Long recognised for its fine old buildings, the cosmopolitan port city of Fremantle held special significance as the first landfall for early settlers to the Swan River Colony. For them, it offered the promise of a new life, but for thousands of convicts transported to the colony after 1850, the future was darker.
"Prisoner 132 received 50 lashes for absconding from the Convict Establishment and forfeited his ticket-of-leave. To be confined on bread and water for twelve days."
Michal Bosworth takes the reader on a fascinating journey through nineteenth century Fremantle, a journey centred on the grim complex of buildings set up to house the prisoners. She paints vivid pictured of the lives of prison officials and convicts, some confined for 21 hours a day in cells barely more than five cubic metres; and the chronicles that attempts of desperate inmates to escape a Dickensian establishment that can still be visited today as a heritage site and tourist attraction.
Contents:
Conversion Table
Introduction
1. Setting the Scene
2. The Convicts are Coming!
3. Esplanade Park and the Commissariat
4. The Warders
5. Military Expertise
6. Prison Design
7. Building Technology
8. Places, Spaces and Prison Routine
9. Theories Behind Transportation
10. Who Were the Convicts?
11. The Royal Engineers' Understanding
12. Punishments and Escapes
13. The Beginning of the End
14. Capital Punishment
Epilogue
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
