Colonial Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s and 1830s is a precursor society to that planted in Southern Victoria in the 1830s and 1840s. People of varied social backgrounds began crossing Bass Strait to settle permanently on the southern mainland from 1834. Melbourne was founded in 1835. Until 1850, when it was renamed in honour of the Queen upon its separation from New South Wales, the new territory on the mainland was called the Port Phillip District. Substantial migration from Tasmania continued throughout the 1840s and into the 1850s.
Links between Tasmania and southern Victoria remained strong in these decades, not least because many squatters and proprietors maintained business interests on both sides of the Strait. Many of the workers and servants who had accompanied the employers to the mainland at Port Phillip were emancipated convicts originally transported to Van Diemen’s Land.
James Lowndes is Lionel’s great-great-grandfather on his maternal side and he was the first of Lionel’s forebears to arrive in Van Diemen’s Land. He was convicted of theft and transported to Hobart aboard the “Commodore Hayes”, which arrived in 1823. His journey to Australia was part of an extensive system of prisoner transfer organised and regulated by the British government. Prior to his departure, James would have known very little of Van Diemen’s Land, apart from the fact that it was a place people were sent to if they were convicted of a crime. He may have expected that he would not see England again, given that he had been given a life sentence.
George Arthur was the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1824 until 1836, the longest-serving colonial governorship in Australia’s history. He was the Lieutenant-Governor for virtually the entire period of James Lownde’s servitude. Arthur introduced several changes in administration that made the already harsh conditions for convicts even more severe. He tightened and expanded the surveillance system used to control convicts and honed the assignment system into an efficient form of government-regulated servitude.
Most convicts in the colony in this period were assigned to a local employer upon arrival. Under the assignment system the government saved money by transferring the cost of feeding and clothing convicts to the masters to whom they were allocated. The masters in return benefited from convict labor to develop farms and businesses. Transportation was both a method of punishing those found guilty of committing offences and a way of securing cheap, pliable labour that could be deployed on the colonial frontier. The great majority of convicts were transported for some form of theft.
George Arthur eventually departed Tasmania as one of the colony’s wealthiest men, having amassed a fortune through land speculation and the subsidised economic development of his property and businesses through the use of convict labor. Although George Arthur was harsh and brutal in his treatment of convicts, he was successful in growing the colony’s economy. He developed its infrastructure and set conditions that enabled private business to prosper.
The mid-1820s marked some of the most violent years of frontier conflict on the island. This was the time of the “Black War.” James Lowndes arrived in Van Diemen’s Land at the height of the conflict which led to the near total dispossession of Aboriginal Tasmanians. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur declared martial law in 1828, which gave a much freer rein to settlers in the war on First Nations peoples. Martial law was in effect for three years. Tasmania’s Aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty over their lands, but the sovereignty they exercised was in effect taken from them by the time George Arthur’s tenure ended. The primary method behind the erasure of Aboriginal sovereignty was the near genocide of men, women and children. This loss was clearly a form of theft, a crime much greater than the theft for which convicts were transported.
The violence which subsequently unfolded in the Western District was foreshadowed by what happened a few years earlier in Tasmania. The First Nations people of Tasmania had virtually everything taken from them, and this was replicated on the mainland.
The term “The Gentlemen in the Country” is used by the Commissioner of Crown Lands, Captain Foster Fyans, in a letter dating from September 1840. Commissioner Fyans was writing to Charles La Trobe, who had recently been appointed as the Superintendent of the Port Phillip District in 1839. Captain Fyans was initially appointed Police Magistrate for the Geelong district in 1837, overseeing a vast area including much of the Western District from Corio Bay to Portland. In early 1840, Fyans was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Portland Bay District.
In his letter to Superintendent La Trobe, Fyans uses the term “The Gentlemen in the Country” to refer to the squatters. When discussing the investigation and capture of Aboriginal men for trial, Fyans wrote: “It is a difficult thing to apprehend natives, with great risk of life on both sides. On the Grange, and many parts of the country, it would be impossible to take them; and in my opinion, the only plan to bring them to a fit and proper state is to insist on the gentlemen in the country to protect their property, and to “to deal with such useless savages on the spot.” This declaration of intent is indicative of how race relations in frontier districts were conducted, although most colonial officials were more circumspect in their correspondence.
Captain Fyans’ comments are an admission of the existence of ongoing warfare in parts of the Western District. Fyans was advocating that squatters should summarily execute any recalcitrant First Nations people who mounted resistance to officially sanctioned incursions onto Aboriginal land. One of the characteristics of a sovereign state is that it has a monopoly on the use of legitimized violence within the territory over which it claims sovereignty.
