|
Page I (A-G)
(see below)
Chriss Addams
& Mark M. Newell, The Dromedary Hulk, Bermuda
Clare Anderson, Fashioning Identity:
the development of penal dress in the Indian convict settlements
Susan Ballyn,
Hispanic and Lusophone Convicts in Australia: Research in
Progress
James Bradley, An Engine of Unlimited Power: Phrenology
and the Individuation of Convicts in the 19th Century
Andrea Button, Commodities of the State:
the trade in convict labour to the West Indies during the
Interregnum
Timothy Coates, Exile as a Tool in
Building and Maintaining the Early-Modern Portuguese Empire
Ian Duffield,
Slave, Apprentice and 'Khoisan' Spaces in Colonial Places:
Criminal Transportation from the Cape Colony to Australia
as a Site of Contested Power Relations
Samantha Fabry,
Convicts and Tobacco Consumption in Hyde Park Barracks
Lucy Frost, Constraining Foreign Tongues
Farley Grubb, The Trans-Atlantic Market
for British Convict Labour (1767-1775)
|
Page II (H-Ma) (see below)
Bruce
Hindmarsh, 'I'll be damned if I don't have some'; Convict
Trangressive Consumption in Van Diemen's Land 1820-40
Erin
Ihde, Edward Smith Hall: Colonial Paradox
Toni Johnson-Woods,
'The Hermit Convict'
Sara Joynes, The
Australian Joint Copying Project and sources for Convict Studies
Patricia Kennedy,
Exporting felons from British North America
Jan Kociumbas,
Convict and Aboriginal Relations in Early Australia
Toomas Kotkas,
The 19th Century Deportations of Finnish Convicts to Siberia
Ian McLean, Convict
art and cultural capital: the case of Thomas Watling
Matthew P. Mauger,
Criminal History Transported: The Literary Origins of
the Convict Narratives
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart,
Between the Lines: Murder and Convict Society at Macquarie
Harbour Penal Station |
Page III
(Me-Re)
David
Meredith, Tasmanian Convict Workers: Modelling the Convict
Labour Market in Van Diemen's Land, 1848-60
Tim Millet, Leaden Hearts:
convict love tokens
Gwenda Morgan & Peter
Rushton, Criminal Connections: Criminal Transportation
and the Place of the North in the Atlantic World of the Eighteenth
Century
Mark M. Newell & Chriss
Addams, The Dromedary Hulk, Bermuda
Tamsin
O'Connor, Charting New Waters With Old Patterns: The Black
Marketeers, Pirates and Those Who Just Dreamed of the Way
Home. The Penal Station and Port of Newcastle, 1804-1824
Diana Paton, An "Injurious"
Population: Race and Slavery in the Transportation of West
Indian Convicts to Australia
Tina Picton-Phillipps, Frozen
Identities: An Exploration, 1810-1830
Anoma Pieris, Productive
illegalities in the Colonial Straits Settlements
Geraldo Pieroni, The
Portuguese Inquisition and Banishment to Brazil
Cassandra Pybus, "By any available
means": The case of the Canadian Political Prisoners
Kirsty Reid, Gender and
convict culture in Van Diemen's Land |
Page IV
(Ro-Z)
Sue
Rosen, 'That Den of Infamy': The No. 2 Stockade, Cox's
River.
Peter
Rushton & Gwenda Morgan, Criminal Connections: Criminal
Transportation and the Place of the North in the Atlantic
World of the Eighteenth Century
Abby M. Schrader, Lawless
Vagabonds and Civilizing Wives: The Official Cult of Domesticity
and the Exile Problem in Early Nineteenth-Century Siberia
Heather Shore, From courthouse
to convict-ship to colony: the Euraylus boys in the 1830s
Max Staples, Australian
colonial art: is there a convict aesthetic?
