'Depravity and Disorder': The Sexuality of Convict Women

Abstract

'Convict women are generally so depraved and the cause of so much disorder'1 asserted the pastoralist John Macarthur in his testimony to the Bigge Inquiry into the state of New South Wales. The themes of 'depravity7 and 'disorder' are especially pronounced in contemporary discussions during the first half of the nineteenth century in Australia, on how convict women should be controlled, disciplined and punished. In assessing these judgements, some historians have focussed on the accuracy or otherwise of such characterisations. These writings about convict women have been informed by a moral verdict. One school, led by Portia Robinson, and followed by Babette Smith, Monica Perrott and Annette Salt, is intent on rescuing those convict women who were not 'dissolute' and 'abandoned', but who 'succeeded' in becoming 'respectable' citizens. Judgement is passed on convict women who 'failed' to seize the economic opportunities offered by a fledgling colonial society. There were those who 'destroyed their chances', rebelled when it was 'more prudent to remain meek'; their future was in large part shaped by the 'character of the women themselves'. In these studies, it is argued that many convict women acted in ways which 'jeopardised their future' because it was the reliable, honest, hardworking convict women, the 'steady sober women' who became respectable members of the community.2 Robinson is intent on illustrating the ways in which convict women lived lives which were 'at least outwardly honesf, because they became the 'pioneer family7 women of Australia.3 This preoccupation of whether convict women did or did not 'succeed' in becoming respectable citizens, or whether they remained 'dissolute' all of their lives, emanates from a liberal notion of 'success' measured in terms of the establishment