Convict Era of Western Australia - Convict Era

Convict Era

Between 1850 and 1868, 9721 convicts were transported to Western Australia on 43 convict ship voyages. At the request of the colony, convicts were initially selected for transportation in accordance with three conditions:

• that no female convicts be transported;
• that no political prisoners be transported; and
• that no convicts convicted of serious crimes be transported.

The first of these was honoured throughout the convict era; and the second until 1868, when the last convict ship to Western Australia, the Hougoumont, was sent out with 62 Fenian prisoners on board. The third condition, that convicts not be convicted of serious crimes, was observed only for the first couple of years, and then only because the absence of a suitable jail would have made management of such convicts difficult. Later, more serious offenders were sent. It is a tradition that Western Australia's convicts were of a "better class" than those of Australia's other penal colonies, but Sandra Taylor has shown that this was not the case. Indeed, as Britain's penal system gradually reformed, it began to deal with more of its minor offenders at home, and therefore transported a higher proportion of serious offenders to Western Australia. 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:

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. A number of public meetings were held in the colony to discuss the proposal which supported the proposal. The idea and the reaction of the colony to it received attention all over Australia and was ultimately rejected by the British Government.