Convict era of Western Australia

Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish the King George Sound settlement.

[6] For the first fifteen years, the people of the colony were generally opposed to accepting convicts, although the idea was in constant circulation almost from the start.

Early in 1831, the Colonel Peter Latour asked permission to transport 300 Swing Riots convicts, but was refused.

[3] Nonetheless, the idea was under discussion later that year, with the Fremantle Observer editorialising on the need for convict labour,[7] and George Fletcher Moore writing in his diary:[8]: 42–43 Mr. B. called yesterday [...].

Towards the end of that year, a meeting of settlers at King George Sound passed a motion, signed by sixteen persons, that convict labour was needed for land clearing and road works, but this was met with little support in other parts of the colony.

[9] As Western Australia was not yet a penal colony, contemporary documents scrupulously avoided referring to the Parkhurst apprentices as "convicts".

[9] Serious lobbying for Western Australia to become a penal colony began in 1844, when members of the York Agricultural Society brought forward a motion stating:[3] That it is the opinion of this meeting that, inasmuch as the present land regulations have entirely destroyed our labour fund, we conceive that the Home Government are bound in justice to supply us with some kind of labour, 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.Nothing concrete came of the motion, but James Battye nonetheless identifies it as a turning point:[3] The York agriculturalists, however, achieved something.

The York Agricultural Society, which consisted mostly of pastoralists, argued that the colony's economy was on the brink of collapse due to an extreme shortage of labour.

[10] The York Agricultural Society's 1845 petition was unanimously rejected by the Legislative Council, which stated:[3] the necessity for such an application is not apparent.

No dearth of labour can be so extreme as to call for, or to warrant our having recourse to, such a hazardous experiment for a supply.Over the following two years, however, the membership of the Council changed substantially.

[3] The petition was debated by the Legislative Council in July and August 1847; it was rejected, but forwarded to the British Colonial Office nonetheless.

[11] When the reports of the Council's debates on the introduction of convicts arrived in Britain in early 1848, the British government took great interest in them.

In February 1849, a public meeting was held to discuss the issue, from which a majority view emerged in support of an alternative proposal put forward by Lionel Samson.

When news of this reached the Swan River Colony, the colonists protested that the original proposal was never agreed to by the majority of settlers.

[15] From 1851–1853, as the number of convicts arriving in the colony increased the mood of the free population changed from popular support to one of great concern:[16] There were times indeed when Perth seemed to be a society under siege, with strengthened doors, fitted locks, restricted personal movement (especially for women and children), and over and above this nervousness and concern, the actual felt experience of personal violence, alienation, and degradation.In November 1857, John Hutt, representing a number of business interests wrote to British Government to suggest the colony as a place to transport sepoys who had rebelled during the Indian Mutiny of that year.

Notable exceptions include Moondyne Joe, who remained at large in the colony for two years, and John Boyle O'Reilly with six fellow Fenian prisoners who escaped to the United States.

After serving a period of time as a ticket of leave man, the convict might obtain a conditional pardon, which meant complete freedom except that they could not return to England.

Although ex-convicts sometimes attained a position of social respectability by successful self-employment, for example as farmers or merchants, it was rare for them to obtain paid work other than unskilled menial labour.

A substantial number of ex-convict school teachers were appointed because educated free settlers were not attracted to the low salaries on offer.

In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866 and 1867, after which transportation would cease.

[28] Western Australia objected strongly to the cessation of transportation, and, once it became clear that the decision would not be altered, pushed for compensation.

One of the best-known events of Western Australia's convict era, the Catalpa rescue, did not occur until 1876, eight years after the cessation of transportation.