21 March, 1-2pm
Seminar Room A, Coombs Building (9), Fellows Road
Dr Rebecca Kippen and Professor Janet McCalman, University of Melbourne
Around 12,000 of the 73,000 convicts transported from the British Isles to Tasmania, 1803-1853, were women. Although prostitution was not a transportable offence, more than a quarter of these women were listed in the convict records as being 'on the town'. 'On the town' had the general meaning of prostitution, but more broadly meant that these were women without a family and without a household. Most had been transported for stealing from their clients.
Using the convict records and a variety of other historical sources, we trace a sample of 6,000 convict women from transportation through their life course under sentence and after emancipation. Controlling for other variables, we find that-under sentence-women who had been 'on the town' had more conduct offences, more alcohol-related offences and were more likely to react against the system with bad language, threats or violence. 'On the town' women were just as likely as other female convicts to marry after transportation, but were less likely to have children. They also had significantly higher mortality than other female convicts, who, in turn, had higher mortality than both free-settler and locally born women.
We investigate the circumstances leading women to a life 'on the town' in nineteenth-century Britain, and why the life outcomes after transportation of these women differed so much from those of other female convicts.
Dr Rebecca Kippen and Professor Janet McCalman
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
The University of Melbourne
Photo: Rebecca Kippen