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<\/a>William Pickering with his second wife Grace Martha (n\u00e9e Palmer).<\/p><\/div>\n
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At the time, there was no legal instrument directing to whence Pickering ought to be sent. This was resolved on 4 November 1841 when New Zealand\u2019s inaugural governor, William Hobson, exercised the prerogative of his office to \u2018appoint that any Offender convicted in the said Colony [New Zealand], and being under sentence or order of transportation, shall be transported by the first convenient opportunity to the Colony of Van Diemen\u2019s Land\u2019. [2] Accordingly, Pickering was eventually shipped to Van Diemen\u2019s Land in 1843 along with 12 other prisoners who had, by then, likewise been sentenced to transportation.<\/p>\n
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Throughout the decade in which New Zealand was shipping convicts across the Tasman Sea, at least 110 people underwent this journey. The vast majority of them \u2013 93 of the 110 prisoners, or 85 per cent \u2013 were young single men from a working-class background. Some were men without means. Most of those transported, whose average age was a little over 28, were convicted of thefts and assaults or, in the case of the military, desertion. This cohort was ethnically diverse and included six M\u0101ori warriors, one Sandwich Islander (Hawaiian) and a man from Cartagena, Spain, who was brought up in North America and was described as having copper-coloured skin, black woolly hair and whiskers, a broad visage and hazel eyes. [3] Amongst those transported were 51 currently serving or discharged British soldiers, some of whom had run away from M\u0101ori in fear, deserting their regiments during armed altercations. The rest \u2013 including one female \u2013 were civilians. Amongst these were emancipated convicts who fled the Australian penal colonies to seek refuge, anonymity and a fresh start in New Zealand but instead ended up being transported again.<\/p>\n
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In reading the trial records of those transported, and other contextual information, it became obvious that rather than transportation being imposed as a punishment by British mandate or external forces, there was an impetus from within New Zealand to cleanse and purify the nascent colony. For example, by 1842, Wellingtonians were noticing an upsurge in \u2018the frequency of petty thefts in the streets of Wellington\u2019. A key strategy in curbing crime was to round up alleged offenders, many of whom were viewed as vagrants, and put them on trial. It was hoped that \u2018the trials before the court, together with the punishment awarded in each case, will \u2026 if not put a stop to, at least check the frequency of such proceedings\u2019.[4]<\/p>\n
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Transportation to Van Diemen\u2019s Land was intended as a deterrent to others. For example, M\u0101ori men who resisted the colonial advance were handed down exemplary punishments \u2013 several were hanged and others were exiled to demonstrate the British Empire\u2019s strength and reach. Transportation had the added advantage that many of those sent to a penal colony were unlikely, at least legally, to be able to return to New Zealand. There were of course some exceptions. White-collar criminal Pickering is an obvious example: he returned to New Zealand where he accrued businesses as well as urban residential and rural properties. His post-sentence success demonstrates how the convict stain did not necessarily attach itself to men from middle-class backgrounds.<\/p>\n
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One striking statistic is that only one woman, Margaret Reardon, was transported from New Zealand. This can be explained through the ways in which women\u2019s and men\u2019s actions were viewed and criminalised differently in colonial society. As Megan Simpson has observed, \u2018women were indicted for fewer serious crimes than men\u2019 in the early years of the colony. She has pointed out how only seven female defendants were brought before the Supreme Court in the 1840s, following \u2018a trend that can be observed in other jurisdictions in the British Empire\u2019. The Supreme Court heard cases of a more serious nature such as murder, fraud and so on, while \u2018cases which were more generally associated with female defendants, such as small theft, prostitution and drunkenness, were heard by the Resident Magistrate\u2019s Court\u2019. [5] These types of crime were far less likely to result in a sentence to transportation from New Zealand.<\/p>\n
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Despite the cessation of convict transportation to Van Diemen\u2019s Land in 1853, New Zealand judges continued to sentence prisoners to transportation until 1854. Justice Sidney Stephen sentenced five men to transportation in March 1853, including Ng\u0101ti Apa rangatira Panapa (Barnaby) Huru te Rangi, who was found guilty of robbing Mr W.H. Constable as well as stealing from Captain Daniell\u2019s station at Rangitikei. When Panapa petitioned Governor George Grey to be allowed to remain in New Zealand the governor conceded to his request, yet Grey did not tell Panapa that convict transportation to Van Diemen\u2019s Land had ended and, moreover, that the British had in any case banned any more M\u0101ori from being sent there.[6]<\/p>\n
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Another M\u0101ori prisoner, Taraiwaru, died in custody in New Zealand in 1855 while under sentence to transportation. He was found guilty of murdering William Smally or Smalley, a man \u2018who so mysteriously disappeared while trading with the natives on the Thames\u2019. Tellingly, Taraiwaru was described as \u2018a strong hale man when taken into custody a few months ago\u2019. The Maori Messenger: Te Karere Maori went on to explain how \u2018a sense of his crimes, added to the loneliness of his situation, so affected him as to engender disease, and thus prematurely has he been ushered into the presence of the Great Judge\u2019.[7] Unfortunately the death of indigenous people in custody was a phenomenon across Britain\u2019s nineteenth-century empire wherever the rule of law was imposed by colonists.[8]<\/p>\n
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After the British Parliament passed legislation (16 & 17 Vic, c. 99) on 4 August 1853 that ended transportation from Britain for periods less than 14 years, New Zealand\u2019s parliament formed a select committee to consider how best to replace transportation as a punishment for criminals convicted locally. Before this select committee could report its findings, a bill to replace transportation with penal servitude was introduced into the New Zealand Parliament. On 16 September 1854, Parliament passed \u2018An Act to abolish the Punishment of Transportation, and to substitute Penal Servitude within the Colony in lieu thereof\u2019. Its first clause, which read \u2018On and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, no person shall be sentenced to transportation\u2019, officially ended more than a decade of convict transportation from New Zealand to Van Diemen\u2019s Land.[9] New Zealand colonists were poised to experiment with new ways of curbing crime and reforming people as part of their agenda to build an ideal society.<\/p>\n
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References<\/strong><\/p>\n [1] <\/sup>Kristyn Harman, Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan, and M\u0101ori Exiles (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2012).<\/p>\n [2] Robert Burnett, Penal Transportation: An episode in New Zealand history<\/em> (Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 1978), 45, Appendix A.<\/p>\n [3] Emmanuel Lewis, Conduct register of males arriving on non-convict ships or locally convicted, CON37\/1\/2, 392, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office, Hobart. Lewis was transported for stealing a sheep.<\/p>\n [4] \u2018Port Nicholson\u2019, Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle<\/em>, 20 August 1842, 95.<\/p>\n [5] Megan Simpson, \u2018R v Margaret Reardon, Supreme Court Auckland, 1 September 1848\u2019, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review<\/em>, vol. 41, 2010, 99.<\/p>\n [6] Burnett, Penal Transportation<\/em>, 37.<\/p>\n [7] Maori Messenger: Te Karere Maori<\/em>, 1 January 1855, 10.<\/p>\n [8] Kristyn Harman and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, \u2018Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Colonial Australia, 1805\u20131860s\u2019, Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History<\/em>, vol. 13, no. 2, 2012. DOI: 10.1353\/cch.2012.0023.<\/p>\n
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