Cirrus@Austlit

'Convict lives pose a unique conundrum. In spite of all their variety, they share
a common experience of having been, at least for a time, consigned to what was
called ‘the other side’, the place of the untrusted and the unwanted. Their identity was
spoiled. After sentence, some were never able to leave that dark place; those that did
manage to return to society had to conceal their past, control their memories, and lie
for the rest of their lives.' (Introduction) 

'On 11 September 1862, the chief justice of New South Wales, Sir Alfred Stephen,
sentenced Alexander McGregor to 15 years’ hard labour on the roads, the first two
years in irons. In his sentencing, Stephen stated ‘that McGregor was an abominably
bad character who was known as one of the worst characters at Norfolk Island where
he was known by the name of Robert Knox’.1 Moreover, the chief justice ‘knew his
character well’ (see Figure 1).2 In other words, he had recognised McGregor as the
recidivist convict Knox. As the account of the court hearing published in the Bathurst
Free Press and Mining Journal suggests, this was not the first time Stephen had had
dealings with the habitually reoffending convict, nor would it be his last. In 1867 he
was consulted regarding Knox’s exile from the colony of New South Wales, where
he had spent around 30 of his 40 years imprisoned. Knox’s subsequent departure,
without Stephen’s consent, would be the final act of a life lived in defiance of the
colonial penal administration in Australia. This article examines the relationships
of the recidivist convict known variously as Edward Knox, Robert Knox, Robert
Edward Knox and Alexander McGregor, between 1829 and 1869. It asks: what can
a biography of a recidivist convict, whose name and story have disappeared from
cultural memory, tell us about convict relationships? What can a convict who never
married, had no known children, and spent the best part of his life incarcerated,
reveal about relationships in the colonial penal system?' (Introduction) 

'Lydia Ann’s position during the winter of 1819 was precarious. Any income from
sales of Newgate was essential if she were to survive her ‘most afflicting reverse’ of
circumstances.3 Her distress was caused by the arrest, imprisonment, conviction
for forgery, and sentencing to seven years’ transportation of her children’s father,
Laurence Hynes Halloran (1765–1831). The case was notorious, and the conviction
calamitous. In 1816, to add credence to his application for the vacant curacy
at Broseley in Shropshire, Halloran had forged the frank of an eminent barrister,
using the alias ‘WC Gregory’. An argument with his rector, Townsend Forester, led
Forester to refer to his clerical agents in London. It was soon proven that Halloran
was an imposter with a long record. Government and ecclesiastical files were thick
with damning detail, commencing with a murder charge in 1783 while a young
naval apprentice (for which he was acquitted), failed attempts at ordination, exposure
at Bath in 1806 after supplying bogus clerical credentials, the circumstances of his appointment as chaplain to the forces at the Cape in 1808, and subsequent behaviour causing exile from there in 1811. From that moment to further damage his reputation, he was known to have abandoned his wife. With Lydia now his partner, he had used aliases and forged credentials to gain clerical appointments throughout the country, concurrently supplementing his meagre income with published poems and sermons, until his arrest in mid-1818. When he sailed on the convict ship Baring seven months later, authorities were pleased to be rid of him. He had embarrassed the Church by causing confusion in marriages, such that ‘it was his bad character and not his crime which transported him to Botany Bay’.' (Introduction)

'The transportation of convicts to Australia was a substantial bureaucratic undertaking. From 1788 to 1868, some 163,000 people were transported to its shores. Underpinning this mass movement of people were various processes for documenting individuals that amounted to what convict historians have termed a ‘paper panopticon’, so called because of the variably immense and detailed nature of the information recorded about convicts and their lives.  These data ranged from essential biographical information, such as the age, native place and occupation of convicts, to descriptions of their physical characteristics. As the historian Janet McCalman has recently written, the ‘men, women and children in the Tasmanian convict records are arguably the most carefully described and recorded ordinary people of the nineteenth- century world’.  The convicts transported to New South Wales and Western Australia were not far behind them. While the surviving archives for those colonies are in some ways less varied and detailed than their Van Diemen’s Land counterparts, they nonetheless offer promising opportunities for detailed reconstructions of individual lives. Complementing, supplementing and enriching convict records has been the ongoing digitisation of archival material—including vital life records, newspapers, gaol and immigration records—most relevant to tracing the lives of these people. What emerges from the consolidation of these sources is, in McCalman’s words, the ‘demographic contours of lives’.' (Introduction)

'As the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) edits the last batch of entries for those who died in the 1990s, we are also preparing for our next project, revising its earliest volumes—dealing with the colonial period—published in the 1960s. Those articles will be revised or rewritten where appropriate, and many new entries added. We are also undertaking several online biographical research projects focusing on the colonial period. The First Three Fleets and Their Families is one of them. For the ‘Fleeters’ project, we are creating biographical entries on the ADB’s companion website, People Australia (PA), for all those who set sail from the United Kingdom for the New South Wales colony, be they convict, sailor or colonial administrator, in the first three fleets from 1787 to 1791. Those who died en route are included as well. It is estimated that about 4,500 men, women and children made that perilous journey. We are also adding entries for the children and grandchildren of Fleeters (mostly convicts) who remained in the colony. The bulk of the biographical records created so far fall within the colonial period or early twentieth century, though a few of the Fleeters’ grandchildren died in the 1940s and the spouse of one grandchild died as late as 1971. Entries are being indexed using the same terms applied to all ADB entries: birth and death dates and place, cultural heritage, religion, cause of death, the ship arrived on, education, occupation, workplace, military service, involvement in key events and organisations, awards, as well as terms developed specifically for this project (more about that later).' (Introduction)

'If pressed to condense biographical method into one word, I would choose relationships. Why? Because, for me, everything of critical importance that led to the publication of Namarari’s biography rested on relationships, and from that, people’s generosity.' 

(Introduction)