Female Convicts at Bathurst, 1820-1840: A Preliminary Study of Demography, Management and Marriage in colonial New South Wales

Abstract

<p>While the Bathurst district provides an illuminating case study of early pastoral settlement in colonial NSW, little has been said about the female convicts sent across the mountains in the early colonial period. This article identifies 558 convict women who served some part of their sentence in the Bathurst district between 1820 and 1840, a cohort that comprises roughly five percent of the total number of women transported to NSW in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The article offers a preliminary account of some components of the convict 'system' as it operated on this frontier during the height of the transportation era, with particular emphasis on the experiences of those convict women. Who were these women and why were they sent to the remote pastoral frontier? How were they employed, and how were they managed? How did they cope with assignment and marriage on the fringe of the colony?</p>