Foster Fyans, in his role as the Commissioner of Crown Lands, was in effect the chief security official of the Crown in the Western District. Fyans was advocating, in a letter to his superior, that squatters should use lethal violence against that section of the Indigenous population who resisted. The gentlemen should employ whatever means necessary to deal with Aboriginal people on “the spot.”
Fyans was clear that it was the squatters of the Portland Bay District who should defend “their property”. The “gentlemen” should resort to violence, and not the men of the lower orders, who by definition were not gentlemen. Squatters in the Port Phillip District were the armed enforcement agents of the Crown, at least tacitly, and thus the genocide in the Southwest was largely a state sponsored affair.
The line between state officials and squatters in those times was quite blurred, with many squatters appointed as magistrates in their local districts. The Crown’s officers were also squatters in many cases. Captain Fyans was himself a squatter. In 1838 he effectively issued a squatting license to himself. As an officer and a gentlemen, a man such as Fyans enjoyed a status that set him apart from the majority of the Europeans in the colony.
Servants are in a unique position to observe. They see what happens, but their subordinate social position renders them largely invisible to the decision makers, except when things go wrong and scapegoats need to be found. Masters decide the truth when servants speak. Workers were not regarded as representative of good society and existed largely outside the system that set the parameters of respectability.
In the penal colonies there was some controversy regarding the degree to which successful emancipists performing essential roles could be accepted in society. Certain colonial governors had more liberal views on this matter than some others. A few former convicts with strategic skills might eventually be accorded the status of gentleman for certain utilitarian purposes, but such instances of upward class acceptance were the exception.
The term “subaltern class” has been coined to refer to members of social groups who are outside the dominant classes. Most former convicts existed forever beyond the pale of deeply entrenched class barriers. It was crucial that a sufficiently controlled subaltern workforce was available to the upper classes in the Australian colonies, otherwise the plantation could not proceed. An entire section of the population was mostly socially invisible to the gentry, apart for their role as subaltern workers.
The trauma experienced by people exiled to Australia in this way must have been profound. This is well illustrated in the story of James Lowndes, and also in the story of Ann Higgins, the young woman James would marry several years after his arrival. Like James, Ann was transported under a life sentence for the theft of property. Like other transported convicts, James and Ann must have found themselves in a disorienting situation when first coming to Van Diemen’s Land. The shock of dislocation from what was familiar at home and the strange conditions on the island left an indelible mark.
The basic outline of James and Ann’s lives can be traced thanks to official records held by governments in Britain, Tasmania and Victoria. Many of these records have been digitized and made available online. Newspaper records from the transportation period of Tasmania’s history can now be accessed through the Trove digital portal.
One valuable source of information on female convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land is the website of “The Female Convicts Research Centre.” The Centre’s database includes an entry for Ann Higgins and the author has relied on information found there. Approximately one thousand six hundred and seventy-five women served time as convicts in Van Diemen’s Land before 1830. The majority of these women were employed in domestic service as housekeepers, nursemaids, cooks, laundresses and needleworkers.
It is apparent that life could be especially difficult and uncertain for convict women. Female convicts were much fewer in number than male convicts and there was great pressure to accede to offers of male protection within the bounds of what was socially acceptable. The alternative was a risky existence outside the bounds of social norms. Academic researchers are interested in the founder aspects of female convicts sent to Tasmania. Those females who married and raised a family in the penal colony have attracted considerable attention on the part of researchers.
A key source of information on James Lowndes and Ann Higgins can be found in the work compiled by Lynette Van Dijk and published in 1993 under the title “The Lowndes Family of Australia”. There is a reference to this document in the Catalogue of the National Library of Australia. The copy the author has was passed on to him by Lionel. In 1993 there was a gathering of descendants of James Lowndes and Ann Higgins, which Lionel and his brother Bill Jones attended. There are commemorative cups from this gathering.
It was from Lynette Van Djik’s research that Lionel and Bill became more fully aware of the early history of the Lowndes branch of the family. When growing up in Kirkstall and Koroit, Bill and Lionel knew some of their Lowndes relatives living in Bannockburn. As a teenager, Lionel visited these relatives around 1946, staying with them for some time. Prior to that, his grandmother Anastasia Lowndes had maintained some contact with her older sister, Harriet Lowndes.
Anastasia and Hariet’s father was born in Hobart in 1827 and he was also called James Lowndes, after his father. James Lowndes Senior was Anastasia and Hariet’s grandfather, transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1823, and their grandmother was Ann Higgins, transported in 1826. The author has some early childhood memory of Anastasia, and so even though the convict era belongs to the distant past, there is this connection across generations.
