Convict Era of Western Australia - Free Settlement To Penal Colony

Free Settlement To Penal Colony

In December 1828, the British Colonial Office agreed to establish a colony at Swan River in Western Australia. It then issued a circular outlining the conditions of settlement, which stated, "It is not intended that any convicts or other description of Prisoners, be sent to this new settlement." That Swan River Colony would not be a penal colony was highly attractive to many of the potential settlers, and the condition was mentioned often by promoters during the period of Swan River mania.

Swan River Colony was established as a "free settlement" in June 1829. 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. Nonetheless, the idea was under discussion later that year, with the Fremantle Observer editorialising on the need for convict labour, and George Fletcher Moore writing in his diary:

Mr B 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 settlers will pay a superintendent.

In 1834 Captain Frederick Irwin suggested that the colony take in some Indian convicts for use as labour for the construction of public works. 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. Three years later a similar motion was considered but defeated by the Western Australian Agricultural Society.