DEATH AND BURIAL AT PORT ARTHUR 1830-1 877 Lynette Ross (B.A.) Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Department of History, University of Tasmania, Hobart May 1995 Hi5 to. l All of the work in this thesis is my own, containing to the best of my knowledge and belief no material published or written by another person except as referred to in the text. .............k .... bJ= ........................... 31 May 95 Lynette Ross For all those who lie forgotten on the Isle of the Dead. For the convicts who were never freed in life but were by death; the boys from Point Puer who never grew up; the invalids sent to Port Arthur to die in pain and suffering; the lunatics; and the several hundred paupers whom society deemed fit to end their days at a penal settlement. May they rest in peace. ABSTRACT ahis thesis examines the subject of death and burial at Port Arthur by testing assertions used in current interpretation of the graveyard, the Isle of the Dead. The issues addressed relate to who was buried there, how many, causes of death and methods of interment. In order to fulfil the aims, relevant death and burial registers were transcribed and compiled on to a database. It has been demonstrated that the number of dead believed to be on the Island was too high and an alternative figure is suggested. Those in unmarked graves were found to be not just convicts but a mixture of convict, pauper, invalid and lunatic, thus i~l'ustratin~the complexity of function of this penal settlement. Indeed, the pattern of burial mirrors the transitional stages of Port Arthur's development, as well as social attitudes of the age. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost 1 wish to acknowledge the support and help given by my long suffering husband, Andrew Piper. I thank my supervisor Professor Michael Roe for direction and guidance. The management and staff of Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority have provided resources and time. I would especially thank Sue Burgess and Lesley Kirby for their support and the active ferreting out of information. The Archives Office of Tasmania provided much needed assistance in accessing historical documents essential to this thesis. I thank them for just being there. 1 also thank Jan Beltz of the Genealogical Society for her invaluable help in tracking down inquests and with the Comptroller General's Register of Convict Deaths. I would also like to acknowledge Andrew Thorn for furbishing me with details of the inscriptions still extant on the Isle of the Dead headstones and for listening while I purged myself of the mental overload. For inspiring my interest in history while an under-graduate I will be forever grateful to Dr Tom Dunning. Last but not least I wish to thank my mother for her unwavering belief in the value of education and her untiring support. TABLE OF CONTENTS Frontispiece: Aerial photograph of the Isle of the Dead, 1982 .................................................................. i .. Abstract .................................................... ............. II ... Acknowledgements ......... ................................ ... ..... III Table of Contents ................................................... iv List of Figures ....................................................... vi List of Tables ......................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ......................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: Review of Literature ............................. 5 CHAPTER 2: The Primary Sources ............................. 10 CHAPTER 3: Determining the Numbers ...................... 31 CHAPTER 4: Causes of Death .................................... 38 CHAPTER 5: Burial Practice ..................................... CHAPTER 6: Synthesis of Results ............................. APPENDIX 1: Wesleyan Burial Register ..................... APPENDIX 2: Statistics of Tasmania ........................ APPENDIX 3: Church of England Burial Register ........ APPENDIX 4: Impression Bay Burial Register ............ APPENDIX 5: Reports of Deaths ................................ APPENDIX 6: Comptroller General of Convicts Alphabetical Register of Convict Deaths & Returns of Convicts Deaths and Casualties .............................. APPENDIX 7: Registrar Generals' Records of Deaths.. TABLE OF CONTENTS (cont.) APPENDIX 8: List of those with headstones on the Is!e of the Dead........................................................... 198 APPENDIX 9: Port Arthur Death and Burial Database.. 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................... .. 208 LIST OF FIGURES 3.1 Burial mounds on the lower side of the 34 Island with the grave-digger's hut in the background. 5.1 Inquest of Richard Bickley murdered by 62 Thomas Shaw. 5.2 View of the free section showing the grave . 68 of Alexander Barr in the foreground (note wooden grave markers). LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER 2 2.1 The number of convict deaths per year as recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register compared with statistics of convict deaths sent to the Colonial Office for Port Arthur and Point Puer. 2.2 Those with headstones on the Isle of the Dead 1833-43 not recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register. 