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From: "Carmel M Reynen" <>
Subject: Re: [AUS-Tas] Post convict lives 2
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 18:40:08 +1100
References: <BAY104-F42B6461B0F3B4D6522EF998A590@phx.gbl> <033801c51e2f$f58cd1b0$9487fea9@acerpower>


>
> Sorry about the unfinished message - a clap of thunder just startled my
> mouse!!! I hope this means that we'll be getting some rain. I'll start
> again.
I hope it don't rain cats and dogs then or your mouse will be in hiding all
together.

I have been following this thread with interest. I have an ancestor (only
one at this stage) who was a convict and was sent to Tassie along with his
brother. He married a girl there and after her mother and stepfather died
they all came to Vic including his brother.
His brother died a few years later and there was an inquest into his death,
I imediately thought he was doing something wrong and came out second best.
As it turned out he was working and was helping out another man when his
horses got spooked and jambed him up against a tree with the dray.
However my fellow lived and eventually had 14 children, I dont know fully
how they all survived as his family claim he was quite lazy, or words more
colourful to that end.
his wife was born in Tasmania although I have not been able to trace her
father at all and here mother must have swum from where ever she came from
as I cannot track her back either and I am not really sure of the surname as
every document I have has a variation of the name.
However the WA convict came to be well respected although my mother still
claims it must be the wrong person cause he was a convict and her family
were well respected. I beg to differ as her ancestor was not a nice man from
the stories I have and it was his brother who was the convict.
Carmel

> Monissa and Kim are quite right - there were many convicts who came to an
> unhappy end, either during their sentences, or after. The plight of the
> old single ex-convicts, mostly men, was particularly sad, as was the fate
> of the mentally ill or seriously disabled. Port Arthur, New Town, New
> Norfolk and the other Invalid Depots and Benevolent Asylums were full of
> such cases. And the criminals who reoffended went to Port Macquarie in the
> 1820s, and Port Arthur in the following decades. A lot of disreputable
> characters also vanished in Victoria and other colonies. It's always
> puzzled me that there was no Poor Law in the Australian colonies, like
> there was in the UK. Provision for the poor and sick here was very
> disorganised, if it existed at all.
>
> But I really think that there there were many more convict success stories
> than was previously thought. Family historians have made an enormous
> contribution to knowlege about the later lives of the convicts. It's a
> long time since I looked at the standard analyses of the whole convict
> population, AGL Shaw's 'Convicts and the colonies', (1966) and L Lloyd
> Robson's , 'The convict settlers of Australia' (1965) and 'The
> transportation of convicts to Australia' (1974)k, which emphasised the
> criminality of the convict population, as Monica says. These were
> published before the family history movement took off, and don't take any
> account of the careers of the convicts after the end of their sentences.
> Now that so much information has been indexed and microfilmed and
> converted to DBs, we're getting a much more complete picture of convict
> lives before, during and after their sentences. It would be interesting
> to build up a database of post-emancipation information, so that we could
> eventually have a statistical analysis of the fates of those who came to
> VDL. I've also found that most of my convicts were rural labourers,
> thought there are also three Lincolnshire poachers (who may have been
> stocking up their butchers shop) and a 13 yr old burglar from the
> Lancashire cotton towns. As others have remarked, there was no knowledge
> of convict ancestry until I began my research 20 years ago. My very
> respectable grandparents would have been horrified to know about it!
>
> Cheers
>
> Judy
>
>
>
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