The Botany Bay Medallion

‘Dear Jack…I value Death nothing but it is in leaving you my dear behind and no one to look after you’. David Prendergast,  Oxford Book of Australian Letters, ed. Brenda Niall and John Thompson, 1998

1788 – 1868: Gender disparity characterised Britain’s invasion and occupation of the island continent of New Holland now Australia.

Of 163,000 convicted criminals transported from the British Isles to Australia between 1788 and 1868 only 25,000 were women, of these 12,500 went directly to Tasmania. See: G is for Genocide

‘The tender [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; and without a sufficient proportion of that sex it is well known that it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’. London, Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay.

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‘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

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