Norma Townsend, An
Alternative View of Female Convicts
Jim Walvin, Atlantic
Slavery and convict slavery: an area for comparison
Kerry Ward, 'Bandieten
and Bannelingen': penal and political transportation in the
Dutch East India Company's Indian Ocean empire, c.1655-1795
Emily Warner, Subjectivity
and the Penal Colony: Convict Narratives and Foucault
Stephen G. Wheatcroft,
The Tsarist Prison System in the Perspective of the Stalinist
and Other Prison Systems
Anand A. Yang, Con(vict)
Tales from Bengkulen: Convict/Laborer/Slave in Early Nineteenth
Century South and Southeast Asia
|
Bruce Hindmarsh,
Dept of History, University of Edinburgh (9238999@lewis.sms.ed.ac.uk)
'I'll be damned if I don't have some'; Convict Trangressive Consumption
in Van Diemen's Land 1820-40
When convict James Murray was refused tea and sugar by his employer
in June 1836 he refused to work, saying to his master, 'I'll be
damned if I don't have some'. Despite a great deal of similar evidence
to demonstrate the importance of consumption among transported prisoners
in the Australian colonies, there has been relatively little attention
paid to this area of convict life. Following the lead of the historiography
on New World slavery, convict historians have ventured into nutritional
analysis of official rations. In Convict Workers Stephen
Nicholas concluded that the feeding of convicts in New South Wales
was nutritionally sufficient, and indeed exceeded the nineteenth-century
English working class diet. While such analysis is useful, it is
problematic, and tends to discount a very large area of convict
experience. Study of assigned convict labourers in Van Diemen's
Land suggests that assignees like James Murray not only demanded
the fullest possible extraction of their rations and indulgences
from their employers, but also that they engaged in the illicit
consumption of various food items, alcohol and tobacco. Similar
patterns of consumption have been demonstrated among other unfree
labour populations, and this discussion draws on this comparative
material to suggest the importance of this illicit consumption among
convicts. The consumption of forbidden, or non-standard items among
prisoners was an important aspect of convict culture. The study
of convict consumption, positing, as it were, a new 'oral history'
of convicts, is then to reveal an important, yet largely overlooked,
aspect of convict life and negotiation of the experience of transportation.
_________________________________________________________________
Erin Ihde, School of Classics, History &
Religion, University of New England (sihde@northnet.com.au)
Edward Smith Hall: Colonial Paradox
Edward Smith Hall is a fascinating case study in the history of
transportation and convicts. On the one hand he fought for just
treatment for convicts, and regarded them as human beings blessed
with the rights of Englishmen, but on the other he fully supported
the system which sent them across the globe and regarded them as
vital to the survival of a colony. He was a man whose views were
a curious mixture of old-fashioned paternalism and the new style
laissez-faire individualism.
Hall emigrated to Australia in 1811, carrying
recommendations from William Wilberforce and Robert Peel, among
others. In 1826 he founded a newspaper, the Sydney Monitor,
which he edited until 1840. Hall was regarded as a very influential
figure in his time, campaigning ardently for trial by jury, a Legislative
Council, and a House of Assembly for the fledgling colony of New
South Wales. As well, he was a passionate supporter of transportation,
yet also strongly advocated the upholding of convicts' rights. Convicts,
and the transportation system itself, were vital for the economic
prosperity of New South Wales, Hall believed. Settlers needed convicts
to tend their farms or businesses. The low wages or rations needed
to support them were the only way the free population could make
a living, as free emigrants demanded too high wages. Indeed, Hall
much preferred that convicts be sent to New South Wales than free
emigrants. He believed that most free people came from the very
lowest classes, and were full of vice and corruption, especially
the women, who were, he said, mostly prostitutes. This is an interesting
observation given that most people thought that female convicts
were prostitutes. But Hall actually called for the transportation
of more females, to address the chronic imbalance of the sexes in
the colony, thus leading to a lowering of the levels of vice and
other depravities practiced by the men. In addition, Hall believed
that sending the poor convicts to Australia was beneficial to them,
as they would be better fed, clothed and housed than in Britain.
So for all these reasons, Hall campaigned strongly for the continuation
of transportation whenever suggestions to discontinue it arose,
and for its reintroduction when it was stopped.
