An address to the North West Chapter of the Fellowship of the First Fleeters by Gordon Holding. 2nd April 2016

Britain in 1788.   What was Britain like in the period in which the First Fleet arrived in the new colony of New South Wales?

George III was on the throne of a very hierarchical, snobbish and class based society. The monarchy was of course Hanoverian (a small north German state) and the Hanoverian King Georges and their descendants have always married their German Princess or Prince cousins – apart from George VI who married a Scottish lass (but he was not expected to become King of course).

Yet in Britain there were more opportunities for personal advancement than in other European countries, except perhaps for the Netherlands which like Britain was a Protestant and maritime country.

The newly rich were absorbed into the aristocracy through marriage or the award of titles. In the 18th century political corruption was normal. Politicians were routinely bribed including by the King. Prime Ministers took and gave bribes. The right to vote varied from place to place. In some boroughs all men owning property could vote and elections were bitterly contested. In others very few could vote and the local aristocratic Landlords tightly controlled the outcome of elections. There was no secret ballot and votes were cast in public. The Landlords agent could keep of careful note of how people voted and those who did not vote for his candidate could lose their jobs and homes. These latter Parliamentary seats were called Rotten (or pocket) Boroughs and were not reformed until 1832. Some small towns had two MP’s whilst new industrial areas, such as Manchester, had none.

The most notorious was Old Sarum (previous site of the City of Salisbury until it was moved) which had three houses and seven voters. Indeed, for a time there were no voters living within it at all but the local Landlord was able to give a few people temporary voting rights to get his candidate in.It was the constituency of famous Prime Minister, and supposed defender of democracy, William Pitt the Elder for a while. His son William Pitt the Younger was of course Prime Minster when the First Fleet set sail, and for a while represented another Rotten Borough – Appleby in Westmorland.

British life was much more localised. Weighs and measures varied. Even the time was not the same as you moved around the country. Local government arrangements varied. Each district had its local dialects and there were even regional language differences.

Much of Wales spoke Welsh, Cornish was spoken in Cornwall, Gaelic in the Scottish Highlands and Scots in the Lowlands. Even the Lake District had remnants of its own language called Cumbric. Yet it was a time when communications were improving. A new network of toll roads and coaching Inns was created with fast mail coaches which reduced travel times from one end of the country to another to a few days. Soon a national canal network would be created to be followed by railways from the 1830’s onwards.

In the 18th century many people were casual labourers moving around for work, seasonal changes and downturns in trade etc. The Old Elizabethan system of each parish looking after its own poor had broken down. This left many homeless and workless people tramping the roads. They begged or stole to survive. Being a homeless vagabond was itself a crime but such criminals could not pay fines and the state simply did not have the money to house even imprison them.

The workhouse system was developed to deal with the problem. By 1776 there were at least 1,800 parish workhouses in England and Wales numbered with a total capacity of more than 90,000 places. Most were cruel cold grim places with a minimal diet. They separated wives, husbands, and children. They also contained the insane and the sick who had no one to care for them. Anyone applicant for poor relief had to enter a workhouse where they worked for their board and no pay. They were a feared last resort with a policy of keeping conditions worse than outside as a disincentive not to enter and become a charge on the local rates.

However even this was not enough to cope with the problem. Why did Britain have a big surplus population that it was anxious to export it to America at first and later Canada, Australia and New Zealand etc.? By 1700 the population of England and Wales was about 5 1/2 million and of Scotland about 1 million, by 1800 Britain had about 9 million (Scotland and England and Wales had become a single country in 1707 called Great Britain); today it is around 60 million.

Whilst the population was expanding and the birth rate was high, average life expectancy was only around 40 years. Infant mortality was high; around 25 % did not reach their fifth birthday.Germs were not understood and medical science could do little to treat infectious diseases which were widespread and hit all social classes including the Royal family.

The so called ‘Agricultural Revolution’ meant a big increase in Agricultural production and better quality nutrition – for those who could afford to buy food. British agriculture was probably the most advanced in the world at this time. But the enclosure movement form the 16th to the 18th centuries consolidated the land into fewer farms with each worker able to produce more food (higher productivity). As a result, there were insufficient jobs in the countryside for its growing population.

This was not a sudden revolution but a set of major changes over at least two centuries. The old Feudal agricultural system was one in which large open fields were shared and animals grazed on commons.

