Tag Archives: imprisonment

Australia’s Convict Sites: Shared past, their present, our future?

Our recent trip to Australia for the Digital Panopticon conference was an invaluable opportunity for so many reasons. We were able to connect and learn from our colleagues across the globe, share our work and develop new ideas and, perhaps most rewarding of all, we had the opportunity to visit some of the remaining places and spaces of convict-era Australia.

Australia has a network of eleven convict sites, designated as UNESCO world heritage sites, in which the buildings and areas of land of Australia’s first penal system are preserved and open to the public. These sites are places of both education and tourism. Australia’s convict heritage sites achieve on a much larger scale the kinds of entertainment and education we can find at home in places like the Galleries of Justice, and Dartmoor Prison Museum. Yet Australia’s transformation from British colony to independent state has allowed it to own and present its convict history in a more frank and reflective way than many of our home grown sites of dark tourism. Australia had been able to separate the historic injustices of the system of transportation from the modern Australian state. Something which seems to inspire a readiness to display their convict past in a more open and critical way than perhaps we do for similar in the UK.

I was lucky enough to visit four of the eleven Australian UNESCO convict sites, which gave a great sense for how the convict past can be preserved and presented. Below I share a few thoughts – and pictures – for each of the sites.

Hyde Park Barracks

The old convict barracks at Hyde Park are one of the earliest of Australia’s Convict heritage sites. Opened in 1819 and used for convicts until 1848 the barracks housed the male convicts who arrived at Sydney Cove (very little remains of the first settlement at Botany Bay). While women were sent out to work for private persons, male convicts were required to undertake public works. Thus, during the day they would labour on the roads and building sites of Australia’s first European settlement and at night they would report back to lodgings at Hyde Park Barracks to be counted, fed, and sheltered.

Hyde Park BarracksThe front of Hyde Park Barracks – central Sydney

The barracks now operate as a ‘living history museum’ which members of the public can tour with or without a free audio guide. There are three levels of the building to visit. The first of which gives not only an overview of the history of convict transportation and the development of Sydney, but also insight into how conservation and interpretation work has been carried out. Two further floors explore the residence of Australia’s first convicts (and other uses to which the building was put in the post-convict era). The majority of the rooms inside the barracks are sparsely decorated and furnished. Boards provide information on the uses of each room, but visitors are left to take in the space and imagine how convicts used it.

HPB 3

One exception to this on the middle floor is the ‘bunk room’. A simple timber frame suspend dozens of tightly packed canvas hammocks, the likes of which early convicts would have slept on. Visitors have the option to try a hammock to get a sense of sleeping arrangements for early convicts.

Bunk room

As a museum, Hyde Park Barracks are probably the least atmospheric of the convict sites– and most familiar in format for UK visitors. However they still provided information of genuine interest and importance, and had used some really thoughtful interpretation to encourage visitors to engage with the space and the experiences of convicts who previously inhabited it.

Port Arthur

The beauty and serenity of Port Arthur’s grounds makes it difficult as a visitor to truly comprehend the brutality of life at Australia’s most famous ‘site of secondary punishment’. A place where the worst reoffending convicts were sent. The complex also includes several other sites such as the cemetery island, and Point Puer a site used for juveniles, both of which visitors are able to ‘cruise’ to.

PA ruins PA scenery

Port Arthur Historic Convict Site

For the main part, the buildings at Port Arthur are derelict. Shells of former buildings, in some cases little more than ruins. Surprisingly, this does not detract from the atmosphere or effect of the place, rather it enhances it. While visitors are free to take group tours or special more fun-focussed events like ‘ghost walks’, Port Arthur is also a place where visitors are free to walk round, explore the buildings, and reflect on the history of the site. Interpretation and reconstruction has been left to a minimum.