But Hall never lost sight of the fact that
the convicts were still men, and more than that, Englishmen. As
such they were entitled to just and fair treatment, with no punishment
beyond what was allowed by law to be inflicted. Hall campaigned
unceasingly for better rations and supplies for the convicts, and
was always ready to expose any injustices in his newspaper. Indeed,
he openly called for convicts to write to him with any grievances,
so that he might publicise them. He also believed that masters should
be punished for mistreating their convicts. However, all this did
not mean he believed the convicts should be mollycoddled. They should
be treated with fairness, but still with sternness. Any punishments
that were called for, and were not inhumane, should be inflicted.
Hall still believed in scourging, as long as it was applied properly.
He had convicts of his own, and was quite prepared to see them punished
if they misbehaved.
Hall, then, is an ideal subject upon which to base an examination
of the attitudes which underpinned transportation and the treatment
of convicts in the colonies; a man who, to reverse the title of
the conference, was concerned with the convicts place in their colonial
space.
___________________________________________________________
Toni Johnson-Woods, Contemporary Studies
Program, University of Queensland (entjohns@mailbox.uq.edu.au)
'The Hermit Convict'
On 28 January 1871, in the Brisbane Courier, appeared the
first installment of 'The Hermit Convict' by the 'Rev. William Draper.'
The Rev. Draper claims that this story is an authentic account of
a convict transported to Moreton Bay (not to Sydney and then to
Moreton Bay). If we can believe the author's assertions, then this
must be one of the very few Queensland convict narratives. Given
that the story appeared in the fiction section of the Brisbane
Courier, I will examine the integrity of the text. Attention
will concentrate not so much on the historical accuracy of the text,
but on the text itself. There are three potentially disruptive zones:
the text (plot), the narrative (mode and genre), and the appearance
(its position within the newspaper). Was this a 'true' story? How
did the Rev. Draper present this material? What was the impact of
its appearance in the Brisbane Courier? These three powerful
forces combine to form the 'accents', the potential readers' positions.
I hope to recuperate this 'lost' narrative by presenting this paper
in conjunction with an annotated (hypertexted) version of 'The Hermit
Convict'.
_______________________________________________________________
Sara Joynes, National Library of Australia,
Australian High Commission, London (sjoynes@sas.ac.uk)
The Australian Joint Copying Project and sources for Convict
Studies
The Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) was established in 1945
by the National Library of Australia and Mitchell Library, Sydney.
By 1993, when the project ended, over 10,000 reels of microfilm
had been produced. This included over 7000 reels of records from
the Public Record Office (PRO), most of which were documents generated
by the Colonial Office and Dominions Office, 1788-1960s. Over 3000
reels were produced in the Miscellaneous Series, which included
material deposited in local record offices, museums, university
and national libraries and specialist repositories. Over 100 collections
of privately-owned papers were also filmed.
Records relating to convicts and transportation
were extensively filmed. The PRO CO 201 New South Wales class, detailing
the sending of the First Fleet and the settlement of the colony,
was filmed in its entirety. The Home Office was responsible for
law and order and all its records relating to the transportation
of convicts have been filmed. Other records, including material
from the Admiralty, Prison Commission, Privy Council and Treasury,
have also been copied.
The AJCP Handbook 8 describes the
collections filmed in the Miscellaneous Series. It lists over 100
collections on 'Convicts' and 'Transportation'. The records include
letters and journals written by the convicts and it is here that
the voices of the convicts can be heard. Also, filmed from Local
Record Offices, are the gaol lists and Calendars of the Assizes,
listing convicts and details of their offences. Numerous logs and
journals kept by naval personnel on the transport ships have also
been filmed, some are still in the hands of descendants. In 1988,
the Republic of Ireland gave Australia film of the Irish transportation
records: over 100 reels of film, with a computerised index.
___________________________________________________________
Patricia Kennedy, Manuscript Division,
National Archives of Canada (pkennedy@archives.ca)
Exporting felons from British North America
Approaching the penal transportation of felons out of British North
America from an administrative history perspective enhances understanding
of the context for this alternative to capital punishment, and for
the expression of clemency. This research blends the historian's
interest how in civil and military judicial systems removed felons
from the community with an archivist's interest in how the nature,
extent and scattering of records, and chosen research methodologies
may affect what information is found and how it is interpreted.
