artefacts found. By the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, much
more substantial houses were being built of stone by the convict settlers,
surrounded by large yards. A wide variety of trades and services is recorded,
and there were many children living there, whose toys were also found. Until
about 1820 when roadgangs and distant penal stations were introduced, the
convict settlement was ‘free on the land’ ̧ with none of the usual
accoutrements of a prison. Most of the inhabitants were fairly young, many
with useful skills and trades, and with a surprisingly high literacy rate of
seventyfive per cent. An account by a surgeon in 1827 tells of the clean,
agreeable accommodations, with whitewashed walls, comfortable furniture,
pristine tablecloths and gleaming dinner services. There were curtains at the
windows, mirrors and prints on the walls, and fine ceramics on the tables
including Spode transferprinted wares and Chinese export porcelain.
The houses were not arranged in ordered streets, but set up wherever the
owner wished, most facing the sea, and the houses were frequently extended
in an unplanned manner. New rooms were tacked on as the need arose. The
artefact distribution suggests that many rooms lacked a defined purpose,
being multifunctional, inner and outer rooms being accessed only through
each other. The yards held cisterns or wells, and gardens– by 1800 the
people there were growing peas and beans, turnips and cabbages, mustard,
watercress and radishes, and also introducing English weeds such as
dandelions, clover, chickweed and nettles. Lemon, apple and peach trees
were planted. The yards were surrounded by privet hedges or paling fences.
Cows, sheep, pigs, dogs and chickens were kept.
Many women earned money by doing domestic chores or through cottage
industries. Margaret Byrne was probably a seamstress–some of her sewing
equipment had slipped between the floorboards, to be discovered beneath,
along with a number of the marbles her children had played with.
Food remains show that forty per cent of the meat eaten was mutton,
twentyfive per cent beef, and the rest pork, goat, chicken or fish, with large
numbers of oysters. Tea, coffee, sugar and cheese were also available. There
was also plenty of evidence for alcohol consumption, including the remains of
what may have been an illicit still.^6
Somewhat later, conditions for convicts in Australia became much more
regulated, and indeed brutal. Work on road gangs meant constantly toiling in
heat wearing heavy legirons, and receiving up to fifty lashes a time for
transgressions. Notorious harsh penal stations were set up in more distant
locations such as Port Arthur in Tasmania for repeat offenders or‘hard cases’.
About twenty per cent of the convicts were women, and for these, factories
CRIME IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE