Halloween in Australia

Australia has had an historically difficult relationship with the festival of Halloween, which can trace its origins back to the Celtic ritual of Samhain. (1) This occurred despite considerable Irish and the Scottish migration historically to Australia. (2) In the 1980s Halloween in Australia was still a mistrusted, foreign institution. Yet more recently, Dr Paul Harrison of the Business School of Deakin University has argued that Halloween has at last ‘caught on’ in Australia. (3) So what happened then? Why did it take so long for Halloween to become popular in Australia? And equally, what has changed so recently that could account for its increased popularity?

A Jack-O'-Lantern, Toby Ord, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

There were many Irish convicts transported to the Australasian colonies and between 1791 and 1867 it is estimated that 40, 000 Irish convicts arrived. (4) Several thousand Irish alone were transported to Van Diemen’s Land between 1803 and 1853 presumably bringing their cultural practices with them. (5) The Irish born population of Australia peaked at 230, 000 in 1891, representing more than a quarter of the total foreign-born population, second only to the English. (6) A much smaller amount of Scots, approximately eight thousand, were also transported to the Australian colonies. (7) Additionally, 175, 000 Scottish immigrants arrived in Australia between 1860 and 1914. As they represented a largely ‘urban industrial working class’, the Scots tended to settle in cities, particularly in Victoria. Scottish migrants had a proclivity to cluster in urban settings and their most obvious cultural impact was to dramatically increase the level of Presbyterianism in their new country. (8) There appears to be a clear disparity though between the level of Celtic emigration to Australia (either forced or free) and subsequent evidence of the adoption of the Halloween ritual in Australia.

As mentioned, Halloween developed out of the traditional Celtic ritual of Samhain and was in fact likely a Christian attempt to recycle and sanitize what was considered inherently pagan. The ritual was developed by the Druidic order who had emerged in Gaul during the Second Century BCE; the druids were known to have had extended contact with the Greeks who celebrated their own festival for the dead—although it was in February. (9) To the Celts, Samhain coincided with the end of summer and the onset of their new year. (10) Originally it may have been a cultural benchmark for the annual agricultural cycle; Samhain marked the time of the year by which all crops needed to be harvested, and farms secured by storing all produce and moving livestock from the moors and mountains so they could be handfed. (11) Traditionally celebrated between sunsets from the 31 October to 1 November, to the ancients it represented a mystical ‘time between times’, a time when the normal physical laws of the world were suspended. As such it was a time when the living and the dead could commune. (12)

However, after the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the animal sacrifices (particularly of cats and horses) common during the feast of Samhain became notorious and evidence of pagan depravity. (13) Pope Gregory I in a letter to Abbot Mellitus - famously quoted in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History - indicated that he desired existing pagan places and rituals be adapted to a Christian purpose. The creation of the ‘Allhallows Eve’ ritual on 31 October in preparation for All Saint’s Day on 1 November during the early Middle Ages to honour Saints, seems suspiciously opportune and synchronous then with church policy; the ritual involving prayers and fasting in preparation for the measured Feast Day seems a stark contrast to the traditional wild festivities already described yet they built on the cultural foundations of Samhain. (14)

The meaning and practice of what became known as “Hallowe’en” and later ‘Halloween’ continued to evolve over the centuries. Reinvention under Christianity saw it become identified with predictions of the future, closely associated with pairing for marriage and of course a time for pranks. One of Robert Burns’ longer poems is ‘Halloween’ and its copious 252 lines document many of the practices and traditions which had become associated with the festival by his lifetime. Burns describes the first ceremony which involved couples going out blind and pulling the first kail plant they encounter, which itself was believed to have prophetic properties. The practice called the burning of the nuts also gave insight into the future of courting couples. According to Burns, ‘sowans’ with butter rather than milk was a traditional Halloween supper treat. (15)

Halloween enjoyed fertile ground in the New World, transmitted by waves of Celtic migration. According to the United States Census Bureau in 2021, more than 35.1 million Americans claim descent from Irish migrants. (16) While some contemporary discrimination was open and documented during the period of the famine, it can be argued that the US particularly better embraced its Celtic heritage than Australia. In a country initially settled by Puritans, eventual waves of Irish emigrants entered the land that had hosted the Salem witch trials and therefore enjoyed a pre-existing awareness and perhaps even belief in witchcraft. (17) The first St Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York as early as 17 March 1762. This sense of Celtic pride has been maintained and in 1991, Congress declared the month of March to be Irish American Heritage Month. (18) In contrast celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day in Australia are arguably much more muted.

New Orleans Charity Hospital School of Nursing Halloween Dance, 1950, Uncredited for the 'Caps and Capes', Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Considerable Irish emigration helped to ensure that Halloween became a permanent feature on the American calendar. The American tradition of trick or treating on Halloween can be traced directly back to the figure of Muck Olla who was represented by a man, adorned by a horses’ head, who during Samhain paraded through a settlement begging for food – the meaning of the tradition having been long lost by those who transplanted it. (19) It was in Scotland that the practice of carving demonic faces in turnips began. By the time the festival reached America it became common practice to carve ‘jack-o-lanterns’ from pumpkins and illuminate them from the inside with candles. (20) Americans even found that their pumpkins were ideal for carving. (21) Halloween became a harvest holiday almost as important as Thanksgiving and therefore in the eyes of the world, distinctly American. (22) Halloween has persisted in Ireland, although there is more emphasis on fireworks and bonfires. In fact, during an atrocity in Northern Ireland on 31 October 1993, the Loyalists responsible shouted the American phrase ‘trick or treat’. Although opinions differ on why this occurred, it certainly reinforces the American appropriation of the concept of Halloween. (23)

Professor John Maloney of the ANU argued in the 1980s that in Australia at least, the Irish were discouraged from practicing that which their English overlords considered to be pagan practices among them funeral wakes and of course, Halloween. This seems a more likely scenario than the alternate argument that the custom died out because Australian pumpkins were hard to carve! (24) I have been unable to find any evidence of suppression and even very little derision of the concept of Halloween in the colonial period. Queen Victoria herself appears to have hosted Halloween balls at Balmoral. (25) Denis O’Donoho typified those attitudes in his story ‘The Irish Peasants: Halloween’ published in the Dublin Penny Journal in 1834. Implicit in the title is the idea that Halloween was common to the simple peasantry. While focusing on a more harmless interpretation of the festival the story describes those involved to have commonly shared a child-like belief in the reality and power of magical conjugations and fairies. (26) There is no doubt though that as a festival it was regarded as quintessentially Celtic and therefore probably as the creation of an inferior people and culture who often represented a threat to the established order.

