An Interstate Research Trip
After a hiatus from blog writing, I’m back. Let us rewind to the end of May, a year ago. After a stint in hotel quarantine and on crutches in April, I recovered and put my moon boot to good use. I booked another ticket to Hobart/nipaluna. It was a Sunday when I arrived, and straight off the plane, I visited the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). As I’ve mentioned before, TMAG is a partner of the Conviction Politics project and will be the venue for the first iteration of the travelling Conviction Politics exhibition, due in late 2023.
On Monday morning I got to work at the Tasmanian state archives. It felt like a sort of coming home, after briefly spending time there the month before. The familiarity of the archivists’ faces and lunch-time routines, but also the very kind record recommendations from staff as they already knew my research interests. Among other things I discovered that convict ship records are digitised and available online through Trove (the importance of Trove as a resource for research, and it’s need for funding, cannot be overstated)![1] The following section written by the Surgeon on the John Renwick ship in 1843 particularly stood out:
“Seventy four of the men were transported at the special commission held at Staffordshire in 1842, having been engaged in the riots in the Potteries at that time. Those breaches of the Law, I am informed were chiefly the result of political infatuation, when the passions were influenced and misguided by designing men. In the confinement and discipline of a Convict Ship, the idle dream, and wild visions of power to effect their criminal and insane purposes, passed away, and the recollection of distant Homes, and those endearing ties of nature and affection, severed so suddenly, and perhaps for ever, crowded upon them, and produced a marked and almost general despondency.”[2]
Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick, 1842-1843, Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-732153960.
This was written in relation to the men transported for their involvement in the 1842 Pottery Riots in the north of Staffordshire, England on the 15th and 16th of August 1842. Eight hundred people were arrested as participators in these riots. These riots represent the peak of the General Strike of 1842, which was sparked by wage cuts but became linked to demands for the Charter and universal male suffrage. Historian Mick Jenkins claims that up to half a million workers were involved in the General Strike from Scotland to South Wales, and that it “marked a historic peak in the struggle of working people against the effects of the industrial revolution and against the new type of class oppression it imposed on them.”[3]
As I’m interested in emotions of activism and exile, the John Renwick ship report was striking. This conception of how space and the (im)mobility of the convict ship effect emotion is clear, as well as the role of passions in political agitation, and the effects of exile. It also offers insight to how the political prisoners were conceptualised, and the range of emotions and feelings attributed to them by superiors. Particularly as in the same report, the Surgeon states that these men should not be treated like the “ordinary felon, whose mind, utterly depraved by systematic vice renders him a living pest upon the face of society.”[4]
On further reading, there were details in the “sick list” of five of these convicts who were put in the hospital with “derangement of the digestive functions” recorded as Dyspepsia, and Servitus. The Surgeon wrote: Pat Ferns, “I found him suffering from great depression of spirits”, John Charlesworth, “I have noticed for some time that his spirits were much depressed”, Edward Walshe, “This man has been in exceedingly low spirits for some time”, and Thomas Tynan whose “spirits are greatly improved.”[5] The Surgeon believed the cause to be their “depression of spirits.”[6]
Historian of medicine Åsa explains this term in the nineteenth century was used to describe a symptom of melancholia. Åsa states: “This pressing down of the mind was often seen as mirrored in overall bodily function, with digestion, respiration, and movement significantly slower than normal in cases of severe melancholia.”[7] Further, as historian Hampton states, “medical thinkers often describe cheerfulness as a counterbalance to melancholy.”[8] On the ship this was the medical advice of the Surgeon, and shaped activities on the John Renwick, including encouraging singing, gymnastics and dancing to alleviate the illness of those on the sick list, and general morale.[9] A turn to cheerfulness on the ship, as evident in other primary sources such as, letters, poems or journals, can be read as a means to endure exile and resist despondency, and as a form of agency.
