Forced and Assisted Migration to Australia from Sussex in the 1830s & 1840s

 This is an expanded version of an essay written for a Unit which is part of a Diploma of Family History. The Unit Convener was one of the driving forces behind the "Founders and Survivors" Project and we were given access to the underlying database of Tasmanian convicts for the duration of the Unit. We were asked to pick one or more convicts and put their experiences in a broader context.

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The levels of both transportation and migration from the UK will naturally be affected by economic conditions. In this essay we look at how conditions in Sussex between 1837 and 1843 produced similar effects on both transportation and migration rates.

Based on broadly-researched family trees the author and partner have 21.8% and 12.5% Sussex ancestry respectively.^1,2 Neither partner has convict ancestry, but both have convict relatives. Astonishingly seven of these thirteen convicts (53.8%) are from Sussex arriving in the period 1837-1843.^3-7 Interestingly the partner’s Sussex ancestry is via two families who arrived in NSW in 1838-39.¹ Between the author and partner, eight other related individuals or families from Sussex also arrived in 1838-39 on ships with high percentages of Sussex-born adult passengers.⁸ Are these figures significant or coincidence?

Table 1 shows the details of the convicts. Two of the arrivals were under 21, four had no prior convictions (though 2 had been imprisoned and acquitted), six were under the age of 30 and five were agricultural labourers.^3,5-7 Apart from the number of agricultural labourers, this breakdown is typical of the overall male convict cohort.⁹

Table 1: Details of seven convicts transported from Sussex.^3,5-7

Name	Age	Previous Convictions	Trade	Marital Status
Edmund Relf	28	None	Agricultural Labourer	Married with children
Joseph Foots	17	None	Agricultural Labourer	Single
Stephen Foots	19	None	Agricultural Labourer	Single
James Davey	23	None	Labourer	Single
George Langridge	25	1	Agricultural Labourer	Single
Peter Young	29	2	Fisherman	Single
Richard Davey AKA French	40	Previously transported	Agricultural Labourer	Married with children

It is, however, interesting to compare the harsher treatment of Edmund Relf in 1836 (married with three children, no prior convictions, petition with 26 signatures, rejected) with that of Richard Davey in 1826 (married with four children, prior minor convictions, petition with 14 signatures, sentence commuted to imprisonment on the hulks).^3,10,11 The intervening years had seen significant unrest amongst agricultural labourers (see below).

To see if there was any anomaly in transportation rates the Founders and Survivors database was used to analyse convict arrivals in Tasmania (Figure 1).^12-16 This displays a clear excess of Sussex convicts transported to Tasmania 1838-42.

Figure 1: Percentages of convicts and persons of Sussex origin.

Sussex in the 1830s was not a good place for agricultural labourers. Enclosure had led to concentration of land ownership.^17-20 This reduced the required size of the agricultural workforce and led to increased casualisation (hiring terms shrank from typically annual to weekly or even daily).^19,21,22 The Napoleonic wars had soaked up some excess labour and kept demand for agricultural produce high.²³ After 1815, the demobilisation of the armed forces increased available labour and the demand for produce dropped, causing an agricultural recession lasting until 1836.^23,24 Sussex was particularly hard hit.²⁴ In the 1820s the introduction of threshing machines significantly reduced agricultural winter work leaving rural families without income during the harshest part of the year.²⁵ This led to the “Swing Riots” which produced a spike in transportation in 1830 (Figure 1).¹⁸ Even when the depression started to lift, increased enclosure and improvements in farm machinery meant the demand for labour did not rise.^18,12,13,24 Poor rates in predominantly-rural areas rose significantly.22

The “New Poor Law” was enacted in 1834.^26,27,23 It was punitive, designed to discourage dependency on parish assistance and reduce the cost of poor relief.²³ However it included a section legalising the raising of parish rates to assist emigration of unemployed families.^28,29,22 While parish-assisted migrants accounted for only 5% of total assisted migration, the scheme is of interest because parishes had to account for such funds to the Poor Law Commission.²² Published in their Annual Reports, the accounts included details of the numbers assisted and their destinations.^30-38 This gives a unique insight into part of the assisted migration process. Rural Sussex used the scheme steadily (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Parish-assisted migration rates.

The destinations were primarily selected by cost and initially Australia could not compete with trans-Atlantic migration.^39,40 In October 1835 Governor Bourke gazetted the first set of Bounty migration regulations, including:

• “The persons accepted should be mechanics tradesmen, or agricultural labourers.
• They should have references as to their character from responsible persons, such as the local magistrate or clergyman”.41

As detailed in further regulations in 1840, the preferred age range for single males was 18-30 years.^42,43 Agents appointed around England managed the scheme and distributed pamphlets to villages, so by mid-1836 local magistrates, clergy and their parishioners in Sussex would have known that Australia was looking for agricultural labourers.⁴¹ With the Australian colonies paying for the passage, assisting migrants to Australia became attractive.⁴⁴ The bulk of the parishes in Sussex utilising the parish-assisted migration scheme were rural and in December 1840 Poor Law Commissioner Tufnell reported that Kent and Sussex supplied many of the migrants with “in some years more than a third of the whole of the voluntary emigration to Australia having been supplied from this district”.^36,44 The scheme was profitable for ship-owners and over 20,000 migrants were assisted to Australia in 1841, nearly bankrupting the colonies and resulting in an increase in regulation.⁴²

If we compare the excess Sussex convicts with the rate of parish-assisted emigration to Australia between 1837 and 1843 (Figure 3) we see that there is considerable overlap between the two distributions. Note also how closely the profile of the convicts match migration requirements.^12-16,30-38

Figure 3: Comparison of excess tranportation and parish-assisted migration.

In conclusion, economic conditions in rural Sussex in the 1820s and 1830s resulted in a willingness to assist the emigration of labourers.²⁴ Combined with the start of assisted migration schemes to Australia this resulted in a short boom in rural emigration. The same economic conditions were probably responsible for a parallel increase in the sentencing of Sussex criminals to transportation for which there are several possible causes, the full exploration of which are beyond the scope of this essay. Firstly, high unemployment in rural Sussex could have led to an increase in the overall crime rate above the national average, with a consequent natural increase in transportations. Secondly the magistrates (involved in both the judicial system and the selection of assisted migrants) may have seen transportation as promising the possibility of a better future for young, unemployed agricultural labourers coming before the courts.^22,41 Thirdly just as it is known that Irish women committed crimes in order to be transported, it is possible that the employment situation encouraged Sussex agricultural workers to do the same, particularly if the local magistrate had just refused to support their request for assisted migration.⁴⁵

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