Research to date in federal and provincial
archives, amongst public records and private papers, demonstrates
that penal transportation was an imperial system administered with
marked consistency in the application of certain policies but exhibiting
distinct variations to meet local circumstances. While the processes
of trial, sentencing and commutation varied between civil and military
judicial systems, and between colonies, the convict experience after
transportation followed the patterns established at specific penal
stations.
Looking only at those who caught the boat
gives distorted impressions, these felons not being entirely representative
of the convict population. New perspectives on the transportees
can be gained from a comprehensive analysis of capital cases and
the clemency process in civil and military jurisdictions from which
the convicts were exported. Alternatives to capital punishment included
exile/banishment and forced military or naval service, until and
even after penitentiaries were established.
Initially focused on Upper and Lower Canada,
circa 1790-1840, this research soon expanded to include all colonies
which transported felons out of North America, whether condemned
by civil or by military tribunals, and to methods other than penal
transportation proper to remove these convicts from the jurisdiction,
from the 1760s to the 1860s. Examination of records from the post-transport
experience took in convicts condemned by British military tribunals
anywhere and by civil tribunals in all British foreign possessions,
to provide a comparative sampling.
Except in unorganized territories or in periods
of martial law, courts marital were restricted to the trial of military
and naval personnel for contravening the Mutiny Acts and the Articles
of War. Those accused of all other capital offences were sent to
the civil authorities for trial in the colony's criminal courts.
Convicts tried in the colonial Vice Admiralty Courts for piracy
or murder on the high seas were more often executed than exported.
Throughout British North America, these alternatives
to capital punishment were used frequently, but the choice of options
differed [as the tables to be presented will demonstrate], reflecting
population size, geographic situation and climate. Forced military
service was most common in times of war. Proximity to the ocean
favored the choice of naval service. Sex and race, age and health,
or a reputation for violence, as much as geographic factors, conditioned
the choice of banishment. Banishment cost little, justifying its
short-term use. Forced military or naval service was equally-cost
effective, its term left to the commander's discretion. For the
civil authorities, the costs of penal transportation were justified
only by Life terms. The armed forces, with easier access to transport,
used terms of 7, 14 or 21 years, or Life.
Banishment was the preferred option for natives
tried in the civil courts. Blacks were banished, transported or
forced into military service along with whites -- but imprecise
identification by race precludes assessment of the proportional
numbers. Clemency for the mentally and physically impaired meant
banishment, if not full pardon -- God having already punished them
and they being unlikely to repay the cost of transport. No evidence
of any female being sent out from British North America has yet
been found. Women were banished. Few juveniles were transported;
some were banished, others apprenticed to remote locations such
as the Hudson's Bay Company posts.
Only banishment was commonly imposed as the
immediate sentence of the court. A direct sentence to transportation,
or a plea for it at sentencing, might be commuted to banishment
or a penitentiary term. Not a few convicts, after literally missing
the boat, received a second conditional pardon further reducing
their punishment to mere banishment or time served. Commutation
to forced military service meant posting to the West Indies, the
Royal African Corps, or the New South Wales Corps -- or the next
Royal Navy vessel entering port.
Some of the banished were allowed time to
settle affairs and secure a passage; others the Sheriff escorted
overland to the nearest border, or arranged that they work their
passage on suitable vessels leaving nearby ports. Arrangements for
penal transportation began in the colony of conviction, but the
final destination -- service on the hulks of England, Bermuda or
Gibraltar, or in the antipodean penal stations -- was determined
by His Majesty in the person of the Superintendent of Convicts.
Between 1825 and 1835, and for a short period in the 1840s, the
civil and military authorities of British North America and the
West Indies were authorized to send convicts directly to the hulks
at Bermuda. After 1840, the Home Office refused to accept convicts
from the civil courts, but military convicts continued to be sent
to England and onward to the hulks at Bermuda and Gibraltar or the
Australian penal stations, until those establishments were closed.