Port Arthur PennitentiaryPort Arthur Penitentiary from the outside

Port Arthur cell-space

The inside of the penitentiary showing the location of now absent cells

Port Arthur cellsPort Arthur Pennitentiary Cell

Remnants of penitentiary cells

Of all the buildings on Port Arthur, it is the visitor’s centre, and the separate prison which resemble most closely sites like the Hyde Park Barracks. Beneath the visitors centre a –soon to be reinterpreted- exhibition gives the feel for the story and process of transportation to Tasmania (and contains the odd familiar face too).Hamish Maxwell StewartThe DP’s Hamish Maxwell-Stewart was instrumental in the creation of Port Arthur’s current visitor centre exhibition.

The well-preserved separate prison provides corridors of cells for visitors to see and a separate and silent chapel to explore. With the audio and visual effects kept to a minimum, the eerie quietness of this site gives a fantastic sense for the isolation and tension prisoners must have lived with on a daily basis.

    Port Arthur Seperate Cell Port Arthur seperate cells corridoorThe separate cells
Port Arthur seperate Chapel

Port Arthur’s separate chapel

Cascades Female Factory

Cascades female factory (to the south and west of central Hobart) is one of the smaller of Australia’s convict sites. Much like the interpretation at Port Arthur, reconstruction has been kept to a minimum. Information is available but the ruins of the site are left to speak for themselves. The site at which female convicts were detained when they arrived in Tasmania before being sent out to work, for punishment of a secondary offence, or in case of pregnancy under sentence, sits unassuming and barely noticeable at the side of a road, with little outside signage to indicate the significance of its former years.

Cff front entranceThe outside of Cascades Female Factory

Very litter remains of the factory grounds – barely more than the outside walls. Again, like at Port Arthur, rather than chose reconstructive buildings that let visitors experience the space ‘as it would have been’, at Cascades Female Factory subtle markings and a few information boards tell the story while allowing visitors to take in the size of the plot, the oppressive presence of the steep hills to the rear, and the full force of the elements outside.

Cff yard plan Cff yard remains

The plan of the former yard, and the physical space

Wandering through the remains of three of the original five yards on a cold and drizzling day provided a sense of the bleak, claustrophobic, and isolated existence prisoners would have experienced at the factory.

Fremantle Prison:

The most recent of Australia’s convict sites, Fremantle prison is unique in that its penal history stretches from its convict origin in the 1850s until 1991 when it ceased to operate as a state prison. In that time the prison has become so much more than a convict site. Something reflected in how its heritage is presented to visitors.

FP wing outside Fremantle Prison main entrance

Visitors can only access Fremantle prison by one of three guided tours, only one of which is a general guide to the history of the prison, and not themed like the ‘‘great escapes’ tour. However, due to the nature of the site it is the most complete and ‘authentic’ experience of a convict-era prison as the majority of buildings have been preserved completely.

FP inner wing  FP wing division 2

Fremantle Prison’s ‘Division 2’ Wing

Built by Western Australian convicts in the 1850s and used to detain them until the last convicts to WA in 1868 were freed, the history of the convict experience is intermingled with the history of imprisonment. Distinctions between what facets of prison life belong to the convict era, and which developed later are not always clear. However, the prison provides a fantastic opportunity see original convict cells fitted with replica hammocks and furniture  next to larger, later, cells showing how conditions for prisoners improved in the post-transportation era.

FP condemned cell FP Convict cell 3 FP reconstructed convict cell

The condemned cell, and two examples of convict-era cells at Fremantle Prison

Some other elements including the chapel are also preserved as they would have been in the convict era.

FP convict chapel

Yet due to the prison’s use throughout the twentieth century – a later history still very much preoccupying former prison staff who now act as guides and in other roles around the site – modernisation of exercise yards, kitchens, bathrooms means that unlike other convict sites, Freemantle prison has inevitably lost some of its convict-era identity.

Australia’s convict sites provide some of the best preserved and most fascinating physical reminders of the transportation era. Ultimately, all of the sites are undertaking a difficult balancing act. First and foremost they preserve some of (white) Australia’s most important heritage, and educate visitors about the history of crime, punishment, and convicts in a surprisingly sympathetic way. Yet these sites also succeed in encouraging entertainment-driven tourism so important to funding heritage projects and future preservation.