Lionel and Bill Jones did not acknowledge their family’s convict connection to Van Diemen’s Land until the early 1990s. Although they knew of an early Lowndes connection to Tasmania, the convict history was not documented until Lynette Van Dijk published her work. Even then, this knowledge was privately circulated and was not widely shared. As with many Victorian families, historic convict connections to Tasmania were erased or hidden in an effort to avoid stigma, to claim higher status, and to prevent repercussions.
Lynette Van Dijk’s booklet provides some details of James Lowndes and Ann Higgin’s life in England prior to transportation. This is supplemented by the publicly available government records of the period, now available online. Conveniently for modern researchers, much of the historical record can now be accessed from home.
Some details of James Lowndes Seniors’s early life in England are known. James’s family lived in Mobberley, near Knutsford, in Cheshire, which is twenty-three kilometers southwest of Manchester. The family had ten children, all born in Mobberley from 1787 to 1806. James, the fifth child, may not have received much individual attention and economic conditions were particularly tough for English families in those years. Born in 1795, James grew up during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
By the time of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, James was twenty years old. After the British victory over Napoleon’s forces, many soldiers were demobilized, leading to a depressed labor market and increased crime rates. This was a time of rapid economic change and social upheaval. Manchester was perhaps the first city in the world to industrialise and this economic turmoil came at great cost to the rural workforce of the surrounding agricultural districts.
A peculiar weather event significantly impacted social conditions around Manchester when James Lowndes was young. The massive eruption of Mount Tambora in modern-day Indonesia in 1815 released enormous clouds of volcanic ash and gases into the atmosphere causing global cooling the following year. Parts of Europe, still recovering from a series of long and debilitating wars, saw food riots and famine as a result.
The English Midlands experienced great social unrest at the time when James was living there prior to his transportation. This culminated in the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when a rally of 60,000 predominantly working-class men and women in Manchester was violently dispersed by soldiers and militia. Eighteen people died and many hundreds were injured when cavalrymen charged into the crowd, which had peaceably gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation at a time when such representation was very far from democratic. At the age of twenty-three and living nearby, James would have been keenly aware of these events and might even have been present at the rally.
When James was twenty-six, on 10 April 1822, he was convicted of “stealing in a dwelling house” alongside a certain Sarah Webb. Before his conviction, James last worked for a Mr. Sutterfield in Manchester and prior to that he spent five years working for a horse dealer named Mr. Wilkins, a man who lived two miles from Knutsfield. The trial took place at the Cheshire Assizes and he was sentenced to transportation for life. James’s native place at the time was recorded as Mobberley. The available information on his case comes from British penal and convict records.
This trove of information from official sources has been described by Deborah Oxley, editor of the fascinating “Digital Panopticon” website, as “one of the most detailed record sets on non-elite people in human history prior to modern times.” The “Digital Panopticon” website situates the colonization of Australia within Britain’s imperial past, making the point that “penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labor, invasion, dispossession, and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonization was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written.”
Following his conviction and before his transportation, James Lowndes spent time on one of the many hulks in the Thames River, compelled to undertake hard labor and kept under strict surveillance. Descriptions from the time depict the lives of prisoners on these decommissioned vessels moored on the river as harsh and bleak. One typical task was to collect gravel from the riverbanks for dock construction. Official penal records on men jailed on hulks were kept by the authorities. The report for James Lowndes records him as being orderly and single. His trade was listed as “farming labourer.” James was described as being five feet eight inches tall, with brown hair and brown eyes. This height was a bit taller than for the average male of the time, according to an analysis of British records from that period.
James Lowndes was transported to Van Diemen’s Land aboard the “Commodore Hayes”. This vessel was a three masted vessel of six hundred and seventy-eight tons built in Calcutta in 1817. In 1823 the ship was contracted to transport male convicts to Hobart and to transport a detachment of soldiers to Sydney. She departed England on April 26, 1823 with two hundred and nineteen male convicts on board, including James Lowndes, as well as the soldiers the 3rd Infantry Regiment, some of whom were accompanied by their wives.
After a journey lasting one hundred and twelve days, during which three convicts and a seaman died, the “Commodore Hayes” arrived in Hobart on August 16, 1823. Remarkably, an original manuscript journal written by an unknown soldier on board this ship is held by the State Library of New South Wales. It details daily life on the trip to Australia, including the birth of five children to soldiers’ wives during the voyage. It also details several incidents of harsh naval discipline and episodes of unrest aboard the ship.
