'Settlers, Servants and Slaves' documents the colonial era exploitation of
both European and Aboriginal children by the settler elite of nineteenth
century Western Australia.
In a struggling colony desperately short of labour, early settlers relied on
the labour of convicted and neglected children - their own and other people's.
Convicted and neglected children from the poorest sections of this divided
society were placed in institutions, where they were trained to become a useful
part of the work force. Education services developed only slowly, and there was
no system of secondary education provided by the government in the nineteenth
century.
From the 1870s, Aborignal children were widely 'unemployed' in a complex web of
contrast and apprenticeship law, in the pastoral and pearling industries in the
North West. Often kidnapped by 'blackbirders', these children received no wages
and had no opportunity to attend school.
'Settlers, Servants and Slaves' also shows how concern over 'the problem' of
children of mixed descent of the nineteenth century was to provide the rationale
for infamous twentieth century 'solutions' – namely, the forced removal of
indigenous children from their parents and the establishment of Aboriginal
Reserves.
Contents:
List of tables
Conversions
Introduction: Understanding childhood in nineteenth century Western Australia
Part 1: European children
1. Counting the European population
2. Family and child labour
3. Parsimony and discrimination in education
4. Paupers, bastards, delinquents and larrikins
Part 2: Aboriginal children
5. Estimating the Aboriginal population
6. Institutions for Aboriginal children in the south
7. Family and child labour in the pastoral industry
8. Child labour in the pearling industry
9. Rehearsing the future: 'Half-castes' and reserves
Conclusion: Holding a work force in bondage
Abbreviations used in notes
Select biblography
Index
Reviews:
'An absorbing and important book that has the potential to change the way
Western Australian history is viewed' - Journal of Australian Studies
'Penelope Hetherington provides a thorough review of evidence for European and
Aboriginal childhoods in WA' - History West
