"Mind-Forg'd Manacles": The Mechanics of Control Inside Late-Nineteenth Century Tasmanian Charitable Institutions (Section IV REGIONAL Themes) (Report‪)‬

Britain had a long history of banishing convicted criminals to other countries. The Transportation Act of 1718 allowed felons sentenced to death to instead be transported to the American colonies. However, the American War of Independence brought this practice to an end. While other places were investigated, it was eventually decided to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay in New South Wales in 1788. Additional colonies were established in the ensuing years with penal settlements established in the south and north of Van Diemen's Land in 1803 and 1805 respectively. Between the establishment of the first settlement in Hobart and the cessation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land in 1853 some 75,000 convicts served time in the island colony, representing about forty-five per cent of all convicts transported 10 Australia. (2) Following the end of transportation to Van Diemen's Land a new colonial administration took over governance of the re-named colony of Tasmania on 1 January 1856. In early 1839 the colonists of Van Diemen's Land were informed that the existing system of domestic assignment, whereby settlers were able to access convict labour, at minimal cost, would cease. It was replaced by a new system known as probation to which all convicts arriving after November 1839 were subjected. (3) The transition from assignment to probation saw the construction of dozens of new convict stations throughout much of Van Diemen's Land, many of which were subsequently used to house the aged-poor. Under probation there was a massive growth in the numbers of transportees who were to stoke the dormitories of Tasmania's charitable institutions for the next sixty years. (4) It was the administrators of this new system who advocated, approved and implemented the policy of institutionalisation which was to dictate the treatment of the aged-poor in the second half of the nineteenth century.