2.3 Number and category of free persons as recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register and headstones 1 833-43. 2.4 Ages of convicts dying at Port Arthur as recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register. 2.5 Trades of convicts dying at Port Arthur as recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register 1833-43. 2.6 Those recorded on the Wesleyan Burial Register as residing elsewhere than Port Arthur and Point Puer. 2.7 Categories used in the Church of England Burial Register to describe persons dying. 2.8 Those persons said to have headstones by Richard Lord which could not be verified. 2.9 Those recorded as buried on the Isle of the Dead 1833-43 without headstones. 2.1 0 Annual numbers of deiths and burials at Port Arthur 1 830-1 877. LIST OF TABLES (cont.) CHAPTER 4 4.1 Causes of deaths at the Port Arthur 41 hospital for the years 1 830-41. 4.2 Medical causes of death numbering more 45 than one. 4.3 Number dying of old age. 46 4.4 Causes of infant mortality. 46 4.5 Causes of child mortality. 47 CHAPTER 5 5.1 Those persons with sandstone vaults on the 69 Isle of the Dead. INTRODUCTION g growing acceptance of Australia's convict roots has focused the attention of historians on this aspect of the country's past. Currently researchers are concentrating on the issues of convict work and health with one of the latest contributions being a selection of articles which seeks to reinterpret the evidence and revise accepted ideas on transportation, convict character and the value of convict work. l However this publication serves both to underline the centering on New South Wales for such studies and the neglect of Tasmania as a source of productive enquiry. It also points out that it is the lives of convicts that have relevance and not their demise, yet death is inseparable from life and much can be learned about the one by studying the other. The development of a death denying society2 in this century has placed restrictions on the appeal of the study of mortality and, although the barriers have been somewhat broken down in the field of psychology by the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and those who followed,s few publications deal with the subject in a historical perspective. One author who has specialised in this area is Philippe Aries whose, The Hour of Our Death, traces through more than a thousand years the development of attitudes towards death and how this was reflected in burial practice and art.4 This long view shows the movement of burials from outside population centres in the pagan and early Christian period; to the precincts of churches in the medieval years; to within the cities in early modern times; and finally, back to the outskirts in the eighteenth century. These changes were a result of alterations in the perception of whether the body was corrupted or sanctified by death with the last move being prompted by the unsanitary 1 S. Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past (Cambridge, 1 988). 2 See P. Aries, The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981), pp.559-601. 3 Ibid., p.589 for a discussion of this. Aries, op. cit. nature of now overcrowded graveyards and fears of the spread of epidemics.5 The presence, form and content of memorials erected over graves also changed over time with a shift from the outward show of corruption in the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries to a gentler form,6 with angels and cherubs replacing the decomposing corpse and grinning skull. Anthropologist James Deetz has illustrated the value in studying this graveyard art.' Stylistic evolution in early New England cemeteries shows an alteration from winged deaths heads in the seventeenth century, to winged cherubs in the mid eighteenth and finally to an urn and willow design later that century. The author firmly ties these to the rise of religious movements and changes in world view.8 Whereas Aries links the revival of inscriptions in the twelfth century to the growth of the belief in individual judgement after death,g another author on the subject, Clare Gittings, ties the desire for worldly remembrance more firmly to the rise of individualism itself.10 One of the consequences of the increased importance placed on the individual was the emergence in the eighteenth century of the perception of the grave as home for the body. The function of the cemetery became a venue for the visit of family and friends with the tomb embodying the physical presence of the deceased.' 1 Eighteenth and nineteenth century . attitudes to death accompanied colonists to new lands and manifested themselves in burial practice and mourning customs. The development of these to the present day in an Australian 5 Ibid., p. 348. Ibid., pp. 120-6. J. Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (New York, 1977), pp.64-90. 8 Ibid., pp.69-7 1. Aries, op. cit., p. 21 7. 10 C. Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modem England (London, 1 984), p.