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forgotten political history of Australia's convicts /
ABC RN / by Nick Baker and Ian Coombe for Late Night Live. Posted Sat 30 Mar 2024 at 10:00am, updated Sat 30 Mar 2024 at 2:33pm. Among the convicts that were transported to colonial Australia, there was a small group accused of very different crimes to the others. Of the roughly 162,000 convicts sent here from 1788 to 1868, there were at least 3,600 political prisoners including trade unionists, democracy advocates and Irish revolutionaries. It's a part of the convict story that's been lost, according to historians Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Tony Moore, who have worked on a touring and online exhibit called Unshackled, currently showing at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. As part of a four-year project, their team used huge swathes of digitised information from Australia's UNESCO-listed convict archive, analysing trends across the decades of transportation and beyond. "Conditions were especially harsh for the female convicts sent here ... They also campaigned vigorously against being forced to work on a Sunday, which was notionally the day off for convicts ... Fanny Jarvis for example, whose story was uncovered by researcher Dr Monika Schwarz during the project. Fanny was a servant in Staffordshire who, at age 16, stole clothes from her master and was transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1836. She was a member of the "Flash Mob" gang and involved in one of the major riots at the Cascades Female Factory [Tasmania], where the women took control of the site. There was a network of protests and this young teenage convict was right at the centre of them." -- Professor Maxwell-Stewart. Among the convicts that were transported to colonial Australia, there was a small group accused of very different crimes to the others. Of the roughly 162,000 convicts sent here from 1788 to 1868, there were at least 3,600 political prisoners including trade unionists, democracy advocates and Irish revolutionaries. It's a part of the convict story that's been lost, according to historians Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Tony Moore, who have worked on a touring and online exhibit called Unshackled, currently showing at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. As part of a four-year project, their team used huge swathes of digitised information from Australia's UNESCO-listed convict archive, analysing trends across the decades of transportation and beyond. "Conditions were especially harsh for the female convicts sent here ... They also campaigned vigorously against being forced to work on a Sunday, which was notionally the day off for convicts ... Fanny Jarvis for example, whose story was uncovered by researcher Dr Monika Schwarz during the project. Fanny was a servant in Staffordshire who, at age 16, stole clothes from her master and was transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1836. She was a member of the "Flash Mob" gang and involved in one of the major riots at the Cascades Female Factory [Tasmania], where the women took control of the site. There was a network of protests and this young teenage convict was right at the centre of them." -- Professor Maxwell-Stewart.