Shades of white: were the Irish historical victims of racism?

An Irishman Looks at a Poster Advertising Voyages to New York and Resolves to Emigrate. Coloured Lithograph after E. Nicol, ca. 1840/1860

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (i)

During the Nineteenth Century and specifically following the Great Famine, 'dark', 'hairy', 'odious', 'simian', 'ugly' and worse, became common terms used to describe the Irish in America (1). Certainly, during the same period and well into the Twentieth Century, the Irish were often portrayed in English political cartoons as not only ugly subhumans but also hopeless and stupid. In his review of Liz Curtis' Nothing But the Same Old Story: The Roots of anti-Irish racsim, John Darby referred to a notorious cartoon by JAK published in the Evening Standard in 1981, which presented a mock movie poster entitled 'Showing Now: the Ultimate in Psychopathic Horror The Irish XXX'. Although purporting to be a commentary on the latest troubles of that time, it was interpreted as a continuation of a tradition of representing the Irish as inherently violent (2). This raises the intriguing question then: have the Irish historically been the victims of racism? 

Irish Emigrants in America: A Woman with Two Children, and a Man Sitting Outside an Inn Smoking a Pipe. Coloured Etching after William Heath, date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (ii)

Bryan Fanning has argued that racism as a concept has 'always drawn on the dominant paradigms of knowledge and truth'. He proposed that while in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century racism largely relied on assumptions of racial superiority, increasingly there has been a shift in rationale towards arguments based around the necessity of exclusion to preserve cultural purity (3). If nothing else then, this suggests that racism is a malleable concept. In contrast, Amy Martin has perhaps provided a more nuanced view of traditional racism and its philosophical foundations suggesting that there were in fact two strains: one was indeed 'epidermal' in nature and the other was reliant on a 'more fluid understanding of racial hierarchy'. Indeed, this might explain Charles Kingsley's reference in a letter to his wife about witnessing 'human chimpanzees' on a visit to Ireland! This is perhaps an indication that British racism in the Victorian period was based less around a bias for 'whiteness' and relied more heavily on a complex, hierarchy of perceived physical and cultural traits (4). But does that mean that the idea that the Irish have been victims of active racial discrimination has merit?

Children Play a Game with Potatoes and a Rag Hanging from the Beam. Process Print after Erskine Nicol, date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (iii)

To some extent negative perceptions of the Irish were driven by the displacement triggered by the famine. The Great Famine of the 1840s triggered a Malthusian response from the British that sought to avoid the effort and cost involved in any relief by blaming the victims with accusations of 'indolence and backwardness' (5). Dale T. Knobel, who wrote Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America in 1985, later noted that of the forty immigrant ships arriving in New York Harbour daily by 1851, most were carrying Irish immigrants; therefore established Americans were very conscious of both their numbers and their 'haggard' presentation on arrival (6). At the time, American nativists were prone to attributing their condition on arrival to their nature rather than their experiences. Such nativists were defined by Knobel as settled Americans with anxieties concerning a national identity during a period of great economic and demographic change who tended to a convenient scapegoat for their varied problems in migrant populations. Among the subjects for derision were their religion, their impact on the labour market, even their politics. Many Irish were accused of undermining the labour market for working for low wages. They were also collectively known to support the then current pro-slavery platform of the Democratic Party. At the same time, the American nativists were concerned to some extent with all migrant groups including the Chinese. As a result, fraternal organisations tended to limit their membership to American born - although it would be interesting to know what percentage of their current membership were themselves descendants of earlier Irish migrants! (7)

A Well-Dressed Black Couple in New York City Are Being Offered a Coat by a Poor Irish Immigrant Outside a Laundry. Coloured Lithograph, artist and date unknown.

Public domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (iv)

Regardless, the Irish were probably historically treated worst of all in their own land under Norman, English and later British rule. The Norman invasion of Ireland was initiated because of an indigenous civil war in the 12th Century and only eventually sanctioned by Henry II on account of political rather than truly colonial motives. The Statutes of Kilkenny that were enacted in 1366, were the foundation of a more 'defensive colonial policy' adopted by the government of Edward III. While they provided practical measures to ensure peace and trade, they were also a vehicle of segregation. The settler population were forbidden to form alliances with the natives through marriage or fostering, speak the Irish language or adopt Irish customs. The native Irish were themselves forbidden to speak Gaelic around the settlers and excluded from ecclesiastical positions. Regardless of whether they were intentioned as defensive or derogatory, they were J. C. Beckett's admission 'aimed at setting a permanent barrier between the two races in Ireland.' Ultimately though - despite their cruelty - the statutes were based on cultural differences and political interests rather than any obvious notions of racism. After all, this form of hierarchical, feudal society was the 'norm' in Europe; the native populations of England were themselves ruled by the Normans. Even so, widespread assimilation occurred in both England and Ireland and the Lordship of Ireland was increasingly left to its own devices until the middle Tudor period (8).

