The idea that the Australian convicts were members of a ‘criminal class’ has generated much debate in the past. Various historians believe that the convicts were ‘professional criminals’ as opposed to ‘casual criminals’. The idea that the majority of the convicts were casual criminals is based on the premise that they were forced to commit crimes such as theft of a loaf of bread in order to feed their families, due to the economic changes occurring in Britain that saw people struggle to survive financially. However historians such as Manning Clark suggest that this was not correct, he contends that the majority of convicts were of a criminal class comprised of professional criminals. There is a widespread consensus that the convicts were mainly agricultural workers who had been crushed by cruel landlords and a monstrous criminal law which transported people for minor crimes. Clark states that the idea that pioneers were more ‘sinned against, that sinners’ was a comforting idea for an Australian nationalist sentiment, than facing the fact that the founders of Australia were professional criminals.
The best source of classification of types of convicts is the indents that were recorded on the convict ships coming from Britain, these indents record information regarding the convict such as; name, gender, occupation and previous criminal record. The indents show that the majority of convicts were transported for thefts, they were drawn from the working class comprising men such as butchers, hatters, shoemakers, engineers as well as many other occupations. The majority of women were domestic servants. Between 1797 and 1815 5546 males and 1799 females were transported, having a ratio of three to one. Another important statistic is that the ratio of town to country workers was five to one, respectively. Another source Clark refers to is informed opinion from Britain. Patrick Colquhoun, an observer of British Society states that the class of thieves in London was comprised of ‘young men, abandoning business, or being bred to no profession, having been left to a life of idleness indulged in things such as gambling and debauchery, and thus must resort of crime in order to finance such habits’. Clark also refers to the opinions of the Constabulary Commissioners in 1839; that states that ‘we find scarcely in any cases it is ascribable to the pressure of unavoidable want or destitution, and that in the great mass of cases it arises from the temptation of obtaining property with a less degree of labour tan by regular industry’. This is essentially saying that men have wants but wish to obtain them more easily than working for money and buying such things, so they resort to simply stealing them. Clark concludes in saying that most ideas regarding convicts as casual criminal have erred on the premise that they committed crime due to the economic challenges that were present between 1788 and 1850. He states that the evidence looked at confirms that the majority of convicts were from professional criminal classes of the towns of Great Britain and Ireland and that they actually chose to commit crime due to idleness and selfish nature, they were not forced into crime due to economic factors.
British convicts leaving their homeland, bound for the new penal colony in Australia
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