Australians: what crime did your long lost ancestor commit?
May 31, 2018 12:12 AM Subscribe
No practical reason for the question. Just curiosity
This post was deleted for the following reason: Let's not -- goodnewsfortheinsane
Further to escapepod above, approximately 164,000 convicts were transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. The estimated population of Australia then was 1.5 million people (which probably does not include indigenous Australians, who were not counted as human beings until the 1960s) - almost ten times the number of convicts transported in the history of transportation to the colony. To put that in perspective, the population of Australia now is over 22 million. Still small, but largely predicated on post-transportation immigrants.
This question is kind of like asking 'Which side did your ancestors take in the Revolution?' It only applies to a limited set of people and ignores the multi-ethnic complication of a modern industrialised nation.
My maternal ancestors came out for the gold rush, much as many Americans-to-be did in California. Even then, the naive view of history fails: they were butchers and merchants, serving the diggers around Castlemaine.
posted by prismatic7 at 12:54 AM on May 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
This question is kind of like asking 'Which side did your ancestors take in the Revolution?' It only applies to a limited set of people and ignores the multi-ethnic complication of a modern industrialised nation.
My maternal ancestors came out for the gold rush, much as many Americans-to-be did in California. Even then, the naive view of history fails: they were butchers and merchants, serving the diggers around Castlemaine.
posted by prismatic7 at 12:54 AM on May 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
This was asked on Reddit recently, and many other times, though lord knows how much of any of it is true.
posted by Rinku at 1:01 AM on May 31, 2018
posted by Rinku at 1:01 AM on May 31, 2018
Response by poster: I'll rephrase the question.
Australians descended from criminals: what crime did your long lost ancestor commit?
posted by BadgerDoctor at 1:02 AM on May 31, 2018
Australians descended from criminals: what crime did your long lost ancestor commit?
posted by BadgerDoctor at 1:02 AM on May 31, 2018
I recently read The Tin Ticket, a book exploring this question for several Aistralian convict women. A decent read although I feel more story and less social history, but it gives a good answer to your question for the reasons why people were sent out and how the penal system worked on the ground.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:13 AM on May 31, 2018
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 1:13 AM on May 31, 2018
I'm hoping you asked this question naively and off-the-cuff because it is offensive. Many Australians today have ancestors who have lived here for tens of thousands of years and are the bloody victims of colonial crimes, not the perpetrators of them.
On preview: Your original question speaks to your thought processes, so thanks for having a re-think.
I have an ancestor who stole a large milk-producing mammal not long after the end of the Irish famine. Unlike many of her convict-ship companions on the last boat to Hobart, she was noted in the ships record as being robust and healthy. She arrived too late to be part of the great mooning, and she spent little time as an actual 'convict', working a farm and marrying a (colonist) farmer a year after her arrival. She raised fourteen children to adulthood, birthing her last in her fifties, and died a respectable old woman. I'm pretty sure her crime was calculated to get her on the convict boats. A life in Australia was going to have a lot more opportunity and potential than her life in Ireland could offer.
posted by Thella at 1:21 AM on May 31, 2018
On preview: Your original question speaks to your thought processes, so thanks for having a re-think.
I have an ancestor who stole a large milk-producing mammal not long after the end of the Irish famine. Unlike many of her convict-ship companions on the last boat to Hobart, she was noted in the ships record as being robust and healthy. She arrived too late to be part of the great mooning, and she spent little time as an actual 'convict', working a farm and marrying a (colonist) farmer a year after her arrival. She raised fourteen children to adulthood, birthing her last in her fifties, and died a respectable old woman. I'm pretty sure her crime was calculated to get her on the convict boats. A life in Australia was going to have a lot more opportunity and potential than her life in Ireland could offer.
posted by Thella at 1:21 AM on May 31, 2018
Murder.
posted by GeeEmm at 1:30 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by GeeEmm at 1:30 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Australians descended from criminals
I don't see our Australian convicts as criminals for the most part. Most of them were victims of British government policies aimed at shipping the poor off-shore, or of their domestic employers who wished to dismiss them from service with an added dollop of spite. Sure, some were degenerate murderers and rapists, but they were not the majority. And, as many of those were often kept in inhumane isolated penitentiaries until death, they didn't have the opportunity or time to breed, to become anyone's ancestor.
posted by Thella at 1:35 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don't see our Australian convicts as criminals for the most part. Most of them were victims of British government policies aimed at shipping the poor off-shore, or of their domestic employers who wished to dismiss them from service with an added dollop of spite. Sure, some were degenerate murderers and rapists, but they were not the majority. And, as many of those were often kept in inhumane isolated penitentiaries until death, they didn't have the opportunity or time to breed, to become anyone's ancestor.
posted by Thella at 1:35 AM on May 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
My ancestors were sent here as colonists not convicts. As far as I'm aware there are no 'stole a loaf of bread' stories, but when they got here they presumably kicked the traditional owners off their land and potentially committed bodily violence against them - but these were likely not considered crimes at the time.
posted by escapepod at 12:36 AM on May 31, 2018 [2 favorites]