This is remember when with Harvey Degan on Perth six pr.
Open the door, Richard, open the door and let me in. Open the door, Richard, rich.
Don't you than that door?
And he has, and he's sitting opposite me in the studio, Richard. Often a very good evening to yourself.
Good evening to you. And I've got to ask, where did you dredge those songs up before?
Then?
They magnificent, magnificently appalling.
Well they were, I think so, yeah, And I did say before we played them all that they should constitute the worst songs people have ever heard.
Yeah, I think you're right there.
There are some, Seriously, there are some one hit wonders that are really nice songs, really wonderful. The fact that there weren't any not those, Yeah, they weren't, no horrible they but there are songs that are nice and we're only we're one hit wonders. And they never ever sort of replicated that with any other songs, but a particular individual or a group.
I'm thinking of graud Show Marx's famous line as he left to parties that I had a marvelous time, but this was not it.
Indeed, now I know that you have a special topic tonight to discuss with us, and I do hope that you deliver that topic with some conviction.
Oh thank you.
Yes, it's actually this month one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary of the first convicts arriving to the West an Australian penal colony. But before we get into that, can I put my Royal Western Australian Historical Society hat.
On because something really important coming up.
There is we've got our annual lecture which is on Wednesday, the second of July six for six thirty pm. And I can tell you I've heard this chap speak before. It's an amazing topic. It's the title is Weaving History into Filmmaking and it's from the LOGI winning Tracks of Glory, which was made by Paul Barron who's a film and television producer and writer. And I've heard him speak before. He is fascinating and he has brought history alive with
these films. And it should be a really good evening because he's very entertaining as well.
He really is.
So as I say, it's Wednesday, the second of July at the UWA Club Auditorium and big booking is essential. The cost is forty dollars, but it'll be forty dollars well spent, I can assure you, and that's for society funds.
And you can.
Book a ticket on our website Historywest dot org dot au or by phoning the Lovely Leslie in our office on nine three eight six three eight four one, So that's nine three eight six three eight four one, and we'd love to see you there.
And if you didn't quite get that number, kight, he's got it, so give us a buzzer on one double three eight eighty two and one as well. Then yeah'll probably be what's the capacity of the auditorium well over one hundred, so it probably need to because I think that'll be rush because he is very good.
He is fantastic, he really is. Yeah.
So back to the convicts, and I will speak with convictions.
You say.
These convicts arrived on the I loved the story and we'll go into it later on the first of June eighteen fifty. But they actually weren't the first convicts to come to the colony. There may have been lots of others on boats that went round Western Australia, but the first convicts actually arrived in King George Sound on Christmas Day eighteen twenty six, and they were part of a party of people from New South Wales to come here.
In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, which finished in eighteen fifteen, there were fears that France was going to lay claim to the western seaboard of Australia, and in March of eighteen twenty six, Henry Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, sent a letter to the Governor of New South Wales and in it he requested that, if found suitable, a settlement should be a
state bablished in King George Sound. Now several other British explorers have been there, George Vancouver and Matthew Flinders in particular, and this was because it was on the shipping route between Britain and Port Jackson. This prompted Governor what Ralph Darling to send Major Edmund Lockier to establish a settlement in the area with twenty troops and twenty three convicts. And I think I was searching the other day for it.
I think I read somewhere in total. With the civilians that were coming here, it was a party of about eighty but I might have dreamt that.
I don't know.
They arrived in King George Sound on Christmas Day. Od data to arrive in a place, isn't there.
A bit the shops want to open?
No, I don't think they were actually and the settlement
was called Fredericktown after King George's son Frederick. They also bought with them enough domestic animals, food crops and building materials to start this small and very remote in those days outpost, and the convict presence was maintained in the settlement until about November of eighteen thirty so, after the Swan River Colony had been formed, and at that time the control of Frederictown was let over to the Swan River Colony and the troops and convicts withdrew back to
New South Wales, and so that colony continued. The small proportion of laborers in the colony meant that everything was slow, and incidentally Fredericktown Sterling renamed Albany, and so Elbany celebrates its two hundredth anniversary of its founding next year. Whereas we have to wait until a nineteen no twenty twenty nine, aren't we Yeah, I have to think about it, yep.
