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'This special issue of the Australian Journal of Biography and History explores the lives of convicts transported to Australia and asks how they can be investigated through various forms of biography. Given the ever-increasing range of methodologies for researching convict lives, this issue offers a timely reflection on their varying strengths, limitations and functions as well as on the future of convict history research. Nine refereed articles and two research notes provide new insights into various aspects of convict lives and experiences, combined with broad discussions on methodology.
'In their introductory article, Matthew Cunneen and Malcolm Allbrook delve into the history of convict biography and the ways previous historians have attempted to explore and understand such lives. To overcome the gaps and silences in the archives, they argue, historians of convict Australia should employ a range of methodologies that each have their own particular domains of enquiry. In her research note, Janet McCalman reflects on the historiographical discoveries that have been made possible by the digitising, indexing and linking of convict records. She calls for future researchers to continue the work behind large datasets so that one day a fully comprehensive database of convicts can be created. Adopting a more fine-grained approach, Jennifer Bird reconstructs in detail from the archives the penal life of the convict Robert Edward Knox. Her analysis of Knox demonstrates an alternative to big-data approaches for understanding convict agency.
'With a similarly refined scope—though one that looks at the convict system from the outside in—Jennifer Brookes examines the struggles of Lydia Anne to join her transported husband, Laurence Hynes Halloran, in Australia. Brookes’s article suggests that historians might consider how contemporary understandings of convicts can be enhanced by studying the lives of non-convicts associated with transportation. Matthew Cunneen reconstructs the lives of three convicts to further inform the experiences of people of colour under transportation. He argues for collective biography as a way of bridging the methodological shortcomings of purely biographical and prosopographical approaches. In the first large-scale study of the subject, Patricia Downes examines the social and legal conditions that saw freely arrived British soldiers sentenced to transportation within the Australian colonies. Complicating old narratives of the soldiers as contaminated by the convicts around them, she explores how military crimes resulting in transportation were sometimes driven by desires for freedom from military life and to protest service conditions.
'Christine Fernon reports in her research note on the progress made in the National Centre of Biography’s First Three Fleets and Their Families project, an ambitious intergenerational study of Australia’s early colonial history. The preliminary findings give a sense of the insights that the project will provide into how convict lives formed the fabric of Australian colonial history. Kristyn Harman and Anthony Ray explore the intergenerational effects of the convict system through the experiences of three convicts of colour. In analysing these lives, they contribute to our understanding of interracial marriage, family formation and recidivism in Van Diemen’s Land. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, David Andrew Roberts and Mark McLean draw on a wealth of convict records to show the potential of using big data to analyse thousands of convict lives in parallel. Doing so would allow the individual to be contextualised within the greater population and would present opportunities for temporal and spatial analysis, thereby deepening understandings of British criminal management.
Visually illustrating the potential of big data in studies of convict protest and collective biography, Monika Schwarz examines collective resistance networks in female factories in Van Diemen’s Land. She draws together the stories of previously unconnected women and uncovers episodes of resistance. Returning convict history to its material origins, Richard Tuffin, Martin Gibbs, David Roe and Sylvana Szydzik draw on archaeological methods of digital technology to recontextualise convict lives. By mapping sites of convict labour and quantifying the outputs from them, the authors collectively argue that adopting multi-scalar and multidisciplinary approaches to studying convict environments can deeply enhance the histories of those who were involved with them. This issue deepens understandings of Australia’s convicts, the lives they led and the ways historians can best study them.' (Publication summary)
Notes
-
Dedication:
In memory of
Patricia Downes (1947–2023)
and
Babette Smith OAM (1942–2021).