It was the Irish settlers in Australia, rather than the Scottish, who were seen to be collectively difficult and rebellious despite evidence to the contrary. This may have simply related to the fact that as discussed, the Scottish were Presbyterians and therefore at least Protestant in inclination as opposed to their native Irish kin. Lloyd Robson demonstrated in The Convict Settlers of Australia that most Irish male convicts at least were first offenders with shorter sentences than their English and Scottish counterparts. (27) Before 1840, all Irish transports were sent to New South Wales. There was little Irish migration to Tasmania before 1845 and they represented only 4,492 in a population of 58,902—however thanks to transportation, the Irish nearly tripled their numbers by 1851 growing to 12, 444. Although still a minority, the Irish were now a sizeable one.

In his 1972 thesis on Irish convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, John Williams argued that the Irish settlers faced widespread social prejudice with regard to their ‘religion, occupations and illiteracy.’ Increasingly then, the Irish were seen to be a ‘problem’ specifically their lack of practical skills and education. (28) The Rebellion of 1798 was likely a contemporary event that hardened pre-existing prejudices. Manning Clark observed that a line had been drawn between Catholicism and rebellion. To the British mainstream, Protestantism encouraged liberty and wealth, while Catholicism was associated with poverty and despotism. The concentration of Irish convicts in New South Wales may have played a factor in two uprisings that took place in 1804 aimed at freeing the disaffected from their Anglo-Saxon oppressors; although small, these incidents likely further cemented an impression of the Irish as ‘disloyal’. (29) Certainly in 1911 only 29% of the Irish born population in Australia was Protestant. (30)

Predictably, the tradition of the Irish wake became very common among the large Irish Catholic population in Sydney. (31) This was an example of an Irish tradition that was arguably discouraged for reasons of hygiene rather than for the hijinks that often accompanied it after the body had been prepared. (32) At the same time, distrust of anything ‘Irish’ in Australia does not account for the persistence of other Celtic concepts such as St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day. (33) But these traditions were Christian in origin and therefore while Celtic, they were tolerated as they did not suffer the additional stigma of being ‘pagan’.

The sectarian divide remained strong in Australian during the interwar period. It had possibly been sustained by the toxic conscription debate during the Great War. (34) Sectarianism even permeated the Australian national cricket team. Catholic Jack Fingleton had a habit of sprinkling Holy water on his bat before an innings. When on one occasion, he was out early, Bradman commented that they would see what a dry bat could accomplish. (35) As late as 1983, only the third Australian Catholic Captain of the national side, Lindsay Hassett, was publicly denying being a party to the tension that had existed between fellow Catholic cricketers Bill O’Reilly and Stan McCabe and the then team Captain Don Bradman in 1937. (36) There clearly were then, distinctive lingering tensions during the period within an institution that should, and normally did, represent a unifying force.

So, a combined Celtic-Catholic prejudice may answer the question as to why the Australian antipodes did not provide fertile ground for Halloween, but it does not explain its continued abandonment amidst a sustained century of infatuation with the emerging United States. An infatuation with US culture in Australia had been brewing for a good century before the Second World War. Famously at the outbreak of that war former Prime Minister Billy Hughes commented in relation to our Pacific neighbour and cousin: ‘What we are, you were; and what you are we hope to be’. (37)

The war torn Twentieth Century arguably drew the two nations, Australia, and the United States, closer politically by necessity and perhaps also uncomfortably close culturally. The decision by the Churchill government during that War to effectively disown Australia and adopt a policy to ‘Beat Hitler first’ in the face of growing concerns over Japanese aggression, forced our young nation to make some hard decisions. The fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin both of which occurred during February 1942 prompted the Curtin Government to reassess its loyalties. When the US were forced out of the Philippines in March by the Japanese, we leapt at the chance to form an alliance; although it was in truth only a practical strategic decision on their part. The ANZUS treaty of 1951 was an attempt to make the arrangement permanent and it coincided with the final decline of what was left of the British Empire. Australia has followed the US into every one of its conflicts from that time. (38)

While the defence and trade relationship with the US has remained the cornerstone of foreign policy, it could be argued that it is one based more on practicality than affection. Perhaps one of the earliest indications that the forced marriage between Australia and the United States had soured was the infamous ‘Battle of Brisbane’ in November 1942, which saw open conflict between Australian and US Service men. (39) Over the next half century or more there has existed a lingering affection for the ‘mother country’ that is offset by the economic realities of the modern world which made it an increasingly indifferent but not irrelevant parent. (40) In 2019-20 the UK was still Australia’s fifth largest trading partner although it ranked behind the US which was second behind China. The UK also remains Australia’s second largest source of investment, after the United States of course. (41) The ties to America are clearly practical while the ties to the United Kingdom appear more familial. It could be argued that the recent AUKUS treaty between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, designed to deal with the potential threat from China is a modern expression of the nation working to balance its practical and familial impulses. (42)

Children trick or treating in costumes, Jarek Tuszynski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our changing relationship with the United States in the Twentieth Century may have inadvertently influenced Australian attitudes to Halloween. Indeed, Phillip and Roger Bell have argued that: ‘The power of the US abroad is increasingly understood as a consequence of its cultural and ideological authority or appeal.’ In relation to all popular culture (including literature, film, radio, music) the American influence on Australia during the post-war era was increasingly pervasive. However, this ‘penetration’ of America into Anglo-Australian culture was not universally admired and did provoke some resistance. (43) The contemporary concern about the hegemonic influence of American culture on Australian society – at least among the intelligentsia – could explain a tendency to ignore the tradition of Halloween. It may have served to exacerbate a prejudice against it that had originally arisen from its ethnic and pagan genealogy. Even in 2013 an ABC radio special indicated that many callers felt that Halloween represented ‘American commercialism’. (44)