That's it.
So the Swan River Colony had been formed, and for the first fifteen years the people of the colony were generally opposed to the idea of accepting convicts. Even though there was a very small laboring force here and they were making well. There weren't enough of them to make any significant progress on building infrastructure like roads, bridges, fortresses or whatever. But the idea of asking the British government to send convicts was in constant circulation and discussion almost
from the start of the colony. As early as eighteen thirty one, permission was requested by a colonial land owner that three hundred swing rights swing riot. I can't even say it convicts, and I haven't had anything to drink. That's probably the problem. Three hundred swing Riot convicts were requested to be brought here but refused.
Now it's interesting the swing.
Riots were widespread uprising in the agri between agricultural workers back in the UK worried about the mechanization of farming. And it all began in my neck of the woods, down in the Elam Valley in Kent, with the destruction of a threshing machine. Obviously, before that, laborers had done the threshing. This destruction was in the summer of eighteen thirty and by December the riots had spread throughout the South of England and East Anglia and caused a lot
of problems. And you can see their point. They were worried that they were going to lose their jobs. Someone that lost their freedom. They certainly did, and were sent to all sorts of places. Even so, the idea of convicts coming here was discussed at length, and there was an editorial in the Freemantle Observer promoting the need for convict labor.
And George Fletcher Moore, who was.
The Commissioner of the Civil Court in the early days of the Swan River Colony, wrote in his diary mister Brown, that was the colonial secretary called yesterday. He wants me to sketch a plan for employing prisoners as a working gang, the governor being anxious to occupy them in this way if the settlers will pay for a superintendent. But that came to nothing, and in eighteen thirty four Captain Frederick Irwin of the sixty third Regiment suggested that they the
colony take in some Indian convicts. These would be used for constructing roads and bridges and things like that, but yet again that was pushed to one side. Also in the same year, there was a meeting of settlers in King George Sound, Albany, and they passed a motion that labor was definitely needed. This was for the work of clearing land around Albany and creating roads, but it was defeated by the Western Australian Agricultural Society, who didn't like the idea of convicts.
Now.
Just a few years later, in eighteen thirty nine, Governor John Hutt, the second Governor of Western Australia, received a letter from the Colonial Office in London asking the colony to accept junior juvenile prisoners. These were young people who had been first reformed in i quote penitentiaries especially adapted
for the purpose of their education and reformation. After seeking comment from the agricultural society here, Hutt responded the majority of the community would not object to boys above the age of fifteen, but that the labor market could not support more than thirty boys a year, and subsequently two hundred and thirty four juvenile prisoners were transported here from Parkhaus Prison. Incidentally, that's now a top security prison on
the Isle of Wight. They came between eighteen forty two and eighteen forty nine, but they were classed as apprentices here of course, no convict name whatsoever.
And I guess we ought to take a break.
Caught we I think you need to make you're going great, Gunzi. You can take a little sip of your cool clear water and we shall be back before you've had a chance to miss it.
On Perth six PR. This is remember when with Harvey Degan.
And Richard Oftens in the studio with me, he's going through the early days of the convicts here, just a year or two after the settlement of the Swan River colony and down albany Way. And you may have those of you listening out there. You may have direct links back to those convicts if you do give us a call and have a chat about them. One double three A to eighty two. Once upon a time you never flush people out, it was, isn't it. Yeah, desperate to find a convict in our ancestry.
Now, Just a funny little aside. A friend of mine, an old teaching colleague of mine back in the UK, when he first came to visit us here about ten years ago. He remarked when he got here that they'd given him the green immigration card on the plane to fill in and he said, there was a question that said, have you been convicted of anything? And he said, I didn't know. It was still compulsory.
Lie. That was a great line that was dropped on immigration by the great cricket commentator John Arlott.
Oh, yes, like that.
You remember from now.
I'm sure Stathan.
Coming in now from the northern end. And he was brilliant, He was absolutely brilliant. And they said do you have any previous conviction? I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was still great line.
So getting back to these apprentices, the lads with the best will in the world, you know, fifteen year olds weren't going to set the world on fire with their skills and knowledge of building roads.
