Folios 30 ? 34: Surgeon?s general remarks. Between 7 and 23 April 1838, 137 women...

ADM 101/56/1A/7

1838

Folios 30 – 34: Surgeon’s general remarks. Between 7 and 23 April 1838, 137 women and 8 children were received at Woolwich, 4 women were refused as unfit for the voyage. On 29 April 1838 they sailed from Woolwich with 141 women and children arriving at Hobart Town on 27 August 1838 with 140, one woman having died on the voyage. Of the women, 60 were from Scotland, 44 from the [Millbank] Penitentiary or Newgate in London and the rest from inland towns of England or Wales. The surgeon comments that many of the women appeared unhealthy but when he attempted to refuse them he found that instead of ‘having to decide whether they were equal to the voyage, the question was a much narrower one; whether any particular person was particularly unfit; and unless this could be positively stated, the sentence of transportation must be made good’. It is difficult to decide the true state of a woman’s health, in spite of certificates from jails, because the women often lie to avoid leaving their country. Their unhealthy appearances may be due to dissipation. A glance at police reports often shows that they have been in the house of correction numerous times. The prisoners were kept on deck from 7am to just before sunset, when the weather permitted. Awnings and windsails were used and the decks were washed and dried daily. The meat was soaked for 24 hours and was ‘thus rendered much [fresher] than what we generally enjoyed at the Captain’s table’. A glass of wine was issued in the mornings and for the last month of the voyage a second was issued before the evening muster, stoppages for punishment supplied the evening issue. The lime juice was not mixed with the wine. Every woman had the opportunity to wash clothes in fresh water once a week and a change of under garments was insisted on every Sunday. No talking or noise was allowed after 8pm. In the tropics each woman had a bath every day between 6 and 9am. The first complaints were mostly diarrhoea and dysentery from the change from living in cells to being nearly all day on deck, and the change of diet. The prisoners who had travelled by sea from Scotland were more used to the diet than the English women, who took some time to adjust. Those who came from the penitentiary at Millbank must have been affected by the sedentary lifestyle and loneliness of their cells. The surgeon recommends that prisoners sentenced to transportation should be given fuller and more solid diets than usual in jails prior to their embarkation. ‘A good prison diet is objected to, as affording a bonus upon crime by its superiority over that which could be had at home’, but this should not apply to those being removed to a foreign country. When diarrhoea first appeared the surgeon suspected it might be ‘in some way connected with the Thames water’ and ordered that filtered water only should be issued. A surgeon on the prison hulks at Woolwich confirmed that male prisoners are affected in the same way on first arriving on the hulks. The surgeon believes that male convicts escape the complaint at first ‘although [gorging] before leaving England in a way that the want of money on the part of women absolutely and entirely precludes’. Bowel complaints continued to be prominent on the list until the north east trades and then reappeared in the cold southern latitudes. There were cases of febricula and cynochus when they were becalmed by the north east trades. The heat below decks in the tropics at night was dreadful and the surgeon directed every care be taken with windsails and that a scuttle be opened in the hospital to increase ventilation in the prison. Iron bars in place of the stanchions used in the prison would increase the space for air to circulate. ‘It is the curse of prisoners that they are allowed to sell their clothes in many of the prisons after sentence has been passed upon them for the gratification of some of the worst appetites of our nature’. Clothes have had to be provided for the passage. The prejudices of some of the women prevent their sharing bedding with their messmates and thus getting sufficient protection from the cold at night. Gums were first examined for scurvy on 27 July and they were inspected weekly afterwards. Lemon juice was given to those suspected of scorbutic taints and only one of them subsequently developed scurvy. The surgeon worried that low diet used as punishment might induce a predisposition to scurvy but this does not seem to have been the case. The cases of amenorrhea are not fairly represented on the nosological synopsis, the functions of the uterus were effected in at least a third of the prisoners. Instances of menorrhagia were also common. The surgeon comments that the list of the Nautilus is a long one but that women present themselves to the surgeon with complaints that men would not attend to. He cannot help thinking that ‘there is often a great deal of quackery in the boasting of absence of all indisposition which commanding officers are so fond of making’. The women of the Nautilus ‘would stand the test of comparison with the residents and the local authorities agreed, certifying them as being particularly healthy.

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