Once shipped out, the convict's experience
was consistent with that of all felons in this imperial system.
Little information is accessible to analyze the experience of the
banished and those forced into the Army or Navy.
The broad outlines have been found through investigation of those
who suffered penal transportation and those who missed the boat,
escaped, died or were sent out of the jurisdiction by other methods.
Current and future research will address the validity of presumed
reasons for the evident patterns. Who actually controlled the exercise
of clemency: did the governor work in concert with his technical
experts (the Law Officers and the judges)? When & how did referral
to Council become common practice? Did usage match legislation?
How (a)typical was the treatment of the political prisoners of the
1837-1838 rebellions -whether sent to Bermuda or the Antipodes?
Has focus on them perverted understanding of both the clemency process
in general and the transportation system in particular? How do convict
experiences accord with expectations? Men on the Bermuda hulks had
much higher rate of survival rate, and of release for good behavior,
than historians have acknowledged, perhaps through reliance on overly-biased
sources.
Last but not least, this work allows me to construct diagrams [one
may be presented] to illustrate processes and through them to explain
how the records created or accumulated at specific stages may enlighten
or obscure our understanding of both individual cases and the general
picture.
______________________________________________
Jan Kociumbas, Dept of History, University
of Sydney (jan.kociumbas@history.usyd.edu.au)
Convict and Aboriginal Relations in Early Australia
This paper will examine friendships between male convict escapees
and Aboriginal people in early New South Wales and Van Diemen's
Land, including the role played by Aboriginal women. Raising issues
of convict identity and penal control, it will argue that strategies
adopted by the authorities to disrupt the perceived threat of these
alliances were on the whole successful. Convict animosity to Aboriginal
people was engendered by the officials' routine use of Aboriginal
tracking skills to locate escapees while the policy of placing male
convict workers on the most dangerous margins of the settlements
meant that it they who bore the brunt of Aboriginal hostilities
and reprisals. Nevertheless fears of friendships between convict
and Aboriginal people were endemic throughout the penal era in eastern
Australia and contributed to the demonisation of both groups, in
some cases extending to the children born of these liaisons.
_____________________________________________________
Toomas Kotkas, Dept of Legal History, University
of Helsinki (toomas.kotkas@helsinki.fi)
The 19th Century Deportations of Finnish Convicts to Siberia
From the year 1826 onwards, Finnish convicts were deported to Siberia,
Russia. At that time, Finland was under Russian rule as an autonomous
grand-duchy. The initiative in deportations came from the Finnish
side, as early as in 1809. There were many reasons for the initiative.
Under the influence of the Enlightenment, some members of the parliament
wanted to get rid of capital punishment. Deportation would give
the convicts a chance to start a new life. Secondly, and more importantly,
prison conditions in Finland were very poor. Escaping was easy,
and there weren't enough places for the convicts.
One of the things that worried the Finnish politicians was the legality
of the whole enterprise. After all, Finnish criminal law did not
recognize deportation as a punishment. Would the enterprise require
a new law or could it be done in a form of an ordinance from the
emperor? The question about the legality was eventually solved quite
easily. The deportations could be carried out using the royal prerogative
of pardon. The emperor would automatically pardon all the criminals
who were convicted to capital punishment. This way no law was needed.
After some political changes, among them
the fact that Nicholas I had become the emperor in 1825, also the
Russian officials got interested in the Finnish initiative. Deportation
to Siberia was not a new thing for the Russians, after all, it had
been used for the Russian convicts at least since the 16th century.
In addition to this, two new Russian statutes concerning deportations
had been recently given in 1822. The statutes were a part of a larger
enterprise to secure the colonialization of Siberia.
So, in 1826, after 15 years of preliminary
work, the first Finns were deported to Siberia. As said earlier,
the 1826 statute concerned only men who were convicted to capital
punishment. In 1848 the range of deportations was extended to women.
And finally, from 1856 onwards, also criminals who were convicted
for long-term prison sentences and vagrants were being deported
to Siberia.