The Australian mainstream media were consistent in their negative interpretation of Halloween in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Halloween trick or treating was described as dangerous because in the US razor blades were being inserted in apples and sweets were laced with poison. The resilient Americans however were foolishly persisting with the tradition; hospitals even provided free x-raying of children’s loot. (45) There was some truth to all this: Jack Santino had observed in 1983 that these concerns had been given some corroboration by the ‘Tylenol scare’ of the previous year. But criminal incidence appears to have been rare. (46) Regardless, this does not seem to have phased the Americans in their enthusiasm for the tradition over the next generation or more. In 2020 US citizens reportedly spent 9.1 billion on Halloween paraphernalia (ranging from costumes to sweets). (47) An article in the Canberra Times in 1986 described Halloween as trivial and nonsensical, the implication being that it was crass and certainly echoing sentiments that it was ‘not our culture’. (48)

Within the last decade Halloween has become popular among young adults. It is thought that the rise of social media has encouraged the uptake of Halloween across the globe, including Australia. This newfound popularity has little or nothing to do with Celtic heritage as it has become just as popular in areas with no such connection. According to a YouGov poll in 2017 about 18% of all German young people aged 18-29 dressed up for the festival. It has also become popular in Japan who have adapted it to indulge in alter-ego costume play as there is less emphasis on the supernatural elements of the tradition. The older demographic seems to have proven less enthusiastic as demonstrated in Devon and Cornwall, England where the police have been known to supply ‘no trick or treat signs’ for concerned householders. (49)

Halloween at Waikiki in 2012, Kyle Nishioka, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Halloween has continued to increase in popularity in Australia where it is estimated that the figure of 50% of adults that celebrated it in 2005 rose to 76% in 2020; the most engaged demographic appears to be the 18-34 year olds. Yes, it has become a youth (read ‘social’) thing! Psychologists and sociologists explain this recent uptake by what they refer to as ‘emerging’ adults. Traditional markers of successful independence such as career, family and home ownership have increasingly been delayed and this has created a longer transitional phase that can extend through a young adults’ twenties into their thirties. Halloween was often a festival for people (originally the Irish and Scottish) who had not been fully integrated into society. As a cultural space it has also historically been claimed by the LGBT communities as a means of celebrating their differences. Most holidays represent some form of social anxiety, and it could be that Halloween has become a way for this disaffected generation to express both its solidarity but also its anxiety about an uncertain future. (50)

The explanation for Halloween’s loss and rediscovery in Australia then is multi-faceted. While there is no evidence for Maloney’s suppression theory, it is very clear that with its links to Samhain, Halloween was widely considered from the time of European settlement in Australia, to be at least subliminally pagan. The overt Catholicism of the native Irish population in Australia, with whom Halloween was so closely identified, may have also inadvertently served to discourage its uptake. Furthermore, it seems likely that an increasing resentment of our political and economic reliance on the United States and their subsequent hegemonic penetration into Australian culture post WWII, may have further extended collective resistance to Halloween. However, over time these hegemonic concerns appear to have largely gone the way of the secular divide, over into the pit of cultural irrelevance.  In the modern, interconnected world of ‘emerging adults’ there are few, if any, disincentives towards embracing Halloween. While my own generation grew up reading American comic books, millennials (including my own children) are clearly just as fascinated with Japanese manga. The increasing adoption of Halloween by the youth of Australia, appears to have no deeper cultural significance beyond the desire to have fun. Their interest in Halloween could be dismissed as being shallow, insincere, and fleeting. However, youth culture today inhabits an increasingly borderless, global world that cares little or nothing for nationalism, hegemonies or, as ever, the past, only fun. Perhaps they and the world they are creating are all the better for that?

 

- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 29 October 2022.

Endnotes

(1) Ralph Linton, ‘Halloween’, Scientific American, 185, 4 (1951), p. 63. The link between Samhain and Halloween is sometimes debated but that is not the focus of this essay; I assume there is a connection. Even if that isn’t the case, historically there was a perception of a link. So even if the connection is not an actuality, the widespread belief that Halloween had pagan origins can be evidenced and arguably provided grounds for cultural resistance in Australia.

(2) While the term Celtic naturally refers to both Scottish and Irish people, it is the latter term ‘Irish’ that can be problematic if not contentious. Scotland exists as a definable region sharing a distinct nationality, albeit within a wider political union; in contrast, Ireland remains a politically partitioned and contested land with multiple Irish identities. In this article I define the term ‘Irish’ to be what J. C. Beckett more specifically referred to as the ‘native Irish’ who descended from Gaelic people who themselves conquered and settled Ireland probably around the first century BCE. Therefore, my use of the word ‘Irish’ refers to both the peoples and the cultural practices of those Celtic settlers who inhabited Ireland from that time and who became almost universally Catholic from the Fifth Century CE. The subsequent colonisations of Ireland arguably began during the Ninth Century CE with the Vikings and persisted into Tudor times in various forms (including a Scottish invasion in the Fourteenth Century CE) before culminating in the plantations established in six counties in Ulster during the rule of James I and involving largely Protestant English and Scottish settlers. See: J. C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland (Melbourne, 1986), pp. 9-90.

(3) Paul Harrison, ‘Should we really be celebrating Halloween in Australia?’, Deakin University, https://this.deakin.edu.au/society/should-we-really-be-celebrating-halloween-in-australia , accessed 5 March 2021.

(4) National Archives of Ireland, Irish Convict Transportation Records, 1787-1868 Reels M2125-229 (Australian Joint Copying Project), p.3.

(5) John Williams, ‘Irish Convicts and Van Diemen’s Land’, unpublished Masters’ Thesis, UTAS (1972), p. 1.

