University of Tasmania Emeritus Professor Lucy Frost will give The Examiner's John West memorial lecture on Friday. Picture: PETER MATHEW
IN 1842, the year The Examiner was founded, more than 3000 British women were listed as convicts in the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land.
Many had arrived with children or had been forced to leave them behind.
Their stories are being researched by University of Tasmania Professor Lucy Frost, who will give The Examiner John West memorial lecture in Launceston on Friday.
The annual lecture, organised by the Launceston Historical Society, marks the establishment of The Examiner and celebrates the work of its famous editorial writer Reverend John West.
The newspaper was first published on Saturday, March 12, 1842 - 171 years ago today.
Reverend West was the colony's most vocal opponent of the transportation of British criminals to what would become Tasmania.
In the first edition of The Examiner he began the newspaper's campaign to stop transportation.
It was a campaign that was successful but by the time it ended in 1853 about 12,000 female convicts had been sent to the colony over a 50-year period.
Professor Frost has found that more than 2000 children arrived here with their convict mothers.
The women began their sentences in female factories and were forcibly separated from their children.
Her lecture will explore the experiences of these children and look at the convict system from their perspective.com and the impact the sentences imposed on their mothers had on their lives.
Professor Frost is an honorary research professor in the Department of English, Journalism and European Languages.ntsat the University of Tasmania.
FACT FILE
WHAT: The Examiner's John West memorial lecture, with Professor Lucy Frost, speaking about the children of mothers in the convict system of Van Diemen's Land
WHEN: Friday, March 15, at 8pm.
WHERE: Sir Raymond Ferrall Centre, University of Tasmania, Newnham campus.