Powerful landlord enclosed these open fields by obtaining Acts of Parliament. The privately owned farms which replaced them were the scene of major innovations, including selective breeding of animals, new agricultural equipment such as seed drills, the development of winter fodder crops such as turnips, crop rotation, better drainage, more systematic manuring etc.

There was a big move to more profitable sheep farming from mixed arable farming. Thus whilst more and better quality food was being produced a great many families lost their land and were reduced to casual labourers or had to move away from their home villages in search of work. The large, often aristocratic landlords, got rich from the rents paid by tenant farmers and built themselves large country houses and second homes in the City (think Downton Abbey).

A new class of Tenant Yeoman Farmers and independent farmers became prosperous. Some full- time farmworkers had adequate wages and their own cottages but many others faced seasonal hunger, unemployment and lack of a permanent home. Economic change always seems to have its beneficiaries and its casualties. The problem of loss of land and surplus population was to become especially acute in Scotland particularly in the Highlands after the Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century Bonnie Prince Charlie etc.) and Highland clearances for sheep from the 1760’s until the 1820’s.

In Ireland the population boomed in the 18th century and farms became smaller and smaller as they were divided between sons. The potato became crucial to survival. The great majority of Ireland was and is Roman Catholic but much of the land was owned by Anglo Irish Protestants (such as the Duke of Wellington’s family – the Wellesley’s) and by absentee Protestant England and Scottish landlords.

Many of the landowners wished to screw as much profit as possible out of the Irish peasantry, who they often regarded as almost sub human. Hence poverty was widespread. Many of the Irish lived on the edge of hunger. The 1845-1849 potato famine was to see the problem at its worst. Many Irish emigrated to America and to England.

In both countries they experienced severe prejudice. Average life expectancy of the Irish in Liverpool England in the early 19th century was under 20 years. Note Ireland did not formally become part of the British state until 1801 but both countries had shared the same Monarch for centuries in effect Ireland was a colony of the English and of the Scots.

Following on from, and to some extent growing out of, the Agricultural changes was the 18th century Industrialisation of Britain. By 1788 the Country was in the throes of the industrial Revolution. It was in the process of becoming the world’s first industrial and mainly urban society. However, whilst industrialisation was beginning to produce new products and generate new wealth it was still in its infancy in 1788 and most of the country was outwardly little affected.

The biggest changes were seen in developing industrial areas in the North of England, the Midlands, South Wales and Central Scotland where water power could be harnessed to drive early factories. What were once small towns and collections of villages, were beginning their growth into large industrial conurbations such as Birmingham, the Black Country, Stoke on Trent (the Potteries) Manchester, Leeds Sheffield, Newcastle, Swansea, and Glasgow.

Growing industries included cotton textiles, pottery manufacture, iron smelting and the manufacture of a huge new range of metal goods including machinery, glass manufacture, ship building, and mining. Iron and coal were crucial because steam power was about to revolutionise manufacturing and transport.From the 1720’s, crude steam powered pumps (Newcomen engines) had been in use but in 1776 a new more efficient and more powerful type of steam engine, designed by James Watt, made its appearance.

Only six years before the First Fleet arrived Boulton and Watt began to build steam engines with rotary motion (with a shaft going round and round rather than just pumping up and down). This meant that steam engines could now power machinery in factories such as cotton mills for the first time. This freed industry from waterwheels and factories soon sprang up near coalfields and in port cities such as London to which coal could easily be transported in bulk.

During the 18th century most towns still had populations of less than 10,000 but the industrial revolution was changing that. By 1800 the population of Birmingham was about 73,000, Liverpool 77,000, Manchester 70,000, and Sheffield 31,000. The port of Bristol around 68,000. But none could come anywhere near London’s one million.

The new industrial cities were a magnet for those dispossessed by agriculture. Working conditions and wages in factories and mines could be appalling. With no laws to prevent exploitation workers were dependent to the goodwill of their employers and landlords. Some were kind and considerate but competition and the desire for profit led to many workers and their families existing in dire poverty and deprivation. As we mentioned above life expectancy was to fall below 20 year of age in the industrial towns of the north west of England; particular among Irish immigrants. was undergoing a transformation.

Until the late 17th and early 18th century the common people lived overwhelmingly in the countryside. Their home would be small cottages built form locally available materials. Bricks were expensive so timber, stone, and wattle and daub, homes were more common. Glass was also expensive and could not be made in large in large sheets. Hence only the better off could afford window glass which was inserted in small panes.