A chance to see the buildings and surroundings, so important in the lives of the individuals we study, was a real privilege. Each visit was a moving – and thought provoking – experience, the likes of which are still largely out of reach in the U.K. What seems to make convict sites so unique is that, East, West, and South, Australia’s convict heritage is presented as an unpleasant feature of the British past – something modern Australia has come to terms with and learnt from while remaining wholly separate to– in terms of both justice and human experience. An important factor which hasn’t been fully achieved in many UK sites of crime and justice heritage. After all, while Australia is preserving its convict sites as places of history, heritage and education, some of the most famous remnants of our own convict era, prisons like Brixton, Pentonville, and Wormwood Scrubs, function not as tools for learning and reflection, but still in their original capacity.

Criminal Records: Prison Licences

Introduction

Home Office and Prison Commission Licences are one of the core sources being used by the Digital Panopticon to trace the lives of nineteenth century convicts sentenced to imprisonment in England.  Licences began to be issued in 1853 when the 1853 Penal Servitude Act officially substituted terms of transportation for terms of imprisonment. Licences granted convicts undertaking penal servitude freedom before the expiration of their sentence in a system closely modelled on the Australian ‘Ticket-of-Leave’. The licence system remained in place well into the twentieth century.

The licences are split into two collections, the PCOM 3 licences for male convicts and PCOM 4 for female convicts. However, only a proportion of the total licences issued between the 1850s and 1940s have survived and are accessible to the public. For women only licences issued between 1853-1871 and 1882-1887 are available, and for men licences issued between 1853-1887.

What are the licences?

A licence document was issued for each convict on release, detailing the conditions of their freedom. However, the prison ‘licences’ can actually refer to a much larger collection of documents covering an individual’s entire time in penal servitude. The PCOM licences can contain items such as a penal record detailing criminal history, medical evaluation form, prison punishment records, and notes of applications by the prisoner to the Secretary of State. From the 1870s onwards, licence bundles also contain photographs of offenders and records relating to their correspondence in prison and, on occasion, police intelligence about their associates and former lives.

This example shows the licence issued for Caroline Jones when she was released in 1866, and her reception form at Newgate Gaol from when her sentence began.

Caroline Jones Licence       Caroline Jones Newgate form

These collections of documents were created by a number of officials over the course of an individual’s incarceration. Various legislation over the second half of the nineteenth century, such as the 1869 Habitual Criminals Act, made provision for the collection of an increasing volume of data about offenders. Some forms, like the penal record, were completed as a convict was processed into prison, others were produced over time as a convict served their sentence. Medical records, record of punishment, and applications and letters travelled with a convict to each institution they spent time in where it became the duty of different administrators to keep them up to date.

This left hand example shows the medical record of Elizabeth Davis, partially completed on her admission to prison, but updated with details of her weight every time she moved to a new institution. The right hand example shows the punishment record of Elizabeth Davis as she served a sentence of penal servitude in Woking prison between 1873 and 1875. Further entries were added each time she committed a prison offence.

Frances Reece medical record      Frances Reece prison offences record

Why are they important to historians?

How, when and, most importantly, why such extensive information relating to convicts was collected over the course of the nineteenth century is currently being explored as part of the Digital Panopticon’s Epistemologies theme.

The PCOM prison licences give historians an unparalleled insight into the imprisonment of thousands of ordinary nineteenth century convicts. The multifaceted remit of these records means that they are useful for studying the personal details of individual convicts and following their journey to and through the convict prison system. Documents within the licence bundles offer us the chance to amass details such as aliases and criminal histories, names and addresses of family members, police intelligence about a convicts ‘character’ and previous life all of which can be used to find the same individual in other sources. These records are also useful for developing a more comprehensive understanding of the prison regime during the mid and late nineteenth century imprisonment came to define penal experience after the end of transportation. Institutional paper-work shows how the system of labour, diet, and marks for gratuity operated on a daily basis. Lastly, any of these records allow us to examine in more detail individual facets of the convict prison system. Whether that be the development of medical provision for prisoners over time, or the punitive measures taken to control the prison population.