(6) David Fitzpatrick, ‘The Irish in Australia’, Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture, https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/diaspora-irish-australia , accessed 28 October 2021.

(7) This equates to about 5.6% of the total 162, 000 convicts transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868. Benjamin Wilkie argues that this is because the Scottish legal system used transportation more sparingly only inflicting it on the worst class of criminals. See: ‘Scottish convicts in Australia’, History Scotland, 14, 6 (2014), p. 23.

(8) Benjamin Wilkie, ‘Lairds of suburbia: Scottish migrant settlement and housing in Australian cities, 1880-1930’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 36, 1 (2016), pp. 1, 5-6, 22.

(9) Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 63-4.

(10) Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

(11) Jack Santino, ‘Halloween in America: Contemporary customs and performances’, Western Folklore, 42, 1 (1983), p. 4.

(12) Eoghan McTigue, ‘Transgressive Events’, Circa, 89 (1999), p. 34.

(13) Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 63-4.

(14) A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England A Revised Translation With Introduction, Life, and Notes (London 1907), pp. 102-4.

(15) Robert Burns, ‘Halloween’, https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/robert-burns/halloween-9914 , accessed 19 October 2021.

(16) Derick Moore, Gerson Vasquez & Ryan Dolan, ‘Residents With Irish Ancestry Are in All 3,142 U.S. Counties and Make Up 20% of the Population in Some’, United States Census Bureau, 16 March 2021. URL: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/happy-saint-patricks-day-to-one-of-ten-americans-who-claim-irish-ancestry.html , accessed 28 October 2021.

(17) Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 13.

(18) ‘March is Irish American Heritage Month’, Prince William Living, 3 March 2021. URL: https://princewilliamliving.com/march-is-irish-american-heritage-month/ , accessed 12 August 2021.

(19) Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 62-3, 66.

(20) Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

(21) Ralph Linton, op.cit., p. 66.

(22) Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 14.

(23) Jack Santino, ‘Light up the Sky: Halloween Bonfires and Cultural Hegemony in Northern Ireland’, Western Folklore, 55, 3 (Summer, 1996), p. 229.

(24) Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

(25) Mercury, 7 January 1878, p. 3.

(26) Denis O’Donoho, The Dublin Penny Journal, 3, 121 (October, 1834), pp. 129-131.

(27) Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia (Melbourne, 1965), p. 189.

(28) John Williams, op.cit., pp. 8, 264, 276, 282.

(29) Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, 2^nd Edition (Sydney, 1980), p. 37.

(30) David Fitzpatrick, op.cit.

(31) Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney (Carlton, 1997), p. 48.

(32) Robert Nelson, ‘The Irish Wake’, Pure Local Australia’s Business Directory, https://www.purelocal.com.au/articles/the-irish-wake-1211 , accessed 28 October 2021.

(33) Paul Harrison, op.cit.

(34) Brenda Niall, edited extract from Mannix from Australian, 21 October 1921.

(35) Arunabha Sengupta, ‘Cricketing Rifts-1: The Bradman-centric and religion-fuelled Australian feuds’, Cricket Country, 2014, https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/cricketing-rifts-1-the-bradman-centric-and-religion-fuelled-australian-feuds-11838 , accessed 21 October 2021.

(36) Canberra Times, 10 September 1983, p.2.

(37) Philip and Roger Bell, "Americanization": Political and Cultural Examples from the Perspective of "Americanized" Australia, American Studies, 37, 1 (Spring, 1996), p. 7.

(38) Ingeborg van Teeseling, ‘The relationship with Britain and America’, Australian Explained, https://australia-explained.com.au/history/the-relationship-with-britain-and-america , accessed 22 October 2021.

(39) Michael Ray, ‘Battle of Brisbane’, Britannica Online, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Brisbane , accessed 28 October 2021. Indeed, the US forces were famously referred to as being ‘overpaid, over-sexed and over here.’!

(40) Gregory Melleuish, ‘No longer tied to Britain, Australia is still searching for its place in the world’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/no-longer-tied-to-britain-australia-is-still-searching-for-its-place-in-the-world-70407 , accessed 22 October 2021.

(41) Australian Government, Australian Trade and Investment Commission, ‘Export Markets United Kingdom: Market Profile’,  https://www.austrade.gov.au/australian/export/export-markets/countries/united-kingdom/market-profile/market-profile , accessed on 22 October 2021.

(42) Peter Hartcher, ‘Why was Washington so ecstatic about Morrison’s AUKUS pact?’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2021, https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-washington-was-so-ecstatic-about-morrison-s-aukus-pact-20210927-p58v3c.html , accessed 22 October 2021.

(43) Philip and Roger Bell, op.cit., pp. 6-7.

(44) Brian Handwerk, ‘Love it or Hate it Halloween is Going Global’, National Geographic, 28 October 2017, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/halloween-world-costumes-germany-uk , accessed 21 October 2021.

(45) Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, p. 1.

(46) Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 1.

(47) Paul Harrison, op.cit.

(48) Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, p. 1.

(49) Brian Handwerk, op.cit.

(50) Linus Owens, ‘Why has Halloween become so popular among adults?’, The Big Smoke, 31 October 2020, https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2020/10/31/why-has-halloween-become-so-popular-among-adults-halloween/ , accessed 21 October 2021.

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Santino, J. ‘Light up the Sky: Halloween Bonfires and Cultural Hegemony in Northern Ireland’, Western Folklore, 55, 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 213-31. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1500482 , accessed 21 October 2021.

Santino, J. ‘Halloween in America: Contemporary Customs and Performances’, Western Folklore, 42, 1 (January 1983), pp. 1-20. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1499461 , accessed 21 October 2021.

Sellar, A. M. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England A Revised Translation With Introduction, Life, and Notes (London 1907).

Sengupta, A. ‘Cricketing Rifts-1: The Bradman-centric and religion-fuelled Australian feuds’, Cricket Country, 2014, URL: https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/cricketing-rifts-1-the-bradman-centric-and-religion-fuelled-australian-feuds-11838 , accessed 21 October 2021.

