Do you know what a penal colony is? It is a settlement of prisoners who have been exiled from their homeland as a punishment, and transported to a far away location. Britain started sending convicts to America from 1597 onwards. The practice was stopped in 1776, with the American War of Independence. British prisoners were sent to Western Australia instead, and new penal colonies were established there. Twenty per cent of these first convicts were women. A system of labour was established in which people, whatever their crime, were employed according to their skills – as brick makers, carpenters, nurses, servants, cattlemen, shepherds, and farmers. Educated convicts were set to the relatively easy work of record – keeping for the convict administration.
Convicts formed the majority of the colony’s population for the first few decades, and by 1821, there were a growing number of freed convicts who were appointed to positions f trust and responsibility as well as being granted land. Meanwhile, public opinion in Britain was against the establishment of penal colonies, and the practice was abolished in 1860. The last convict ships left Britain in 1867, and arrived at their destination in 1868, 80 years after the arrival of the first convicts in Western Australia