Out of sight, out of mind: Ex-convict female paupers incarcerated in Queensland's benevolent asylums

Abstract

<p>The establishment of Queensland's first establishment for paupers, the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum on Stradbroke Island, led to over 18,000 males and 3,000 females being transferred by ferry from Brisbane's bayside to their island exile between 1865 and 1946. Among their number were at least 148 male and nineteen female exconvicts who had once served sentences of transportation in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Of these, at least ten male inmates had served colonial sentences at Moreton Bay, with the remainder arriving in the district after the closure of the penal settlement in 1839. However, there is no evidence that any of the nineteen female emancipists admitted to Dunwich were former Moreton Bay prisoners. In addition to these women, Ann Jane Webb, originally identified as an ex-convict in the first Brisbane Gaol register, was later reported in a local newspaper to have died in the Rockhampton Benevolent Asylum in 1897.¹ In total, my research has established that twenty ex-convict women were admitted to Queensland benevolent institutions prior to 1900. Although the number is small, the detailed admissions registers of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, as historian Daniel McKay has noted, offer tantalising glimpses of the lives of ex-convicts.</p>