This biography is the true story of a woman who was transported to Australia as a convict in the l820s. While not a significant historical figure, she represents the thousands of people, mainly convicts and former convicts, who settled this country in the first wave of white migration.
She was personally involved in two of the most important episodes in Australia's history - the convict era and the gold rushes of the nineteenth century. By tracing her life we gain a unique insight into what life was like for ordinary people in those times.
In this historical biography, the contextual background is as important as the story itself. The story of Mary Proctor's life and the events she lived through is in a sense a route map. As we follow it, it takes us through certain times, places and events in English and Australian history that she lived through and enables us to experience them as she would have experienced them.
This therefore is history with a difference. Her life was not like that of the important figures who are the usual subject of biographies. It was much more typical of the majority of the population. Tracing her life enables us to see these historical events from the bottom up' from the perspective of ordinary people rather than that of the upper echelons of society at the time.
Thus for example the judicial system in England in the early 19th century is described not by discussing the various political debates and legislative reforms that were being propounded at the time, but by describing a typical day's proceedings in a typical court (the day Mary Proctor was tried at Assizes). The separation of Victoria from New South Wales in 1850 is handled by describing the public mood in Melbourne at the time and the street celebrations that everyone would have taken part in. The approach is to use the small concrete picture, taken from Mary Proctor's life, to illustrate the general situation in a more easily understood and entertaining way.
The route map' of times, place and events that Mary Proctor's life leads us through includes her imprisonment and trial in England, transportation by sea to Van Diemen's Land, her time as a female convict and as a pioneer settler in Tasmania, and as a poor resident of early Melbourne before and during the gold rush. After her husband's death in 1852 she followed her by now adult sons to the gold-fields and lived through both the primitive times on the early diggings and the more settled life in one of the small mining towns that sprung up in rural Victoria at that time, and then died when the gold ran out. Her life is the history of early Australia in microcosm.
Contents:
Introduction
1. Trial and Transportation
2. The Female Factory
3. Trial at Quarter Sessions
4. Van Diemen's Land Convicts
5. Emancipists
6. In Early Melbourne
7. On the Goldfields
Epilogue
Appendix: The Children of Mary Proctor and William Fitches
Bibliography
Index