Upon arrival, the ship was inspected by the colony’s Principal Superintendent of Convicts, who began individual records for every prisoner on board. After inspection, the prisoners were marched to barracks or other lodgings to await assignment. They were issued with rations and convict clothing. On 15 August 1823, a government advertisement, placed in the Hobart Town Gazette by the Lieutenant-Governor’s Secretary, announced the availability of a fresh contingent of convicts. The official notice stated that “all Settlers having Claims to Servants as Indulgence with Land or otherwise, are requested to apply at the Secretary’s Office, before Thursday next.”
A week later, the Hobart Town Gazette of 23 August reported that “The convicts from the ship “Commodore Hayes” were landed on Thursday; and, after the usual inspection by the Lieutenant Governor, were assigned to their several services. – These convicts landed in a very healthy and orderly state. Fifty proceeded immediately to Port Dalrymple, whither thirty from the ship “Competitor” were sent about a fortnight ago.”
Unfortunately, it remains unclear to whom James was initially assigned. When assigned to employers, convicts often found themselves serving on the estates of military officers or other senior officials of the Crown. There was an upsurge from the early 1820s of free settlers arriving in Van Dieman’s Land attracted by the promise of land grants. The assignment system expanded in the wake of the Bigge Report and an increasing number of convicts were assigned to the free settlers who had been granted land based on the capital they had brought to the colony.
Upon arrival, not all convicts were immediately assigned to settlers. Some convicts were employed in work gangs building roads, wharves, bridges and other infrastructure. For example, Tasmania’s oldest bridge of real substance was built over the Coal River at Richmond by convict labor. Construction commenced in December 1823, not long after James arrived at Hobart, and so he may have been pressed into service on this project together with many others. When completed in 1825, the Richmond Bridge was considered a triumph of colonial enterprise, permitting heavy vehicles to travel to the east coast, and later to Port Arthur. The necessity for the bridge was pointed out by Royal Commissioner John Bigge in 1820. John Bigge wrote his famous Bigge Report based on his lengthy field trip to New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land at the time when Lachlan Macquarie was Governor of New South Wales.
The Bigge Report was significant because it influenced how the transported convicts were utilized. The policy of greatly expanding the number of land grants issued to free settlers was aimed towards increasing the production of wool, an essential commodity in the rapid growth of British textile mills. Private capital was attracted to the colony by the promise of both land and labor. Textiles manufactured in Britain and sold on the global market was a justification for the expenditure outlaid in transmigrating a large convict workforce.
John Bigge’s recommendations were largely based on the ideas advocated in New South Wales by John Macarthur and others of his exclusive clique. Bigge had particular praise for John Macarthur, and in line with Macarthur’s views he recommended the occupation of extensive tracts of land for sheep grazing using assigned convict labor. Like Macarthur, he thought wool growing to be the only clear source of profitable industry for the Australian colonies. He favoured a harsh regime in the treatment of convicts in order that their productivity might be maximized and criticized the supposed leniency of Governor Lachlan Macquarie.
Henceforth land grants would only be provided to free settlers who could demonstrate that they possessed at least £500 in capital and in Tasmania each free settler was entitled to one convict for every hundred acres granted. Much of the Tasmanian economy became dominated by a network of business cartels operating under a political regime best described as a form of oligarchy.
John Bigge was the son of Thomas Charles Bigge, the High Sheriff of Northumberland. Prior to his arrival in Australia, John Bigge was Chief Judge of Trinidad, then a British slave plantation colony, a post he held for four years. He was educated at Westminster School in London and at Christ Church, Oxford, and he was made a barrister in 1806. Following Bigge’s recommendations, largely adopted, Australia’s economic development was henceforth underpinned by the expansion of the pastoral industry. This expansion was the primary driver of the genocide in southeast Australia.
Britain had been sending convicts to Australia for decades but transportation involved considerable public expenditure, and so in order to make the colonies more sustainable and cost-effective, from the 1820s the British adopted policies aimed at expanding the pastoral industry, identified in the Bigge Report as the economic hope of the continent. The people exiled to Australia were used as a labor force for pastoral expansion. The numbers of convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land increased sharply in line with the increase in the number of land grants awarded to free settlers in the 1820s, and the total volume of wool exports increased commensurately.
Crown land granted to free settlers in the Tasmanian Midlands came into the Crown’s procession by virtue of the fact that the Crown claimed it as its own. At the heart of this constitutional arrangement was the legal fudge of Terra nullius. The fact that the land was the ceremonial country of First Nations people was not recognized in any meaningful way. Dispossession proceeded step-by-step, as if run by an algorithm overseen by a bureaucratic administration.
The British regulations for the planting of the Tasmanian Midlands required that land should be cleared for stock and infrastructure provided. The construction of homesteads near reliable water points and the building of wool production facilities such as shearing sheds were the priorities. A convict workforce was preferred by the British administrators due to its availability, controllability and replaceability. Convicts did not have to be treated well as their moral redemption was seen as contingent on their suffering, which was seen as the proper response to their criminal convictions.
