This is yet another enjoyable installment of the PBS series, "Secrets of the Dead". However, unlike most which are about topics in the United States, this one is set in Australia and is about the country's founding mothers. Unlike most countries, Australia's founding is very well-known and documented--and mostly consisted of prisoners sent to the colony by the British. In this particular case, a boat filled with female prisoners (mostly thieves and prostitutes) is sent to the colony and folks today were investigating their ancestors' lives. Some of it is a bit shocking (after all, prostitution was common among the ladies) but it is also quite interesting and well-constructed--making for a very interesting story. Worth seeing.
2 Reviews
Moral maelstrom
Goingbegging22 April 2017
Early Australia was no place to take a lady.
It was meant to be an open-air jail, whose future population would come not from local families but just from more and more convict fleets. Anyone could have told them that this was asking for trouble. By June 1790, the young colony was close to collapse, a scene of starvation and savagery under the baking sun. But the timely arrival of a boatload of women - urgently summoned by the governor - would soon change the picture, sowing the first seeds of the nation we know today.
The story of this ship, the Lady Juliana, makes an intriguing morality tale. At the beginning, we are told that the London crime wave was caused by the gap between rich and poor (the standard left-wing gospel, confirmed by the keyword 'obscene'), when in fact it was caused by too many demobbed troops, back from the wars. Then we've always tended to assume that the female convicts were transported as a punishment for prostitution - which was not, in fact, a transportable offence. Instead, they were penalised for the thieving and violence that went along with it.
But aboard the Juliana, there was a whole new ethical setup, possibly unique in history. The crew of just 35 men found themselves surrounded by 225 women for almost a year, and wholeheartedly indulged the luxury of temporary marriages that suited both sides. Predictably the favoured women were awarded special privileges, and you can call this harlotry if you want. But the film demonstrates the futility of such moralising, when we meet the female descendants of several of the 'founding mothers'. These display a mature attitude to their convict ancestry, neither distancing themselves from it in the traditional bourgeois style nor boasting about it like rowdy students. One of them is a cheerfully philosophical church minister, no stranger to ethical debate; another is a young office worker, genuinely intrigued by her family history, and able to view it with mildly amused detachment.
It is interesting to note that one of the convicts had had her death-sentence commuted as an official act of leniency to celebrate the king's (temporary) recovery from madness, though we are also reminded that some people regarded the convict passage as a worse fate, and would cry out "Hang me instead!" The film does not make clear why the Juliana called in at Rio before turning east to head for the Cape of Good Hope. Also the women's costumes look a little too lavish to be believable. Otherwise, though, it's a pretty good 50-minute summary of a less-known episode that cuts across our usual assumptions about early Australia.
It was meant to be an open-air jail, whose future population would come not from local families but just from more and more convict fleets. Anyone could have told them that this was asking for trouble. By June 1790, the young colony was close to collapse, a scene of starvation and savagery under the baking sun. But the timely arrival of a boatload of women - urgently summoned by the governor - would soon change the picture, sowing the first seeds of the nation we know today.
The story of this ship, the Lady Juliana, makes an intriguing morality tale. At the beginning, we are told that the London crime wave was caused by the gap between rich and poor (the standard left-wing gospel, confirmed by the keyword 'obscene'), when in fact it was caused by too many demobbed troops, back from the wars. Then we've always tended to assume that the female convicts were transported as a punishment for prostitution - which was not, in fact, a transportable offence. Instead, they were penalised for the thieving and violence that went along with it.
But aboard the Juliana, there was a whole new ethical setup, possibly unique in history. The crew of just 35 men found themselves surrounded by 225 women for almost a year, and wholeheartedly indulged the luxury of temporary marriages that suited both sides. Predictably the favoured women were awarded special privileges, and you can call this harlotry if you want. But the film demonstrates the futility of such moralising, when we meet the female descendants of several of the 'founding mothers'. These display a mature attitude to their convict ancestry, neither distancing themselves from it in the traditional bourgeois style nor boasting about it like rowdy students. One of them is a cheerfully philosophical church minister, no stranger to ethical debate; another is a young office worker, genuinely intrigued by her family history, and able to view it with mildly amused detachment.
It is interesting to note that one of the convicts had had her death-sentence commuted as an official act of leniency to celebrate the king's (temporary) recovery from madness, though we are also reminded that some people regarded the convict passage as a worse fate, and would cry out "Hang me instead!" The film does not make clear why the Juliana called in at Rio before turning east to head for the Cape of Good Hope. Also the women's costumes look a little too lavish to be believable. Otherwise, though, it's a pretty good 50-minute summary of a less-known episode that cuts across our usual assumptions about early Australia.
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