Resistance against colonialism also ironically provided a basis for the development of a view that the Irish were inherently troublesome (9). The worst excesses of the plantation system were to some extent an opportunistic response by the English to the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The corrupt system of confiscation that developed was likely fueled again by a defensive colonial policy which feared a coalition of the 'old English' (ie. the descendants of Norman invaders) and the natives. The confiscations inevitably led to the uprising in 1641. The English response was itself brutal and was largely justified by exaggerated claims of massacres of Protestants. Once English authority has been fully reasserted, the Irish Parliament of 1697 instituted laws that were designed to be specifically degrading to Catholics, which incorporated virtually the entirety of the native population. Catholics were excluded from Parliament, military service, civil service, municipal corporations and the legal profession. Alterations to laws relating to land ownership and inheritance were designed to make it virtually impossible for Catholics to accumulate land. Many of the 'old English' were also Catholic though, and were also impacted, probably more by the restrictions on educating their children abroad and change to rules of inheritance which encouraged conversions. These discriminatory laws were not repealed until 1829. These new laws were clearly an official strategy to deprive the native Irish population of any political power (10). The conflicts in Ireland from 1641 have traditionally been framed within the wider contests between Protestants and Catholics or Loyalists and Parliamentarians rather than one that on the ground may have been for the participants, more essentially between colonisers and natives. 

From 1641 then, the Irish character was characterised as inherently treacherous and violent. The thousands of Irish that were sold into Carribean slavery under Cromwell after the defeat of the rebellion in 1649 were by his own admission meant to serve as examples to the rest of the native population and not treated so because of their 'race'. (11). Later conflicts appeared to consolidate the treacherous and violent characterisation of the Irish which helped justify their heavy handed responses. Two attempted revolutions in 1798 and 1803 led to the institution of martial law. (12) The British reaction to the Easter uprising in 1916 for instance involved imposing martial law across Ireland although most resistance was centred around Dublin. The arbitrary British reprisals against the Irish during the War for Independence included such atrocities as the sacking of Balbriggan and the burning of Cork. (13) This pattern of brutality demonstrated a dogged colonial mindset rather than a racist agenda. General Nevil Macready who accepted Irish Command in 1920 and was apparently more sensitive towards the Irish situation than most of his counterparts, reportedly hated the Irish 'with a depth deeper than the sea and more violent than that which I feel against the Boche.' (14)  However, the Victorian and Edwardians tended to emphasise their Anglo-Saxon heritage at the expense of their Celtic, Roman and Scandanavian roots. (15) The 'Boche' of the day were likely despised because they represented a rival empire with which the Commonwealth had recently been at war, not from sense of racial superiority. It had been widely recognised by the British, that among the wider population of Ireland in 1916 there had been sympathy with the allied cause and most were content to wait to the end of hostilities before terminating the legislative union. The impatience and poor judgment of a small number of separatists (republicans, socialists and Sinn Fein) was not claimed to be proof of some kind of inherent racial propensity for treachery. (16) 

Author Unknown, advertisement for the position of a Nanny, Boston Transcript, 1868.

Public domain via wikimedia commons (v)

The Australian colonial experience for the Irish raises the same caveats to the proposition. Just as in the United States, there were a plethora of Nineteenth Century job advertisements evident in Australian colonial newspapers specifying that the Irish need not apply! (17) And while there is some evidence that the Celtic ritual practice of Halloween was suppressed in the Australian colonies, it has been noted that both the St. Patrick's and St. Valentine's feast day celebrations were better accepted on account of their Christian rather than pagan origins. (18) Certainly, there was discrimination, but it often appears to have emanated from a sectarian rather than a racial basis. Until the middle of the Twentieth Century at least, Australia was regarded as homogenous Anglo-Saxon society. The adoption of the term 'Anglo-Celtic' has only become evident in response to recent lobbying by descendants of Irish and Scottish migrants who desired recognition for their ancestors' contribution to the nation's cultural development.  But there is little or no evidence that this Celtic amnesia was motivated by anything other than an official desire to cultivate a more homogenous society. It may be significant to note however that the shift from Australia identifying as an 'Anglo' to an 'Anglo-Celtic' society though followed the upsurge of non-British emigration after 1945. (19)

A Potato Shaking Hands with Edward Jenner, Claiming Him as a Fellow Vaccinator. Watercolour by John Leech, date unknown. Note the name of the potato: 'Paddy Fluke'.

Public Domain via Jstor, Open Artstor Collection (vi)

Ironically in recent decades, Ireland itself has demonstrated increasing opposition to migrants, particularly asylum seekers. Bryan Fanning has argued that while this populism has great 'political currency' it is nevertheless 'grounded in racism and xenophobia'. Like the objections the American nativists expressed to Irish immigration in the Nineteenth Century, this resistance Fanning explains 'provides exceedingly simple explanations for complex societal problems' (20). 