Wilkie, B. ‘Scottish convicts in Australia’, History Scotland, 14, 6 (2014), pp. 22-27. URL: https://thescottishaustralian.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/wilkie-scottishconvicts-2014.pdf , accessed 21 October 2021.

Wilkie, B. ‘Lairds of suburbia: Scottish migrant settlement and housing in Australian cities, 1880-1930’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 36, 1 (2016), pp. 81-102. URL: https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30081073/wilkie-lairdsofsuburbia-post-2016.pdf , accessed 28 October 2021.

Williams, J. ‘Irish Convicts and Van Diemen’s Land’, unpublished Masters’ Thesis, History and Classics, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 1972. URL: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/21799/1/whole_WilliamsJohn1972_thesis.pdf , accessed 21 October 2021.


Online Resources:

Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, accessed 21 October 2021.

Prison and prejudice

In his book Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce argued that for much of our history, and perhaps in some form continuing to this day, there has been a type of historical amnesia in Australia that prevented us from acknowledging the convicts as the true founders of our nation. The history that was handed down was a sanitized version that shunned many aspects of the reality. (1) However, as John Reynolds observed in his history of Launceston published in 1969, free immigrants benefited immensely from the infrastructure built by convicts and their subsidized labour. He went on to elaborate:

The roads, bridges, buildings, and civil works which helped to make life easier in a new colony were mainly the work of convicts and had cost the free settlers nothing; the British Government clothed, fed, housed and controlled this large section of the labour force. (2)

Despite this, when John Blindell died aged 82 at Brickendon in 1856 his grave at Christchurch cemetery in nearby Longford, was carved with the following epitaph: ‘From a respectable family in Hertfordshire emigrated hither in 1837. Resident at Brickendon for 18 years.’ The first time I read that inscription I got the message instantly: he, or at least his kinship network, were assuring us that he hadn't been a convict! (3) So, how and why did the stigmatization of convictism in Tasmania manifest itself over the last two centuries?

 

A Government Jail Gang, Sydney, N.S. Wales, Earle Augustus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The system of transportation was one of several repressive responses to the economic and social problems that afflicted British society in the early Nineteenth Century. A combination of industrialisation, increasing population, spiraling food prices and demobilisation at the end of the Napoleonic Wars had led to over-crowded prisons and transportation was the logical solution. (4) The traditional ‘dumping ground theory’ has been challenged by ‘human capital theory’ which informs us that the system was in fact a large-scale forced labour migration scheme, the participants largely being selected on their skills or labour potential to develop the Australasian colonies. Regardless of the exact impetus (or likely combination of them) for colonization of the Australasian continent by the British Empire, between 1803 and 1853 approximately 67, 000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to Tasmania or as it was then known, Van Diemen’s Land. In fact, those transported to Tasmania between 1803 and 1853 represent 45% of all convicts transported to Australia. (5)

 

Convict constructed Richmond Bridge, Richmond, Tasmania, Rexness, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The stigma associated with convictism appears based on a reluctance for Australians to accept their convict forbears as moral and productive human beings. But were the convicts concerted members of a criminal class or simply victims of circumstance? L. L. Robson first investigated the demographic character of the convict population sent to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in his PhD thesis which was later published as a book: The Convict Settlers of Australia. Robson claimed that Van Diemen’s Land was a depository for the worst convicts. He found the average age of the men to be approximately twenty-five years, half of them to be single and two thirds of them transported for some kind of larceny. The nature of the offences differed of course between nationalities as well as urban and rural origins. (6) In his 1972 MA thesis entitled ‘Irish Convicts and Tasmania’, John Williams drew attention to the fact that there's evidence to suggest that during the Irish famine many men were chosen on the basis of their orderliness and were almost entirely, first time offenders. (7) Robson’s own findings concurred with this analysis in that he found Irish male convicts to be older, first time offenders with more lenient sentences. (8)

In contrast, women constituted only 15% of the total number of convicts and the vast majority were domestic servants mostly convicted for larceny. Female convicts were generally a little older than their male counterparts and at least 20% of them were known prostitutes with long criminal records. Robson observed that if they married, most male emancipated convicts clearly preferred native-born girls to transported women. He probably unfairly described female convicts as ‘indifferent settlers’ with the Irish component – a full third of their number - being graded as the ‘best of a bad lot’. Robson’s research and analysis appears to suggest then that it was female convicts, rather than male convicts, who were more accurately classified as members of a separate criminal class. (9) An arguably more balanced assessment by Diane Snowden insists that the majority of convict women defied the ‘damned whore’ stereotype, despite their challenges. Punishments were based more on humiliation rather than physical ordeal. Once emancipated they enjoyed few economic opportunities particularly after the depression of the 1840s. Many women were also deserted by their partners during the gold rushes leading to further destitution. One of their only collective advantages was their scarcity which created demand for their services as both servants and wives. (10)

 

Footsteps Towards Freedom Sculpture by Roam Gillespie, Hobart, Tasmania, photo by Gary Houston, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

John Reynolds once wrote that free settlers were ‘…never allowed to forget they lived in a penal colony…’. (11) From 1818, free immigration to the colony began to markedly increase. (12) Boyce argues it was from this time that the distinctions between free and convict became more defined in the settler society of the island. Free immigrants were known to despise and shun their convict counterparts in the 1820s, although they relied heavily on their labour for their economic welfare. Boyce has argued that this was the beginning of the formation of essentially two societies: the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land and the free settler society of Tasmania. In an extension of attitudes to slavery, penal societies were increasingly seen by the middle class as morally contaminated. This became a prime motivating factor not only for stigmatization of convicts and the penal system by the 1840s but also for the organization of the anti-transportation movement. (13) The segregation between free and convict burials appears to have intensified during this period as well. There are in fact eight headstones to be found on the Isle of the Dead cemetery marking the graves of convicts on both high and low ground. (14) However, it was as late as 1845 that the prisoner’s cemetery was established at the outskirts of the Launceston settlement on Peel Street; this facility went on to be used for thirty years and was the exclusive site of internment for about 300 convicts. (15)