Except for the very rich windows were small and homes very dark.Many cottages only had one room. In pastoral districts one long house would be divided into two spaces and shared with the cattle.

The cottages of the common people often lacked a chimney. Smoke from the fire would find its way out through the thatched roof. Cooking was on an open fire – no cookers or ovens then. The village baker might have an oven to server the whole village. Whilst people tried to keep clean and washed themselves daily hot water was a problem and soap was an expensive commodity enjoyed by the rich.

There were no flush toilets of course. You had to squat over a (often communal) cess pit and holds your nose. Hence Britain would have been an extremely smelly place. It is often though that people emptied their bed pans from upstairs windows on to the streets which were full of excrement. This is largely a popular myth because excrement was a very valuable item. It was the main fertiliser on farms and veggie plots.

Urine was used in the bleaching, dying, and tanning industries (as were dog turds). Each householder was expected to keep the front of their building clear of rubbish and were fined if they did not do so; court records are full of such cases.

Horse manure did fill the streets but was constantly being collected for fertiliser. In fact, refuse collection was not a big problem since virtually everything was recycled and reused. It provided many jobs. Even old rags and worn out ropes could be sold and used for oakum (mixed with tar and used as waterproofing between the planks of wooden ship). Producing oakum as a common task of inmates of workhouses.

Ashes from the fire were used in soap production. The throwaway society is a relatively recent product of our generation But the increasing wealth of the 18th century saw many more brick homes being built. Large Georgian era farmhouses sprang up.

Industrialisation cut the price of glass for windows, Brick chimneys were added to old houses. Soap became pleasanter to use and a bit more affordable but was still seen as something of a luxury item until germ theory of the spread of illness was established and the tax on it was reduced in 1853.

Bathing became fashionable again in the 18th century among the better off after having previously been seen, in Tudor and Stuart times as a health hazard. Heating enough water for a bath was a problem at home but Spa towns and sea bathing were beginning to grow in popularity.

Previously only the rich had beds and mattresses, people had slept in their day clothes (often their only clothes) on straw filled bags. But the use of beds mattresses and nightgowns gradually spread down through society in the 17th and 18 centuries. They did not become universal until well into the 19th century.

A large group in the population were domestic servants. Even people on quite modest incomes had servants since they were cheap and of course there was no electricity supermarkets or labour saving devices. It was common for children to be sent from home to work as domestic servants at a wealthier neighbour from about the age of seven years.

Whilst they usually worked hard for low incomes servants living conditions were often better that those outside and they learned domestic skills and manners from their employers; whose old hand me down clothes they often wore.

Housing for the common people in the cities was often appalling. Old wooden tenements would house numerous families – one family to a room, often lacking furniture, sleeping on sacking; some even including a lodger! Many families might share a single outside toilet over a cess pit. Disease was rampant.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the rise of cheaper cotton goods. The Common people were beginning to afford changes of clothes and underwear for the first time.

Some of the better off farmers even had separate nightwear. However, clothes were recycled down the class system and many people wore second hand clothes. Beds and clothes were people’s most valuable possessions.

The poor would only have the clothes that they stood up in. More plentiful food and new food from around the world had become available. The potato for example had initially been seen as an unpleasant animal food but now it was a dietary staple. Sugar from the West Indies poured and became much more affordable, teeth deteriorated.

Since drinking water from the local river was not always trustworthy beer and cider had been the staple drink of the common for centuries even, in diluted form for young children. The rich often had access to wine, coffee and chocolate.

The 18thcentury saw a transformation with the increasing availability of tea from India, which in turn made the temperance movement a practical possibility.

Childhood. Childhood was regarded very differently in the 18th century. Traditionally it was a very short period. Once a child reached around the age of 7 they were seen as small adults and could be convicted of crimes. At seven years many children were sent away in into service in other households.

Around this age the sons of the wealthy might be packed off to boarding schools. Boys could enter Oxford or Cambridge universities (there were only the two in England but four in Scotland) from around the age of 14.

Among the poor families, children were put to work as soon as they could walk and understand what was required of them. They worked in agriculture and underground in coalmines from the age of four. But they were generally working alongside their parents.

Poor children who has lost their parents or had been abandoned by them were a big problem. Unwanted babies were abandoned at the Foundling hospital or at collecting points around the country.