Innovators of Australian convict historiography,
generous mentors and dearly missed friends. -
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
-
Convict Lives : A Research Note,
single work
criticism
(p. 25-33)'Convict lives pose a unique conundrum. In spite of all their variety, they share
a common experience of having been, at least for a time, consigned to what was
called ‘the other side’, the place of the untrusted and the unwanted. Their identity was
spoiled. After sentence, some were never able to leave that dark place; those that did
manage to return to society had to conceal their past, control their memories, and lie
for the rest of their lives.' (Introduction) -
Robert Edward Knox : Revealing Relationships of a Recidivist Convict,
single work
biography
(p. 35-52)'On 11 September 1862, the chief justice of New South Wales, Sir Alfred Stephen,
sentenced Alexander McGregor to 15 years’ hard labour on the roads, the first two
years in irons. In his sentencing, Stephen stated ‘that McGregor was an abominably
bad character who was known as one of the worst characters at Norfolk Island where
he was known by the name of Robert Knox’.1 Moreover, the chief justice ‘knew his
character well’ (see Figure 1).2 In other words, he had recognised McGregor as the
recidivist convict Knox. As the account of the court hearing published in the Bathurst
Free Press and Mining Journal suggests, this was not the first time Stephen had had
dealings with the habitually reoffending convict, nor would it be his last. In 1867 he
was consulted regarding Knox’s exile from the colony of New South Wales, where
he had spent around 30 of his 40 years imprisoned. Knox’s subsequent departure,
without Stephen’s consent, would be the final act of a life lived in defiance of the
colonial penal administration in Australia. This article examines the relationships
of the recidivist convict known variously as Edward Knox, Robert Knox, Robert
Edward Knox and Alexander McGregor, between 1829 and 1869. It asks: what can
a biography of a recidivist convict, whose name and story have disappeared from
cultural memory, tell us about convict relationships? What can a convict who never
married, had no known children, and spent the best part of his life incarcerated,
reveal about relationships in the colonial penal system?' (Introduction) -
‘The Law Must Take Its Course’ : Serving Dr Halloran’s Time,
single work
criticism
(p. 53-74)'Lydia Ann’s position during the winter of 1819 was precarious. Any income from
sales of Newgate was essential if she were to survive her ‘most afflicting reverse’ of
circumstances.3 Her distress was caused by the arrest, imprisonment, conviction
for forgery, and sentencing to seven years’ transportation of her children’s father,
Laurence Hynes Halloran (1765–1831). The case was notorious, and the conviction
calamitous. In 1816, to add credence to his application for the vacant curacy
at Broseley in Shropshire, Halloran had forged the frank of an eminent barrister,
using the alias ‘WC Gregory’. An argument with his rector, Townsend Forester, led
Forester to refer to his clerical agents in London. It was soon proven that Halloran
was an imposter with a long record. Government and ecclesiastical files were thick
with damning detail, commencing with a murder charge in 1783 while a young
naval apprentice (for which he was acquitted), failed attempts at ordination, exposure
at Bath in 1806 after supplying bogus clerical credentials, the circumstances of his appointment as chaplain to the forces at the Cape in 1808, and subsequent behaviour causing exile from there in 1811. From that moment to further damage his reputation, he was known to have abandoned his wife. With Lydia now his partner, he had used aliases and forged credentials to gain clerical appointments throughout the country, concurrently supplementing his meagre income with published poems and sermons, until his arrest in mid-1818. When he sailed on the convict ship Baring seven months later, authorities were pleased to be rid of him. He had embarrassed the Church by causing confusion in marriages, such that ‘it was his bad character and not his crime which transported him to Botany Bay’.' (Introduction) -
Fragmented Lives, Fragmentary Archives : Collective Biography in Australian Convict History,
single work
criticism
(p. 75-93)'The transportation of convicts to Australia was a substantial bureaucratic undertaking. From 1788 to 1868, some 163,000 people were transported to its shores. Underpinning this mass movement of people were various processes for documenting individuals that amounted to what convict historians have termed a ‘paper panopticon’, so called because of the variably immense and detailed nature of the information recorded about convicts and their lives. These data ranged from essential biographical information, such as the age, native place and occupation of convicts, to descriptions of their physical characteristics. As the historian Janet McCalman has recently written, the ‘men, women and children in the Tasmanian convict records are arguably the most carefully described and recorded ordinary people of the nineteenth- century world’. The convicts transported to New South Wales and Western Australia were not far behind them. While the surviving archives for those colonies are in some ways less varied and detailed than their Van Diemen’s Land counterparts, they nonetheless offer promising opportunities for detailed reconstructions of individual lives. Complementing, supplementing and enriching convict records has been the ongoing digitisation of archival material—including vital life records, newspapers, gaol and immigration records—most relevant to tracing the lives of these people. What emerges from the consolidation of these sources is, in McCalman’s words, the ‘demographic contours of lives’.' (Introduction)