Another significant finding, this time related to the transported Young Ireland prisoners, was a Young Ireland folk concert in Hobart on the day I was meant to fly back to Melbourne. It seemed to be too good to be true, so I bought tickets and changed my flight. I did a little bit of digging and found out it was developed by John Hickey with funding from the Folk Federation of Tasmania during 2020. I sent off a few emails and managed to get in contact and have a coffee with him during the week. He had first heard of Young Ireland from his mother, an Irish emigree, and he developed the concert based off archival research. It was interesting to see how people are remembering these prisoners transnationally, and what they signify culturally to Tasmanians. The concert took place in Fern Tree Tavern, a little pub on the way up the mountain, Kunyanyi. It was a special evening and I’m so glad I didn’t miss it. A website, The Young Irelanders in Van Diemen’s Land, has now been set up with recordings of the songs and further details.[10]
The rest of the research trip was split between the Tasmanian state archives and historic convict sites. I was able to visit Port Arthur and the Coal Mines on the Tasman Peninsula, and to spend time at the Cascades Female Factory in South Hobart.[11] All three of these sites are part of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority but offer very different perspectives. Port Arthur, as a notorious prison site, involved a walking tour with a guide in a large group; the Coal Mines site hidden off a bush track, with unassuming stone remains and several plaques which I read in silence; and the Cascades Female Factory, which had a self-guided audio-based tour, requiring an introspective imagining of the space and sensory storytelling. These three sites are part of the eleven penal sites spread across Australia that together form the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage property.[12]
Port Arthur Historic Site
Exiled Young Ireland leader William Smith O’Brien’s cottage at Port Arthur, now the site of the political prisoner exhibit which refers to the Young Ireland movement, Canadian rebels and English Chartists who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land in the nineteenth century.
The Coal Mines Historic Site
The Coal Mines ‘main settlement’, with the remains of several buildings. From 1834 convict labour from Port Arthur was used for coal mining, at it’s peak in the 1840s over 600 convicts were stationed here. Transported Chartist leader Zephaniah Williams was employed as superintendent at the Coal Mines in 1840, but after an attempt to abscond, he was given a two year sentence of hard labour in chains. He again attempted to abscond in 1847, and was sentenced to another twelve months hard labour in chains. Three months of the latter sentence were spent at the Coal Mines.
The Cascades Female Factory
The Cascades Female Factory is the most significant site associated with female convicts in Australia, approximately seven thousand women spent time here from 1828 to 1856. The site then operated as a gaol from 1856 to 1877. Here I stand looking out from yard one to kunanyi, and the expansiveness of the Tasmanian sky.
From July, I’ll be living in Hobart for two months, undertaking an internship with Roar Film in Hobart. Among other things, I’ll be working on editing micro documentaries for the Conviction Politics online hub, and artefact and image descriptions for the Conviction Politics exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. I’m looking forward to being able to visit more historic sites in Tasmania (hello Maria Island), and the public facing outputs of the project coming to life after years of research.
Footnotes
[1] Kelly Burke, “Trove: National Library of Australia’s digital archives thrown $33m lifeline by federal government,” The Guardian, 3rd April 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/03/trove-national-library-of-australias-digital-archives-thrown-33m-lifeline-by-federal-government.
[2] Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick, 1842-1843, Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-732153960.
[3] Mick Jenkins, The General Strike of 1842 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 21.
[4] Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick.
[5] Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick.
[6] Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick.
[7] Jansson Åsa, From Melancholia to Depression: Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Place: Springer International Publishing AG, 2020), 72.
[8] Timothy Hampton, Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History (Zone Books, 2022).
[9] Surgeon’s Report, Convict Ships: John Renwick.
[10] The Young Irelanders in Van Diemen’s Land, https://theyoungirelandersinvandiemensland.net/.
[11] Port Arthur Historic Site, https://portarthur.org.au/; Coal Mines Historic Site, https://coalmines.org.au/; Cascades Female Factory, https://femalefactory.org.au/.
[12] Australian Convict Sites, UNESCO, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1306/.