Therefore, while the Irish were arguably vilified and discriminated against during the Nineteenth and into the Twentieth Centuries it should not be considered to have been a form of racism. In a colonial context, their 'whiteness' likely allowed for a swifter assimilation into European colonial societies than non-white immigrants. There were also major structural differences, both legislative and cultural, that would have mitigated their experiences; for instance, however equal their treatment with their black counterparts in the Caribbean, they were not assigned to become a kind of hereditary property in perpetuity. Furthermore, their typically pro-slavery stance during the Nineteenth Century was actually evidence of the privilege of suffrage, a liberty not universally enjoyed at the time by the Afro-American population. The subjugation of Ireland by the Normans, English and later British, occurred over several centuries. The conflicts that ensued have probably been correctly framed by historians as sectarian or native resistance movements rather than having been explained by racism. Subsequent to the Great Famine at least, it's clear that the Irish experienced prolonged periods of active discrimination in the New World by nativists but perhaps never as extreme as that inflicted by foreign invaders in their own occupied country. Ironically, there are some 'nativist' Irish voices today that could be accused of expressing anti-migrant sentiments that might be more accurately explained by racism.

-  Colin Mallett, 17 March 2026. 

Endnotes

(1) Dale T. Knobel, 'Celtic Exodus: The Famine Irish, Ethnic Stereotypes, and the Cultivation of         American Racial Nationalism', Radharc, 2001, 2:3-25, p. 5, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122316, accessed 17 March 2025.

(2) John Darby, 'The Problem of English Racism', Fortnight, 1984, 211:19-19, p. 19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547631, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(3) Bryan Fanning, 'The Political Currency of Irish Racism: 1997-2002', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2002, 364(91):319-27, p. 320, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30095578, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(4) Amy E. Martin, 'Victorian Ireland: Race and the Category of the Human', Victorian Review, 2014, 1(40): 52-7, p. 52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24497037, accessed 17 March 2025. 

(5) Martin, "Victorian Ireland', p. 53. 

(6) Knobel, 'Celtic Exodus', pp. 3-4.

(7) Kevin Kenny, 'Race, Labor, and Nativism: A Response to Dale T. Knobel', Radharc, 2001, 2:27-33, pp. 27-30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122317 accessed on 17 March 2025. 

(8) J. C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland, Cressant Library, Sydney, 1986, pp. 16, 27, 31-6.

(9) Martin, "Victorian Ireland', p. 53.     

(10) Beckett, Short History, pp. 62, 64-5, 71-5, 92-3, 127.

(11) It must be acknowledged as John Donoghue argues that Atlantic slavery based on race was in fact an historical abberation. See: John Donaghue, 'The Curse of Cromwell: revisting the Irish slavery debate', History Ireland, 2017, 4(25):24-8, pp. 24-5, http://www.jstor.org/stable/90014565, accessed on 19 March 2025. This view is reinforced by the trade in a million European slaves among the Ottoman Barbary states from the Seventeenth Century the early Nineteenth Century. Refer to: Giles Milton, White Gold, Hodder and Stoughton, 2005, passim.

(12) Charles Townshend, ' Martial Law: legal and administrative problems of civil emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800-1940', The Historical Journal, 1982, 1(25):167-95, p. 167, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811, accessed 21 March 2025. 

(13) M. A. Doherty, 'Kevin Barry and the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War', Irish Historical Studies, 2000 126(32):217-31, p. 228, http://www.jstor.org/stable/300006997, accessed 21 March 2025; Martin Frederick Seedorf, 'The Lloyd George Government and the Strickland Report on the burning of Cork, 1920', Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies', 1972, 2(4):59-66, pp. 59-60, https:doi.org./10.2307/4048122, accessed 21 March 2025. 

(14) Ian Roxborough, '6. The Military: The mutual determination of strategy of Ireland, 1912-1921', in Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged, Jan Willem Duyvendak & James M. Jasper (eds), Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015, pp. 142-4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt.196315k.9., accessed 21 March 2025.

(15) Joanne Parker, '6. The Victorians, the Dark Ages and the English National Identity', in The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Low Countries, pp. 132-3, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004241862_088, accessed 11 August 2025. 

(16) Beckett, Short History, pp. 151-2. Ultimatley, sixteen of the insurgents were tried and shot. 

