Hyde Park Barracks is worth a visit

I have just spent a couple of weeks in Sydney researching and recording oral histories for my childhood memoir. Because four of my ancestors were convicts, with a fifth most likely and a sixth possibly (I still have much work to do), I made it my business to visit Hyde Park Barracks which housed Sydney's convicts for almost thirty years (1819 - 1848). That was until the convict system was terminated in 1840 and the remaining convicts served out their time. To acquire an understanding of what I am and where I came from, I am keen to understand the convict system, what it meant for the colony in NSW, and what the convicts themselves experienced. Hyde Park was an obvious place to visit.

My knowledge of Australia's convicts before I began my research was, I suspect, as limited and skewed as that of most Australians. My discussions with family and others about the history of the first fifty years of the colony in NSW and the information I have dug up about my ancestors supports me in this view. From the limited exposure I had to Australian history during my school time and the fragmented (often biased) information that comes through the various media, it is little wonder I had the impression that the life of the convict was uniformly and unrelentingly brutal, and that floggings and inhumane forms of incarceration were the norm. I have discovered that this is not so.

Certainly there were forms of incarceration and brutality that make most people shiver these days, but it is not the full story. I am beginning to think that it is not the most important story and that the writings and extemporisations of such as Thomas Keneally and Robert Hughes have given us a bum steer. It is likely Keneally and Hughes have let their well developed ideological sense drive them. Let me illustrate with examples from my own family tree, which on the evidence cannot be much different from many others.

Many convicts on arrival in Port Jackson did not see Hyde Park Barracks, or they spent a short time there. Those thought to have the skills were assigned directly to important landholders who had urgent need of labour. In brief, the establishment and the development of farms and large landholdings rested crucially on the labour of convicts. In fact, the whole colony rested on the labour and skills of convicts, particularly when it came to the nasty work that had to be done. But it was not one-sided. A convict who proved himself in his work not only escaped flogging and cruel forms of incarceration, but was given the opportunity to establish himself, sometimes before the term of transportation had finished. It was mostly those that transgressed under the colony's harsh disciplinary system who tasted the brutality.

My great-great-grandfather, Michael Jones, was born in Manchester in 1811. In 1827 at sixteen years of age he was convicted in Lancaster, Lancashire, for 'street robbery' and sentenced to seven years transportation. In 1838 he married Elizabeth Harris, daughter of free settlers from Wiltshire. He died in 1860 in Muswellbrook, NSW. His death certificate states he was an 'Inn Keeper'. His daughter and my great grandmother, Mary Jane, married James Wilson, farmer. It is fair to say that if Michael Jones had managed to escape an indigent criminal life in Manchester he and his family would not have enjoyed anywhere near the material circumstances of life in the Muswellbrook/Mudgee area.

To take the second example from my mother's side, Bryan McGroder (born 1791) was convicted in Monaghan, Ireland, in 1819 for 'stealing a heifer'. He was sentenced to seven years transportation. He married Elizabeth Ford in 1825 somewhere, it seems, in the vicinity of Penrith, NSW. It seems also likely that Bryan McGroder chose Elizabeth from among the women at the Parramatta Women's Factory. In 1823, Elizabeth Ford (19 years) and her sister Hannah (16 years) were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for stealing silver cutlery. Their death sentence was commuted to transportation for life. These were, it must be admitted, pretty dismal beginnings.

Bryan was again convicted of stealing (it was a case of family need, he claimed) and sentenced to three years at the penal settlement of Port Macquarie. Apart from that incident, and I don't know how long he served, it is not clear to me at this stage, how the lives of Bryan and Elizabeth developed. What is clear is that son John McGroder (my great grandfather) rose well above the background of his parents. He married Ellen Burgess, daughter of Scottish free settlers from Aberdeenshire, literate people who had elevated ideas of manners and style, which manners and style have passed on down through the family - though in less strict form. John McGroder was a successful businessman, owned land in Molong, NSW, and was Mayor five times of Molong. His death certificate says he was a 'cordial manufacturer'.

Hyde Park Barracks gives an excellent insight into the daily lives of the convicts who worked in the Sydney area. Much of it seems hard and sometimes brutal to us at this distance. Indeed, floggings when they happened were brutal. But as my ancestors above illustrate, the Barracks were one aspect of convict life in the colony, one that not all by a long shot experienced. Transportation and the hard life during their early years in the colony were the passport for many convicts to have a second go at life, of which we who came after are the happy beneficiaries.

Hyde Parks Barracks Museum

The Hyde Park Barracks dormitories where the convicts slept locked-up for the night.

Postscript: I cannot help wondering what Michael Jones, Bryan McGroder and Elizabeth Ford would have thought if they had known that a great x 6 grandson would be living in London in the first decade of the 21st century and working for a cutting edge computer firm.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com