Transportation
Beginnings
Transportation had been used as a form of punishment since 1717. Under the "Bloody Code"
courts were looking for a punishment which was not as extreme as hanging, but tougher than
a fine. In the absence of proper prisons, transportation seemed the answer and was used for
over a hundred years. Transportation was also part of the early beginnings for a movement
for reform of punishment away from the severity of the bloody code and towards a moral
reformation of the criminal.
In the 18th century convicts were transported to America. After US independence in 1776,
however, this option was closed and the British government looked for another destination.
Australia had been mapped and claimed as British territory in 1770, so convicts began to be
sent there. By sending convicts to Australia Britain would also be able to build up control
over her region and prevent the influence of France.
From 1787 to 1857, 162,000 British convicts were transported to Australia. Seven out of eight
of these were males; some were as young as nine or ten; some were over eighty. 80 % of
those transported were thieves and most had committed one offence. 3% had been
convicted of minor crimes. Political prisoners were also transported, including Luddites,
Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Irish Nationalists.
They were sent first to the "hulks" -disused warships. Conditions on these rotting vessels
were often terrible, with death rates of one in three. The long voyage to Australia could take
six months. Many lives were lost among the convicts, locked in iron cages below decks in
insanitary conditions, although by the end of the transportation era more care was taken and
loss of life on the voyage was minimised.
Development up to 1830’s
The convict’s initial destination was Botany Bay (Near Sydney) but life was too harsh there
and so they were the sent to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour). However life was very harsh
there as well. By 1790, no ship had called there for 32 months and supplies were so low that
half the convicts had to be moved to Norfolk Island (an Island in between New Zealand and
Australia). The British wanted to make sure they colonized this island so as to stop the
French getting it.
Once in Australia, convicts lived in barracks and worked in gangs, building roads and bridges
or working on farms or quarries. Some were sent out to work for farmers. If they behaved
themselves, their sentence could be reduced by a "ticket of leave." The majority of convicts
decided to stay in Australia at the end of their sentences, recognising that they could make a
better life there than returning to Britain. Ironically transportation was not designed to reform
the criminals yet it did result in less prisoners re-committing crimes after they had been given
a leave at the end of their sentences.
Many concerns arose in Britain about the quality of Transportation as a punishment. These
included Bentham who argued that:
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Transportation was too costly
It was uncertain in the punishment it inflicted
It was unlikely to reform because those employing the convicts were interested only in
profit
It was unable to deter criminals in Britain because Australia was so far away
As a result the government ordered an inquiry led by a man called Thomas Bigge, to inspect
the convicts colony.
Bigge found that Botany Bay was a healthy colony relying on convict Labour and where the
convicts did not live in terror as he thought they should do. Thus Bigge’s recommendations to
make Transportation work as a credible punishment resulted in harder work and attempts to
regulate and standardise the levels of punishment so that transportation remained a proper
punishment and not a ticket to freedom.
The creation of the ‘assignment system’ in the 1830’s was an example of this. This was
where free settlers could apply to be ‘assigned’ a skilled convict to work for them. The settler
would have to be vetted by government officials to make sure they would not be too lax or
too abusive towards the convict, and the government would allocate suitable convicts to
settlers.
However success was uneven: there was still too much variation in the ways settlers treated
their convicts: some gave convicts virtual freedom – they were only focused on making a
profit thus treating the convict harshly with starvation rations was not going to make them
work hard. Other convicts were treated harshly by their employer by being made to sleep
outside at night and walk the vast distances (150 miles or more) to the farms they had been
assigned to. In New South Wales they were forced to work in irons on mainland roads with
their legs chained together
Thus by the 1830’s opposition to Transportation had gained more momentum