-
The First Three Fleets and Their Families : The Lives and Legacies of Australia’s Early Colonial Settlers,
single work
criticism
(p. 123-133)'As the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) edits the last batch of entries for those who died in the 1990s, we are also preparing for our next project, revising its earliest volumes—dealing with the colonial period—published in the 1960s. Those articles will be revised or rewritten where appropriate, and many new entries added. We are also undertaking several online biographical research projects focusing on the colonial period. The First Three Fleets and Their Families is one of them. For the ‘Fleeters’ project, we are creating biographical entries on the ADB’s companion website, People Australia (PA), for all those who set sail from the United Kingdom for the New South Wales colony, be they convict, sailor or colonial administrator, in the first three fleets from 1787 to 1791. Those who died en route are included as well. It is estimated that about 4,500 men, women and children made that perilous journey. We are also adding entries for the children and grandchildren of Fleeters (mostly convicts) who remained in the colony. The bulk of the biographical records created so far fall within the colonial period or early twentieth century, though a few of the Fleeters’ grandchildren died in the 1940s and the spouse of one grandchild died as late as 1971. Entries are being indexed using the same terms applied to all ADB entries: birth and death dates and place, cultural heritage, religion, cause of death, the ship arrived on, education, occupation, workplace, military service, involvement in key events and organisations, awards, as well as terms developed specifically for this project (more about that later).' (Introduction)
-
The Road to Marnpi : A Biographer’s Journey,
single work
criticism
(p. 223-242)'If pressed to condense biographical method into one word, I would choose relationships. Why? Because, for me, everything of critical importance that led to the publication of Namarari’s biography rested on relationships, and from that, people’s generosity.'
(Introduction)
-
Margaret Allen Review of Anne Black, Pendragon : The Life of George Isaacs, Colonial Wordsmith,
single work
review
— Review of Pendragon : The Life of George Isaacs, Colonial Wordsmith 2020 single work biography ; (p. 249-252) -
Nicholas Brown Review of Bob Boughton, Danny Blackman, Mike Donaldson, Carmel Shute and Beverley Symons, Eds, Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists,
single work
review
— Review of Comrades!: Lives of Australian Communists 2020 anthology biography ; (p. 253-259) -
Martin Crotty Review of Doug Munro, History Wars: The Peter Ryan–Manning Clark Controversy,
single work
review
— Review of History Wars : The Peter Ryan–Manning Clark Controversy 2021 multi chapter work criticism ; (p. 261-263) -
Carol Liston Review of Patricia Clarke, Great Expectations: Emigrant Governesses in Colonial Australia,
single work
review
— Review of Great Expectations : Emigrant Governesses in Colonial Australia 2020 multi chapter work biography ; (p. 265-267) -
Andrew J. May Review of Richard Broinowski, Under the Rainbow : The Life and Times of E. W. Cole,
single work
review
— Review of Under the Rainbow : The Life and Times of E.W. Cole 2020 single work biography ; (p. 269-273) -
Colin Milner Review of Peter Edwards, Law, Politics and Intelligence: A Life of Robert Hope,
single work
review
— Review of Law, Politics and Intelligence : A Life of Robert Hope 2020 single work biography ; (p. 281-286) -
Melanie Nolan Review of Peter Beilharz and Sian Supski, Eds, The Work of History: Writing for Stuart Macintyre,
single work
review
— Review of The Work of History : Writing for Stuart Macintyre 2022 anthology essay ; (p. 287-292) -
Rosalie Triolo Review of Kim Rubenstein, The Vetting of Wisdom: Joan Montgomery and the Fight for PLC,
single work
criticism
— Review of The Vetting of Wisdom : Joan Montgomery and the Fight for PLC 2021 single work biography ; (p. 293-296) -
Jessica Urwin Review of Eleanor Hogan, Into the Loneliness : The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates,
single work
review
— Review of Into the Loneliness : The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates 2021 single work biography ; (p. 297-301) -
Peter Woodley Review of General Sir Peter Cosgrove, You Shouldn’t Have Joined... : A Memoir,
single work
review
— Review of You Shouldn't Have Joined ... A Memoir 2020 single work autobiography ; (p. 303-307) -
Peter Woodley Review of Krista Vane-Tempest, Edith Blake’s War : The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action During the First World War,
single work
review
— Review of Edith Blake's War : The Only Australian Nurse Killed in Action during the First World War 2021 single work biography ; (p. 309-313)
