Imagine sending prisoners in a place where the heat is to the core, the geography is tormenting, and the wildlife is unforgiving.
During the 18th century, the British sent its convicts in Colonial America due to the overcrowding of prisons in Britain, they would usually do hard labor there as punishment, however, that would all change when the American Revolution happened on 1776 and America became independent from the hands of the British.
Since the British no longer had the authority on its former colony, it cannot send it's prisoners there.
This became a problem for them since prisons in Britain also started to get fully overcrowded, however with one brilliant idea, in order to separate the convicts from the society, the British parliament considered Australia as a place where they would send their convicts.
Since Australia was large, there was plenty of lands where the British could establish penal colonies.
In 1787, the first fleet of eleven ships composing of convicts set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent.
Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824. While Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850.
The majority of the convicts sent in Australia were convicted of petty crimes such as robbery, etc. People who committed serious crimes, such as rape, murder, and arson became possible to be transported there in the 1830s, but since they were also punishable by death, comparatively few convicts were transported for such crimes.
Approximately 1 in 7 convicts were women, while political prisoners, another minority group, comprise many of the best-known convicts.
Convicts sent to Australia were usually punished by doing hard labor, normally once they arrived in Australia, the Governor of the penal colony would separate and sort the prisoners into gangs based on their skills.
Skilled convicts such as those who had the experience of being a carpenter, blacksmith, and stonemason were used as manpower on building bridges, roads, port houses, infrastructures, or even working on government farms. Unskilled convicts meanwhile were assigned on laboring works such as gathering and burning seashells.
Free settlers, those who voluntarily settled in Australia, and convicts whose sentence was already over picked convicts as their servants.
Female convicts made up of 15% of the convict population in Australia, they mostly worked as domestic servants to the officers, while others worked on female factories where they made clothes.
At first, convicts wore their own clothing when sent to penal colonies but as more free settlers arrive, there has been a necessity for a uniform in order to prevent confusion and to distinguish the innocent from convicts.
From the early 1800s, the particolored uniform was introduced, this yellow and black uniform became the official uniform for the convicts to distinguish them from the population, it was also designed to humiliate them.
Convicts who continued to cause more problems were sent to more remote penal colonies or prisons in Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie, and Moreton Bay.
During its first years, penal colonies had no restrictive walls or fences to prevent prisoners from escaping so some of them who were the foolish and the daring ones tried to escape.
But when they succeeded on doing so, they encountered the bush, a wilderness that they couldn't survive, due to the harsh weather, some of the escaped prisoners become dehydrated due to the extreme heat, some of them also starved since they couldn't find any food.
Apart from that, the wildlife and the aboriginal people also acted as a deterrent, dangerous and poisonous animals such as snakes and scorpions attacked prisoners who were resting due to exhaustion, the aboriginal tribesmen those people who were native in Australia who was working willingly or unwillingly with the British hunted down those prisoners.
Punishment and harsh discipline were heavily enforced by the military guards on those convicts who were lazy or unruly on their jobs.
These are the punishments for those convicts:
1. Solitary Confinement - prisoners who were disrespectful to authority were detained in dark dumb cells with no lights inside where they would be only given rations of bread and water, they would stay there for weeks, according to the authorities, this punishment would cause the prisoner to reflect or think on his/her behavior and rehabilitate.
2. Heavy Ankle Irons or Leg Irons - prisoners who tried to escape were usually punished by this, it is a metal band or a chain placed around a prisoner's ankle as a restraint to prevent the prisoner from running away.
3. The Treadmill - This punishment was first introduced in Carter's Barracks, Sydney, in 1823, it was a punishment for insolence, the treadmill would see a convict walk on a revolving set of steps that turned a wheel, they would walk for 40 minutes with 20 minutes rest and they could be flogged if they didn't keep the pace or was slow. The dust created from the treadmill irritated their eyes and lungs, if they slipped, their legs might be shredded by the blades below.
4. Flogging - prisoners who were lazy, disobeyed orders, and didn't do their work at all were punished by flogging. This punishment involves a prisoner being whipped at the back, this punishment was usually shown publicly as a warning for other prisoners, the doctor was also present on the time of the punishment because a couple of lashes coming from the whip can break the skin anytime. Sometimes prisoners would be flogged 50 times causing his back to be a bloody mess, and sometimes the prisoner would be flogged 100 times which could result in the prisoner dying due to the extreme pain.
These punishments changed the morality of convicts, some convicts changed for the better, others changed for the worst, some desired revenge on those who inflicted the harsh punishment to them, and others however became unproductive due to the extreme pain and trauma that they suffered on the punishments.
Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies.
In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.
From 1788 to 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.
Prison time for convicts ranged from seven years to life, convicts who worked hard would obtain a ticket of leave or a pardon, these were frequently granted after four years for those with a seven-year sentence.
Once they were free, they could finally work for themselves and own a property.
Few convicts returned to Britain because they couldn't afford the transportation back, many of them joined the free settlers and some of them rose to prominent positions in Australian society.
However, convictism carried a social stigma, and for some later Australians, being of convict descent instilled a sense of shame and cultural cringe.
Attitudes became more accepting in the 20th century, and it is now considered by many Australians to be a cause for celebration to discover a convict in one's lineage.
Almost 20% of modern Australians in addition to 2 million Britons are descended from transported convicts.
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