddersfieldFour.pdf>, accessed February 2017.
FLASH MOB AT THE CASCADES
The Colonial Times, 10 March 1840, p. 4.
Cascades Female Factory, <http://femalefactory.org.au>, accessed February 2017.
Phillip Tardif, Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls: Convict Women in Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–1829, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1990, pp. 1062–6; 1424–9; 1684–9.
THE PATRIOTS
Except four who were convicted of civil crimes, they went to Van Diemen’s Land with the Americans.
Quoted in Gregory Blaxell, ‘A Slice of Canada in Australia’, Afloat, 2007 at <www.afloat.com.au/afloat-magazine/archive/2007_December2007_AsliceofCanadainSydneybyGregoryBlaxell.htm#.WNi6RTtBVds>, accessed March 2017.
Cassandra Pybus (ed), The Exile’s Return: Narrative of Samuel Snow Who was Banished to Van Diemen’s Land, for Participating in the Patriot War in Upper Canada in 1838 (Cleveland, 1846) at <http://iccs.arts.utas.edu.au/narratives/snow3.html>, accessed June 2017.
THE OLD LAGS’ HERO
Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, p. 242.
William Moy Thomas, ‘Transported for Life’, Household Words, Vol. V, No. 124, 7 August 1852, pp. 482–9, being the account of William Barber who was on Norfolk at the time of the events described.
THE GHOST POET
Kilkenny Journal, 18 January 1832, see Bob Reece, ‘Frank the Poet’ in Gwenda Davey and Graham Seal (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 187.
Mark Gregory, <https://frankthepoet.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/for-company-underground.html>, accessed December 2016; R.H.W. Reece, ‘MacNamara, Francis (1810–1861)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macnamara-francis-13073/text23647>, published first in hardcopy 2005>, accessed December 2016.
Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 18 June 1862, p. 2.
Mark Gregory, ‘Frank the Poet: Francis MacNamara, 1811–1861’, <https://frankthepoet.blogspot.com.au>, accessed February 2017, has links to most of the main sources of Frank the Poet’s life and legend.
7 PLACES OF CONDEMNATION
PLUTO’S LAND
From reports and other papers relating to a visit to the Australian colonies and South Africa, 1832–1840 by J. Backhouse & G.W. Walker. MLB706.
The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 1 September 1838, pp. 138–9.
Peter Gifford, ‘Murder and the Execution of the Law on the Nullarbor’, Aboriginal History Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, 1994, p. 114.
Katherine Roscoe, ‘Rottnest Island: A Prison for the Indigenous Australian Convicts’, Convict Voyages at <http://convictvoyages.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Rottnest-Island.pdf>, accessed June 2017.
Rottnest Island Authority—Our History, <www.rottnestisland.com/the-island/about-the-island/our-history>, accessed February 2017.
COAL RIVER
Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 17 August 1840, p. 2.
THE NORFOLK ISLAND SUFFERING OF THOMAS COOK
Thomas Cook exiles [sic] lamentations; or biographical sketch, 1841, State Library of NSW, A 1711; Kay Walsh and Joy Hooton, Australian Autobiographical Narratives, Vol. 1: to 1850, National Library of Australia, 1993, p. 39.
ON THE SQUARE, EVER
William Moy Thomas, ‘Transported for Life’, Household Words, Vol. V, No. 124, 7 August 1852, pp. 482–9.
Price Warung, ‘The Liberation of the First Three’, 1891; Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, first published in serial form between 1870–72.
THE WATER RATS
Diary of Joshua Hamlet Gregory, 1842, Norfolk Island Museum, transcribed by Don Brien. This research in Don and Sue Brien, ‘Were the Water Rats on Norfolk Island Australia’s First Surf Life Savers?’, unpublished paper, 2017, used with permission.
A RUNNING FIRE OF CURTSEYS
Godfrey Charles Mundy, Our Antipodes: or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies, with a Glimpse of the Gold Fields. First edition, Richard Bentley, London, 1852.
A CONVICT’S DREAM
The Critic (Hobart), 8 May 1914, p. 3.
NOT A BAD MAN AT HEART
Empire (Sydney), 16 October 1867, p. 6. While this sounds almost too bad to be true, the details of T’s life appear authentic, even if perhaps given some journalistic spice and polish by the Empire staff.
A HEROIC STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY
Frederick A. Pottle, Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay, Viking Press, New York, 1937. See also Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, self-published, London, 1793 at <http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/p00044.pdf>, p. 147, accessed April 2017.
Tim Causer (ed), Memorandoms of James Martin, The Bentham Project, University College, London, 2014 at <http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1558725/1/Memorandoms-by-James-Martin.pdf>, accessed June 2017.