(17) A phrase search for 'No Irish Need Apply' on the digitisation resource TROVE in the category of Newspapers and Gazettes produces 1, 181 results: https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/advanced/category/newspapers?keyword.phrase=No%20Irish%20Need%20Apply&startPos=0&sortBy=dateAsc The source newspapers cover the period from early settlement to the 1950s: the earliest example is from 1832 and the most recent from 1953. See: "English Wants', Launceston Advertiser (Tasmania), 18 January 1832, p 23, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article84775136, accessed 19 March 2025 & 'Irish insulted', Tribune (Sydney), 25 February 1953, p 9, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212468776, accessed 19 March 2025.

(18) Colin Mallett, 'Halloween in Australia', The Write Side of History blog, 29 October 2022, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/halloween-in-australia.html, accessed 19 March 2025.

(19) Miriam Dixson, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the present, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 9.

(20) Fanning, 'Irish Racism', p. 319. 

Figures and Illustrations

(i) Nicol, Erskine, 1825-1904. An Irishman Looks at a Poster Advertising Voyages to New York and Resolves to Emigrate. Coloured Lithograph after E. Nicol, ca. 1840/1860. 1 print : lithograph, with watercolour, [not after 1867]. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24750461, accessed 19 March 2025.

(ii) Heath, William, 1795-1840. Irish Emigrants in America: A Woman with Two Children, and a Man Sitting Outside an Inn Smoking a Pipe. Coloured Etching after William Heath. 1 print : etching. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24885469, accessed 19 March 2025.

(iii) Nicol, Erskine, 1825-1904. Children Play a Game with Potatoes and a Rag Hanging from the Beam. Process Print after Erskine Nicol. 1 print : process print, 4 July 1891. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24884706, accessed 19 March 2025.

(iv) A Well-Dressed Black Couple in New York City Are Being Offered a Coat by a Poor Irish Immigrant Outside a Laundry. Coloured Lithograph. 1 print : lithograph, with watercolour, 1800-1899. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24885523, accessed 19 March 2025.

(v) Unknown, Author. Advertisement for a nanny that appeared in the Boston Transcript in 1868, stating "Positively no Irish need apply." Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No_Irish_Need_Apply.jpg#Licensing. Reprinted in "A Journey Through Boston Irish History" by Dennis P. Ryan, Arcadia Publishing, 1999, accessed 19 March 2025. 

(vi) Leech, John, 1817-1864. A Potato Shaking Hands with Edward Jenner, Claiming Him as a Fellow Vaccinator. Watercolour by John Leech. 1 drawing : watercolour, with pen and brown ink, [between 1800 and 1899]. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24742788, accessed 19 March 2025.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Launceston Advertiser (Tasmania)

Tribune (Sydney)

Secondary Sources:

Beckett, J. C. A Short History of Ireland, Cressant Library, Sydney, 1986.

Darby, John, 'The Problem of English Racism', Fortnight, 1984, 211:19-19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25547631.

Dixson, Miriam, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the present, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999.

Doherty, M. A., 'Kevin Barry and the Anglo-Irish Propaganda War', Irish Historical Studies, 2000 126(32):217-31, http://www.jstor.org/stable/300006997.

Donaghue, John, 'The Curse of Cromwell: revisting the Irish slavery debate', History Ireland, 2017, 4(25):24-8, http://www.jstor.org/stable/90014565.

Fanning, Bryan, 'The Political Currency of Irish Racism: 1997-2002', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2002, 364(91):319-27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30095578.

Kenny, Kenny, 'Race, Labor, and Nativism: A Response to Dale T. Knobel', Radharc, 2001, 2:27-33,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122317. 

Knobel, Dale T., 'Celtic Exodus: The Famine Irish, Ethnic Stereotypes, and the Cultivation of American Racial Nationalism', Radharc, 2001, 2:3-25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25122316.

Mallett, Colin, 'Halloween in Australia', The Write Side of History blog, 29 October 2022, https://thewrite5ideofhistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/halloween-in-australia.html.

Milton, Giles, White Gold, Hodder and Stoughton, 2005.

Parker, Joanne, '6. The Victorians, the Dark Ages and English National Identity', in The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Low Countries, Hugh Dunthorne & Michael Wintle (eds), Brill, Netherlands, 2013, pp. 133-50, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004241862_008.

Roxborough, Ian, '6. The Military: The mutual determination of strategy of Ireland, 1912-1921', in Breaking Down the State: Protestors Engaged, Jan Willem Duyvendak & James M. Jasper (eds), Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015, pp. 133-56, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811. 

Seedorf, Martin Frederick, 'The Lloyd George Government and the Strickland Report on the burning of Cork, 1920', Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 1972, 2(4):59-66, https:doi.org./10.2307/4048122. 

Townshend, Charles, ' Martial Law: legal and administrative problems of civil emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800-1940', The Historical Journal, 1982, 1(25):167-95, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638811. 

Online Sources:

Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, accessed 2 April 2025.

*

Many thanx to Kylie for always proofreading my scribbles!

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...

 

-  Colin 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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