Mortality at Sydney Cove, 1788-1792*

Abstract

Summary: Death and disease greatly influenced the development of the first Australian settlements but no detailed study of mortality over the critical years 1788–1792 has previously been made. Mortality was virtually confined to three distinct “epidemics”, each with different characteristics, and none related to the phases of severe rationing. The first epidemic occurred in the first months of the colony and affected both children and adults. The second, associated with the arrival of the notorious Second Fleet, was limited to the months of July and August 1790 and to adults. The third extended for a year after the arrival of the Third Fleet between July and September 1791; both children and adults died. Mortality after arrival amongst convicts on any individual ship was not related to the morbidity or mortality experience of the outward voyage. Convicts already in the settlement were little if at all affected by the second or third epidemics. After eighteen months in the colony, male survival rates from the time of embarkation were 91%, 57% and 74% for the three fleets. Contemporary records are reviewed in an attempt to establish the causes of mortality and to explain the epidemiological data, including the low mortality in inter‐epidemic periods.

Extreme weather events and infectious disease outbreaks

“…Many deaths were from dysentery and scurvy, although there may well have been an acute epidemic of imported infectious disease, most probably typhoid or typhus. 24 The suffering was not equally shared; a majority of the recorded deaths occurred in debilitated survivors of the seriously mismanaged Second Fleet (with its 25% on-board mortality among convicts).…”

Childhood mortality and its social background in the first settlement at Sydney Cove, 1788–1792

“…The cause or causes of the year-long epidemic in 1791 -1792 are not known with certainty, but dysentery and probably other disorders such as typhoid and typhus fevers, were prevalent among adults. 8 The rise in adult mortality upon the arrival of the Third Fleet, and the deaths over the following year occurred almost exclusively among the male convicts arriving in that fleet. This localisation of mortality t o the later arrivals probably extends to the children, in that only about 25% of the total childhood deaths in the year-long epidemic had a First Fleet parent, although First Fleet children must have accounted for half the childhood population, and for a higher proportion of the older children.…”

“…The official ration, when available, was 7 lb salt beef (or 4 Ib pork), 7 Ib flour, 3 pints pease, and 6 02. butter for adult males; children under 2 years received a quarter, between 2 and 1 0 years a half, and over 10 years two-thirds of this issue27 *. In November 1789, the women's ration, then two-thirds of the men's, did not suffer in the general reduction imposed: "many of them either had children who could very well have eaten their own and part of their mother's ration, or they had children at the breast; and although they did not labour, yet their appetites were never so delicate as to have found the full ration too much, had it been issued to them"2 8 No reference has been found to the weaning of infants, although this must have been a significant problem in a hot and unfamiliar climate, with limited dietary resources and a continual shortage of eating and cooking utensils. The accidental loss of livestock "deprived them (the inhabitants) of the present benefit of milk, butter and cheese"31.…”