The Plan To Reduce The Population Of The Poor

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Crowd of 19th-century people waving at three large sailing ships docked in a harbor with rowboats nearby.

Summary:

  • History reveals Britain’s inhumane solution to poverty: shipping 162000 convicts to Australia for minor crimes like stealing bread.

  • The convicts sent to Australia were often not violent criminals, but those struggling to survive by stealing food.

  • The impact of British transportation of convicts to Australia on the indigenous population was disastrous and led to conflicts and killings.

History has a manner of unconfronting unpleasant realities concerning the way society responded to its weakest. During the 18 th and 19th centuries, Britain devised an inhuman measure to the severe levels of poverty and overcrowding in prisons, a solution: ship the poor to the other planet of the earth. Neil Tonge, a historian, has shed fresh light on a system where more than 162000 people have arrived in Australia to commit crimes as minor as stealing bread.

Poverty Plan

Victorian-era street scene with crowded children and adults outside brick buildings in an industrial city.

According to historian Neil Tonge, the British government has successfully used transportation in a bid to shrink the poor population. People feared that poor people would overrun a rich society, and Australia became their destination.

Small Crimes

Two men strangling a third man in a street alley during a robbery labeled "Daring Case of Garotte Robbery."

The majority of the convicts ever transported were not violent criminals – they were merely robbing food to live. Taking an item valued above one shilling today is the equivalent of 5p, which constituted a crime worthy of the entire transportation process.

Prison Ships

Detailed black and white drawing of an old wooden ship docked near a coastal village with people on the pier.

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As they awaited transportation, prisoners were detained on abandoned ships which had been moored on the River Medway – floating prisons of those that would be permanently exiled to the other side of the globe.

Child Victims

Group of 19th-century people in a village scene with a girl holding a basket of apples and men engaged in animated conversation.

Such unaccompanied children at the tender age of eight were sent to Australia. A prisoner was given an option between transportation and hanging as one of the recorded cases. They preferred to be hanged instead.

The Numbers

Line of soldiers and young boys in 19th-century military uniforms standing outdoors with rifles.

Over 162000 British and Irish convicts were exported to Australia in 1788-1868. The First Fleet had 11 vessels that transported more than 700 convicts between Portsmouth and Botany Bay in the State of New South Wales.

First Fleet

Three large sailing ships decorated with flags docked at a harbor with small boats and people nearby.

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The First Fleet settled after a dangerous eight-month voyage at Sydney Cove as a convict settlement. The distant dumping ground of unwanted poor in Britain was the basis of the modern Australian society.

Why Australia

Map of British Empire commercial routes and ocean currents across the world, including Mediterranean and Pacific insets.

Primarily, America, in the early times, was the destination of transported convicts. Once the American War of Independence came to a close in 1783, this possibility was completely eliminated, and Britain resorted to using Australia instead.

Indigenous Tragedy

Black and white illustration of a rural village with thatched huts and large trees surrounding the area.

 

With the coming of convict settlers in Australia, the impact on the First Nations people was disastrous. The conflict is horrific as described by Tonge. Tasmania’s Aboriginals were actively hunted and killed by the white settlers.

Some Prospered

Four bearded men from the Overland Telegraph Party standing by a wagon with tents and horses in the background.

The system did not destroy all the convicts. D’Arcy Wentworth came to the Second Fleet in 1790 as a surgeon, superintendent of the police force, and inaugural member of the Bank of New South Wales.

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