A common solution, particularly for workhouse children, was to ‘apprentice’ them out to factories, mines or farms were they worked for long hours for their board without pay (called pauper apprentices). They had no legal protection. Many were hoovered up by unscrupulous white slavers and sent as indentured labour to America. Later many were sent by charities and churches to Australia to work in residential industrial schools.

Literacy improved dramatically in the 18th century. By the time of the First Fleet about 60% of British men could sign their own names on documents and perhaps about half as many women. Yet far more people could read.

In Protestant northern Europe encouraged everyone to read the Bible. A literate population, cheaper paper and reduced taxes encouraged the growth of books, pamphlets, newspapers and advertising.

Living Standards in the later 18th centuryWe could detail many more changes but it is clear that alongside agricultural improvements and industrialisation, living standards for a large slice of the population were improving but as substantial minority of people, became poor casual labourers and/or homeless vagrants. Whist some got very rich and most saw a gradual improvement over the period, conditions for those at the bottom worsened.

Are we seeing a similar problem developing in Britain, several other European countries, and the USA today with the rise of neo-liberal economic policies, privatisation of public services, welfare cuts, and the decline of trade unions?

The incomes of the wealthy are rapidly rising, middle incomes stagnating, many young people are unable to get a regular income because they are hired on temporary, part-time, or zero hour’s contracts, the use of labour hire organisations offering poor pay and conditions, together with a growing homelessness problem. Will this polarisation of society produce widespread disaffection and conflict?

Today these countries can’t export their surplus disaffected populations to a colony. On the contrary refugees are trying to get in. Where does Australia fit into this pattern? Britain had just lost the 13 colonies in North America in the American war of Independence (but retained Canada and was expanding its control of India through the East India Company.

In the 17th century nearly half of the people sent to North America and the West Indies from Britain were in effect white slaves, mostly sent for life; but some were indentured for a fixed term.

In the 18th century up to half those going to North America did so involuntarily. Some were convicts, some illiterates were tricked into indentured service, some agreed to indentured service through extreme poverty and desperation. Many were orphaned and abandoned children scooped up from the streets. In other words; America became the dumping ground; the place to send the unwanted at a time before long term imprisonment (prisons at the time were unlike prisons today; they were only for debtors who had to pay for their own keep, or for those awaiting trial).

Shipping them off to America as cheap labour was seen as a solution. Out of site out of mind – palm the problem off on others.But with the loss of the American colonies a major destination was lost. Canada could only absorb limited numbers and heat and disease in the West Indies killed most white labourers with a year. This meant that African slave labours immune to mosquito borne disease, was preferred there (as it was on Southern USA plantations).

Opening up a colony in Australia was an alternative venue. It was partly seen as punishment for crimes, partly as an opportunity for rehabilitation but also as an outlet for surplus population, including very minor criminals who stole to eat and women forced into prostitution by homelessness and hunger and destitute children who roamed the streets begging and stealing to survive.

A big slice of those enslaved and sent to America were Irish and Scottish rebels after civil wars and uprisings. In the 17th century King James I sold 30,000 Irish to Americans to use as slaves. The Irish were of course largely Catholics, seen as little better than devil worshippers by the evangelical Protestant s who controlled the New England Colonies in North America.

Crime. We may be surprised today at the apparently severe sentence of transportation to Australia was imposed upon destitute people for relatively minor offences but we should remember that: What is minor today e.g. stealing a handkerchief was not so then, when products were handmade and our modern luxuries and mass production had not been invented. A handkerchief could be much larger than today and made of silk with fine embroidery.

Often the offender had a previous criminal record which was taken into account in sentencing. The government was keen to tackle the problem of unemployment and vagrancy by exporting the problem, hence it encouraged courts to transport the destitute. Some judges and lawmakers were beginning to be influenced by Enlightenment ideas rather than earlier cruel punishments of offenders as a deterrent; which were clearly not working e.g. pickpockets were active in the crowds watching criminals being whipped or hung!

They saw transportation as a means of rehabilitating the offenders and giving the destitute a chance of a new life. Many were transported for seven years. The idea was that after 7 years of punishment many would take the opportunity to build a new character and new crime-free life in a country where land was plentiful and opportunities plentiful for those willing to work hard. Later, transportation was seen as a way of building up the size of the colony and warding off other European powers.

Transporting women also came to be seen as important. Men far outnumbered women, so that newly arrived women, even if rather unprepossessing, would usually have little difficulty in finding a husband. Marriage and children would give stability to men and help their rehabilitation as well as populating the colony.

