Australian Penal Colonies

An early map of Botany Bay, site of the first Australian penal colony

Australian penal colonies refers to the transportation of approximately 162,000 prison convicts from Britain and Ireland to Australia and Tasmania in the eighty year period between 1788 and 1868. The very first British colony established in Australia was founded following the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney in New South Wales in 1788, with just under 800 of the 1,380 or so people who arrived there being convicts. Hundreds more convicts arrived in the Second Fleet in 1790 and nearly two-thousand through the Third Fleet in 1791. This would continue for decades to come and in its early days convicts made up a huge proportion of the population of British Australia. At first New South Wales was the only penal colony, but a second was established on Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania) in 1803, a third in Queensland in 1824 and a fourth and final penal colony at Swan River in Western Australia at the end of the 1820s. Of those shipped to Australia and Van Diemen’s Land, a disproportionate amount (24%) were from Ireland.

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Australian penal colonies chronology of events

An element of British overseas colonization had always involved the export of convicts from England, Wales and Ireland at a time when there was not a developed prison system in those countries. Many convicts had been sent, for instance, to colonies like Virginia in North America in the seventeenth century where they became ‘indentured servants’ who had to carry out six or seven years of labor before they were often given a small plot of land in the colony. In actuality, many Africans who were forcibly brought to the region from 1619 onwards were often so as ‘indentured servants’ before the laws concerning Africans became more brutal and plantation slavery of the kind we are familiar with developed. A new form of bonded labor again began in the American colonies in the eighteenth century with the passage of the Transportation Act in Britain in 1717. This allowed for British and Irish convicts to be sent to the North American colonies where they would serve either seven years for minor offences or fourteen years for capital offences. The Transportation Act would form the basis for the Australian penal colonies for the next century and a half.

In the mid-1780s proposals arose in Britain to revive this system of shipping convicts overseas to build British colonies as ‘indentured servants’, ones who would be given their freedom after a period of years (usually seven or fourteen years depending on the severity of one's crime) and would then serve to expand the colony. The southern continent, Terra Australis, which Europeans had known of since the first half of the seventeenth century, had recently been mapped extensively by James Cook during his first expedition to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1771 and so it was decided that Australia, as it would eventually become known, would be settled as a British penal colony. The First Fleet was sent out in 1787 and arrived to New South Wales in January 1788. There they began building the settlement of Sydney, overseen by British military and civilian administrators. Further fleets followed in 1790 and 1791, expanding the size of the convict population in New South Wales to several thousand. It was the beginning of British Australia.

Over the decades that followed tens of thousands more convicts were sent out to Australia from Britain and Ireland. Eventually they became so numerous in New South Wales, that a second penal colony was established on the island of Tasmania in 1803, then known as Van Diemen’s Land after the Dutch explorer, Anthony Van Diemen, who had first landed somewhere on the coast of Australia back in the late 1610s after his ship became lost while sailing to the East Indies. A third penal colony would eventually be set up in Queensland in 1824, followed by a fourth, the Swan River Colony in Western Australia in 1829. These four penal colonies eventually evolved into the cities of Sydney in New South Wales, Hobart in Tasmania, Brisbane in Queensland and Perth in Western Australia.

Drawing of convicts in Sydney by Juan Ravenet in 1793

A further penal colony, one which developed along considerably different lines and which was opened and closed intermittently on several occasions in the nineteenth century, was established on Norfolk Island some 1,450 kilometers off the Australia coast directly east of Brisbane. This was reserved as a particularly harsh punishment for severe offenders. In the mid-1850s it was curiously transformed into the new home of the descendants of the famous mutineers from the HMS Bounty back in 1789, who had been confined to living on Pitcairn Island, but who had outgrown the tiny island’s ability to support them.

In these colonies many people carried out hard labor or were employed as servants in the households of the colonial administrators and other civilian settlers. Their work is still visible in many instances. For instance, the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, a UNESCO World Heritage site today, was built in the 1810s using convict labor. When the prisoners eventually earned their freedom most elected to remain in Australia or Tasmania, having little option given their inability to return home to faraway Britain and Ireland. The flow of convicts slowed considerably in the middle of the nineteenth century as the colonies had become well enough established and populated that people were now arriving voluntarily in large numbers from Europe, especially so after the discovery of gold out in Victoria in 1851. The last penal ship arrived in 1868.

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Extent of migration to Australian penal colonies

Ned Kelly in 1880, the day before his execution

Owing to the fact that convicts were being transported and there was a wide array of records produced around their passage to Australia and Tasmania, from court records in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland to ship manifestos and other documentation, we have a very accurate picture of the extent of the migration associated with the Australian penal colonies. Approximately 162,000 people were transported from Britain and Ireland to Australia between the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and the last prisoner ship in 1868. However, the use of the penal colonies had begun to decline from the middle of the nineteenth century and most of these were transported before 1850.

Of those so trafficked, a disproportionately high number, in terms of the respective populations of Britain and Ireland at the time, came from Ireland. Some 24% were Irish and they were often individuals who had been convicted of minor crimes in Ireland. The famous outlaw Ned Kelly was born in Australia, but his father John ‘Red’ Kelly was from Tipperary in Ireland. In 1841 he was convicted of stealing two pigs and was sent to Tasmania. He eventually finished his sentence in 1848 and relocated to Victoria in Australia where he married and acquired a small plot of land, a common convict-turned-settler story. Most others did so too and the 162,000 prisoners produced hundreds of thousands more Australians of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish descent by the end of the nineteenth century.

Demographic impact of the Australian penal colonies

The demographic impact of the penal colonies was very great. They formed the basis of the colony in New South Wales in its early days and the early history of European settlement in Tasmania is dominated by its role as a penal colony. While there were 162,000 people transported to Australian and Tasmania in this way between 1788 and 1868, it is estimated today that roughly 20% or five million out of Australia’s population of 25 million people are descended in one form or another form convicts brought to the penal colonies here during this eighty year period.

See also

• Australia
• Australian convicts
• Australian ethnicity
• Australia's First Fleet
• Australian penal transportation
• Australian immigration

Explore more about Australian Penal Colonies

• Australia, New South Wales Convicts Index, 1791-1873 record collection on MyHeritage
• Australia, New South Wales Birth Index, 1787-1916 record collection on MyHeritage
• Australia, New South Wales Death Index, 1787-1986 record collection on MyHeritage
• Settlers, Squatters and Selectors: Land ownership in Australia, 1788-1900 at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• A Cargo of Criminals: Transportation to Australia at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Researching in Australian Archives at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Australia Day: January 26 at the MyHeritage blog

References

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