There was an evident tension from the 1840s between the economic reliance on, as opposed to the moral outrage over, the convict system in Tasmania. Many free settlers had clearly seen the supply of convict labour as an attractive aspect of migration; following the end of the assignment system there was a drop in free migration to the point that only one solitary free migrant is known to have arrived in the colony in 1846! (16) Dan Huon in 1997 argued that it was systematic changes to the transportation system that alarmed the free middle classes. The Molesworth Report which had criticized the ‘lottery’ of the assignment system led to the introduction of the probation station system in the 1840s, which made it mandatory for all (male convicts) to spend time in hard labour on the roads relative to their sentences. The nature of the probation stations led to accusations of depravity and Huon argues that it was this fear of widespread homosexuality more than any other factor that would ‘stigmatise convictism’. (17) It seems that moral panic overrode economic concerns: the convict system was viewed as a being too high a price to pay for the free settlers of Tasmania who saw the spectre of “Van Diemen’s Land” a threat to the creation of their own little England. All convicts were now regarded as being a part of a distinct criminal class, their skills and contribution to the colony now under-valued and they were commonly disenfranchised in every available sense. (18)

 

Chain gang, Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land, Unknown Author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The convict population was a major demographic factor in Tasmania during the Nineteenth Century. In 1820 of a total population of 5, 468 people, there were 2, 588 or 47.3% serving convicts (which discounts the 368 holding tickets of leave, 208 with conditional pardons and 1, 020 children). (19) In 1835 the convict population remained 43.6% of the total. (20) There were still 30, 000 convicts on the island in 1846 including 12, 000 passholders and 10, 000 in work gangs. (21) The partial emptying of convicts from Van Diemen’s Land to the mainland during the gold rush period was subsequently welcomed and to some extent even encouraged by authorities in the colony. This is consistent with their newly attained collective status as an unwanted criminal class. This exodus was, in turn, not as well received by the mainland colonies. A report in the Argus in January 1853 lamented that several hundred serving convicts had escaped from the island which the editor labelled an ‘execrable felon-dispenser.’ Ironically the effects of the purge were likely more dire for the island colony: L. S. Bethell argues that because of this population drain, in subsequent decades the colony was subsequently ‘dying of inertia.’ (22) The colony of Victoria sought to exclude convicts from emigrating from Van Diemen’s Land through an 1852 Act. New South Wales also developed a Vagrant Act which was designed to curb the influx of convicts to that colony but it was overturned by London. The Victorian law though which placed the onus on emigrants from Van Diemen’s Land to prove they were free was applied until 1856. (23) The demographic distortion to the working population necessitated the introduction of new Bounty regulations which saw 16, 613 arrive between 1851 and 1860. (24) Despite the increasing influx of free settlers, the residual aging convict population were seen by the colonial government as a large and unhappy burden. In 1895 it was estimated by the government that costs would possibly continue until 1916. The last time the term ‘free by servitude’ appears in the official goal returns was in 1913. (25)

Following the slow dismantling of the convict system in Van Diemen’s Land, convicts and emancipists were often discriminated against by the authorities. There was an increasing level of regulation evident during this period regarding many freedoms including the issuing of hunting licenses, taxation on dogs and vagrancy laws; the fact that the wealthy were rarely prosecuted indicates that this was aimed largely at the convict and emancipist population. Many convict pastoralists were displaced by free settlers often with Government support. To keep wages low and the employable pool large during the 1820s, access to resources for the working class had to be curbed and this led to the effective end for a time of small land grants. There was an attempt by the Legislative Council to have emancipists provide proof of their free status before being allowed to vote. Other various forms of discrimination that continued to stigmatise convicts either officially or unofficially included frustrating applications for hotel licenses, placing restrictions on recruitment to positions in the public service and many more. (26) When the Board of Education was established in Tasmania in 1838 many members of the ‘respectable classes’ refused to send their children to institutions dominated by the children of convicts and elected instead for private options. The Board of Education’s system was largely directed to benefit the children of convicts although many struggled to afford the fees even after it was made compulsory for children between the ages of seven and twelve in 1868. (27) In 1888-9, approximately 82% of the residents in Launceston Invalid Depot and its Hobart counterparts were listed as ‘free by servitude’. This is a testimony to the fact that many found it difficult to secure employment in their declining years and without a wider support network had to resort to welfare. (28)

 

Port Arthur Penitentiary c.1880, Port Arthur, Tasmania, Anson Brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The ’free’ society of Tasmania found it difficult to reconcile itself with the penal past in the century after 1856. In the protracted search for respectability there was a combination of officially sanctioned neglect and mutilation of heritage. (29) The fabric of the past was to also suffer and in 1889 when the government moved to sell the prison buildings at Port Arthur there was a delegation of largely local residents and landowners who protested. While those with a vested interest could see the monetary benefits of maintaining the historical site, the Minister for Lands, Alfred Thomas Pillinger, refused to be dissuaded arguing that he saw the decaying site as being full of ‘monuments of disgrace to the British Empire’. (30) Indeed, Henry Reynolds related in his famous article on the stigmatization of convictism that the subsequent fires that devastated the fabric of the Port Arthur penal station in the 1890s were greeted with widespread positivity. (31) It is likely that there was more interest and appreciation for the significance and contribution of the transportation system in the England during this period. In 1902 the Thames Conservancy was preparing to remove the last prison barge from the river before the coronation of the new King. Several dignitaries had reportedly visited to inspect the surviving cells and records in what was described as ‘a unique museum’. (32)

Regardless of the stigma, in 1927 the Launceston City Council exercised an option to purchase the J. W. Beattie (33) collection: this was made up of hundreds of historical artifacts that had been amassed over several decades. (34) When preparing to integrate the artifacts into a display at the Victoria Museum, curator H. H. Scott (35) had the intention of keeping the sections representing the penal system and that of the free settlers ‘entirely apart.’ Elaborating on his philosophy Scott added:

Many people have the idea, particularly on the mainland, that Tasmania had no history but that which concerned the convict system… We are endeavoring to show them that that is not so. The history of Tasmanian is one thing, and the story of the convicts is another.

