The Botany Bay Medallion

Whitehall – 1786, 8 August: ‘His Majesty [King George 111] has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay…to form a military establishment [with] two companies of marines. Orders [were] issued for the transportation of six hundred and eighty [680] males and seventy [70] female convicts to New South Wales’. Lord Sydney Home Secretary to Treasury.   

London – 1786, August: An unsigned ‘Heads of a Plan for effectually disposing of convicts [and] the establishment of a colony in New South Wales’ was circulated via the Home Office to Treasury and the Admiralty

‘Without a sufficient proportion of that [female] sex it is well known that it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’. Heads of a Plan for  Botany Bay, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1. Parts 1 & 2

Between 1788 to 1868 Britain transported 163,000 convicted criminals to Australia. Only 25,000 were women. Of these 12,595 went directly to Tasmania.

Between 1858 and 1868 West Australia, an embryonic white settlement, received 10,000 male and zero female prisoners. Hougoumont, the last convict transport, reached Fremantle in 1868 with two hundred and eighty (280) convicted criminals.

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‘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.

London –  1786, August 8 August:‘His Majesty [George III] has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay’.

1786-1868:  During the period 1786 to 1868 Britain transported approximately 163,000 convicted criminals to New Holland, now Australia. Only  25,000 were women. One-half of these 12,500 went directly to Van Diemens Land now Tasmania.

West Australia: Between 1858 and 1868 the embryonic white settlement in the west, where transportation ended in 1868, received ten thousand (10,000) male criminals and zero (0) women prisoners.

‘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.

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