The slavery of a colored workforce was falling out of favor in England at that time. A workforce of coloured indentured laborers might also have been deployed in Tasmania, but for some reason this solution was mostly rejected. Non-white people were considered essential as subaltern workers in tropical climates but not necessarily so in milder climates. The transportation of convicts had the added benefit of removing from Britain a section of the population which respectable society considered surplus to their requirements. It was convenient to send the underclass to Tasmania partly because the Indigenous people of the island had proven resistant to being used as a subaltern workforce, with some exceptions.
Notions of social class were deeply embedded in the minds of all. When James Lowndes was transported to Tasmania, respectable British society viewed the social hierarchies as natural orders. People were grouped in lower to upper ranks due to supposedly inherent differences.
The ladies and gentlemen at the top of the social order relied upon the lower orders to get work done. There were many tasks which they themselves could not perform without losing status, or they could not perform certain tasks because they had insufficient skills or fortitude. The upper ranks needed to involve the lower orders in ways that were fundamentally structural, as well as deeply psychological. Built into the system and essential to its functioning was the perceived moral and intellectual inferiority of the subaltern population.
Social hierarchy in the colony was reinforced by the quasi-military nature of the regime that governed the island. In colonial society, perhaps even more than in England, people were keen to mark themselves as men and women of good standing. There was an expectation that colonists should know their place in the hierarchy and relate to other people in society according to their rank. In a military regime, hierarchy according to rank was part of the structure. Free settlers who came to Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s were largely from the upper and middle classes of English and Scottish society. Many had connections with the military or with the church or the learned professions, all institutions based on strict hierarchies. The upper classes were literate, had capital, and dressed and spoke like people of importance.
Throughout the 1820s those with capital and connections received grants of Crown land upon application. Those who qualified were assigned convicts based on the amount of capital they could bring to the colony. The size of the grants reflected social status. Letters of recommendation from key administrative gatekeepers in Britain were important in vetting appropriate people for grants of land. There was a significant amount of corruption in the process of dispensing these grants. Having the means and the connections required to navigate the application process was essential for acquiring land.
Land ownership was the cornerstone of wealth and status in Van Diemen’s Land. Wool production and its export became the largest industry on the island. Tasmanian wool was almost entirely shipped to Britain for industrial manufacturing.
In the early 1820s, a specific contingent of middle-class settlers from England and the Scottish Lowlands established themselves in the Tasmanian Midlands and in the towns of the island. This cohort is especially significant in Western District history. After taking root in Tasmania, these proprietors, professionals and merchants subsequently transferred part of their family business to the mainland at Port Phillip and Portland Bay.
The British government oversaw the commercial, legal, and financial regulation of Tasmania’s economy. Those granted land did not have to pay for it, but they were required to invest their capital to improve their property and enhance their productivity. Many settlers were backed by finance from England and Scotland channeled through a newly reformed system of banking and shareholding. Often commercial entities were based around family networks. The government was also responsible for the supply of convict labor and the regulation of servitude, without which the economy of Van Diemen’s Land could not function. The state had great scope in its control over development but its program was carried out by commercial interests tied to the market.
While violence may not have been the aim of this pattern of settlement, it was the material consequence of British policy and practice. Aboriginal resistance to British interests was not tolerated. Those who openly resisted were killed or imprisoned. Convicts were forced to comply through threats of violence. James Lowndes’s arrival in Van Diemen’s Land in 1823 coincided with the most significant period of pastoral expansion and with the conflict known as the Black Wars.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars resulted in a surplus of military officers in Britain. Some of these officers received substantial sums of money upon retiring, while others remained on half-pay and pursued other business interests. As John Reynolds notes in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, “The ready availability of land suitable for sheep-breeding and wool-growing and of cheap assigned labour attracted a considerable number of former army and navy officers who brought their families, household goods, agricultural implements and in many cases substantial capital with them.”
Perversely, the end of the wars in Europe led to an increase in young men sentenced to transportation. There were now fewer wars to which surplus young men might be sent. Industrialization increased poverty and crime rates in Britain, further contributed to the number of young people being convicted and thus available for transportation.
The years from 1821 to 1830 marked the height of pastoral expansion in Van Diemen’s Land. Approximately four thousand free settlers were awarded land grants along the rivers of the midland plains between Hobart and Launceston, as well as along the Tamar River north of Launceston and various locations along the East Coast. The entire midland area of the island became known as the “Settled Districts.” Supporting these settlers were at least five thousand convicts and ex-convicts, employed as stockkeepers and shepherds and in other roles such as carting.