When interviewed further about his plans for the exhibit, Scott betrayed his own narrow attitude to convictism when he indicated that he had ‘no intention of turning this particular room into a house of horrors.’ (36) This negative and dismissive attitude towards the convict experience was echoed by the editor of the Examiner in its appraisal of the exhibition, emphasizing the only room out of eight which contained no convict relics presented ‘a rather fine glimpse into the lives of the early colonial settlers.’ (37) The apparent inference was that convicts were not settlers, despite a number of prominent early settlers either being emancipated convicts or their immediate descendants. (38) This squeamishness was also reflected in the release of For the Term of his Natural Life in cinemas that same year: the film included a preceding statement that the depicted events were all long in the past—despite the fact that many practices and events involving the transportation system were still well within living memory. (39)

 

Port Arthur Church, Port Arthur, Tasmania, 1926, during the filming of 'For the Term of HIs Natural Life', Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office Commons, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Attitudes towards convicts and the convict system appear to have begun to change midway through the Twentieth Century. This was a gradual process hallmarked by the formation of the Scenery Preservation Board in 1915, the Tasmanian Society in 1935 and the Tasmanian Historical Research Association in 1951. The National Trust of Tasmania was formed in Launceston in 1960 and they introduced a classification system that was designed to protect and preserve the ‘built environment’. (40) When announcing a sesquicentenary exhibition at the Queen Victoria Museum in 1954, Mayor Pitts noted that it would cover all phases of the history of Northern Tasmanian and Launceston from discovery, through the penal settlements to the modern day. (41) Among the items proudly on display were convict uniforms and shackles. (42) This upsurge of interest and appreciation of the significance of the transportation system to the development of the state was also increasingly reflected in the historical literature of the time by writers including G. B. Lancaster (Edith Joan Lyttleton), Roy Bridges and Bernard Cronin. (43) Even so, Dan Huon has noted though that many in Tasmania did not learn that they had convicts in their ancestry until as late as the 1980s! (44)

Approximately 67, 000 convicts were transported to Tasmania between 1803 and 1853. The traditional thesis that the convict population were representative of a criminal class seems simplistic and exaggerated. While Robson's classic statistical analysis of the convict population builds a comprehensive demographic portrait, it reveals little about their motivations for crime or fundamental character. While it is clear there was a component of a hardened criminal population amongst both the male and certainly the female prisoners, they were clearly not in the majority. The evidence of their conduct, productivity and subsequent family life following emancipation is at odds with that assessment. Regardless, there is clear evidence that the stigmatization of the convict system began even before the end of transportation and the achievement of self-government in Tasmania. Class distinctions began to take hold with the influx of free settlers into the colony from the 1820s. The restructuring of the convict system in the 1840s led to concerns of ‘vice’ in the probation system and the accompanying moral panic was a driving factor for both the anti-transportation movement and the long-term stigmatization of convictism in Tasmania. Despite significant free immigration, convicts and emancipists remained a significant portion of the colony throughout the Nineteenth Century, naturally declining after the end of transportation in 1853 until the last vestiges passed away in the very early Twentieth Century. Across this period, convicts and emancipists were discriminated against in a plethora of ways both official and unofficial. Their contribution to Tasmania as a result went long unrecognized and heritage associated with them was neglected and often deliberately ignored and even actively erased. Eventually, the stigmatization of convictism in Tasmania began to wane midway through the Twentieth Century because of both an upsurge of interest and appreciation of the past as well as a growing awareness of the economic potential of the physical heritage. When asked if he was descended from convicts one of my ancestors would smile, lift a trouser leg (where one might have had a ball and chain attached) and quip: 'yes, but the marks are worn off now.' Ironically, even in the Nineteenth Century, some people already understood that denying the reality of your own history was ultimately self-defeating...

 

- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 15 October 2022.

 

Endnotes

(1) James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land (Melbourne, 2009), pp. 253-358.

(2) John Reynolds, Launceston History of an Australian City (South Melbourne, 1969), p. 69.

(3) At some point, Blindell’s headstone was relocated from section E row 31 in Longford Christ Church Anglican to LO05/F0020. See: Tasmanian Family History Society, Tombstones and Memorial Inscriptions of Tasmania, 2nd Edition, (Hobart, 1999), p. 673.

(4) Wilfred Asquith Townsley, Tasmania from Colony to Statehood 1803-1945 (Hobart, 1991), p. 7.

(5) Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Convicts’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Convicts.htm accessed 17 November 2021. It is not clear if this includes those convicts transferred from NSW to Van Diemen’s Land after arrival.

(6) Leslie Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers (Melbourne, 1976), pp. 134. 143-158.

(7) John Williams, ‘Irish Convicts and Van Diemen’s Land’, unpublished Masters Thesis (UTAS, 1972), pp. 69-70. URL: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/21799/1/whole_WilliamsJohn1972_thesis.pdf

(8) Leslie Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers, op.cit., p. 144.

(9) Leslie Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers, op.cit., pp. 142-158. This work of course does not cover all convicts as transportation continued to Western Australia until 1878. While his statistical research was cutting edge for the time and remains an important source, his meanderings on the motivations of the convicts for offending are less authoritative as he comes down as grading them as somewhere between ‘village hampdens’ and ‘ne’er-do-wells from the city slums’, leaning strongly towards the latter in true dumping ground tradition. In truth within his data set there were no doubt 150, 000 scenarios of offending – although many were likely variations on several core themes, the primary one being poverty. Perhaps the most significant element in determining the quality of the convict population were the shifting grounds for selection?

