Established in 1853, after the end of penal transportation to Australia,
the convict prison system and the sentence of penal servitude offered
the most severe form of punishment - short of death - in the criminal
justice system, and they remained in place for nearly a century. Penal
Servitude is the first comprehensive study to examine the convict prison
system that housed all those who were sentenced to penal servitude
during this time. Helen Johnston, Barry Godfrey, and David Cox detail
the administration and evolution of the system, from its creation in the
1850s and the building of the prison estate to the classification of
prisoners within it. Exploring life in the convict prison through the
experiences of the people who were subjected to it, the authors shed
light on various details such as prison diet, education, and labour.
What they find reveals the internal regimes; the everyday endurances,
conformity, resistance, and rule breaking of convicts; and the
interactions with the warders, medical officers, and governors that
shaped daily life in the system. Reconstructing the life histories of
hundreds of convict prisoners from detailed prison records, criminal
registers, census data, and personal correspondence, Penal Servitude
illuminates the lives of those who experienced long-term imprisonment in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