This example shows the penal record of Elizabeth Davis, stating her full conviction record and several aliases which can be used to trace her in other records.

Frances Reece penal record

Problems with the licences

Despite the potential of these records there are issues and limitations that researchers should be aware of. There is a lack of consistency in the content of licences. Some of the earliest examples have little more than the paper licence issued for prisoner release, and later licences (from the 1870 and 1880s in particular) can have vast amounts of material. The style and content of recorded information also changes over time. Whilst this can be useful for epistemological questions and examining the development of the administrative prison system, it does present a challenge when creating research questions relating to inmate experience across time. Whilst offering a great amount of detail about individuals and their lives inside (and often outside) prison, the documents were written from the perspective of the prison system. The emotional lives of inmates, their motivations, and experiences are not often explored. For example, the licences can help historians investigate the difficult and dangerous environment in which prisoners lived. Instances of prisoner violence and distress are very commonly recorded on prison offence forms. However, the forms do not record contextual exploration of why and how such behaviours occurred. Likewise, information relating to key issues such as mental illness are largely absent from these documents.

Nonetheless, the diverse range of documents available through the PCOM prison licence collection remain one of the best and most important sources for researching the men and women confined in Victorian convict institutions. The PCOM licences give us a rare insight into the minutia of daily prison life. Most importantly, these sources provide otherwise unavailable information about thousands of individuals serving time in prison between the 1850s and 1880s. Licence documents can prove essential for understanding the lives of prisoners and for collecting information which lets us trace how they arrived in prison, and what happened after their release.

Amelia Acton, a petty thief with a string of convictions

Some of Amelia's previous convictions, 1866 (TNA PCOM 4/45/7)

Some of Amelia’s previous convictions, 1866 (TNA PCOM 4/45/7)

Amelia Acton can be identified (with certainty) in the Old Bailey Online just once, in a trial for uttering (passing) counterfeit coin in 1854 – even though she was tried using a different name, Amelia Smith, and there is no mention of an Amelia Acton in that trial. We can connect Amelia Smith with the Amelia Acton who was convicted of a string of thefts using several different aliases between 1851 and 1866 because 19th-century bureaucrats were increasingly concerned to identify and record recidivists so that they could be punished more severely. Several of the records the project is using included information about previous convictions.

This list for Amelia is compiled from two sources: TNA PCOM4, Female Prison Licences (1853-83, records relating to women prisoners sentenced to penal servitude and released early on licence), and LMA MJ/CP/B, Calendars of Prisoners in the Middlesex House of Detention (1855-1889). MJ/CP/B is not currently online, and these records are in the process of being digitised for Digital Panopticon. Brief item-level descriptions for PCOM4 can be found on TNA’s website and the images are at Ancestry.co.uk. We will be rekeying more extensive data from these (and PCOM3, the counterparts for male prisoners), including information about previous convictions, health and physical descriptions, and offences in prison.

Another list of previous convictions, 1866 (LMA MJ/CP/B/13, 5 Nov 1866)

Another list of previous convictions, 1866 (LMA MJ/CP/B/13, 5 Nov 1866)

  • Middlesex Sessions, February 1851, as Sarah Smith: larceny (table cloths); sentenced to 4 months
  • Middlesex Sessions (Westmr), September 1851: larceny (shawl?); 12 months
  • Middlesex Sessions (Westmr), November 1852, as Amelia Welsh: larceny; 9 months
  • Central Criminal Court, February 1854, Amelia Smith: uttering counterfeit coin, 6 months
  • Middlesex Sessions, December 1854: larceny; 4 years.
  • Middlesex Sessions, April 1855: felony; 4 years penal servitude
  • Middlesex Sessions, August 1859: larceny; 4 years penal servitude
  • Middlesex Sessions, February 1861: larceny; 4 months
  • Westminster police court, March 1864: 3 months
  • Marylebone police court, July 1864 as Amelia Sayers: 4 months
  • Middlesex Sessions, November 1866: stealing a gown; 7 years penal servitude

