Colonial Australia was a brutal place for convicts, but it was more political than previously thought.
Among the convicts that were transported to colonial Australia, there was a small group accused of very different crimes to the others.
Pushback came from groups like the Luddites and the Swing Rioters, who protested wages and conditions. Some of these people fell afoul of authorities and were sent to what is now Australia. Some convicts were classified as "rioters or breakers of the peace or things that aren't political, like theft", he says. But when they looked into the records, they found they were on strike.Muir was an idealistic Scottish lawyer who advocated for democratic changes to the political system, leading the Society of the Friends of the People."He had the temerity to talk to and organise workers in 1790s Scotland and he had the temerity to be a media activist," Dr Moore says.
"If you were sentenced to a stint in prison in Britain or Ireland, it's likely to have been measured in months sending somebody to prison is insanely expensive … But if you got sentenced to transportation, the minimum sentence was seven years," he says. In 1804, many from this group planned to attack colonial government sites, commandeer a ship and return to Ireland to continue the fight there.But the Castle Hill rebellion was unsuccessful, with its leaders and participants hanged without trial while others faced punishment like being banished to the Coal River chain gang."We are able to show that every day that a female convict was put in solitary , knocked 10 days off life expectancy," Professor Maxwell-Stewart says.
"There was a network of protests and this young teenage convict was right at the centre of them," Professor Maxwell-Stewart says."There was media activism by the political convicts — they're editing newspapers whilst they're convicts here," Dr Moore says.Cuffay was a Chartist leader, a trade unionist and a descendant of slaves. He was known as a gifted public speaker, often taking his message to the masses.
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