Welcome!
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The Female Convicts Research Centre promotes interest in the female convicts of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), by encouraging and facilitating research. From 1803 to 1853, 12,500 female convicts were transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), as punishment for crimes, mainly theft. After serving their sentences they were released into the community. Their transportation left a lasting legacy. The Female Convicts Research Centre encourages research into these female convicts, mainly through its database, website and twice-yearly seminars. When you register with the FCRC, you gain access to our database where you will find information entered by our volunteers as we attempt to reconstruct the life course of each female convict. We update this website and our database regularly and sometimes daily, as our volunteer transcribers continue to provide new information. Please bookmark this page and return soon.
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From the Shadows Inc.: First major fundraising eventFollowing on from the hugely successful Footsteps towards Freedom project, a new not-for-profit project, known as From the Shadows, has been established to raise funds for three statues by renowned Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie. Rowan created the Footsteps towards Freedom statues on Hobart’s waterfront, receiving global media attention. The newly commissioned statues will include two statues of children for the Orphan Schools in New Town and a female convict statue for the Cascades Female Factory. Three community organisations have been acknowledged as Foundation Supporters: the Female Convicts Research Centre, the Friends of the Orphan Schools and South Hobart Progress Association. The Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA) is committed to the project as a Foundation Sponsor. |
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The first major fundraising event will be held on 26 August 10am to 4pm at the Davidson’s Magnolia Garden, 15 Pascoe Avenue, Claremont. All are welcome. For more information download the invitation here, or contact info@fromtheshadows.org.au You can follow From the Shadows on Facebook. |
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National Family History Month, August 2018
Libraries Tasmania invites you to come along to free events.
Location: The Hub, Level 2, 91 Murray Street, Hobart. For further information on events: http://www.familyhistorymonth.org.au or phone (03)61655539.
Call for submissions for the next CWP book
Convict Women's Press has decided that their next book will be Convict Lives at the New Norfolk Asylum.
You are invited to submit a chapter (no more than 2000 words) with references about a convict woman admitted to the Asylum. Please contact Dianne Snowden at info@femaleconvicts.org.au
Program available and registration open.Spring Seminar, 28th October 2018Topic: A Great Blessing? Convict Women and Orphan School ChildrenLieutenant-Governor Arthur believed it would be ‘a great blessing’ for the children of convicts to be removed from their parents. Our next seminar explores the relationship between the Orphan School, the orphans and convict women. In 1828, women convicts transferred from the old Hobart Town Female Factory to the new Factory at the Cascades. In 1828, the King’s Orphan Schools opened. To mark the 190th anniversary of both institutions, our next seminar will be run jointly by the Female Convicts Research Centre and the Friends of the Orphan Schools and it will be held at the Orphan School, St John’s Avenue, New Town (http://www.orphanschool.org.au). |
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania |
Australian Historical Association Kay Daniels Award won by Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden for ‘Van Diemen’s Women. A History of Transportation’ |
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Congratulations to Dr Dianne Snowden AM (President of FCRC) and Joan Kavanagh. The Australian Historical Association has announced the winners of its 2018 prizes and awards. The Kay Daniels Award recognises outstanding original research with a bearing on Australian convict history and heritage including in its international context. The winners of the Kay Daniels Award 2018 were Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden, Van Diemen’s Women: A History of Transportation to Tasmania (The History Press Ireland Ltd). |
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Citation This is a very impressive work in which the authors have mastered a prodigious quantity of primary sources. It follows the lives of the 138 Irish women (and their 35 children) transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the convict transport Tasmania (2) in 1845, the year that the potato blight first struck Ireland. The study sets out to examine the women, the conditions in which they lived in Ireland, the reasons for their sentencing and the social impact of their transportation. In this it succeeds admirably. Moreover, the exploration of the women’s descendants emphasises the role convictism played in the formation of contemporary Australia, as well as the global familial connections forged through the results of forced migration and transportation. This book is weighty contribution to our knowledge of female convicts and as such is a worthy recipient of the Kay Daniels Award. It will be valuable in a scholarly sense, by adding to our knowledge and by providing research insights. It may also offer insights to family historians working on convict lives by providing new research directions. |
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Forty South Publishing 'The Van Diemen History Prize 2018/19'
To foster quality writing about Tasmanian history, Forty South Publishing is initiating a biennial prize for non-fiction history articles written for a general audience. Entries open July 1, 2018 and must be lodged by September 24, 2018. The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $500 and publication in Tasmania 40°South magazine.
A selection of the best entries will be published in an edited volume, The Van Diemen History Anthology 2019
(publication estimated to be in mid-2019). For further details, Terms and Conditions and entry form, please visit https://fortysouth.com.au/tasmanian-writers-prize/
Save The Dates:Spring Seminar 2018: 28th October 2018 Autumn Seminar 2019: 28th April 2019 |
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Recent Updates
- Ships - Surgeon's Journal Lloyds 1845. Transcription courtesy of Rhonda Arthur(16/08/2018).
Charles K Nutt M.D. was Surgeon Superintendent. 170 female convicts and 17 children were all sent from Millbank Prison. There were 42 cases in the Sick Book including a woman who had chronic bronchitis and spent most of the voyage in the hospital; two cases of scurvy; a slight case of mumps; two cases of gout in the same woman and another was twice treated for caries of the inferior maxillary bones. Towards the latter part of the voyage some of the women complained of cold and rheumatic pains. A female child was born at sea. Six were transferred to the Hospital in Hobart Town including a curious case of a young girl who had an epileptic seizure which left her with a mental impairment and a tragic case of an infant whose forehead was blistered having been kept for too long in the sun and developed a fever –the only death on board.
- The Orphan Schools - a new page linking the female convicts and their children to the orphan schools at New Town. Children were admitted when they arrived with their parents on convict transports, when their parents were undergoing punishment, or when they were destitute.
- The East London - Chapter 16: The Crimes. By Colleen Arulappu (25/07/2018). Almost all the women on the East London committed theft of some kind and that included those charged with receiving stolen goods and prostitutes who stole from the person. There were only six women convicted of other classes of crime. Dolly Douragan and Martha Reilly of perjury; Mary Quinn (2) of arson; Mary Healy of vagrancy; Susan Cassidy of assault and Judith Murtagh was found guilty of ‘child murder’. Read more....
- Volunteers - Tricia Curry from Ballarat, Victoria. (22/07/2018)
- Ships - Surgeon's Journal Greenlaw 1844. Transcription courtesy of Colleen Arulappu (6/07/2018). The journal has a complete set of names from his Sick List, including convicts, crew and master of the ship. There were five deaths during the voyage and in the General Remarks at the end of the journal the surgeon commented on the diet in Irish jails which he felt contributed to the outbreak of scurvy on board. He also recommended changes in the provisions supplied, especially for those ships which carried Irish convicts.
- Research Seminars - Prologue: women's lives before transportation - Libby Prescott: Bigamists (One Husband Too Many…Female Convicts Transported from England for Bigamy) (30/07/2018)