The Origins of Irish Convict Transportation to New South Wales

This paper is an empirical and theoretical analysis of buggery charges brought against men in New South Wales in the period 1788—1838. Drawing on a previously unexamined archive, it shows that an irregular pattern of charges in the first forty years of colonization was displaced by a dramatic increase in buggery charges in the period 1828–1838, and a move towards charging accused persons capitally; that the genesis of most complaints was community, rather than official, surveillance; and that throughout the entire period witnesses were far from circumspect in their evidence of unspeakable acts. The paper then argues that the upswing in charges post-1828 was only partly related to the introduction of the Offences Against the Person Act 1828 and its lower evidentiary threshold for proof of buggery. More important, it suggests, was the acute moralism of NSW society in the 1820s and 1830s, generated in part by John Thomas Bigge's 1822 Report into the State of the Colony of New South Wales. The move towards capital charges, however, does appear to bear some relationship to the changes in the Offences Act. The final part of the paper connects social anxiety over buggery to the 1837–38 Molesworth Inquiry into Transportation and the eventual cessation of convict transportation to NSW in 1840.

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Irish Convict Transportation and the Reach of the State in Late Hanoverian Britain

Journal of the Canadian Historical Association ◽

10.7202/031117ar ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 61-85

Author(s):

Simon Devereaux

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Criminal Justice ◽

New South ◽

New South Wales ◽

The State ◽

Leeward Islands ◽

Cape Breton ◽

South Wales ◽

Convict Transportation ◽

British State

Abstract The difficulties encountered by English authorities in resuming the regular and effective transportation of convicts overseas between the loss of the original American destination in 1775 and the opening of a penal settlement in New South Wales in 1787 are well known to historians of criminal justice. Far less so is the contemporaneous convict crisis in Ireland. This article considers the practice of convict transportation from Ireland throughout the eighteenth century. In particular, it examines a series of three dramatic incidents of the late 1780s in which Irish convicts were unscrupulously (though not illegally) abandoned in Cape Breton, Newfoundland and the Leeward Islands. It argues, first, that such practices were not entirely surprising given the great difficulties that had often been experienced in transporting convicts from Ireland even before 1775. It goes on to suggest that the subsequent decision of authorities in London to assume a directive role in the transportation of Irish convicts was informed by changing perceptions of the British state in both its national and imperial dimensions.

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