They'll be on their mobile phones all the time.
Well of course they would, yes, stupid boy.
And so it didn't help with the severe labor shortage here and serious lobbying for Western Australia to become a penal colony began in eighteen forty four and at that time the members of the York Agricultural Society and they were having the biggest problems because the road from York to person Fremantle was virtually non existence, dust bowl in summer,
quagmire in winter, and absolutely useless. They brought forward emotion stating that it is the opinion of this meeting that inasmuch as the present land regulations have entirely destroyed our labor fund, we conceived that the Home Government, that's the English government, British government are bound in justice to supply us with some kind of labor. And after mature deliberations, we have come to the determination of petitioning the Secretary of State for the Colonies for a gang of forty
convicts to be exclusively employed in public works. I just love the words that are used.
We've got a listener wishes to have a chat. Jeff of Eastvic Parkers John.
Could I Jeff good Harvey? How are you welcome the bushranger Moundine. Joe is a relative of mine.
Wow? How is his name?
Was Joseph Bealitho John.
That's right? Yes, from Barry in Wales.
His mother was married Belitho and Belitho is an ancient Cornish Homers in the Domestay book.
Yeah it is, yes.
He wasn't a convict though, was he He was a bush ranger.
No, he was a convict to start.
He was.
Transported here for stealing in I thought a little bit about Moondan didn't know that bit, and he.
Kept gaping from Frio, so they built him a special cell so he couldn't get out.
That's right.
Yes, he was the Houdini of the nineteenth century in Western Australia.
There's no doubt out it.
So my surname is Blitho bl igh O and his mother's name was Blo.
That was too fantastic. Cool.
Yeah, what do you know?
Can you Are you good at escaping?
I've never been in sight.
Well, just escaping the washing up in the evening is a skill I find anyway.
I'm a bachelor of Well, there you go, the Moondine Joe story.
That's my favorite Moondiine story. Just digressing. And he was He was a British convict, of course, silly Harvey. What he was doing at Fremantle Jail. He was sentenced to hard labor and that meant breaking rocks. But because they're a bit worried about him escaping, they brought the rocks into the prison that's a true story. And so he was breaking the rocks, and then when the guards weren't watching, he was also whacking the walls of the fremental prison
with the sledgehammer. Sledgehow and that's how we escape. Amazing. You must be very you must be very proud to have to have him in your lineage. Jeff.
Yeah, well I only found out a couple of years ago. I've had romas, but I'm still I actually go and did not for a fact.
You know.
No, Well, that's great, indeed, good only, thank you very much. Anyone else has got links to any convince. It was a buzz, yeah, certainly. So.
The your agricultural society said that we really ought to have convicts here, but there was still strenuous opposition to it. But you know, other particularly the agricultural society, is cottoned onto this, and they kept saying that the convicts would provide much needed labor to help with the infrastructure. And but that eighteen forty five petition was rejected you nanimously by the Council, the Legislative Council. They stated that the
necessity for such an application is not apparent. No dearth of labor can be so extreme as to call for or warrant our having recourse to such a hazardous experiment for a supply, so they weren't too keen on it. However, to address the problems raised by the petition, the Legislative Council asked, with great misgivings, for the British Government to send out a small number of convicts for a limited term.
When the reports of the Council's debate on the introduction of convicts arrived in Britain in eighteen forty eight, the British government.
Took great interest in them.
Not surprisingly, by this time the only British colonies still willing to accept convicts under protest were Canada and Van Demon's Land now Tasmania. Even New South Wales had stopped. By then. A tentative attempt to institute a penal system within England had caused public outcry and had been dispen suspended. With nowhere else to send convicts, the numbers of British jails had in jails had increased, and there were serious problems over there.
Well, what do you know, Steve of Beachbrook, That a lot of story to tell us, could I.
Steve good Evening? Yes, Tarby and Richard. Hello, Yes, my great great grandfather was a Parker's boy.
Wow.
He came out on the Cumberland in eighteen forty six. Yeah, and he was of the ripe old age of nine crust packers. Boy.
Is incredible, isn't it. What did he do steal a handkerchief or a loaf?
