The Botany Bay Medallion

‘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, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol 1

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‘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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“Rape is a biological possibility for the male”. Cited, Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, Penguin, 1975

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London –  1786, August 8: ‘His Majesty [George III] has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay…. orders …issued for two companies [of marines] to form a military establishment…the transportation of six hundred and eight (680) males and seventy (70) female convicts…to New South Wales’. Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay, Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol 1

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1786 – August 21: Lord Sydney the Home Secretary informed Treasury; prisoner numbers had been amended;‘six hundred (600) men… two hundred (200) women’.

‘It was the custom in the eighteenth century for the authorities to consider the sex problems of convicts or others in similar positions’. Commentary, Bladen, Historical Records of New South  Wales, Vol. 1

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