As we saw above many of the growing rural labouring population had lost their land when it was enclosed and were employed only seasonally at hiring fairs. Many were forced to tramp the road in search of work. Many moved in to towns and cities becoming factory works, miners, shop assistants etc. For there was a growing casual labouring population periodic unemployment was commonplace due to seasonal work and trade fluctuations.

There was a very localised and inadequate welfare system. Hence, many were left hungry and destitute turning to crime, prostitution and begging (itself a crime, as was homelessness.) Types of Crime ‘Moral’ offences e.g. bigamy, blasphemy, incest etc. Crime as a , social protest against their loss . (Douglas Hay, Eric Hobsbawn) and resistance to new economic order of market capitalism e.g. gathering wood from owner’s forest, miners taking home some coal from the mine, dockers pilfering a little of a cargo.

Some of these ‘crimes’ were previously an accepted perk of daily life, farm labourers gleaning corn fields (see Peter King 2006) and taking a turnip from a field that they had been working in, poaching - Douglas Hay's study of poaching (in the book Albion's Fatal Tree) showed how local communities. "…united solidly in defence of poaching. The keepers met with a wall of silence when they tried to make inquiries, but found that word spread like lightening when they obtained a search warrant, and that the suspects had escaped with 'the apparatus' just before they arrived.

Witnesses lost their memories… Poachers not only gave alibis for one another; they also took measures against informers" (1975: 198) (avoiding excise taxes on imports and exports) had become a huge industry; excise men were employed to chase smugglers. Resistance to new working methods that destroyed their livelihood e.g. Luddism. In February 1811 in the Midlands lace and hosiery trades. Protected by exceptional public support within their communities, Luddite bands conducted at least 100 separate attacks that destroyed about 1,000 knitting frames (out of 25,000!) valued at £6,000–10,000.

Many Luddites were executed e.g. 17 were hanged in York in 1815. Many were also transported to Australia. Bread riots, in response to deregulation and rising prices. They are recorded in 1709, 1740, 1756-7, 1773, and 1782 and in particular 1795 and 1801. These are just the ones of which historical records remain. E P Thompson quotes a petition of labourers from Leeds in 1795 to the local magistrates.

They complained of "corn factors and the millers and a set of people which we call hucksters and meal men who have got the corn into their hands that they may hold it up and sell it at their own price or they will not sell it." Attempts to . The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 acts were passed as a response to the fear that workers would strike during a conflict to force the government to accede to their demands. Sympathy for the plight of the workers brought repeal of the acts in 1824. However, in response to the series of strikes that followed, the Combination Act of 1825 was passed, which allowed labour unions but severely restricted their activity with stiff penalties for swearing illegal oaths (of loyalty to one another). For example, in 1832 six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset tried to form a union to protest about low wages and high food prices. They were prosecuted and transported to Australia for 7 years (The Tolpuddle martyrs).

Attempts to win for the working class e.g. the Peterloo massacre 1819 (Army charged 60,000 pro-democracy demonstrators in St Peters square in Manchester 18 were killed and 700 seriously wounded by sabre cuts). Anti Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 were an uprising against the Papists Act of 1778 which had removed some of the more extreme restrictions on Roman Catholics. Lord George Gordon led up to 60,000 people in a demonstration by Protestants against the Act. It got out of hand and a section of the crowd tried to break into the House of Commons. Catholic homes and business were burned and rioting spread. The army was called in to restore order and fired on the rioters. About 285 people were shot dead, with another 200 wounded. Around 450 of the rioters were arrested. Of those 21 were later tried and executed.

Gordon was arrested and charged with high treason, but was found not guilty. , pickpocketing, ‘Theft, burglary, extortion, kidnap, by ‘professional criminal gangs. Highwaymen (on horseback), footpads (robbing on foot in towns – down a dark alley)., pirates. The lack of police meant that most crimes went unpunished. Domestic abuse of wives’ children and servants –often seen as a private family matter and ignored unless it was very extreme.

White collar crime’ – fraud, bribery, corruption, was widespread. In 1725 the head of the legal system - the Lord Chancellor - was himself found guilty of embezzlement. However, when these offences were committed by Aristocrats, politicians, and businessmen, prosecution was unusual (indeed such men were the law – MP’s, lawyers, magistrates etc.).

Although the first Prime Minister Robert Walpole was imprisoned for embezzlement before he became PM, he continued to take and receive bribes once in office.

