Valoración de los operarios por elementos

(England) to Norfolk Island, Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur (Hobart, 1932), p.76 average of 350. 115

HRA III, iv pp.163-4 Enclosure No. 1 in HRA III, iv pp.161-4 Arthur to Bathurst, 15 August 1824. The 1823 General Muster lists a population of 250 people at Macquarie Harbour.

116

HRA III, iv p.151 Sorell to Arthur 22 May 1824 Enclosure No. 1 in HRA III, iv pp.133-154 Arthur to Bathurst, 9 June 1824.

117

conjunction with the commandant, the practicability of forming a secure

anchorage. Boat building was to be an important activity, and a fine schooner which had been built at Macquarie Harbour sold for £400. Similarly, timber which had been cut at Macquarie Harbour and transported to Hobart Town had been sold by auction.118

Only a month after taking command, Arthur expressed his belief in a ‘rigid course of discipline, strictly and systematically enforced at the penal settlement’.119 He noted that he was not able to find any copy of instructions which had been issued by Sorell for Lieutenant Wright’s direction. However, as previously detailed in Sorell’s report on the settlement at Macquarie Harbour, it is clear that Sorell had given instructions (whether verbal or written is unclear), to Wright about timber exports, security of provisions which discouraged escape, and orders regarding cultivation of grain for the settlement. Arthur supplied instructions to Wright on 25 June, 17 July and 12 August 1824120 regarding the control of convicts, in which he stated that the main object and design of the settlement was to allow his discipline to be seasoned with humanity, but Wright was not to lose sight of a continued, rigid, unrelaxing discipline and he was always to find work and labour,even if it only consisted ‘in opening Cavities and filling them up again’.121

Lempriere, The Penal Settlements of Van Diemen’s Land, p.42; HRA III, iv pp.150-1 Sorell to Arthur, 22 May 1824 Enclosure No. 1 in HRA III, iv pp.133-154 Arthur to Bathurst, 9 June 1824. 119

HRA III, v p.630 Arthur to Wright, 16 June 1824. 120

HRA III, v pp.631-2 Arthur to Wright, 25 June 1824 Sub-enclosure F in pp.619-651 Arthur to Bathurst, 23 March 1827; HRA III, v p.632-3 Arthur to Wright, 17 July 1824 Sub-enclosure G in pp.619-651 Arthur to Bathurst, 23 March 1827 HRA III, v pp.633-4 Arthur to Wright, 12 August 1824 Sub-enclosure I in pp.619-651 Arthur to Bathurst, 23 March 1827.

121

HRA III, v p.631 Arthur to Wright, 16 June 1824 Sub-enclosure D in pp.619-651 Arthur to Bathurst, 23 March 1827.

Doubly convicted felons were still sent from New South Wales to the penal

settlement at Macquarie Harbour until 1825. Crowded conditions and an oversupply of labour rendered the situation impractical, and the distance from New South Wales greatly increased expenses. On 27 February 1825, a government vessel was sent with a detachment to form a penal settlement at Maria Island on the east coast of Van Diemen’s Land, under the command of Lieutenant Murdoch.122 The sand bar at the mouth of Macquarie Harbour had been problematic since the settlement’s early days, and over time as it filled up it rendered access by sea dangerous. In 1833, Macquarie Harbour was abandoned for Port Arthur.

When Sorell arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1817, there were only 400 convicts at the Derwent, half of whom were employed by the government, seventy were

assigned, ninety others were rationed on the store in the private service of government officers, and the remaining forty had tickets-of-leave. The shortage dramatically improved by 1820, and at the time of his departure in 1824, the European population was approximately 12,500,123 a little over half of whom were convicts, consisting of 5,700 males and 444 females. Nine females and 584 males had a ticket-of-leave, and those with either a free or conditional pardon totalled 187 males and no females.124

HRA III, iv p.873, n68. 123

A McKay, The Assignment System of Convict Labour in VDL 1824-42, unpublished Master of Arts thesis. University of Tasmania, 1958, p.19; Edwards, Of Yesteryear and Nowadays, p.79.

124

Statistical Returns of Van Diemen’s Land: From 1824 to 1839, compiled from official records in the Colonial Secretary’s Office (Hobart Town, 1839), Table 36.

It does not appear that Sorell revoked assignment to settlers as an aspect of

control in his system. According to Humphrey, Superintendent of Police, there were very few complaints from servants against their masters for non-payment of wages, insufficient clothing, or for severe treatment. He thought the reason was because the masters had plenty of animal food and grain, and they were generally inclined to treat their men well.125 Great progress was made during Sorell’s administration, a positive system for the management of convicts was introduced, the prisoners were employed as servants to settlers or as labourers on public works; and as the

settlement extended, roads and bridges were constructed, and a steady tide of immigration expanded the bounds of settlement. A comparison of the system of recording convicts in New South Wales with that of Van Diemen’s Land,

demonstrates the New South Wales system was not as thorough as that instituted by Sorell. In New South Wales the office of the Principal Superintendent of Convicts was not set up until the leadership of Governor Ralph Darling,126 where the

information on each convict was not recorded in one place. Office registers were kept of punishments inflicted by the various courts, and to enable a check to be make, a number of registers had to be consulted, which became a time-consuming process.127

The assignment of convicts to private service had first been sanctioned by the instructions given to Governor Phillip in 1789 following his recommendation of the

HRA III, iii p.281 Humphrey to Bigge, 13 March 1820. 126

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

probable value of their labour to free settlers. In February 1820, there were 274 assigned servants at George Town and its surrounding districts.129 As it has been shown, although operating under difficult circumstances,130 a problem which was also to hinder his successor, on departure in 1824, Sorell left an operating assignment system for Arthur, which was approved by Bigge who noted the great ‘degree of method and regularity’ in the regulation of the convicts and Sorell’s ‘system of perpetual reference and general control’ which had been useful in the detection of crime.131

Sorell had inherited limited facilities for the reception of convicts, therefore creating overcrowding in what facilities were available, a situation which, according to Bigge was unfortunate. The convicts were obliged to provide themselves with lodgings in the town, which they either paid for by the ‘produce of their labour in their extra time, or by domestic services performed for their landlords’.132 In July 1825 the situation had not improved, as Arthur was also critical of overcrowding.133 Arthur, very conscious that he had been put in charge of a colony where the main purpose, for the British Government, was to be a large gaol, and the biggest single element of the population was an increasing body of convicts, paid particular attention to the administration of strict discipline in his thorough overhaul of the departments of

Account of Record Branch in Report of Board . . on Principal Superintendent of Convicts, enclosure in Bourke to D.O. 2 May 1834 CO 201/29 cited in Hirst, Convict society and its enemies,

p.91. 128

31 October 1800 in New South Wales, General Orders & Proclamations, safe 1/87 Mitchell Library Sydney cited F. Crowley, A Documentary History of Australia Volume 11788-1840, (West Melbourne, 1980), pp.96-8.

129

HRA III, iii p.722 Nominal List of Crown Prisoners, 19 February 1820. 130

One such circumstance was the lack of reliable information about convicts, see Appendix B. 131

Bigge, The Bigge Reports Volume 1, p.19. 132

government. His reorganization also impacted on the increasing numbers of free settlers arriving, the native-born, and also the convicts who were free by servitude.

HRA iii, iv p.284 Arthur to Bathurst, 3 July 1825. 134

CHAPTER 5