Introduction

Abstract

This text was automatically generated on 4 July 2022.All rights reserved 6 New South Wales was founded in 1788 as a penal colony, a place where convicted felons would be transported from Britain to the Antipodes. Contrary to the American transportation scheme, convicts were not stripped of their rights to be sold by ship captains to private masters as indentured servants, but remained in the care of the Governor of New South Wales. 44 Unless they were assigned to a private master, convicts worked under a task work system whereby they were expected to complete tasks for the government, before they could go about their own business, growing their own provisions and living in their own homes. 45 The transportation system was seen both as a mode of punishment and as a way of supplying free labour to the developing colonies. 46 The confinement of convicts in barrack in Sydney was only introduced in 1819.