‘Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, such as;
killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
imposing measures intending to prevent births within the group;
transferring children of the group to another group’. Article 2, United Nations 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
1788-1868: In the period 1788 to 1868 Britain transported approximately 163,000 convicted criminals to New Holland, now Australia, of these only 25,000 were women with one-half, 12,500, sent directly to Van Diemens Land now Tasmania.
In the ten (10) year period between 1858 and 1868 the embryonic white settlement in West Australia received ten thousand (10,000) male criminals and zero (0) women prisoners.
1786 – 8 August, London: ‘His Majesty [George 111] has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay’.
1786 – 21 August: Home Office informed Treasury; ‘to New South Wales…orders had been issued for the transportation of six hundred and eight (680) males and seventy (70) female convicts’.
‘It was the custom in the eighteenth century for the authorities to consider the sex problems of convicts or others in similar positions’. Commentary, Historical Records of New South Wales. Vol. 1
With this ‘considerat[ion]‘ in mind the numbers were amended; six hundred (600) men and two hundred (200) women convicts.
‘It is well known…without a sufficient proportion of that [female] sex…it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders…HMS Supply…may be employed in conveying to the new settlement a further number of women from the Friendly islands, New Caledonia etc…from whence any number may be procured without difficulty’. Home Office, Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay.
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