The children of mothers in the convict system of Van Diemen’s Land

March 16 2013 - 9:25am
 Professor Lucy Frost
Professor Lucy Frost

Among the women sentenced to transportation in courtrooms across the British Isles, many were mothers. Their sentences would change the lives of children. Most of these children would be left behind to be cared for by relatives or to fend for themselves on the streets or to suffer the grimness of a workhouse. Others would sail with their mothers on the convict transports, facing their own future in exile. And then there were the children yet unborn. Some convict women would become pregnant while they were serving their sentences, and would give birth in the hospitals of female factories to babies whose daily existence would be controlled by the convict system. Even children born after the mothers were free would be affected. Not surprisingly, many exiled convicts never brought a sustainable order into their personal lives, and inflicted chaos and emotional trauma upon the next generation as well.

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