In the early 1800s ten female convicts in Bristol Newgate Gaol (now the site of The Galleries shopping centre) were sentenced to ‘transportation beyond the seas’—Australia. While much is known about these women after they were transported, almost nothing was known of their lives, and crimes, here. In 2022-3, with funding from Historic England and UWE, we explored these forgotten stories through a series of workshops with women in HMP Eastwood Park. Sessions included creative writing with group […]
Not A BRHG Event
5.00 pm, Thursday 18th January at the Newport Rising Hub, 170 Commercial Street, Newport NP20 1JN. Professor Nick Carter of the Australian Catholic University and former Head of History at University of Wales, Newport will introduce the Conviction Politics Project. This is an international digital history project exploring the impact of radicals and rebels transported as political convicts to Australia on their place of exile. In association with Six Points Publishing and Our Chartist Heritage. […]
In the early 1800s ten female convicts in Bristol Newgate Gaol (now the site of The Galleries shopping centre) were sentenced to ‘transportation beyond the seas’ – Australia. While much is known about these women after they were transported, almost nothing is known of their lives, and crimes, here. We’re exploring their Bristol stories through a series of workshops with women who have experienced the criminal justice system today. Two of the ten women transported lived in Bedminster and […]
This story starts in the Forest of Dean with a riot and song and ends with an account of the struggle for the human rights of the visually impaired in Australia. The folk song As Sylvie Was Walking, made famous by Pentangle in 1969, has been traced to Ann Howell who was born in October 1832 at Broadwell Lane End, Forest of Dean, where she learnt it from her uncle. The Pentangle version, which can be viewed on YouTube, is called Once I had a Sweetheart and leaves out the first three verses. The […]
Anyone interested in the history of Australia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would do well to read Robert Hughes’s book. He describes in detail the development of the convict system and the colonisation of Australia from the first convict ship arriving at Sydney Cove in 1787 to the last convict voyage to Fremantle in 1868. With intensive research he has given the convicts a voice describing their own experiences of suffering, survival and resistance during that period. Robert […]
Not A BRHG Event
A rich and complex history: conscientious objection to the military in the First World War (Lois Bibbings) This talk revisits what we know about objectors – in terms of their thoughts, motivations, decision-making and actions as well as how they were seen and treated – in order to reflect on the importance of portraying this (and other) rich and complex stories of protest and resistance. John Percy Fletcher, Thomas Gregory, and the Quaker campaign against compulsory military training in New […]
