On board a female convict ship to Australia

From Syphilis to Scrofula: the diary of
a convict ship surgeon

'Men of war bound for the Port of Pleasure' caricature (1791)
 from the National Maritime Museum

Delving into the lives of female convicts at the National Archives, I came across the medical journals kept by the ship surgeons on transportation ships bound for Australia in the early 1800s. Ship doctors kept detailed notes on the worst cases - and there were quite a few - from syphillis to scrofula. Alongside the common complaints - dysentry, sickness and fever - to be expected on long sea voyages, some of them women suffered from "hysteria" or violent emotional outbursts, screaming and shouting. 

"Dirty, lazy women!"

As well as listing details of the treatments the surgeons prescribed remedies for the moral character of their patients. One called a less than hygiene-conscious convict, "a dirty lazy woman", while praising others for physical attractiveness. The ship surgeons never let themselves forget that the women were criminals and always seem to have been suspicious of their motives. One remarked that his cure for most convict women was to put them on a "low diet" (short rations) to weed out the malingerers from the real sick.

Many prisoners were pregnant when they boarded the ship and the journals usually report several births during a voyage. A great deal of these were stillbirths - perhaps from poor conditions in prison and then on the ship but some infants survived to land in the Antipodes with their mothers.

On the Mary-Ann, sailing from Woolwich to Sydney in the 1830s, surgeon, William Bland, noted that a baby girl born en route failed to thrive. She survived for four months but cried and grizzled each night, disturbing the convicts' sleep. Her desperate mother, thinking that it might give her little girl some relief, stole a bottle of laudanum from the surgeon's store cupboard. Although she only gave her daughter a small dose, it was enough to kill the infant. 

Bland noted compassionately that the women was very distressed, as she had loved her baby and had so far been quiet and well behaved. Did she manage to settle in Sydney after losing her child - the last vestige of her old life in England?

You can find the journals for ships that sailed between 1817 and 53 in series ADM 101 at the National Archives. Find out more about TNA archives on transportation here.