Many of the free settler gentlemen who arrived in Tasmania during the 1820s were accompanied by their wives and children and their extended family members, in a process which bolstered the size of the middle class. Additionally, a significant number of free settlers brought their indentured domestic servants with them and some brought skilled tradesmen from Britain. The expanding middle-class became a market for British manufactured goods and the merchant class accordingly benefited from this growth in trade. Van Diemen’s Land did become more self-sufficient and economically more developed by 1835, and so it is often claimed that Bigge’s vision for Australia was a success. The price for this undoubted economic development was paid by others.
James Lowndes arrived in Hobart aboard the “Commodore Hayes” in 1823. That year, 175,704 hectares of land were granted to scores of newly arrived free settlers and to those settlers already established. These grants were collectively the largest amount granted in a single year during the convict era in Van Diemen’s Land. James Lowndes thus arrived at the height of pastoral expansion in Tasmania. Coincidently, George Arthur was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land in 1823, although he arrived in Hobart the following year.
In November 1825, Van Diemen’s Land gained separation from New South Wales and thus independence from government administration from Sydney. Nevertheless, Tasmania remained firmly under British rule from London. By 1830, nearly half a million hectares of pastoral land had been granted to free settlers, which represented most of the accessible land suitable for this purpose. The fact that suitable land for pastoralism was in short supply by the early 1830s was a key reason new free settlers to Tasmania such as the Hentys, the Manifolds, the Batmans, the Mercers and the Learmonths, and many others, were all eyeing the southern coast of the mainland. Pastoralism had yet to commence there, partly due to the fact that such expansion was contrary to British and New South Wales regulations in place at that time.
The “Digital Panopticon” website, dedicated to examining the convict period, states: “The creation of Australia as a sheep-run took a little time, but it worked, based on monied men, merinos, convict shepherds, and a lot of land – a very big lot of land. Pickings of grass were thin on Australian soil, and it took 6 acres to support one sheep. The land grab that ensued brought intensified conflict with Australia’s First Nations.”
Wool from Australia supported an important British industry. In the wake of the Bigge Report, the “Digital Panopticon” website adds that “The new agenda promoted the private sector and fostered an export-based economy supplying wool to Britain, making good use of a mainly male population. Wealthy immigrants were to be attracted with large land grants and free convict labour. Places of secondary punishment were to be established for discipling the large, coerced workforce.
“The Digital Panopticon” website is a remarkable resource. It draws upon various official datasets to illustrate the workings of the convict system. The term “Panopticon” means “all-seeing eye”, which is adopted to describe the government’s system of control and surveillance over convicts. According to the website, “most assigned convicts worked without restraint and were for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from other members of the colonial lower orders. Those that escaped further encounters with the courts could expect to be rewarded after a number of years’ service with a ticket-of-leave. This indulgence operated as a form of probation, enabling the recipient to work for wages. It was also common practice to reward good service with early release in the form of a conditional pardon.”
When James Lowndes arrived in 1823, much of the Midlands remained under the control of Aboriginal clanspeople, with an estimated population of about two thousand people. This situation did not last. The European population increased from seven thousand one hundred and eighty-five in 1821 to 24,279 in 1830. The increase in the European population perhaps inevitably led to increased conflict over land and resources.
Conflict was most intense in the years immediately following James Lowndes’ arrival. By the end of the 1820s, nearly one million sheep grazed on about one-third of the island, transforming the colony. While there were concerns expressed regarding the impact of this expansion on Aboriginal people, these were greatly overshadowed by those extolling the benefits of economic growth for Tasmania and for British industry at home.
In 1828, Martial Law was declared in the Settled Districts, authorizing the military to capture or shoot any Aboriginal person found at large in these districts. In February 1830, the government introduced a bounty of five pounds for every adult Aboriginal person captured and two pounds for every child taken. By 1835, Tasmania was declared to be effectively “free of Aborigines”. This was in the aftermath of considerable conflict. It also followed the policy of enforced removal of surviving Aboriginal people to Bass Straight islands. The entire elimination of Indigenous people wasn’t actually achieved but the notion of Tasmania as a place “free” of Aboriginal people persisted for a long time.
Officials with a distinctly Christian evangelical outlook, such as Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, blamed the convicts and ex-convicts for the dispossession and killing of Aboriginal people. While unsurprising, this example of blatant hypocrisy should be seen as convenient scapegoating in order to deflect blame from where it should lie. It was the policies of the British authorities, particularly under George Arthur’s governorship, that were at the root of genocide. The land grant system, the assignment system, and the regulations governing free settler immigration were all the Crown’s responsibilities, as were the policies of Aboriginal bounty and enforced removal to offshore islands.
Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur became very wealthy through land appropriation and assigned convict exploitation. Prior to his appointment in Van Diemen’s Land, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur served as Superintendent of British Honduras, a Central American colony characterised by extensive use of slave labor and the forced transportation of African men and women. British Honduras was a rigid hierarchical society where class and race determined social ranking. Similar to the administration of Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s, governance in Honduras was under a British military regime. Before his posting to Honduras, Arthur served as an officer during the Napoleonic Wars. In this regard, he was typical of many of Britain’s colonial officials in Australia. They were frequently military men with experience overseas in roles in other parts of the empire.
Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur was a major beneficiary of the system he developed. Arthur was frequently accused of using insider knowledge to accumulate a personal fortune through land sales and the improper exploitation of convict labor. By the time he left, he had accumulated wealth far beyond what he could legitimately have garnered from his official stipend. He was also accused of appointing friends, family, and loyalists to key government positions. He was at the head of a “clique” which dominated colonial affairs. To blame the convict class for the corruption and crime in Tasmanian society, or for the inter-racial violence, is entirely disingenuous and self-serving. As people say in South America, a fish smells from its head.
The island in this period had more than its fair share of “colorful characters” at the top of the tree. One such figure was Edward Lord, a British officer in the marines. Edward Lord was an influential government magistrate, banker, and merchant. At one point, Edward Lord was the richest man in Tasmania, having acquired vast tracts of land and much livestock through a series of corrupt and dubious dealings.
A Tasmania free of its Aboriginal inhabitants appears to have been exactly what the leading British cliques set out to achieve on the island, regardless of what may have been said in public or conveyed through official correspondence. In London influential evangelical gentlemen needed to be appeased. Whereas members of the liberal middle class in Britain were increasingly troubled by reports of atrocities occurring in the colonies, locally on the island, the landowners and government officials met the displacement, killing, and exile of Aboriginal Tasmanians with general indifference or tacit approval. On the island, gentlemen consoled themselves with finger-pointing at convicts.
Even a prominent scientific visitor to Tasmania expressed his understanding regarding this infamous turn of events. Charles Darwin visited Hobart in 1836 as part of his “Voyage of the ‘Beagle’” expedition. Darwin wrote that “The Aboriginal blacks are all removed & kept (in reality as prisoners) … I believe it was not possible to avoid this cruel step.” When he returned to England, he added the following: “When two races of men meet, they act precisely like two species of animals, – they fight, eat each other, bring diseases to each other &c., but then comes the most deadly struggle, namely which have the best fitted organization, or instincts (i.e., intellect in man) to gain the day. …in Van Diemen’s Land – they [ the Black Race] have been exterminated on principles strictly applicable to the universe …”
For Charles Darwin, the demise of Aboriginal Tasmanians fit perfectly into his theory of the evolutionary survival of the fittest, which he clearly considered to also apply to humans. For him it was completely natural that Aboriginal people should be erased from the island. When considering this triumph of English blood, he wrote: “I do not know of a more striking instance of the comparative rate of increase of a civilized over a savage people”.
Charles Darwin’s musings regarding the convict men and women he saw in Sydney and Hobart are equally revealing. While he considered the English gentry to be at the apex of human development, he considered the convicts to be a dangerously low order of human life who needed to be controlled and profitably exploited by men at a higher evolutionary level. Darwin felt threatened by the very sight of convicts and became particularly incensed by the presence of ex-convicts mingling in polite society. This notion offended his sense of the proper order appropriate to British society.
Additionally, Darwin was deeply troubled by the possibility that freed convicts might interact as equals with the gentlemen of the colony and their good womenfolk. He observed at Sydney a society “rancorously divided,” particularly between the free settlers and the emancipist former convicts and their children. He expressed concern that the children of free settlers were being corrupted by constant association with convict servants, a “degraded” class of people from whom the settlers’ children acquired “the vilest expressions” and ideas. Nevertheless, he credited forced convict labor as a primary reason for the colony’s rapid early prosperity.
Such attitudes might now be seen as an example of conspiracy theory backed by pseudo-science. It is important to remember that throughout the Western world in the late nineteenth century and well into the early twentieth century, European culture was deeply infiltrated by white supremacist ideologies supported by the pseudo-science of eugenics.
If convicts did not do what they were told, they could face severe punishments, including the lash or even public execution, among other cruel and violent treatment. Public execution was practiced, and the bodies of executed convicts were left hanging as a warning to others. Convicts were also at the mercy of their free settler masters, who could bring them before a magistrate at any time. Many of the magistrates were also the local gentry landowners. Convicts who violated the law while serving their sentences faced harsh incarceration in places of secondary punishment, such as at Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour. The threat of these places of secondary punishment was ever-present. Female convicts risked being sent to oppressive Female Factories, such as those in Hobart and other locations.
