Chris Bedford, David Andrew Roberts & Cathy Dunn, Macquarie’s Distribution Lists: Convicts Arriving in New South Wales, 1813-1822, (University of New England, 2024) <https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/61193> DOI: <https://doi.org/10.25952%2Fha0b-7j34>

Research undertaken for Australian Research Council Discovery Project, Enquiring into Empire <http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000923>

The documents we call the ‘distribution lists’ are scattered through the Colonial Secretary’s copies of out-letters, being lists naming some of the convicts freshly disembarked from 73 convict ships that arrived between October 1813 (the earliest known list is for the Earl Spencer from Portsmouth, England) and 1822 (being the limit of our study period, though there are comparable lists for later years). The lists, signed by William Hutchinson, the Principal Superintendent of convicts (an ex-convict himself) were transmitted with letters from the Colonial Secretary to a small number of magistrates – primarily Hannibal Macarthur and Samuel Marsden at Parramatta (Marsden also received separate lists of women intended for the Factory), William Cox at Windsor, later to James Mileham and Captain John Brabyn at Windsor and to Thomas Moore at Liverpool. For most of the period under study, these convicts were sent upriver to Parramatta and placed into the charge of Hannibal Macarthur, who distributed those allocated to his jurisdiction and forwarded the rest to the neighbouring magistrates.

There are in total 5,443 entries across 71 documents pertaining to 76 convict ships. accounting for roughly 30% of all convicts on board those ships ― although the percentage of each ship’s cohort captured in the lists varies, from the mere four men distributed from the Shipley in 1820, to as high as 70% of convict passengers distributed from the Earl St Vincent and Shipley in 1818. In 1816, over 50% of the convicts arriving on 7 voyages were named as being sent out to rural magistrates. The allocation of convicts to the hinterland had clearly dropped away by 1820, when the extant distribution lists account for only 26% of the freshly arrived convicts.

Usually, these were convicts intended for ‘general distribution’ to settlers within the district over which that magistrate presided, although a small number were allocated to named settlers by the authority of governor. The second extant distribution list named 68 women from the Wanstead sent to the Factory at Parramatta, from where they were ‘to be indented as servants as may be required by Persons of Respectable character who are married’. At least another 252 women are later listed as being distributed, most to the Factory although Elizabeth Robinson from the Northampton in 1815 was ordered to the asylum for the ‘insane’ at Castle Hill. Only thirty women were directly assigned to named individuals, all between 1818 and 1820, including 6 for one of Governor Macquarie’s loudest critics, the former NSW Corps officer, Nicholas Bayley at Parramatta, and two for his dear associate, William Redfern. At least 39 of the women sent to the Factory had arrived in the colony with children, including Buckley who had four.

Otherwise the lists overwhelmingly pertain to male convicts, beginning with 80 men sent from the Earl Spencer in 1823 to be assigned ‘to those settlers only who have no govt men’ A subsequent batch of men sent from the Surrey to Windsor in August 1814, to ‘be distributed amongst the settlers whose men were sent to the mountains’ were presumably replacements for servants who were allocated to the construction of the road from Emu Plains to Bathurst. In 1816, for the first time, convicts were specifically earmarked for Bringelly and sent to magistrate Robert Lowe, and then in 1817 a small number were allocated to government work at the remote western settlement at Bathurst. From some point, at least by 1818, they were all being sent, by boat, to Macarthur at Parramatta from where some were forwarded on to Windsor, Liverpool and Bringelly. From July 1820, convicts were also being sent to Howe at Upper Minto, and from 1821, to Airds (south of Liverpool) and Castlereagh.

Overwhelmingly these were convicts intended for ‘general distribution’ to settlers although in the early phase there were occasional and targeted allocations of individuals into government employ, such as William Gilmour and Daniel Tierney, both gardeners who arrived on the Guildford in 1816, sent to work at the government garden at Parramatta. Two years later, in late 1818, twenty men from the Glory were allocated to the Superintendent of Roads, Nicholas Delaney, for work on the road from Parramatta to Emu Plains. A month later, on the arrival of the Atlas, convicts began to be distributed to the government’s new farming establishment at Emu Plains – 306 men are recorded as being sent there (from 10 ships) until December 1821, put to work in a manner that Governor Macquarie hoped would generate ‘sobriety and industry’ (although many of them, we know, ended up at penal settlements at Newcastle and Port Macquarie).

