The Australasia sailed from Dublin in May 1849 carrying 200 female convicts, many from the western counties of Ireland where the effects of the Great Famine were still being felt, and anchored in the Derwent River on 28 September 1849. Rather than landing immediately, the women typically spent a further six months moored on the river under the probation system, before being hired out into service across the colony.
Dr Trudy Mae Cowley draws on convict records — charges, sentences, family details, tickets of leave, conditional pardons — and a wide range of other sources to trace each woman's life from Ireland through the voyage, the institutions of the probation system, and on to marriage, children and life in the colony. The book is structured in detail: the crimes and previous offences that led to transportation; the voyage itself; the women's colonial employers; the institutions they passed through, including penitentiaries, probation stations, hiring depots, female factories, gaols, nurseries and orphanages, hospitals and invalid depots; their Irish and colonial families and marriages; and a statistical study of the convicts themselves — age, height, religion, native place, literacy, trade, friendships, freedom and death. A closing chapter, "The Facts," gives details of every one of the Australasia's convicts by name, with appendices covering name variants, abbreviations, a glossary, trial places, court offence classes, and marriage witnesses and baptism sponsors.
This copy is signed by the author and includes the accompanying Chapter 7 CD, containing individual fact sheets for each of the 200 women — not present in every surviving copy.
See Related Products below for more on Irish convict women and Van Diemen's Land's female convict history — order two or more titles together and we'll combine postage into one parcel.
BOOK DETAILS
- Softcover book (with chapter 7 CD)
- Published 2005
- 396-pages, indexed
- Approximate size 15cm x 21cm
- Signed by the author.
CONDITION
This is an out-of-print book. It is in clearly used but generally good condition with some wear to the edges. Crease in the corner of back cover. Previous owner's name written i nthe front. Small piece of sticky tape inside front cover.
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