THE VAGABOND OF THE WOODS
Charles White, Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, Bathurst, 1889, chapter 6 at <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1204081h.html>, accessed March 2017; A H Chisholm, ‘Wilson, John (?–1800)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wilson-john-2803/text4001>, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 14 November 2016; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 2 (London, 1802).
CHARLOTTE THE PIRATE
V. Blomer, ‘The Fate of the Brig Venus Seized in 1806’, Convict Connections Chronicle, Convict Connections 2013 at <www.convictconnections.org.au/newsletter_articles.html>, accessed March 2017; Mary Louise Ormsby, ‘Badger, Charlotte’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, <www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b1/badger-charlotte>, accessed 7 March 2017. Charlotte’s enigmatic story has been the subject of plays and books.
A TASTE FOR FLESH
Reverend Robert Knopwood, Narrative of the escape of eight convicts from Macquarie Harbour, c. 1824, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales.
Hobart Town Gazette, 28 January 1826, given in broadside form in Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, p. 107.
The Awful Confession and Execution of Edward Broughton and Mathew Maccavoy, &c., broadside in the Mitchell Library, in Geoffrey C. Ingleton (ed), True Patriots All, pp. 125–6. Original spelling of names.
James Porter autobiography, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, DLMSQ 604, composed between 1840 and 1844.
H. Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Seven Tales for a Man with Seven Sides’, in L. Frost and H. Maxwell-Stewart (eds), Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001), pp. 64–76.
THE GREAT ESCAPER
The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 15 March 1867, p. 2.
I. Elliot, Moondyne Joe: The Man and the Myth, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 1979, second edition, Hesperian Press, Perth, 1998; Graham Seal, The Outlaw Legend: A cultural tradition in Britain, America and Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 144; M. Tamblyn, ‘Johns, Joseph Bolitho (1827–1900)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/johns-joseph-bolitho-3859/text6139>, published first in hardcopy 1972, accessed online 20 December 2016.
REBEL HEROES
A.G. Evans, Fanatic Heart: A life of John Boyle O’Reilly 1844–1890, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 1997, p. 98. See also C.W. Sullivan, III., Fenian Diary: Denis B Cashman aboard the Hougoumont, 1867–1868, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 2001; ‘Correspondence Entry Books of Letters from Secretary of State. Despatches 1856–73’, CO 397/28 (part 2); J. O’Reilly, Moondyne, published in Boston in 1879, in Australia the following year and frequently reprinted since; Alexandra Hasluck, Unwilling Emigrants, OUP, Oxford, 1959, p. 75.
The correspondence files of the Colonial Office include a considerable amount of correspondence relating to O’Reilly’s case, see ‘Correspondence Entry Books of Letters from Secretary of State. Despatches 1856–73’, CO 397/28 (part 2).
9 THE FELONRY
Though he may well not have composed it.
THE MAN WHO INVENTED AUSTRALIA’S BEER
G.P. Walsh, ‘Squire, James (1755–1822)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/squire-james-2688/text3759>, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed March 2017.
Heather Shore, ‘Transportation, Penal Ideology and the Experience of Juvenile Offenders in England and Australia in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies [En ligne], Vol. 6, n°2 | 2002, mis en ligne le 25 février 2009, <https://chs.revues.org/416>, accessed June 2017.
THE BOTANY BAY ROTHSCHILD
‘A.L.F.’—late of New South Wales, The History of Samuel Terry in Botany Bay, &c., London, 1838; Gwyneth Dow, ‘Terry, Samuel (1776–1838)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/terry-samuel-2721/text3833>, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 30 December 2016.
Thomas Atkins, Reminiscences of twelve years’ residence in Tasmania and New South Wales, Norfolk Island, and Moreton Bay, Calcutta, Madras, and Cape Town, the United States of America, and the Canadas, Malvern Advertiser, 1869.
THE LEGEND OF MARGARET CATCHPOLE
Richard Cobbold, The History of Margaret Catchpole (1845), Oxford University Press classics edition, London, 1907, p. xiii.
Carol Birch, Scapegallows, Virago, London, 2007.
Margaret Catchpole’s letters are available through the State Library of New South Wales at <www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/justice/convict/MargaretCatchpole/catchpole.html>; Joan Lynravn, ‘Catchpole, Margaret (1762–1819)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/catchpole-margaret-1886/text2219>, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 24 January 2017.
THE CONVICT KING
Jorgen Jorgenson, The Convict King: Being the Life and Adventures of Jorgen Jorgenson, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable. Retold by James Francis Hogan, Ward & Downey, London, 1891, p. 157. (Jorgenson’s surname was Jorgensonsen, he changed it to Jorgensonson in 1817.)
