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Convict labour

Convict Station

Between 1803 and 1853 convicts from Britain who had their sentences commuted were sent far across the world to penal settlements in Tasmania.

Bridgewater was the site of a convict station created in 1828 to support the construction of the Bridgewater causeway across the River Derwent.

While most convicts that arrived in Tasmania were put to work under individual free settlers, the convicts that were kept at the
Bridgewater Convict Station were made up of re-offenders who had caused trouble or broken the rules while already serving their sentences in Van Dieman’s Land.

These convicts were forced to work in chain gangs, quarrying stone with pick axes and then pushing it to pushing it by wheelbarrow to the River Derwent to build the causeway. This work was done in heavy iron leg-cuffs, called ‘leg-irons’, which could only be removed by a blacksmith.

Up to 280 convicts worked at the Bridgewater Convict Station, after which they would be returned to their original master or transferred elsewhere to a lesser punishment.

Some convicts tried their best to escape the gruelling punishment by running away or swimming across the river, however, those that were caught could be punished by solitary confinement, forced to wear even more restrictive leg-irons or flogged with a whip on a timber stand in the station’s courtyard.

After the causeway was complete in 1836, the Bridgewater Convict Station was converted to a ‘probation station’ where convicts would be given less severe punishment, and moral instruction and training until they were judged worthy of a ‘probation-pass’ allowing them to be hired by free settlers.

This probation system had replaced the earlier ‘Assignment’ system, in which convicts had simply been assigned to a free master straight away, which was found to be too inconsistent in the convict’s potential treatment, workload and likelihood of being reformed.

Nominal return of men employed at the Bridgewater Road Station, 1840
Nominal return of men employed at the Bridgewater Road Station, 1840.Source: Tasmanian Archives: CON77-2-30

References:

  • Kirsi Graham, ‘Object Biography: Bridgewater convict-era shirt’ National Musuem of Australia.
  • ‘Granton Convict and Memorial Group, Lyell Hwy, Gnraton, TAS, Australia’. Australian Heritage Database.
  • Michael Sprod, 2006. ‘Probation System’ The Companion to Tasmanian History, Accessed form the University of Tasmania ; Richard Tuffin and Martin Gibbs, 2020. ‘Uninformed and impractical?’
  • The convict probation system and its impact upon the landscape of 1840s Van Diemens Land.’ History of Australia – Volume. 17, No. 1, 87-114, p. 92-