However, already at the beginning of 1860's proposals were made
to end the deportation of Finnish convicts. Some politicians still
doubted the legality of the whole enterprise. Certain officials
were concerned about the living conditions in Siberia. The Russian
side, for its part, was concerned about the increasing criminality
and vagrancy in Siberia. But, it was only during the years 1887
and 1888, when deportation ended. The Finnish prison reformation
of 1880's and the drafting of the Finnish 1889 penal code had a
huge influence in its end.
So, as a summary, from the Finnish perspective
the deportation of convicts can be seen as an attempt to solve the
problem caused by the insufficient prison conditions in Finland.
The enterprise suited also the Russian side due to the settlement
politics of the emperor. Despite the difficulties and special features
caused by two separate legal orders, the deportation of Finnish
convicts to Siberia followed a European trend.
______________________________________________________________
Ian McLean, School of Architecture and Fine
Arts, University of Western Australia (imcl@arts.uwa.edu.au)
Convict art and cultural capital: the case of Thomas Watling
Conventionally, the first artists to represent Australia accurately
are held to be the impressionists. They, it is claimed, first depicted
its light and open spaces. Why did it take 100 years, until the
1890s, to accomplish this simple feat? I have suggested (in White
Aborigines, 1998) that the light and open spaces of impressionist
paintings was more metaphorical than literal: it depicted a whitewashed
Australia; free of both its Aboriginal and convict origins.
There were, of course, plenty of artists
working in Australia before the impressionists. Bernard Smith, who
repeats the impressionist myth, pointed out that one early colonial
artist, John Glover, did a fairly good job at depicting the gum
trees and light of Tasmania in the 1830s. He also prefigured them
in the art of whitewashing. Glover was a free and wealthy immigrant,
and one of the first professional artists to settle permanently
in Australia. He depicted two types of Tasmanian scenes which befitted
his position and romantic disposition: paintings of his estate which
showed a glorious cultivated landscape, the picturesque achieved
in the Antipodes, and depictions of a precolonial Tasmania showing
Aborigines enjoying what he considered their primitive and colourful
pastimes. He was sorry for their fate, but in his paintings they
added cultural capital to his property and enterprise. They were
his own local version of the Greek Arcadia which nurtured his and
his fellow Englishmen's sense of civilisation and destiny.
Glover was assigned convict labourers, and
it has been argued, they are depicted in his painting My Harvest
Home. He certainly depicts them, but very rarely, in his sketchbooks
- he prefers to draw Aborigines. Further, in his sketchbooks and
paintings there are no obvious visual clues that he is depicting
convicts. They have been assimilated into his family and his triumphant
celebration of a colonial redemption - and thus their convictdom
has been rendered invisible. This is not surprising given Glover's
class and position in Tasmania. He, more than any other, provided
the cultural capital (in Bourdieu's sense) for the young colony,
and for this reason now enjoys a reputation as Australia's greatest
colonial painter.
But Glover was not the first colonial artist,
and nor was he the first to paint such a cheery vision of the place.
Ironically, the first artists to depict this place without convictdom
were convicts. In the 1830s Glover was a special case. Most colonial
artists - or at least those employed to provide the cultural capital
of the colony - were convicts. 'The convicts', writes Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones,
in a brief and only study of Australian convict artists, 'were the
only coherent group of artists to record the appearance, growth
and progress of the two colonies' 'during the first half century
of settlement.' One reason why their art is not widely known, she
suggested, 'may be that "convict" and "art"
are not usually viewed as co-existent terms' (The Convict Artists,
1977, p. 10). Cultural capital, Bourdieu showed, is class specific.
Why did the convicts paint themselves out
of the picture? Maybe the subaltern can not speak. Or maybe their
resistances are not obvious in these pictures which were made for
others. If the convicts made the art, it was, pace Bourdieu, for
the consumption and legitimation of a ruling class. Or were the
convicts, whom we know did not like calling themselves convicts,
keen to erase signs of their punishment, to transform their condemnation
into redemption? Or were the convict artists a special class of
convict, well educated artisans convicted of forgery, and more ideologically
attuned to the values of their masters than their fellow convicts?