THE SOLICITOR’S TALE
William Moy Thomas, ‘Transported for Life’, Household Words, Vol. V, No. 124, 7 August 1852, pp. 482–9.
The Australian Star (Sydney), 5 December 1896, p. 7.
Philipp Butterss & Elizabeth Webby (eds), The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, Penguin Books, Vic., 1993, with the note: ‘From a broadside in the Mitchell Library. Printed by Birt, 39 Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials.’
A BROKEN DOWN GENT
The number may have been fewer, but in any case around a dozen of the Maitland’s human cargo died or were murdered within eighteen months of their arrival on Norfolk Island. See G.A. Wilkes and A.G. Mitchell (eds), Experiences of a Convict Transported for Twenty-One Years, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1965, p. 65.
J.F. Mortlock, Experiences of a Convict, Transported for Twenty-One Years (edited by G.A. Wilkes and A.G. Mitchell). Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1965 (first published London, 1864–5).
THE POACHER’S FATE
Graham Seal, These Few Lines: The Lost Lives of Myra and William Sykes, ABC Books, Sydney, 2006 contains the full surviving correspondence of Myra and William.
10 A CONVICT STAIN
TOM TILLEY’S TOKEN
Colonial Secretary’s Office (Fiche 3267; 9/2731 p. 18).
Powerhouse Museum, <https://ma.as/73510>, accessed February 2017. See also <www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=734380.0>, accessed February 2017.
THE FIRST AUSTRALIA DAY
Philip Gidley King, Private journal, in two volumes, Vol. 1 titled: ‘Remarks & Journal kept on the Expedition to form a Colony in His Majestys [sic] Territory of New South Wales’, entry for 26 January 1788 (mistakenly given as 27 January by King), State Library of New South Wales.
Sydney Gazette, 1 February 1817, pp. 2–3.
Australia Day Council, <www.australiaday.org.au/australia-day/history/1938-the-sesquicentenary-and-the-day-of-mourning/>, accessed June 2017.
FLOATING BROTHELS
Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1969; Siân Rees, The Floating Brothel: the extraordinary story of an eighteenth-century ship and its cargo of female convicts bound for Botany Bay, Hodder Headline Australia, Sydney, 2001; Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787–1868, Collins Harvill, p. 279, London, 1987.
Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s grim convict armada of 1790, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 2001; Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts and Gender in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997; Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, (1975), NewSouth Books, Sydney, 2016.
THE STAIN THAT WOULD NOT FADE
Reported in the Hobart Town Courier, 15 November 1828, p. 2.
Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The startling legacy of the convict era, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2008.
THE CABBAGE TREE MOB
The Sydney Herald, 4 May 1841, p. 2.
Godfrey Charles Mundy, Our Antipodes: or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies, with a Glimpse of the Gold Fields, Richard Bentley, London, 1852, three volumes, <http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/munoura.pdf>, accessed February 2017.
The Cabbage Tree Mob is also mentioned in an 1843 play set in Sydney, Richard Fotheringham and Angela Turner, Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage, UQP, Brisbane, 2006, pp. 61ff.
BOTTOMS UP!
Michael Connor, ‘Fabricated Feminist Flashers’, Quadrant Online, 1 May 2010 at <https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/05/fabricated-feminist-flashers/>, accessed February 2017. In 2004 a Hobart publisher, Michael Tatlow, commissioned the bare bottoms artwork and postcard from artist Peter Gouldthorpe.
Lucy Frost, ‘The Flash Mob, and the Flashing Bottoms: Sorting out a popular confusion’, Female Convicts Research Centre, 2013 at <www.femaleconvicts.org.au/index.php/convict-institutions/flash-mob>, accessed February 2017.
THE GUNDAGAI CAT
The Mercury (Hobart), 17 June 1876, p. 3.
The Gundagai Independent and Pastoral, Agricultural and Mining Advocate, 2 May 1927, p. 2.
‘Nine Miles From Gundagai’ at <http://folkstream.com/064.html>, accessed July 2017.
For more Tasmanian ghosts see Will Mooney, ‘Ghost Stories’, The Companion to Tasmanian History, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006, <www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/G/Ghost%20stories.htm>, accessed November 2016.
Richard Davis, The Ghost Guide to Australia, Bantam, Sydney, 1998, p. 223.
LAST OF THE EXPIREES
Mirror (Perth), 27 August 1938, p. 22; Register of Heritage Places—Sunset Hospital Assessment Documentation 02/09/1997, p. 2 at <http://inherit.stateheritage.wa.gov.au/Public/Content/PdfLoader.aspx?id=1ec6a19a-74a7-4b72-ad36-d56c5ad5e357&type=assessment>, accessed August 2016. Samuel Speed died in 1938.