OPINIÓN PERSONAL

To enable settlers to apply for assigned servants, as much notice as possible was given of the arrival of a convict transport. Public notice was always given to the settlers of the disembarkation, and if time permitted, notice was sent to the distant settlers by constables. After landing, the convicts were mustered at the gaol yard, and Bell would report to Sorell when the men were ready for inspection. Sorell addressed the convicts, and generally commenced with his approval of their clean appearance and their correct conduct whilst on board. They were told that good behaviour would be to their advantage, and they would be treated kindly. Sorell warned those who had been reported as disorderly by the Surgeon-Superintendent, that they should be more circumspect and they would be watched by the police. Convicts intended for public works were then inspected by Sorell for his approval for such public employment, and the settlers chose from the remainder. Any convicts not selected by settlers were then put to labour in the public works and afterwards ‘given away’ as requested.60

On the arrival of a female convict ship, Sorell visited the convicts before landing and inspected the ship. He supplied the Surgeon-Superintendent with a list of settlers

William Alexander Ross 12 April 1817 to c17 January 1818; Samuel Hood 17 January 1818 to 30 June 1818; Robinson 1 July 1818 to 14 May 1824. Thomas Wells was chief clerk throughout the whole period, see AOT ‘Sorell file’ reference no.1967/71.

requesting female servants, and after selection by the Surgeon-Superintendent, they were landed by the Chief Constable, who also ensured they were delivered to the appointed house, town or country. According to Sorell, positions for servants with people of the ‘better class’ were filled by convicts who were recommended for good conduct, whilst those of a ‘bad character’ were placed in the female factory.61 There is no mention of servants being supplied for the people of a lesser or inferior class.

Police regulations had been published by Davey in April 1816, and republished and revised by Sorell. Chief-of-Police Humphrey had a constabulary which consisted of as many free men as possible and some well-conducted convicts, and he was

responsible for the discipline of all assigned convicts under Sorell’s leadership. In evidence to Bigge, Humphrey stated that before his appointment as Police

Magistrate, there ‘was always a record made of the offences and punishments’ but then he contradicted himself by saying that ‘the information was not always taken down in writing’62 and the records were in the custody of Thomas Fitzgerald,63 clerk to the magistrates. Despite this apparent contradiction, Humphrey stated that he had good reason to believe that at the time of his appointment he did not receive the whole of the records as he had been informed by the clerk, Mr Brodribb, that the records had been kept in the loft of a small thatched cottage and Brodribb suspected that some had been destroyed by damp and wet.64

HRA III, iii pp.230-5 Bell to Bigge, 26 February 1820. 61

HRA III, iv p.145 Sorell to Arthur, 22 May 1824. 62

HRA III, iii pp.271-2 Humphrey to Bigge, 13 March 1820. 63

Fitzgerald was also a school master. 64

HRA III, iii pp.276, 271-2; P. Eldershaw ‘The Convict Department’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings 15.3 (January, 1968), p.131.

There is evidence in the form of testimonies and documentation of the structure of a convict system being established by Sorell in 1817 soon after his arrival, and being maintained throughout his term of office.65 In 1820, in describing the nature and practice of the regulations under Sorell’s orders, Humphrey stated that from 1817 he maintained alphabetical registers of all convicts in the County of Buckinghamshire. The registers detailed a description of each convict, any particular marks, his native place, trade, place and time of trial and sentence, and details to whom he was assigned. The object of the registers was also to show the place of abode of every male convict and the convict population of each district, and they were used to check the weekly reports of the mustering constable of each district. A further object was, according to Humphrey, to record the details of passes for those convicts who had reason to travel to another district, and the time they were required to return. The pass system, which had been developed by Davey and Sorell, was an effort to cope with the bushranging problem. The dates and times were written in pencil and erased to enable subsequent details of passes to be recorded.66 It was not until after 1824, and Ralph Darling’s term as Governor of New South Wales, that a centralized system of convict records was established in New South Wales.67

Sorell’s system of registers can be seen as a precedent for Arthur’s later system of surveillance of convicts in which the island was divided into nine districts, in which

HRA III, iii p.272 Humphrey to Bigge, 11 March 1820, pp.542-62 Specimen Pages of Registers. 66

each district was under the responsibility of a police magistrate who exercised the functions of justice, as a coroner, a commissioner of the court of requests, granted travel passes and kept detailed registers of the free and convict population and also handled all applications for assigned servants. To ensure that he could regularly account for every convict, Arthur employed Edward Cook, a law-stationer who arrived in 1825 under a life sentence, to compile a series of ‘Black Books’ under the direction of Josiah Spode, Muster Master. In March 1827 Humphrey asked for Spode’s appointment as Muster Master to be attached to his department. On the arrival of convict ships, Spode accompanied the Principal Superintendent on board to note the prisoner’s descriptions and other particulars. Arthur’s ‘Black Books’, were an expansion of Sorell’s registers, as Arthur had marriages, deaths, pardons and other degrees of emancipation, particulars from the hulk lists, surgeon’s reports, prisoners confessions, and previous offences incorporated into them. 68 Having established the details of Sorell’s convict system, the next chapter will examine its operation.

J.B. Hirst, Convict society and its enemies: A history of early New South Wales. (North Sydney, 1983), p.91.

68

CSO 1/431/9687 cited Eldershaw, ‘The Convict Department’, THRA P&P 15.3 pp.133-4; P. Eldershaw, Guide to the Public Records of Tasmania: Section Three: Convict Department, p.4.

CHAPTER 4