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APPENDIX 1 Inmate Profile APPENDIX 1 Inmate profile In October 1858, the LBS, along with the Launceston Municipal Council and prominent' Launcestonians, headed a petition protesting the deplorable situation facing the north's indigent poor.' This petition encapsulated a middle class view of the invalid crisis. The document exposed a perception held that invalids belonged to a specifically identifiable group made up of individuals of both sexes who had originally been transported as c~nvicts.~ They were a lingering reminder of Tasmania's convict past, a dross that refused to disappear. What distinguished these individuals from other emancipists was their physical condition. They were the 'diseased, aged, blind, incapable, and destitute'? If an understanding is to be gained of who the invalids were, and of the circumstances of those who found themselves in their old age and infirmity readmitted to institutional space, it is important to obtain an inmate profile. This appendix examines the typical attributes of invalid inmates. While both males and females found themselves in distress in their latter years, the typical inmate of a colonial Tasmanian charitable institution was male, unmarried (or if a female then widowed), aged at least 55 years but more likely to be aged closer to 70 than 60. In addition to being old they almost certainly suffered from an age related illness, such as dementia, rheumatism or chronic ulcers. They would have been born in Britain or Ireland, and have arrived in Tasmania as a transported convict. While they ' AOT: CSD 1/132/4836, Petition from the inhabitants of Launceston and its vicinity to Sir Henry Young, Governor of Tasmania. This memorial was given wide circulation in the north, being published in the Lnunceston Examiner (21.9.1858, p. 2 c. 5-6) and receiving the support of a favourable editorial (p. 2 c. 2). The list of memorialists was headed by Henry Dowling, the then Mayor of Launceston, and also contained the names of other Aldermen and prominent citizens as well as the entire Committee of the LBS. AOT: CSD 1/132/4836, Petition from the inhabitants of Launceston and its vicinity to Sir Henry Young, Governor of Tasmania. ibid. may have been able to read and write, their literacy standard was low when compared to that of the rest of society. This meant they would have experienced restricted vocational opportunities and would have primarily been employed in unskilled labouring or domestic service positions. Table Al.l lists inmates dieing in July 1895, at the NTCI. While the numbers in this table are low they do demonstrate a consistent pattern and give some impression of the backgrounds of inmates. TABLE ~1.1:Return of Deaths for the NTCI for July, 1895. (Based upon AOT: CSD 19/1/5.) In addition to the aged and infirm pauper, there were a number of minority groups also present in charitable institutions. For example, as a means to assist New Norfolk in minimising the problems it was facing due to want of space, the NTCI accommodated a number of harmless imbeciles. One of these was Henry Lewis, a 23-year-old imbecile of 'cleanly habits', admitted to the NTCI in September 1898.' It is also highly probably that Hilda Dinham, who was admitted into the NTCI in 1900, also had only limited intellectual capacity. In July 1900, after receiving a letter from the Reverend Cannon Finnis seeking his assistance in protecting this woman, the Under Secretary wrote to Seager asking that he help in keeping this 'poor woman . from the public street^.'^ At this juncture the Chief Secretary was able to detain her in the Contagious Diseases Hospital, at the Cascades, but once she had been ' AOT: CSD 22/11/26, Steward to Seager, 8.9.1898. AOT: CSD 22/35/105, Steward to Seager, 13.7.1900. certified as clear of venereal disease he would no longer have this authority. Seager responded positively stating that if Dinham agreed to enter the NTCI then he would recommend that she be transferred there following her detention at the Contagious Diseases Hospital. He would also see to it that if she did enter the Institution then he would ensure that she not leave it except in the company of some responsible person. Further, he would 'recommend her detention from time to time as necessary to keep her from the public street^.'^ It would appear then that, despite 'improvements' in institutional classification, at the turn of the century the Administrator of Charitable Grants was prepared to accept social misfits, along with those of limited mental capacity, into the NTCI. Sex and marital status While both sexes suffered destitution, infirmity and poverty, there were far greater numbers of male invalids. There were three basic factors which accounted for this situation. First, there had been a greater number of male convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land than female convicts, and thus there was a greater number of male emancipists. As it was primarily from the emancipist population that invalids derived, there were, therefore, numerically and proportionately more male invalids than female invalids. Portia Robinson has argued that transportation reversed traditional British gender structures causing a gender imbalance whereby there were proportionately far greater numbers of men than women in early colonial A~stralia.