Alcohol fuelled crime – a big issue including CHEAP GIN DRINKING – the fashion for Gin Palaces – very cheap and quick to get inebriated BUT not social drinking, people stood at the bar drunk quickly and moved on.

Juvenile Delinquency begins to be a problem towards the end of the Georgian era. Prostitutes sometimes sentenced to be branded or stripped to the waist and flogged – a popular public spectacle. However, action against prostitutes was intermittent and in the larger towns and ports prostitution was common. In times of unemployment it might be the only way that a single or deserted woman could make a living. Many women preferred it to long hours of hard physical labour in mines, on the land or in domestic service for desperately low wages. Branding was abolished in 1779 and public flogging of women was abolished in 1817.

Punishing Criminals We must remember that violence was very common and normal – in marriage and childrearing – to servants and slaves. God was seen as frequently using physical punishment in the Bible. It was seen as normal, even required, of those in authority to inflict corporal punishment on those beneath them, to keep them from sin.

Despite the lack of proper police or state prosecution system, lots of criminals were arrested (perhaps by the unpaid parish constable) and tried for a very wide range of minor offences such as: vandalism, public drunkenness, swearing, trading on Sunday, homosexuality, failing to support your family (so leaving them dependent on Parish poor relief), performing abortions, breach of promise, and keeping an unlicensed ale house. Punishments for these crimes included: the pillory (or stocks), fines, public whipping, the scold’s bridle, branding with the letter M for Malefactor of a thief or burglar. Landlords sometimes used large steel mantraps to catch poachers which could lead to the loss of a foot, shatter a leg or even bleed the victim to death (these were legal).

The Bloody CodeLocal government could not afford to maintain prisons for large numbers of long term offenders. (Prison was mainly used for debtors and those awaiting trial). Parliament responded by deterrence – a way of keeping social order by keeping the masses in fear. It increased the number of offences leading to the death penalty.

It was more important to have regular public executions than to make sure that everyone hung was actually guilty. By 1815, 222 offences carried a sentence of capital punishment including poaching (where guns were fired at gamekeepers), forgery, sheep stealing, killing a cow, theft or robbery (even of low value items e.g. pick pocketing over 1s, shop lifting 5s), associating with Gypsies, entering land with intent to kill rabbits, bigamy, vandalism of machinery or turnpikes (responding to the Luddites), theft by a servant from a master. For some of these offences there was no other sentence allowed apart from death. Religion was used as a justification.

The church was a strong supporter of the death penalty and quotations from the Old Testament were used to support this position. In the Bible God brought death down on his enemies.Hence the state was seen as God’s agent in administering death to those who broke his laws. Between 1770 and 1830: 35,000 were sentenced to death -only about 3,500 were actually executed. Small numbers were executed at the beginning of the 18th Century but later as the crime problem grew about 200 people were executed each year. Many who were found guilty escaped the gallows. Why? Juries were reluctant to bring in guilty verdicts for relatively minor offences, knowing that death could be the result.

Pardons were quite common – often as the result of politics, bribes or influence – hence those executed were largely the poor. When they reached court juries often reduced the crime to a lesser one that did not carry the death sentence. Judges would often remit a death sentence to one of transportation. In theory the death penalty and criminal law applied to anyone over the age of seven but usually courts would not hang under 15’s (they often altered the charge to lesser, non-capital, offence). An ancient practice called ‘benefit of Clergy’ was invoked.It used to be believed that crime was the result of possession by a demon or by the devil himself.

Demons could not stand the reciting of the Lord’s prayer or the psalms.Hence if you could read the 51st Psalm (known as ‘the neck verse’) without making a mistake it was seen as good evidence that the demon had left you and you could go free after being branded on the thumb. This was originally only applied to ordained ministers because only they could read but by the 18th C anyone could plead it.In practise if you could read and write you usually escaped the noose.Class based justice. Hence only about 5 % of those charged with a capital offence were actually hung. Almost all those executed were illiterate and from the poorest class. Law was class based!

A small number of the better off were executed who showed extreme psychopathic behaviour or threaten the state. Meeting Times Get Social with us! New members and interested people are always welcome at our meetings. If you have a First Fleet Ancestor or you are interested in our aims, there is a membership catagory for you Share your thoughts! At most of our meetings we have someone speak either on their own ancestor and what their life was about or a topic relating to the early years of the colonisation of Australia or Norfolk Island.