When we extract the relatively small number of men sent into public works, and women sent to the Factory, the lists appear to provide a sound account of the distribution of convicts to settlers outside of Sydney (supplementary records will need to be consulted to determine whom the convicts were assigned to). The distribution lists therefore promise valuable insights into the allocation of convict servants, at a time when the allocation of convict labour was controversial. Commissioner Bigge, in particular, was highly critical of the ‘bad effects’ arising from a concentration of convicts in extensive public works in the town of Sydney, leading him to recommend a winding down of those projects and a reduction in the number of mechanics appropriated for them.

Our digital techniques have added substantial value to the distribution lists records by, first, linking them to the convict arrival lists or indentures (‘indents’) which in this period frequently contain a statement of each individual’s trade or occupation, as well as their age (although valuable biometric data such as height were not recorded until later). The nature of the distribution lists, being made more or less at the same time as the indents, allows for a high rate of matching across those records – in only 303 instances where we unable to match a name in the lists to an identity in the indents (these being in many cases instances where there two individuals on the same name on a single voyage, with the insufficient description in the lists to distinguish them). In sum the successful matching rate was about 95%. The results produced trade and age data for most of the individuals listed.

Below is a preliminary breakdown of a sample of the men distributed into assignment versus government employ, by occupation (as freshly recorded in the indents), categorised as usual using the HISCO standardised occupational unit group scheme, at a 2-digit level. The sample only includes occupational categories which are recorded in 10 or more instances, giving a sample of 4,189 male occupations from 36 occupational categories.The data may reflect on one of the core criticisms levelled against Macquarie during the Bigge Commission of Inquiry ― that he was starving the private sector of workers, although more precisely the concern was that certain types of especially valued workers were being withheld, specifically ‘mechanics’ (or skilled tradesmen) and ‘men tied to agriculture’, notably shepherds and herdsmen.  On a simplistic reading the evidence suggests that most trades were distributed evenly between assignment and government (proportionately, that is, taking into account that roughly 87% of men in the lists were distributed for assignment).

However, admittedly by small margins, the evidence here suggests that government was less likely to keep ‘Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Workers’ (cattlemen, diary workers, gardeners, horse breakers, ploughmen, reapers, shepherds, stable workers and stockkeepers, and stockmen), contrary to the complaints made to Commissioner Bigge.  Similarly, those classified as farmers were slightly more likely to be assigned to the private sector than retained in government employ, as were blacksmiths, whitesmiths and tin workers ― but so to were ‘machinery fitters’ (watch and clock makers), and hairdressers and barbers. Further, Government was slightly more likely to retain ‘Spinners, Weavers, Knitters and Dyers’, along with ‘Cooks and Waiters’, and also what HISCO calls ‘Building Caretakers’ who were in our cohort actually chimneysweeps. Proportionately, the government was more likely to retain colliers and coalminers as well, although there was no mining at Emu Plains or nearby government stations. The ubiquitous ‘labourers’, who are by far the largest occupational category were distributed at the overall average rate of 85% (assignment) to 15% (government). 

More analysis is pending, taking into account the age of the cohort, the applicability of some of the HISCO coding, the occupations of the convicts who were not distributed to the rural areas, and of course the likelihood that the trade recorded on a convict’s arrival was not necessarily a reliable indication of actual skill or capacity.

The dataset is pertinent to research undertaken for the Australian Research Council-Discovery Project, Enquiring Into Empire (DP180100537), and has been compiled by staff, students and associates involved in the University of New England’s Convict History Research Collective who are using digital techniques to reconstruct assignment and labour trends in the colony of New South Wales in the early decades of the nineteenth century.