Why seven years?
Why seven years?
Last night I was singing to the kittens (well, singing in the same room as the kittens. They were playing leap and pounce) before going to bed. I was singing the Kate Rusby version of "Botany Bay". I was struck by the line:
For seven long years I'm transported
seven long years and a day.
Of course, the Faerie Queen's ( Read more... )
Last night I was singing to the kittens (well, singing in the same room as the kittens. They were playing leap and pounce) before going to bed. I was singing the Kate Rusby version of "Botany Bay". I was struck by the line:
For seven long years I'm transported
seven long years and a day.
Of course, the Faerie Queen's ( Read more... )
The stage which transportation was now reaching and the actual condition of affairs in the Australian colonies about this period do not appear to have been much understood in England. Earnest and thoughtful men. might busy themselves with prison discipline at home, and the legislature might watch with peculiar interest the results obtained from the special treatment of a limited number of selected offenders in Millbank penitentiary. But for the great mass of criminality deported to a distant shore no very active concern was shown. The country for a long time seemed satisfied with transportation. Portions of the system might be open to criticism. Thus the Commons committee of 1832 freely condemned the hulks at Woolwich and other arsenals in which a large number of convicts were kept while waiting embarkation. It was reported that the indiscriminate association of prisoners in them produced more vice, profaneness and demoralization than in the ordinary prisons. After dark the wildest orgies went on unchecked dancing, fighting, gambling, singing and so forth; it was easy to get drink and tobacco and to see friends from outside. The labor hours were short and the tasks light; altogether the situation of the convict in the hulks, says the report, cannot be considered penal; it is a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.
(bolding mine)
Sadly, although I am Australian it seems that all of my relatives went there voluntarily to work as coal miners, share croppers, and missionaries. Bloody boring bunch of folks. I bet very few of them every engaged in any orgies of dancing.
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Try here for a whole load of legal / historic fact bumf - you just need an idea of the year you are aiming at to start the process off :) It is possible to waste spend many happy hours researching on the Internet :)
Peace
peter
Sadly, although I am Australian
Oh, I missed that - is it in your bio? And you sounded so nice ;)))))))) G'day
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Yes, born but not raised. I've been in the US since I was three, and oneofthesedays will get duel citizenship.
I AM nice, damn it. Anyone says different is looking for a fight.
Thank you again.
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