I’m not certain that all of these records are completely accurate. I’ve definitely identified the following Middlesex Sessions convictions:

  • Middlesex Sessions (Westminster) 15 August 1859 (MJ/CP/B/6): tried as Amelia Acton, aged 40, trade “ironer”, for the theft of 23 yards of carpet value 15s. of Ann Boyce widow (felony); pleaded guilty to larceny after previous convictions and sentenced to 4 years penal servitude.
  • Middlesex Sessions (Clerkenwell) 5 November 1866 (MJ/CP/B/13): tried as Amelia Acton, aged 54, trade “washer”, for the theft of a gown value 12s of Thomas Gardner; pleaded guilty to larceny and receiving after previous convictions and sentenced to 7 years penal servitude.

Penal servitude was a harsher form of imprisonment in special ‘convict prisons’, including hard labour, which replaced transportation in the 1850s for repeat offenders. Amelia was sentenced to penal servitude on three occasions, in 1855, 1859 and 1866. Prisoners serving penal servitude sentences might be released early on licence (probation), but if they re-offended they were likely to have their licences revoked and be returned to prison. This happened to Amelia in early 1863 – just months after she’d been released on licence in October 1862. She was released when that sentence expired in August 1865, but she was back in the convict prison system again within 15 months. She was released on licence once again to the “Battery House Refuge” in February 1871 and I haven’t found any further offending records.

Are there other trials before 1851 or after 1866 that aren’t recorded in this list? But I’ll keep looking as we get more data… There are other Amelia Smiths who might be the right age in the Old Bailey Online, but no Amelia Acton or Amelia Welsh. If there are more, why aren’t they recorded with the rest? But if not, why did Amelia turn to crime in 1851 and why did she stop in 1871 after barely being able to stay out of prison for more than a few months at a time for 15 years?

What else do we know about Amelia? Quite a lot, though there’s one slight puzzle. In the records before 1866 Amelia’s age is quite consistent, with a year of birth around 1820. But in 1866, her age is given as 54 (y.o.b. about 1812) – she’s gained about 8 years! We know that ages were rarely precise for people born before civil registration started in 1837, but this seems an unusually large variation (there doesn’t appear to be any question that it’s the same woman). It certainly makes tracking her in other records more difficult. But so does the variety of names we have to search for: four different surnames and two given names!

We know a lot about Amelia from the PCOM4 records (which are amazingly rich). She was already  married with a child by 1855; Acton was her married name, and her maiden name may have been Welsh (or Welch). Her mother was living in Nightingale Street, Lisson Grove in 1855. Her complexion was dark, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, and she was just over 5 feet tall. She put on weight as she reached middle age – she went from being described as ‘thin’ in 1860  to ‘stout’ in 1866. She was a laundress (or in closely related trades) according to several of the records. In 1870 she suffered from rheumatism – maybe age and poor health are the main reasons why she didn’t reoffend after 1871.

Beyond the criminal records, there are some possible matches in Census and civil registration records. There is an Amelia Welsh, aged 20, living in the St Pancras area in the 1841 Census. And there is an Amelia Acton, a widow aged 70 (consistent with the older age given in 1866), and whose occupation is given as laundress, in the 1881 Census. Sadly, this Amelia was a pauper in St Marylebone Workhouse. It looks like, for her, crime really didn’t pay. Finally, possibly, there is a death record in 1888 for an Amelia Acton, aged 79, at Guildford, Surrey.

Do you know anything about Amelia? Please let us know!

[This post is one of a series of Convict Tales, in which we post about individual convicts whose lives the project has begun to link together. It may be updated as we learn more.]