Dorothy Handland

Dorothy Handland (* 1705 in England ; † unknown), at the age of 82, was probably the oldest convict ever to be deported to the then convict colony of Australia . Dorothy Handland arrived in Port Jackson with the First Fleet on January 28, 1788 .

Life

Little is known about her early life. On September 22, 1766, she married Robert Gray, with whom she collected and sold rags and old clothes. Presumably she also married a John Henley, this is not certain. What is certain is that she married John Handland on November 3, 1781. She was convicted of perjury in connection with robbery. For this she was sentenced to a seven-year sentence, which she had to serve outside the country.

deportation

On May 13, 1787, the First Fleet left Portsmouth , England, to establish a colony in Australia . Among the 11 ships was the convict transport Lady Penrhyn , on which Dorothy Handland arrived in Port Jackson on January 28, 1788. 101 female convicts were transported on the Lady Penryhn , including Dorothy Handland. The treatment of the women on this ship was inhumane, they were viewed and treated like prostitutes by the seafarers and Royal Marines . The food was extremely scarce, they went hungry and there was too little clothing for the women.

According to research by Riaz Kassan , Professor Emeritus of Flinders University , who was honored with the Order of Australia in 2006 for his research , the female convicts were sexual objects for the male convicts, Royal Marines and officers on the ship before and after landing in Australia. In particular, the female convicts' first shore leave in Port Jackson is said to have turned into a sex orgy. Due to the ongoing misrepresentation of history , Kazzan's current population of Australia has the impression that the female convicts were almost all whores .

Date of birth and suicide

There is different information about Dorothy Handland's date of birth. When she left England for what is now Australia, her age was entered on the ship's lists at 61. On the voyage, the ship's doctor Arthur Bowes Smyth (1750-1790) stated her age in his diaries as 81 years. That date is believed to be likely today. Furthermore, in the book "The Fatal Shore" published by Robert Hughes in 1987, Dorothy Handland is named as the first European person to commit suicide in Australia. According to more recent findings, in particular through research by Riaz Kassan, it must be assumed that this was not the case, but that after seven years she cast off with the ship Kitty on June 4, 1793 and returned to England on February 5, 1794 in Cork . For Kazzan, she is an example that women like Dorothy Handland can rise above their misfortune with their humanity.

Furthermore, in the book by David Collins , which was translated into German in 1799, it is confirmed that an 80-year-old woman on the Kitty left Australia in June 1794. On her departure this woman confirmed that she was physically able to survive the difficult voyage by ship. It is very likely that this was Dorothy Handland.

memory

A plaque with her name on a brick memorial in the Australian town of Coomba Park in New South Wales .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dorothy Handland , on convictrecords.com.au. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
2. ↑ Here Comes an Old Woman from Botany Bay, What have you got to give her today? ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at familyhistorytales.wordpress.com. Retrieved September 16, 2016.  
3. ↑ ^{a b} Whores, damned whores and female convicts: Why our history does early Australian colonial women a grave injustice , on theconversation.com. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
4. ↑ David Collins: History of British people planting in New Holland or New South Wales from May 13th 1788 to September 1796 , p. 119. Halle 1799, digitized . Retrieved October 11, 2016