~Secondly, the numerical gender imbalance resulted in greater opportunity for female convicts to marry and establish families proportionately than male convicts despite an apparent preference by both free men and male convicts for either immigrant or native-born born women as marriage partners. This was based upon a belief that female convicts were AOT: CSD 22/35/105, Note, Seager to Chief Secretary, 16.7.1900, appended to, Steward to Seager, 13.7.1900and AOT:CSD 22/35/105, Steward to Francis, 13.7.1900. ' P. Robinson, 'Forgive them their ways: gender and criminality in New South Wales, 1788- 1829' unpublished paper presented to the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies 1998 Conference: Exiles of Empire: convict experience and penal policy, 1788-1852, Hobart, 25.7.1988. of bad character and dissolute habit^.^ According to the Irish political prisoner, William Smith O'Brien: The government indeed very wisely encourage the convicts to marry, but opportunities of advantageous settlement being very limited it is not surprising that a great majority of the male prisoners are destitute of homes. There are I believe three or four males to every female among the convicts: and many of the women are of such bad character that even the most reckless will not consent to take them as associates for life? As a consequence of this, three quarters of male convicts were unable to form traditional roles of father, husband and head of ho~sehold.'~A likely consequence of this was that the incentive to save for old age was absent leaving these men little option but to seek relief through the charitable institutional system when no longer able to earn an income. Given that convict women proportionally married more frequently than convict men they were less likely to find themselves in the grim position of seeking admittance to an invalid institution, unless they had been unfortunate enough to find themselves widowed without children. The third factor weighing against male emancipists was the nature of the male convict experience. This was not one to engender the establishment of 'traditional' family values and the sedentary lifestyle necessary to enable the creation of wealth for old age. The nuclear family, as opposed to the parish community, became the central structural unit in nineteenth-century Tasmanian society." Without it, failure was almost guaranteed. The state of one's personal welfare was directly related to the number and strength of L. Scripps, 'The Ross female Factory, Tasmania', unpublished report for the Department of Parks, Wildlife and Heritage, Hobart, 1991, p. 3. R. Davis, T. Jetson, M. Davis and S. Harris (eds),"To Solitude Consigned': The Tasmanian Journal oJWilliam Smith O'Brien, 1849-1853 (Sydney, 1995), p. 385. l0 Robinson, 'Forgive them their ways'. l' This was an Atlantic world phenomena and a consequence of industrial capitalism. Gerald Grob has noted it in relation to the North American setting. While the effects of transportation are interpreted as having played a significant role for this development in Tasmania, Grob attributes it to increasing rates of individual and family mobility resulting in elderly persons having fewer relatives nearby in times of crisis. He has further argued that: 'The separation of home and work tended to create smaller and more specialized families and undermined their capacity to care for needy and especially elderly members.' (G.N. Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill (New York, 1994), p. 118). family ties. The men and women who lacked these family connections found themselves institutionalised in their old age and during times of infirmity. Having a family network to fall back on in difficult times offered a form of social insurance. Those convicts who did marry and did establish such a network were able to draw upon it in their later years, and thus avoid being institutionalised as infirm paupers. In 1871, the LBS resolved not to relieve single men. All such applicants were immediately referred to the LID.'2 Marriage was therefore an important determining factor in aiding a person to secure relief outside of institutional space. Mr. Whitiker, the Town Missionary, told an 1871 Royal Commission into charitable institutions that very few of the inmates of the LID had relatives in the colony." The only men being relieved in 1871 by the LBS were old men with wives or those disabled from work and having children." It is worth noting that Withrington informed the same 1871 Royal Commission that he did not believe that the inmates in the Brickfields had relatives living in Hobart Town.
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