Thesis Is Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Western Australia
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SURVIVING THE COLONY THE IMPACT OF THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN CONVICT SYSTEM ON PRISONER HEALTH, 1850-1877 Louis W. Marshall BA (Hons.), BSc This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities Discipline of History August 2018 THESIS DECLARATION I, Louis Marshall, certify that: This thesis has been substantially accomplished during enrolment in the degree. This thesis does not contain material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution. No part of this work will, in the future, be used in a submission in my name, for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of The University of Western Australia and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. This thesis does not contain any material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. The work(s) are not in any way a violation or infringement of any copyright, trademark, patent, or other rights whatsoever of any person. This thesis does not contain work that I have published, nor work under review for publication. Signature: Date: 16/8/ ii ABSTRACT This thesis examines the severity of convict experiences in Western Australia, through an analysis of the illnesses and injuries transportees suffered. Harnessing prisoner medical records in conjunction with convict-written accounts and official correspondence and statistics, it explores the living and labour conditions convicts faced, the health impacts of their punishment, and the objectives of convict administrators. The limited existing research on convict treatment in Western Australia depicts a relatively benign and reformatory system in which conditions were generally less severe than for prisoners sent to Australia’s eastern shores – only the five-year tenure of Governor John Hampton (1862-67) has been associated with episodes of harshness. These representations draw largely on the claims of Western Australian convict department officials that their system was more ‘humane’ and ‘rational’ than earlier incarnations. While also produced by the state, records of diseases and deaths provide greater insights into the sufferings of prisoners, making it possible in some measure to recover convict experiences. Through a multi-faceted analysis of several thousand prisoner health problems, this study challenges the long-established view that Western Australian convicts endured relatively little hardship. The first portion of this thesis analyses changes in convict health over time (during the period 1850- 77) and compares the conditions experienced by inmates of the Fremantle Convict Establishment, prisoners at regional depots and work parties, and ticket-of-leave convicts. For Fremantle inmates, severity was not confined to Governor Hampton’s regime but was evident from the Convict Establishment’s inception. For much of the 1850s, overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate diets and arduous labour in chains produced dramatically elevated rates of death and disease. These first chapters also uncover numerous deficiencies in the provision of food, accommodation, sanitation and medical care for regional convicts and show that these men enjoyed few health advantages over incarcerated Fremantle prisoners. Mortality data suggests that acquiring a ticket-of-leave offered similarly few benefits in terms of health, particularly for aging convicts and men hired in urban areas. Furthermore, there is evidence that many ticket holders were socially marginalised, poverty- stricken, and vulnerable to mistreatment from colonial employers. The second half of the thesis seeks to position the experiences of Western Australian convicts within the broader context of transportation to Australia. It shows that convict labour management in Western Australia was driven largely by the same economic motives that historians have identified in eastern Australia and questions claims that the Western Australian system was primarily focussed iii on prisoner reform. As has been argued for Tasmanian transportees, the treatment a Western Australian convict received depended as much upon his occupational skills as his moral progress, creating an uneven system in which men lacking useful trades were more prone to punishment and poor health. This section also compares the experiences of secondary offenders in Eastern and Western Australia, contending that attempts to impose heightened severity on reconvicted men were less effective in the western colony, probably because of the absence of isolated ‘penal stations’ and the employment of recidivists on key public works projects. The after-effects of the convict voyage on health are also investigated, revealing that experiences at sea had an even greater impact on death rates after landing than has been shown to be the case in Van Diemen’s Land. Lastly, this thesis engages with emerging debates about the health impacts of the mid-nineteenth- century shift from physical to psychological punishments in convict Australia. Although penalties such as solitary confinement are often considered more ‘enlightened’ than the floggings that predominated in convictism’s early years, this study suggests that cellular isolation, a practice routinely employed in Western Australia, was in fact more damaging to prisoner wellbeing. This uniquely detailed and nuanced account of convict treatment in Western Australia shows that each stage of the convict system involved considerable suffering, whether it was incarceration at Fremantle Prison, forced labour at regional outposts, or life on ticket of leave. The pioneering comparisons of the second half of the thesis suggest further that many aspects of Western Australian convictism were no more equitable or ‘humane’ than the eastern Australian systems depicted by current scholars. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the support and guidance of many people and organisations. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors, Jenny Gregory and Angus Cook, for their astute advice and unwavering enthusiasm throughout the project, and for all of their hard work in editing my drafts. Thanks must also go to Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Sean Winter for their encouragement and interest in my research, and for their help in navigating previous scholarship on convictism. I am also grateful to Barry Godfrey, Lucy Williams and other members of the Digital Panopticon project for their willingness to assist me in any way possible, and for their hospitality during my research trip to England. The generosity of Clare Anderson and Kellie Moss at the University of Leicester was also very much appreciated. I am indebted to the staff of the archives and libraries that provided source material for the thesis. I particularly wish to thank Fremantle Prison curator Olimpia Cullity for her general helpfulness and for allowing me to utilise some of the prison’s digital data resources. Thanks also to Gerard Foley and the rest of the team at the State Records Office of Western Australia, and to the J.S. Battye Library, UK National Archives, and London School of Economics Archive for allowing me to access their collections. A further thank you to organisers of the conferences at which I have presented (particularly Lucy Hair, Luke Donegan, Anita Gowers and Elaine Philip), and to David Barrie, Patricia Downes and Chris Holdridge for their support at these events and their helpful feedback on my papers. Above all, thank you to my family and friends. To Chellyce, thank you for tolerating my apparent obsession with convicts and my chronically-stressed state – finishing my thesis would have been a near impossible task without you. I am also grateful for the camaraderie I have shared with my fellow PhD hopefuls: Adam Andreotta, Guy Kirkwood, Federica Verdina, Cliff Stagoll, Alicia Ettlin and Parisa Shams. Finally, thank you to my father for painstakingly proofreading these several hundred pages, and to my mother for promising to read them in future. This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. v CONTENTS List of Figures vii List of Tables xi Abbreviations xii Introduction 1 Chapter One Review of Literature 10 Chapter Two Convict Care and Treatment in Western Australia, 1850-1877 49 Chapter Three Health Patterns at the Fremantle Convict Establishment 132 Chapter Four The Health of Regional Convicts and Ticket-of-Leave Men 177 Chapter Five Disease, Work and Prisoner Skills: Convict Labour Management 218 and its Impact on Health Chapter Six ‘Scum of the Convict Body’: The Treatment of Secondary 272 Offenders in Western Australia Chapter Seven Beaten Bodies and Tortured Minds: Comparing the Health 312 Effects of Physical and Psychological Punishment Conclusion 358 Appendices Appendix 1: Convict Population Numbers 368 Appendix 2: Regression Models referred to in Thesis 371 Bibliography 375 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Plan of the Temporary Convict Establishment, 1851 51 Figure 2.2 Detail from Plan of Fremantle Prison, 1857 52 Figure 2.3 Map showing Location of Convict Prisons and Depots in Western Australia 55 Figure 2.4 Lashes per Convict in Western Australia, 1850-1867 65 Figure 2.5 Configuration of Prisoner Hammocks at the Temporary Convict 70 Establishment, 1851 Figure 2.6 Mean Ticket-of-Leave Wages, 1850-1861 121 Figure 2.7