Stories : Tasmania
Penal Penalties
While some of the penal conditions were harsh, others weren’t -depending on the time and who was running the place. When the original convicts arrived from England, they weren’t imprisoned. They were assigned to work for someone as a ‘servant’. The idea was that, if this person proved to be trustworthy and rehabilitated after a couple of years, he or she would be given a ‘ticket of leave’ allowing travel anywhere in the colony to work for wages or set up a business.
Some well-behaved convicts were also granted plots of farming land. This had the authorities back in England in a bit of a quandary. On one hand, they were condoning a form of slavery. On the other, they were offering felons a far better lifestyle and future than most of the people had struggling in Dickensian London. Rather than being a deterrent, crime was becoming the ticket to freedom.
In 1838 the House of Commons decided that all transported prisoners would start their sentences working in gangs and living in barracks. Throw together a breakdown in communication between England and Australia, and a couple of harsh Governors in the colonies, and the result was an extremely unpleasant time for many of the convicts. Later, the assigning of convicts as servants was reintroduced, which pleased farmers looking for cheap labour. In 1858 transportation to eastern Australia ceased, primarily because people were queuing up to get on a boat, especially as gold had just been discovered in Victoria.
