About 20,000 or 12.3% of the convicts transported to Australia were women.
Convict women were assigned as domestic labour, and were encouraged to reform though a system of rewards and indulgences, such as the ticket-of-leave, which permitted the holder to work for any employer for wages and to choose her own residence.
Convict women varied from small children to old women, but the majority were in their twenties or thirties. The British Government called for more women of “marriageable” age to be sent to Australia in order to promote family development for emancipated convicts and free settlers.
On 30 March 1789 Ann Martin was sentenced to 25 lashes, reduced from 30 lashes, for creating a disturbance at night. Later in our convict history, female convicts would receive other punishments instead of flogging. They could be put in solitary confinement and have only bread and water.
Floggings were given to both men and women, although the flogging of women was stopped by British law in 1791.
Mary Wade (17 December 1775 – 17 December 1859) was a British teenager and convict who was transported to Australia when she was 13 years old. She was the youngest convict aboard Lady Juliana, part of the Second Fleet.
was the youngest female convict, at 13, on the First Fleet. She received seven years transportation at the Old Bailey in January 1787, for being accused of stealing clothes from the clog maker she was working for.
After 93 nights in the Newgate Prison Mary set sail for Australia. King George III was declared mad. As a result, many waiting to be executed were instead bound for transportation to the penal colony of Australia. At 10 years old, Mary took voyage, the youngest ever convict, aboard the Lady Juliana.
It was usually 450 grams of salted meat (either mutton or beef), cooked again into a stew, and some bread. By 1826, the government also had a more established cattle stock available and so the meat served to convicts was fresher and taken from better-quality cuts than before.
“The women were housed on the orlop deck, the lowest and the smelliest where they slept on wooden bunks that measured eighteen inches wide,” says Deborah.
Clothing in the Female Factories
Documents from the time tell us that these convicts were given: petticoats, jackets, aprons, shifts (smocks), caps, handkerchiefs, stockings, shoes and straw bonnets. They'd be made from cheap, coarse material.
Women were usually chosen as servants, wives or housekeepers to the officers with lodging. Some women became partners or wives to other convicts. Women became hut keepers to groups of convict men. Some women were sent to work as a punishment for breaking the rules.
The first recorded African-diaspora settlers were black convicts, eleven in number, transported by the British, on the First Fleet of 1788. On their release, many bought land and brought up families in the area of Pennant Hills in western Sydney.
Convicts were married by banns having first sought official permission. These registers record the names of the parties applying for permission to marry, their ages, the date of permission or refusal, ship of arrival, sentence, whether free or bond, and the name of clergyman.
South Australia was an experimental British colony and the only Australian colony which did not officially take convicts. But naturally some former convicts made their way to South Australia. Men who had completed their sentences came to settle here, usually hiding their convict past if possible.
The ships departed with an estimated 775 convicts (582 men and 193 women), as well as officers, marines, their wives and children, and provisions and agricultural implements.
Convicts were housed below decks on the prison deck and quite often further confined behind bars. In some cases they were restrained in chains and were not allowed on deck except for limited fresh air and exercise. Conditions were cramped and they slept on hammocks.
The youngest convict on the First Fleet was 13-year old John Hudson. He was convicted for breaking and entering and was sentenced to seven years in prison and transportation to Australia for his crime.
But other factors were also at play. For a time, spirits were used in barter and convicts were part-paid in rum. In this way, rum became a currency of the colony - hence the term “a rum state”.
By far the most common crime that led to transportation was petty theft or larceny. Historians estimate that roughly a third to three-fifths of the male convict population came under the category of 'other larcenies'.
The Western Australian records we've been using for our recent research and digitised for the Digital Panopticon project reveal the story of Samuel Speed, the last living Australian convict. He was transported to Western Australia in 1866 and died in 1938, just short of his 100th birthday.
Male convicts in Australia typically wore prison 'slops', with calico, duff or canvas trousers, striped cotton shirt and grey wool jacket. In later years, inmates in female factories wore drab cotton clothing stencilled with a 'C', and convict women might have their heads shaved.
Samuel Terry (c. 1776 – 22 February 1838) was transported to Australia as a criminal, where he became a wealthy landowner, merchant and philanthropist. His extreme wealth made him by far the richest man in the colony with wealth comparable to the richer in England.
“The oldest convict was Dorothy Handland, a dealer in rags and old clothes who was 82 years old in 1787. She had drawn 7 years for perjury. In 1789 a fit of despair she was to hang herself from a gum tree at Sydney Cove, thus becoming Australia's first suicide.”