Robert Espie (1791 – October 1870) was an Irish convict ship surgeon-superintendent born in 1791.
[1] Many of his medical journals did not survive but the ones that did provide insight to his life and experiences as a surgeon on the ships.
In 1851, Robert and Janet Espie were living at Hanstead House in Lewisham, U.K., with three servants.
His wife died in 1854 when she was 60 years old and in 1861, Espie was living in Bushey Hertfordshire with three servants and their children.
Throughout his career, he was employed as a Surgeon-Superintendent on eight different convict ships to Australia: Morley in 1817, Shipley in 1818, Dorothy in 1820, Lord Sidmouth in 1822, Lady Rowena in 1825, Mary in 1830, Roslin Castle in 1834 and the Elizabeth in 1836.
In his journal, Espie notes that their death was not because the ship was “sickly” or related to cleanliness; their deaths were “purely the effect of incidental disease attacking men already much advanced in years and greatly emaciated by mental anxiety and confinement…”.
After a few days on the voyage, Espie started taking off the leg irons of the well-behaved prisoners.
The second was Edward Gale, age 29, who was already sick before the journey and later died of a ruptured blood vessel.
The third patient was George Turner, a sixty-nine-year-old man who caught a chill and despite Espie's treatment and nourishment, failed to recover.
It was an all-female convict ship but the women were “wild and defiant” and he was almost stabbed by one of them before he left.
Despite the chaos, there were no deaths Robert Espie's most influential legacy that he left behind is his medical journals describing service on convict ships to Australia.
The journals provide a first-hand account of what life was like for the surgeons and the convicts during the journey.