Me that I haven't found out what his crime was? Yes, terrible really when you think about how old you could send somebody like halfway around the world nowhere, yes, at nine?
Yeah, yeah, I mean how did you survive on the ship for three or four months?
As incredible? All that? All that?
Yes, poor little blighter, Well it must have carved a pretty good future for himself. You must have been a lad of strong character.
Steve Well, Yes, I guess.
I guess they put them to work pretty much down at wherever it was done in the Southwest that they hadn't and.
I think a lot of them were built.
Yeah, I think a lot of them were put into domestic labor, weren't they, and things like gardeners and that sort of thing, because a nine year old wouldn't be up to building a bridge, I don't think.
Year. No, maybe apprenticed of some sort. I'm not sure. I don't have all the story about his life because I'm still looking into that.
Yeah, that'll be interesting to you. What give us a buzz back when you delve into PA. We'd love to know the history of a nine year old who's made good after being deported at that age. Good only stay.
Thanks for you, Colling, You're welcome.
Thank you. That's great.
Yeah, has got some good I thought it, thought it might bring some people out tonight.
Yeah.
So yet again the British government said, nap, We're not doing that. We're not sending you them on a fixed term. You either have them for life or not at all. And that led to even more concern over here about getting them, should we have them or not? And after the break, I'll talk about a public meeting. In February of eighteen forty nine.
This remember when with Harvey Degan on Perth six PR.
Richard often talking about our early convicts. I suppose they're all early weren't they?
Well they yes to tortoism, Yes, yes, So in February of eighteen forty nine, this whole issue of are we going to have convicts? Aren't we came to a head, and there was a public meeting held in what we now call the old Courthouse down in Sterling Gardens. Three hundred attended it, and on they say there was a hot debate, But on a February day with three hundred in there.
I think everything was hot.
I think there were a few who fainted. I don't know, but very soon a majority view emerged that in support of a proposal put forward by Laronel Sampson, who of course was a merchant in Fremantle. Sampson argued that the colony needed both labor and capital, and he thought that a penal colony would not only bring the labor, but there would be some money coming with it from the
British government to help. They got the convicts, but not a lot of money, and as a result, Governor Fitzgerald was able to tell the Colonial Office that the colony had decided that we could be turned into a convict colony in May of eighteen forty nine. She's quite quick
after the February meeting. When you think that letters had to go backwards and forwards by ship, I'm wondering whether the British government had decided to impose the colony the convicts on us, because there was an order in Council that on the first day of June of eighteen forty nine that Western Australia would become a penal colony.
Because we should remember that the whole philosophy behind convict settlement of Australia from Britain was to clear out the British jail.
That's right, moved the dross somewhere well away from them.
Yeah, and it has to be said.
In eighteen fifty anticipation of the first convicts arriving, the Legislative Council debated a convict discipline bill and it didn't get too far, the Inquirer reported on the second of January. Notwithstanding the many alterations and amendments effected at the former sitting, the bill had to undergo still further pruning, as it was red clause by clause discussion. There was none rambling. Conversation took place, sometimes three or four speaking at once.
That sounds like Premiers question.
Time to me. But anyway, and as later as late January that year, the Birth Gazette was reporting that we would get some convicts, and the first convict ship, of course, arrived on the first of June eighteen fifty in Fremantle, much to the surprise of everyone here. They weren't expecting them. Really, yeah, it's lovely. I love the irony of this. You couldn't
make this up. It Nobody mentioned this in the articles in the newspapers, but evidently the convict ship had overtaken the ship bringing the message to say you're going to receive convicts. So I don't think communications have got much better in the last two hundred years.
Anyway.
As a result, they'd got seventy five convicts and nowhere to put them, so Daniel Scott, who was the Freemantle harbor Master, rented out his wall store as a secure place to keep them until they the convicts built their own prison basically which is now Freemantle Prison. Now Captain Edmund Henderson was responsible for the seventy five convicts on board, as well as the pensioner guards and with the warders and their families who accompanied them.
So these these.
