Tag Archives: women convicts

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.

Stealing one’s Heart: The story of Samuel Haslam and Elizabeth Ann Fernley

Samuel Haslam's First two Indictments

The beginning of a long day in court for Samuel Haslam and Elizabeth Ann Fernley (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=184202280123).

On 12th August 1839 Samuel Haslam pleaded guilty to embezzlement. For this offence the eighteen year old was sentenced to four months in prison. These are the only details we have of the trial; evidently, the case was open-and-shut and the reporter wasted no time documenting superfluous information.

The reporter was much busier, however, on 28th February 1842 – on this date Samuel Haslam faced no fewer than three separate trials. In the first of these, he again pleaded guilty to embezzlement. His victim was his master John Ord, from whom he stole 27 pounds.

Following this verdict Haslam remained in the dock. He was charged with conducting a burglary that took place on 4th December 1841. The crime was carefully conceived and a surprising amount of goods were taken from the home of Joseph Rawlings – this included:

1 hat; 1 pair of boots; 2 rings; 2 candlesticks; 2 cups; 2 saucers; 4 jars; 20 thimbles; 4 pencil-cases; 1 brooch; 1 cloak; 2 coats; 1 waistcoat; 1 miniature-case; 1 table-cloth; and 19 spoons’ .

Some of the stolen goods were recovered in a later police search of his house. As a result, Haslam was found guilty. However, he was not the sole defendant in this case – alongside him at the stand were several members of the Fernley family, including his partner Elizabeth Ann Fernley. Twenty-three year old Elizabeth Fernley and Haslam rented the Bethnal Green house where the goods were discovered together ‘as man and wife’.

Fernley was not charged with the burglary itself. Instead, she faced the lesser charge of receiving stolen goods. Four pawnbrokers testified against her; each claimed that she had pawned a portion of the stolen goods in their shops under the name ‘Bennet’. This alias was regularly used by the couple – it was the name under which they rented their house and it was used by Haslam when confronted by a police officer. The testimonies of the pawnbrokers convinced the court that Fernley was intimately involved and she too was found guilty. Incidentally, all the other defendants in the case were not convicted.

Before Fernley and Haslam were sentenced they were indicted for a final time. The similarities between this case and the previous one are striking. Haslam was convicted of burglary and taking a large number of household possessions, while, after the testimony of a pawnbroker, Fernley was found guilty of pawning the stolen goods. Once again she was using the name ‘Bennet’. The same Fernley family members were also indicted but again were found not guilty. Fernley received a sentence of 14 years transportation for her two offences; Haslam was to be transported for life for his role in these burglaries and his two previous charges of embezzlement.

Samuel Haslam and Elizabeth Ann Fernley worked together to carry out these burglaries. They were no Bonnie and Clyde, although they do seem to have been very much in love. Before the final verdict was delivered Haslam made an emotive defence of the couple’s actions:

It was intimated in the last case, that I and Elizabeth Fernley lived together as man and wife, it is false; I had been acquainted with her for some months, and the property brought into the cottage, I brought there; she placed the greatest confidence in me, and thought I came by it honestly; we were short of money at times, and I told her to pawn the things; I took the cottage myself, with the idea of our being married, but the rooms being small, and not liking it, we said we would wait some time, and take another…

Haslam’s statement was meant to encourage the court to exercise leniency. In particular, it emphasizes Fernley’s innocence – he stresses that she was unaware that the goods were stolen and that she pawned them at his instigation. The burglaries, according to Haslam, were motivated because the couple did not have the funds to marry or afford a better house. In short, he suggests that his crimes were motivated by love.

There is evidence that Elizabeth Fernley also protested the verdict. She filed a petition to the court pleading for mercy. This was an appeal which tried to persuade the court to reduce the length of her sentence or overturn it completely – for more information about petitions see the stories of Elizabeth Morley and Robert Jones. Although a record of Fernley’s petition being filed survives (and if you have a subscription to Find My Past you can view it here), sadly the petition itself no longer exists. It seems likely that this petition too would have pulled on the court’s heartstrings and focused on the romantic motives behind the crimes.

Both convicts were transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania); Fernley arrived in September 1842 and Haslam two months later in November. The course of their relationship in Australia is difficult to follow. If the couple married as convicts both would have needed the permission of the local authorities. However, in a search of the convict marriage permissions database, which covers records from 1829-1857, no results were found for either Samuel Haslam or Elizabeth Ann Fernley. Neither Fernley’s nor Haslam’s conduct records suggest that there were any informal liaisons between the pair.

While these crimes may have been committed for love, it appears that this passion fizzled out once both convicts reached Van Diemen’s Land. In all likelihood external circumstances intervened; the couple may even have been separated for the rest of their lives. Here the British penal system extinguished a young couple’s love. In every sense then, this is a case of stealing one’s heart.

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.]