(10) Diane Snowden, ‘Female Convicts’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/F/Female%20convicts.htm accessed 19 January 2022. Snowden explains that their experience was related but different to that of male convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, enduring three separate phases: ‘open prison’ (1803-13), ‘assignment’ (1814-1842) and ‘probation’ (1843-53). Female factories acted as hiring depots and places of incarceration for those who fell pregnant. The overall demographic ratio of men to women in the colony in 1820 was 10:3 and remained 7:3 in 1835. Although she does not elaborate, humiliation included such punishments as head shaving, restricted diets and iron collars. See also: Female Convict Research Centre, Convict Institutions, ‘Punishments’. URL: https://www.femaleconvicts.org.au/convict-institutions/punishments#:~:text=Additionally%2C%20all%20Crime%20(or%203rd,have%20medical%20or%20hygiene%20objectives accessed 19 January 2022. Although hardly providing a ‘gendered’ analysis, Robson is almost as harsh in his collective assessment of male convicts.

(11) John Reynolds, op.cit., p. 86.

(12) Wilfred Asquith Townsley, op.cit., p. 7.

(13) James Boyce, op.cit., pp.133, 157-8, 236.

(14) Richard Lord, The Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur: inscriptions on the headstones and historical background of the cemetery at the Port Arthur penal establishment, 1830-1877 (Taroona, 1985), p. 2.

(15) Isabella Mead, ‘Launceston’s Convict Burial Ground’, October 1958, typescript, Convict Cemetery File, Launceston Local Studies Library.

(16) John Reynolds, op.cit., p. 87.

(17) Dan Huon, ‘By Moral Means Only: The Origins of the Launceston Anti-Transportation Leagues 1847-1849’, THRA P&P, 44, 2 (June, 1997), p. 118 & Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Convicts’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Convicts.htm accessed 17 November 2021.

(18) Henry Reynolds, ‘That Hated Stain’ in Tasmanian Historical Studies, Vol. 14 No. 53, passim.

(19) Wilfred Asquith Townsley, op.cit., p. 8.

(20) Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Census History in Tasmania’ in The Tasmanian Yearbook 1998. URL: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/7ece045bc4080344ca256c320024164d!OpenDocument accessed 12 January 2022.

(21) Wilfred Asquith Townsley, op.cit., p. 61.

(22) Llewelyn Slingsby Bethell, The Story of Port Dalrymple: Life and Work in Northern Tasmania (Hobart, 1957), p. 54, 137.

(23) James Boyce, op.cit., p.249.

(24) Jill Cassidy, ‘Migration’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Migration.htm accessed 17 November 2021.

(25) Leslie Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, Volume II, Colony and State from 1856 to the 1980s (Melbourne, 1991), pp. 40 & 307.

(26) James Boyce, op.cit., pp. 152-3, 180-2, 217-8, 242.

(27) Michael Sprod, ‘Education’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/E/Education.htm accessed 12 January 2022.

(28) Leslie Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, op.cit., p. 40.

(29) Leslie Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, op.cit,, p. 72. Convict records were often a primary target.

(30) Mercury, 7 March 1889, p. 3.

(31) Henry Reynolds, op.cit., passim. Reynolds notes that the destruction of the penitentiary in Port Arthur in 1897 was in part seen as being symbolic of a release from the “spell of convictism”.

(32) This ship could have been the Thalia a Juno class corvette which appears to have been the last of the Woolwich convict hulks that were moored at the end of Warren Lane. Between 1776 and 1857 these hulks were used as floating prisons. The Thalia appears to have had several lives and at the time was a powder hulk used for storing explosives. Examiner 9 May 1902, p. 4. URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/35485670?searchTerm=Victoria%20Museum%20celebrate%20artifacts%20convict%20centenary%20appeal%20penal%20convict & Steven Peterson, ‘Prison Hulks’ in Royal Arsenal History, 2021. URL: https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/prison-hulks.html both accessed 17 November 2021.

(33) Beattie was a Scottish emigrant who had arrived in Tasmania in 1878 and became a successful photographer and antiquarian. See: Michael Roe, ‘Beattie, John Watt (1859-1930)’ in Australian Dictionary of Biography (2006-21). URL: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/beattie-john-watt-5171 accessed 17 November 2021.

(34) Examiner, 24 September 1927, p. 9. URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51441273?searchTerm=Exhibition%20penal%20convict%20Victoria%20Museum accessed 17 November 2021.

(35) Barbara Valentine, ‘Herbert Henry Scott’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/S/Scott%20HH.htm accessed 17 November 2021.

(36) Examiner, 8 February 1928, p. 8 URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51461747?searchTerm=Exhibition%20penal%20convict%20Victoria%20Museum accessed 21 November 2021. This belief concerning the ‘horrors’ of the system ignores both the reality of the highly regulated system of punishments and the fact that pre-reformation of the system assignment was the norm: in 1836 there were 53% of male convicts in assignment as opposed to 18% caught at the harsher end of the system (road gangs, penal colonies etc.). See: Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, op.cit. URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Convicts.htm accessed 17 November 2021.

(37) Examiner, 12 May 1928, p. 8. URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51477275?searchTerm=Exhibition%20penal%20convict%20Victoria%20Museum accessed 21 November 2021.

(38) The descendants of William Field, Thomas Reibey, Richard Dry and John Fawkner can attest to the truth.

(39) Leslie Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, op.cit., p. 382.

(40) Lindy Scripps & Anne McConnell, ‘Heritage Conservation’ in The Companion to Tasmanian History (2006). URL: https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/H/Heritage%20Conservation.htm accessed 17 November 2021.

(41) Examiner, 11 November 1954, p. 26. URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/96382392?searchTerm=Exhibition%20penal%20convict%20Victoria%20Museum accessed 21 November 2021.

(42) Mercury, 12 November 1954, p. 7. URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/27257583?searchTerm=Exhibition%20penal%20convict%20Victoria%20Museum accessed 21 November 2021.

(43) Leslie Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, op.cit., p. 381.

(44) Dan Huon, op.cit., p. 118. Or perhaps they did not want to know? I’ve subsequently discovered that I am descended from at least 14 convicts and therefore my children from >24 of them!




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Examiner

Mercury



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