This paper will address some of these questions
through a discussion of the first known convict artist, Thomas Watling.
Charged with forging notes in 1788, he arrived in Sydney in 1792
- having spent some time at liberty after escaping en-route in Africa.
By 1797 he was free, having received an absolute pardon for his
diligent work as an artist. During those few years in the mid-1790s
he was the principle artist of the colony, making hundreds of drawings
for the surgeon-general, John White. There is no doubt that this
Scottish artist hated his English masters. In a series of letters
to his Aunt he condemned his master, the Surgeon-General, and the
colony. Yet there is a remarkable consistency between the tropes
used by Watling in his letters and art, and those used by his masters
of a regime that he condemned. With then he shared an ideological
commitment to the romantic precepts of the picturesque.
______________________________________________________
Matthew P. Mauger, Dept of English, University
of Queensland (mpmauger@hotmail.com)
Criminal History Transported: The Literary Origins of the Convict
Narratives
From the foundation of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1787,
through to 1868 when transportation to all Australian colonies ended,
nearly sixty autobiographical narratives purportedly written by
convicts were published. Most are in the form of short pamphlets,
though there are also broadsides and other much longer works. Some
engage in political debate, others have clearly didactic motivations.
As a group of texts, however, the convict
narratives exhibit striking similarities which may be extended to
produce a flexible model for their narrative structure. This paper
will approach this generic identity through a consideration of the
narratives' literary antecedents. In the various works popularly
ascribed to George Barrington, among some of the earliest texts
to which the label 'convict narrative' may be applied in this context,
the formative moments of a new genre are captured. These works take
as their two main subjects the criminal history of their supposed
author, and the description of his travels around the world to the
penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. The fluctuating
emphasis placed on these two subjects in successive editions of
the Barrington narratives demonstrates their hybrid nature as a
somewhat crude combining of two earlier literary traditions: travel
writing and criminal history, both with their attendant requirements
for journalistic reportage.
The description of voyages to exotic lands
had been one of the most enduring of literary subjects due to the
boundless possibilities it created for writers. In the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, however, as much of the world came to
be reliably charted and documented, travel writing's popularity
was maintained through the publication of the voyages of explorers
such as Cook. The exotic opportunities suggested by travel also
formed excellent subjects for early novelists such as Defoe and
Swift in the fantastic journeys related in Gulliver's Travels.
This paper will demonstrate how this tradition of travel writing
continues through the convict narratives' emphases on travel and
exploration.
Though the lives and actions of notorious
criminals have excited readers and audiences from the earliest recorded
literature (see Joseph Marshburn and Alan Velie, Blood and Knavery,
Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1973), the tradition with which
the criminal portraits contained within the convict narratives is
most clearly linked developed with the increasing popularity of
the pamphlet in the mid-sixteenth century. This paper will examine,
through consideration of such publications as The Newgate Calendar
(in its various eighteenth and nineteenth century incarnations),
features of the convict narratives which developed from these criminal
histories.
This paper will argue that the origins of
the convict narratives lie in these two pre-existing literary forms.
Through an examination of the motifs of these earlier genres, this
paper will seek to establish a model for the typical convict narrative.
Such a formulation could form the basis for a more elaborate appreciation
of the narratives as forming a distinct genre, which would facilitate
their inclusion within wider discussion of early Australian literature.
____________________________________________________________
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Port Arthur
Fellow, University of Tasmania (hamish.maxwellstewart@utas.edu.au)
Between the Lines: Murder and Convict Society at Macquarie Harbour
Penal Station
In 1824 a young convict named John Knight was retransported from
New South Wales to Macquarie Harbour penal station, Van Diemen's
Land. Shortly after his arrival Knight was subpoenaed to act as
a witness in a murder case. The evidence that he gave at the subsequent
trial had far reaching ramifications for both himself and his friends.
This is a paper about Knight's attempts to negotiate a trouble free
passage through the ensuing chaos and the light that this throws
on the nature of power within penal societies.
Continue with abstracts:
