C is for... things not talked about
Apr. 14th, 2012 05:01 pmAt least not until 40-50 years ago. Sort of. The Port Arthur site was developed in the 1970s, so I guess that contributed. It's a bit hard to ignore something when it's your state's premier tourist attraction, but the place has been a tourist destination since the site was closed a century earlier. And we were obviously taught about things in school because when I started doing family history it was different (school history: transportation didn't work because most of the men came from the cities & didn't know anything about farming; family history: shepherds, ploughmen, farm labourers) and of course the oft repeated line about them all being poor unfortunates who were picked up for stealing a loaf of bread or an apple.
So when I say not talked about, you know what I really mean. But it was something that happened out on the edges, in remote place Port Arthur, Maria Island and Macquarie Harbour. There are people who even today will tell you that. Like the lady at Somercotes who told us ticket of leave were given to men who had left Port Arthur, and I've seen similar comments in general history books and of course on various places on the Internet. (Reality, which of course I don't need to tell anyone reading this, is the men were sent out to work in the community, which is what makes the era so interesting. What sort of society do you have when more or less half of your population is prisoners under sentence? When the bulk of your labour force-- farm workers, clerk, mailmen, police--is prisoners of the crown?)
And that's the men. Women were even less talked about. Even as recently as the turn of this century, it doesn't seem to have been common knowledge. Comments on mailing lists, for example (Women?! Yes, and children!). The first time I came across a mention of the female factory at Cascades, in a bookshop in Hobart, late in the 1990s.
I don't know how widely known such things are now. In the circles I move in, such topics and women in particular have become very popular. For good reason, there's a lot not known, a lot that's been lost and so a lot to (re)discover.
Flicking through that chapter in the book of readings for one of my history units, I notice some changing perspectives. An extract from one book presents the women sent to NSW as being young, skilled as housemaids, cooks etc, and generally literate; rather than a wide range of ages and a larger percentage of factory workers that you'd expect if you took a true cross section of working class women. Similarly with the men, young, fit and with useful skills (allowing for the fact that occupation as given was not what they were necessarily occupied in prior to departure). Selected migrants rather than a random dumping gives a slightly different picture to that usually presented.
Interesting things going on, although I don't know how much of that makes it out to the mainstream. I haven't as yet come across any comments about female workers at Port Arthur :)
(OK there were some, house servants and wives of the civillians & military officers, but you know what I mean.)
So when I say not talked about, you know what I really mean. But it was something that happened out on the edges, in remote place Port Arthur, Maria Island and Macquarie Harbour. There are people who even today will tell you that. Like the lady at Somercotes who told us ticket of leave were given to men who had left Port Arthur, and I've seen similar comments in general history books and of course on various places on the Internet. (Reality, which of course I don't need to tell anyone reading this, is the men were sent out to work in the community, which is what makes the era so interesting. What sort of society do you have when more or less half of your population is prisoners under sentence? When the bulk of your labour force-- farm workers, clerk, mailmen, police--is prisoners of the crown?)
And that's the men. Women were even less talked about. Even as recently as the turn of this century, it doesn't seem to have been common knowledge. Comments on mailing lists, for example (Women?! Yes, and children!). The first time I came across a mention of the female factory at Cascades, in a bookshop in Hobart, late in the 1990s.
I don't know how widely known such things are now. In the circles I move in, such topics and women in particular have become very popular. For good reason, there's a lot not known, a lot that's been lost and so a lot to (re)discover.
Flicking through that chapter in the book of readings for one of my history units, I notice some changing perspectives. An extract from one book presents the women sent to NSW as being young, skilled as housemaids, cooks etc, and generally literate; rather than a wide range of ages and a larger percentage of factory workers that you'd expect if you took a true cross section of working class women. Similarly with the men, young, fit and with useful skills (allowing for the fact that occupation as given was not what they were necessarily occupied in prior to departure). Selected migrants rather than a random dumping gives a slightly different picture to that usually presented.
Interesting things going on, although I don't know how much of that makes it out to the mainstream. I haven't as yet come across any comments about female workers at Port Arthur :)
(OK there were some, house servants and wives of the civillians & military officers, but you know what I mean.)
