British Women In Australia Research Paper

In the mid-eighteenth century, Britain faced a crisis. The early Industrial Revolution had created new technologies that increased production. However, with it came a restructuring of jobs and low wages. Unemployment increased and crime rose. Many poverty-stricken residents resorted to theft (Harris 74). As more burglars were arrested and imprisoned, prisons became overcrowded. As a result, the British government sought a solution to prison overcrowding and packed most convicts onto prison ships anchored off-shore called hulks. These floating jails, however, proved to be a poor solution because of the lack of hygiene and high death rate among prisoners (“Prison Hulks on the River Thames”). Finally, the government decided to transport these and other convicts to the colonies in America. However, after the successful American Revolution in 1787, American leaders refused to accept Britain’s convicts. This left one far-flung territory claimed by James Cook in 1770 for British settlement: Australia (Morgan). Britain formally colonized Australia in 1788 and quickly established penal colonies for its convicts, transporting nearly

Convict women were under great pressure to pay for their food, bedding, and clothes with sexual services. Many of the women in Australia, convict or Native, were victims of sexual assault (Fuchs and Thompson 37). It is a popular belief that the reason convict women seemed to be available for all of the men’s (convict or free) sexual needs is because the British government needed some way to keep the men inactive. “The whore stereotype was devised as a calculated sexist means of social control and then, to absolve those who benefitted from having to admit their actions, characterized as being the fault of the women who were damned by it” (Sturma