During George Arthur’s rule over the island there was a system of perpetual surveillance and control over convicts, maintained through regular musters, passes, and records kept of poor behaviour and lack of compliance. Every convict had an entry in a book that was started upon his or her arrival in Tasmania and then added to over the years until they died or were granted a pardon at the end of their sentence. These ledger entries were part of a wider system of comprehensive scrutiny which tracked people for years, but which are now an invaluable font of information for researchers.
The name of the convict transport ship on which a prisoner traveled became permanently linked to that prisoner from the time of their arrival in the colony. For example, James Lowndes was associated with the “Commodore Hayes” from the moment he landed. Convict records and newspaper notices regularly referred to him as “James Lowndes, Commodore Hayes.” This was done so that there was a known date of arrival in the colony for each convict and to distinguish one convict from another. It essentially functioned as a convenient indexing system for official record-keeping.
When researching convict forebears, especially those with common names, knowing the ship they arrived on can be extremely valuable. Unfortunately, this is not always easy. In the case of James Lowndes, his name is unique enough to stand out, but identifying other convicts can be much more challenging. For instance, the name “Thomas Jones” was shared by many convicts, one of whom was apparently another forebear of Lionel Jones. Additionally, many convicts used aliases, further complicating efforts to trace their identities.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, a leading scholar of Australia’s convict history, has extensively examined the assignment system in Van Diemen’s Land. He concludes that the system of surveillance and control became much more intrusive from the mid-1820s after Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur took charge. His writing provides descendants with a detailed understanding of Tasmania’s unique colonial system and the author is indebted to him.
According to Maxwell-Stewart, this system, while similar in some respects to Britain’s plantation economies elsewhere in the empire, offered a distinctive approach to labor exploitation. Convicts were allocated to landholders, officials, and to business owners. These masters were required to provide their assigned convicts with convict clothing, basic housing, and adequate food and drink in exchange for their coerced labor.
While the convict system was harsh, it did not reach the level of barbarity seen in the Atlantic Slave Trade, with its vast network of African slaves exploited on plantations. Unlike chattel slaves, who could be bought and sold as property, convicts in Australia were unfree servants with the prospect of eventual pardon. Convicts in Australia were regarded as human beings with certain inherent rights, rather than as mere property to be bought and sold. Most convicts spent only part of their lives under sentence. However, the stigma of transportation lingered throughout their lives.
Most of the convicts sent to Australia were convicted of theft, and the majority of convicts were young, primarily in their late teens or twenties. This was the case with both James Lowndes and Ann Higgins. Selection of convicts was based on their potential to contribute to the labor essential for developing the colonial economy. Individuals whose potential as workers was insufficient to justify the expense of their transportation were generally excluded from selection.
From very early on, the British seem to have applied a racial selection criteria to Australia, which is strange when you think about it. The British could have chosen a workforce from an alternative racial background if they had so desired. They deliberately chose a subaltern population from primarily within their own underclass and from the northern and western margins of their home islands. Non-white convicts were transported to Australia in relatively small numbers. A deliberate policy decision was taken whereby Australia was a place designated for white people. The bulk of the non-white people who were convicted within the empire found themselves sent to other places.
For instance, a convicted felon in British India would be transported to Australia if they were white, but if they were Indian then they would be sent to another location. There does seem to have been an ideological drive to plant a recreated British society in Australia, for whatever reason. There is a clear ideological and religious motivation at play beyond any evident economic rationale.
In colonial Australia, convicts had the prospect of obtaining a conditional pardon, which offered hope for an improved life for themselves and their children. The Digital Panopticon website outlines the key aspects of this system. The process began with convicts receiving tickets-of-leave which granted limited freedom of movement and the ability to work for their own benefit. If their behavior was deemed acceptable, they could gain conditional pardons which provided still more autonomy in life and even greater freedom in employment. These “privileges” were contingent on adherence to the rules and evidence of moral improvement. Eventually, a conditional pardon could lead to a free pardon, theoretically restoring full civil rights.
However, the stigma of being a former convict persisted throughout a person’s life and might extend to their children. This intergenerational stigma often led families to conceal or erase their convict background in subsequent generations. Moreover, acquiring pardons and navigating the system involved financial payments to officials, or other services, with corruption frequently permeating relations between free and non-free. The underclass grew to be deeply cynical with regard to those in authority over them, and it was attended by a rejection of the standards of the ruling class to some extent.
The Shadows of the Gentlemen 