Pensioner guards were allowed to bring their family with them free of free of charge. There was a total of two hundred and seventy seven passengers on board, so they'd found a place to lock the convicts up, but nobody seems to have thought about where on Earth all of the others were going to stay, so that must have
been a problem as well. And the Britain's penal colony was great or penal system was gradually being reformed and it began to deal with more of its minor offenders at home, and this meant that UK transporter transported higher proportion of serious offenders to wa and from eighteen fifty one to eighteen fifty three the number of convicts arriving in the colony increased quite considerably. The mood of the free population changed from popular to support to one of
great concern. But it has to be said that the vast proportion of the convicts who came here were pretty well behaved. There were only a few, like Moondine Joe, who were a problem. The colony, when it asked for these convicts, set three conditions. Initially, no female convicts, no political prisoners, and no convicts convicted of serious crimes should be transported here. Well, the only one the British government
took notice of was no female convicts. We had quite a few serious offenders and quite a good number of political ones, particularly the Fenians. We know about the cat helper rescue. The first one was as I say, the ladies was kept throughout the second one until eighteen sixty eight when the last it was the last convict ship brought the sixty two Fenians to Western Australia, and the others, as I said, really weren't too too badly behaved for
serious criminals. They were mainly thieves and that sort of thing. Well, no bit worse than that, stealing really valuable stuff. I think we had a few murderers, but not so many of them. And between eighteen fifty and eighteen sixty eight, when the last ship arrived here, almost ten thousand convicts were transported in forty three convict ship voyages, so it was quite amazing. Thirty seven of the voyages carried large numbers of prisoners from England, with one voyage even collecting
convicts from Bermuda. I bet they were disappointed to leave that rather nice place. And the remaining six ships brought smaller car goes of military prisoners from amongst the ranks of the British troops, particularly those in India, because that was a bit closer and according to the dead persons Society website. WA convicts had been sentenced to terms of six to fifteen years. That's why we didn't get many murderers, because they would have got a lot longer or generally hanged,
you know. So it was embezzlers and that sort of thing. Some reports suggest that their literacy rate was around seventy five percent, as opposed to only fifty percent of those in the Eastern States.
So we got clever convicts as well as and.
About a third of the convicts left after serving their time, but many of them also reconvicted locally later of minor offenses and so on. And there were also four instances of prisoners escaping and being sent back after they'd been recaptured. For convicts who were nearing the end of their sentence, of course, there was the ticket of leave introduced. This was similar to our modern day parole and how provide a labor, a labor for the development and expansion of agriculture.
And the effects of that convict era continued to be felt for many years and quite a number of the although the eighteen sixty eight they'd stopped sending the convicts here because there'd been a huge penal reform in Britain, and more large prisons had been built, quite a lot of them that had sentences that ran into the eighties and nineties. So they were still convicts and then ticket
of leave and then whatever. And it's interesting. In eighteen seventy four, WA's Legislative Assembly lobbied the British government for responsible government. Now, I know those two words together sound like an oxymoron, but that means that instead of all of the decisions made by the Legislative Council here having to go back to Britain to be ratified and then come back to say yes, you can do it, it meant we could be responsible for our own work here.
I suspect an awful lot of decisions that were made here were acted out before ever they got back to Britain.
But that's another story. But the British government.
Refused this request for responsible government on the grounds that the proportion of ex convicts in the colony was too high. Now, if you look at the members of the houses of Parliament at that time, that's pretty rich.
I can tell you.
Most of the convicts spent very little time in prison, and we'll perhaps talk a little bit about what they did after the break.
There were some great contributors to society certain that not just in WI of course, Australia wide. Okay, looking forward.
To that until midnight on Perth six PR This is remember when with Harvey d again and.
Richard often has been well as in his usual manner of enlightened the ass on all sorts of things, but mainly to do with convicts. And as you mentioned before the break, some really turned out to be a great citizen.
Yesterday certainly did. Yeah, yes, yeah, quite a few.
There was one who managed the telegraphy set up in Perth in eighteen sixty nine. And Greenaway isn't It wasn't.
Francis Greenaway was the architect. Yeah, yeah, was he based here? Him? I think he might have Beenston Stadium, he.
Might have been. Yeah, I don't know.
But I think actually ironically he was a criminal and of course he got his ticket of leave. I think he built a courthouse, designed and built a I love firsthand knowledge.
