Tasmania
Apple Island
Prisons in 19th century England were not for punishment, and they were not for rehabilitation. Neither were they really for criminals other than seditionists, strangely. By and large, if you were in a prison such as the Marshalsea, in central London, in the early part of the 19th century, you were there because you owed money.
We know a great deal about British prisons, and the Marshalsea in particular, because Charles Dickens' father was sent there in the early 1800s and it is a presence in some of his stories. So we know that while someone was a guest of the Marshalsea for owing money, they would accumulate further debt for such things as rent to the Gaoler and the purchase of food. A British jail was run for profit, and once you were in it you seldom got out.
So a prudent individual would go to enormous lengths to avoid incurring a debt. For the poorest of the poor, which was essentially all of England minus a very few rich people, that meant that stealing food or going hungry was a daily choice. Even someone gainfully employed, perhaps as a groom for a gentleman's horses, barely earned enough to survive. In 1820, a groom would earn roughly fifteen pounds a year. This would be something like 1,400 pounds today or (very) roughly $2,500 dollars. While room and board would generally be a part of the deal, as an outside staff, and only one step above Stable Boy and two steps below Page Boy in the estate's hierarchy, a groom would be eating mostly hand-me-down food that was passed over by the upper staff and most of the lower staff. So the temptation to help one's self to some dainties, perhaps the master's picnic, must have been overwhelming.
The stealing of anything, even food, made one a criminal. There were very few punishments for criminals in those days. These were the days of the "Bloody Code", a time when the punishment for most anything was death. In particular, the theft of anything having a value of more than 12 pence, or about what a skilled labourer would earn in two hours, was a capital offence. But there was the nucleous of a prison reform movement underway. It wouldn't really accomplish anything for at least thirty years, but sentiment at the time was "Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but [they are hanged so] that horses may not be stolen.". This was a radical new thought - punishment as a form of deterrant. And what better deterrant than the threat of being sent to Australia. This was called being sentenced to transportation.
Conditions on board a transport ship were not ideal - it mostly involved being locked in below decks with two buckets - one for water and one for waste - and the crowding and lack of food meant that typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera and scurvy were endemic. By comparison, when the convicts arrived in Sydney, life was pretty good. They lived in houses and ate regular meals, which right there was probably an improvement over their previous life in England. But it was hard labour from sunup to sundown 6 days a week. If a convict worked hard at their assigned task, say, at the government lumber yard, and was "well behaved", then they could expect to earn an absolute pardon over time, which entitled them to try to make it back to England somehow, or, more likely, remain as a free person in the colonies. If they misbehaved, however, or slacked off, they might be flogged or even hanged. They might be put in chains. If they were really badly behaved, they might be sent to the mines of Newcastle, or even far-away Norfolk Island. Or possibly to the hell of Sarah Island.
Sarah Island is a little island inside Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania. You get to it through Hell's Gates, given its name by the convicts sent to the penal colony there. The Gates themselves are at the point where Macquarrie Heads mostly pinches off the bay and the water is almost too shallow to navigate. These two conditions combine to force the waves to crest, and navigating the gates is sufficiently treacherous that many convicts got a reprieve of sorts and never made it to the colony.
For those who made it, they would find life not as enjoyable as it was in their previous colony. They would spend their days cutting timber. They would be in chains and, more often than not, it would be cold and raining. At night their barracks were too small to allow sleeping on their backs. Floggings were quite common. The food was poor. Scurvy and dysentery were rampant. For those who liked to complain there was Grummet Island, known as Condemned Island, a place of solitary confinement. In the first six years of the colony, 156 escapes were attempted.
Escape from Sarah Island was at best a fifty-fifty thing; you had a fifty percent chance of dying within a few hours or a few days, either from misadventure, starvation or just drowning at the gates. There were some success stories - James Goodwin and a mate carved a canoe and used it to escape. Goodwin made it as far as Ouse, hundreds of kilometers of bush away, before being captured. His knowledge of the Western Wilderness that he had travelled through was such that he was pardoned and hired by the Surveyor General. Another success was Alexander Pearce. He and seven friends overpowered their guard and escaped on a whale boat. A week into their journey they started drawing lots to see who would be killed and eaten. By the time Pearce was captured he was alone. Yet another success was the Frederick, an incomplete brig (ship) being built at Sarah Island. Ten men stole it and sailed all the way to Chile. They were accused of piracy, but since the brig wasn't technically a boat when they stole it the charges were dropped. But possibly the most famous escape was by "Gentleman" Mathew Brady.
Brady had been a gentleman's servant in England. It is likely he was a groom, based on the skill he displayed in the saddle. What the court documents say for sure is that he stole a basket of butter, bacon and rice, and for that he was sentenced to seven years' transport. He arrived in Sydney on 29 Decmber, 1820 aboard the Juliana. And immediately started causing trouble.
Over the course of the next three years he would receive 350 lashes for "attempts to abscond and other misdemeanours". Finally, in 1823 his captors sent him to the relatively new Sarah Island, the place for secondary offenders and desperate prisoners. On 7 June 1824 he and fourteen other desperate prisoners comandeered a whale boat and sailed it out through Hell's Gates and around the south coast to the River Derwent, where they became bushrangers.
Bushrangers were generally escaped convicts who disappeared into the bush, reappearing from time to time to rob banks, coaches, pretty much anything or anyone. They were generally bad people, but many had a cult following as the papers would print lurid illustrated stories of bushranger attacks. Some became folk heroes of a sort. Such was the case with Mathew Brady.
He was always extremely polite to people, even as he robbed them. He would rarely rob a woman and would never harm or even insult one - he even went so far as to publicly proclaim he was going to hang one John Priest for his ill treatement of a lady. His most famous exploit was the capture of an entire town - Sorell - and its garrison of soldiers. For this and other crimes, Lieut. Governor George Arthur posted a reward of 25 pounds and conditional pardon for the capture of Brady. Brady responded by posting his own reward: "It has caused Mathew Brady much concern that such a person known as Sir George Arthur is at large. Twenty gallons of rum will be given to any person that will deliver his person unto me."
Brady was eventually caught (by no less a figure than Batman himself) and sentenced to hang in Hobart. His cell was filled with wine and flowers from the ladies of town, and there were several petitions to stay his execution. But nonetheless, as the Herald wrote: "There was a hush, broken only by stifled sobs, as the bushranger knelt to receive the last consolations of his faith. Then, standing erect, he bade adieu to the multitude and died more like a martyr than a convicted felon.".
So that's Tasmania. It's where you go if you get kicked out of Sydney. Let's go see.