Australia's Convicts - Were they simply scum?

Source: Mollie Gillen's The Founders of Australia


The white settlement of Australia began in the late 18th century because the English wanted to be rid of thousands of people clogging up their gaols and spilling into old ships hulks where they led an indescribable existence of squalor and degradation.

In 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip led the First Fleet of ships bearing 1,400 people sent to found the nation which is Australia today. An overwhelming number of those people were convicts.


Source: Mollie Gillen's The Founders of Australia

Many stood trial at the famous Old Bailey courthouse in London (above), often for quite trivial offences. I’ve asked myself what type of people were these convicts whose suffering laid the cornerstone of today’s prosperous society in the Great South Land?


Source: Mollie Gillen's The Founders of Australia

These are the signatures of some of the ‘better off’ (non convicts) who were on board the First Fleet – beginning with the Captain who would become Governor Arthur Phillip, and Phillip Gidley King, also a Governor of the colony.

The young settlement certainly began in inequality, and it is indeed interesting that inequality seems to have been an abiding concern for Australians ever since. Governments seem to be more popular here today when they look to concerns of the little people as well as to those of the great and powerful.


Source: Mollie Gillen's The Founders of Australia

These signatures of some of the convicts on board demonstrate inequality. Note the large number who confirmed their signing with their mark ‘x’, signifying that they could not write – even in those days a barrier to advancement in society.

The first years of the colony were brutal, but inequality did dissipate somewhat and gradually as many convicts served their terms to become part of the society, contributing to the general good. This movement grew in pace as a new generation of Australians was born, declaring pride in their native land.


From a portrait attributed to R Read the elder, published in Australian Genesis 1974

Esther Abrahams (c7769-1846) is the only First Fleet convict known to be the subject of a portrait. She was sentenced to transportation in 1786 for the theft of some black lace, even though evidence against her was circumstantial.

She became the wife of First Lieutenant George Johnston who later held the position of Lieutenant Governor and was a leader in the rise against Governor Bligh. The marriage only took place some years after she had had seven children by Johnston.

There is no photograph of John Hudson, probably the youngest convict, who was found guilty on circumstantial evidence at the Old Bailey in 1783. His crime was alleged to be breaking into a house at night and stealing some clothing and a pistol. He was eight years-old at the time.

Our third convict, William Lane, stole a substantial bag of goods when he was 30 years-old, and was in trouble again soon after he reached the colony. He received 2,000 lashes when, with another convict, he stole 13 pounds of biscuit. He said he did it because he was hungry.

James La Rue began life in Exeter. He was sentenced there to be publicly whipped for petty larceny at the age of 20, and was later transported for an unnamed felony. He was sent to Norfolk Island and regularly received harsh punishment, including work in heavy irons and 800 lashes. Le Rue died in 1816 at the age of 51.

At that time the Hobart Town Gazette wrote: “Jemmy La Rou (sic), a poor maniac whose death was occasioned by being exposed during the night to all severities of the weather in the state of intoxication. He was a poor harmless being who was regarded with pity and compassion.”

Mary Humphries was known in London as “Hell-Fire Moll”. She was transported after she assaulted a young man until he cried. They accused her of stealing 23s 6d which was found in her chimney.

Will Parish was transported for threatening a man with a pistol in an attempted but unsuccessful robbery. David Lankey was a young tailor sent on an errand by his father, when he was accused of the theft of a handkerchief. Even in the colony he continued his tailoring work, becoming known for his expertise. Apparently by this time he was regarded as “respectable” and useful.


Photograph: R N Dalkin

And then there was Thomas Headington, an unskilled labourer who was transported for stealing.

The inscription on his Norfolk Island gravestone was
“Dear wife do not grieve
Nor children shed a tear
For I am gone to heaven above
To meet sweet angels there.”

He died age 40 years.

Author Mollie Gillen spent 20 years hunting through primary documents to put together brief biographies of almost everyone on board the fleet, and her book The Founders of Australia is the result.

In her book Gillen quotes a German traveller Henry Meister on the barbarity of the English justice system. Meister noted that often the smallest theft (that is, against property) was punished with death, yet the most heinous violence often went unnoticed.

Other historians disagreed.

In 1956 Manning Clark had looked also at later convict arrivals to conclude that they were professional criminals. Others did the same.

In 1970 John Cobley seemed to put the newcomers in the same bag as Manning Clark’s later arrivals. Cobley concluded that the First Fleeters were NOT “more sinned against than sinning” and that no convict in that fleet was transported for a purely political crime.

It is possible that convicts in the First Fleet may have been hand picked to assist the fledgling colony, colouring Mollie Gillen’s general conclusions.

Whatever the historians may say, Australia’s convicts were certainly human beings with hopes, and desires, and needs. They were people who, just as we do, felt pain and hunger, and love and hate, with the need to satiate these needs. They were people who may have been into crime for excitement and easy profit. They may have been vicious and violent people. Or they may have become embittered by cruelty.

Of course it is very difficult to compare values and behaviour of the past and today.

Regardless, convicts were torn from their personal roots, whatever former lives had been. Once the fleet sailed, they certainly lived with increasing fear and uncertainty, often bereft of love and respect – for themselves and others.

The story of the white settlement of Australia, today so sophisticated, is fascinating.

It is certainly a mixed story and often an ugly one. But it is also to some degree at least a tribute to the hard work of these raggle taggle people.


Were the First Fleet convicts universally no-hopers, deserving of the label “scum of the earth”?
What would we do if our children were hungry?
Would our characters change under such pressures?
Would we respect our captors?
Should we put labels on people as a group anyway?