Yes, he'd seen the inside of them before, so quite easily.
Yeah.
So, as I said before the break, most WA convicts didn't spend that much time actually in prison, those who were stationed in Fremantle. Of course, were housed in the convict establishment once they built it, which took a couple of years, but most of the convicts were stationed in other parts of the colony. There was no convict assignment in Wa, a practice which was used in the other
penal colonies. This involved assigning convicts to work with private individuals, which some considered was slavery, so they would be assigned to a property owner for farm work and things like that. But here initially and throughout the convict period, most convicts worked on creating infrastructure first for the convict system and then constructing other things later. For instance, in Perth, the convicts built Perth Jail, which is now part of the
Wamus Zeum. That took two years to build, and some were then housed to provide labor for other projects in the cities, so they were housed in that jail, and of course they built Perth Town Hall at the Canning River Convict fence, which you can still see to this day. Convict escapes did occur, especially those stationed to work in remote areas out in the wheat belt and places like that.
These offered better opportunities for escape. But it's interesting there were a group of convicts out in York and I think it was eighteen sixty four, and they found some flecks of gold and they decided to head off to South Australia. I think they'd only gone about a day's journey, and they went back and gave themselves up because they realized that it wasn't going to work getting across the Nullibore desert.
I don't think the ear Highway was fully sealed there.
No, I don't think it was. No.
And since the colony was pretty much surrounded by water on one side and desert on the other, it was almost impossible to leave. On some occasions, though escapees left the colony, but most surrendered to avoid starvation. Notable the exceptions was of course our friend's ancestor Moondine Joe, who remained at large in the colony for about two years. And then of course there was John Boyle O'Reilly, the
Fenian prisoner, who managed to escape to the USA. But as I said before, the convicts who were well behaved look forward to obtaining a ticket of leave before completing their sentence, and that permitted them to be able to work for money, whereas the other convicts were just given boordant lodgings basically and a few garets or something like that.
And this meant that complete freedom for them once they got their ticket of leave and pardon, but they could never return to England, so they were doomed, not that it would be a doom really to be here. And it also affected the children too, with neither ex convicts nor their children, very few of them actually married into settler families in the first instant. And that's probably why we got to the stage some years ago when nobody
mentioned they'd got a convict background. Now, of course it's a badge of honor.
Yes. One of the.
Ones who did very well, as I mentioned earlier, was James Fleming, who was transported here in eighteen sixty four for defrauding a Glaswegian tea merchant. Now I don't know how, because he had telegraphic skills, he knew about the telegraphy system, he'd learnt that in Scotland, and as a result he was put in charge of all the technical aspects of our first telegraph system and that came into being in
June of eighteen sixty nine. As a result, Fleming was appointed the colony's Superintendent of telegraphs, So you know, he was one of the ones that did very well. Indeed, quite a number of ex convicts, interestingly were appointed teachers and yeah, so they carried quite a responsible place in society, and government posts, of course, were generally close to them,
with the notable exception of teaching. And once the convict eer came to an end, Britain punished its own and the last convict ship was the Hugemont, which arrived in February and January of eighteen sixty eight. By then, wa was strongly objecting to the cesation of transportation, but once it became clear that the decision would not be altered, they just gave up and said, okay, that's fair enough, and it went its mery way.
Indeed it did well.
Well.
We've learned so much about our early convict days. Tonight, now, just before we let you go, Richard, and we have people tuning in all the time, tell us about another reminder about the Paul Baron Letcher. Yes, the Historical Society's annual lecture weaving history into filmmaking. Paul Barron, who's a film and television producer. He's giving a talk and he is a very entertaining and interesting speaker. He's at the UWA Club Auditorium on Wednesday, the second of July. It's
six for six thirty tickets of forty dollars. It will be a fascinating evening. You can either get a booking on the Historical Society's website or by phoning nine three eight six three eight one four nine three eight six three eight four to one sorry three eight four one, No worries, we've got that number here and if you're missed it faction you want a book, just give Katie a call on one double three eight eighty two and
thank you for tonight. It was fantastic as it always is, and we'll see you in a fortnight.
Yes, indeed