Introduction

Questions concerning the care of convicts, except for the detailed recounting of corporal punishment, have been largely neglected by Australian historians. John Hirst's The Convict System and Its Enemies is a notable exception, but even Hirst fails to consider the quality of housing, the nutritional content of the standard ration and the access to medical care provided for convict workers. At best, there are only scattered references in the historiography to mortality and morbidity, the frequency of suicides and the quality of the convicts' environment. The material condition of the convicts is rarely compared with that of ex-convicts or of free settlers. A peculiar insularity in Australian historiography treats the nineteenth century convict experience as unique; and comparisons with the condition of free labour in England, slaves in the United States or bonded Indians in the Caribbean are largely neglected. This chapter on the care and feeding of convicts provides a comparative analysis of the convicts' physical punishment, diet, hours of work, housing and medical care. It represents a first attempt to evaluate the material and non-material needs of the convict workers, outlining a methodology and area for future research. However, the conclusions are neither speculative nor tentative, since only errors of exceptional magnitude could revise the thrust of our main conclusions: that the convicts received good treatment, nutritious food, decent housing, adequate medical services and reasonable hours of work relative both to other forced and free workers.