Transportation, Post-Penal Identity and the Life Course

Transportation, Post-Penal Identity and the Life Course explores the life-courses of convicts who, after being transported to Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, and released from servitude, died in pauper establishments.

Presenting new case studies that look at the whole lives of former convicts dying in poverty to understand the long-term effects of the convict transportation system, Watkins facilitates an exploration of a broader view of the charitable institutions and its connections with the penal system. Delving into the path dependency and the criminalization of poverty the author uses criminal justice records, civil records, and newspapers for life-course analysis, along with colonial statistical returns and correspondence of officials to contextualize those life-courses. Exploring the Vandemonian charitable system within its post-penal identity and socio-economic context, this book looks at the social mobility of pauper emancipists to disrupt the enduring belief that all convicts who were transported to Australia were ‘better-off’ and that Australia was a ‘working man’s paradise’ in the context of a re-emerging glorification of empire.

An interdisciplinary work exploring historical documentation and using criminological methodologies to uncover the lives of working-class people, this is insightful reading for researchers interested in the histories of charitable and criminal justice institutions, working class lives, life-course methodology, and criminalization.

Emma D. Watkins is Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Birmingham, UK.