Summary
Personal Information
Crime
Transportation
Cornelius Barratt was transported on the Adelaide, departing 13th May 1863 and arriving unknown with 211 passengers.
The 'ADELAIDE’ was built 1832 in Calcutta. Wood ship of 640 Tons. 1849 voyage: Departed London 17 Aug 1849. The convicted persons were then known as 'Exiles' because they had served part of their sentence in England and providing they were of good conduct were to be given a 'Ticket of Leave' or Conditional Pardon upon arrival in Australia. The 'Adelaide' arrived at Hobart, VDL on 29 Nov 1849 and disembarked 40 men. The ship then sailed to Port Phillip, Victoria but was refused entry and so sailed on to Port Jackson, New South Wales arriving there 24 Dec 1849. 1855 voyage: departed Portland, England on 19 April 1855, arriving Fremantle, Western Australia on 18 July 1855. 260 convicts, 1 death. The ship also carried 30 Pensioner Guards and their families.
Adelaide (generic)References
| Primary Source | Australian Joint Copying Project. Microfilm Roll 93, Class and Piece Number HO11/18, Page Number 557 (280). --00-- Lawrence A. Sawchuk, Lianne Tripp and Michelle M. Mohan (2010), “'Voluntariness of Exposure'”: Life in a Convict Station", The Prison Journal, 90(2),pp203–219. |
| Source Description | This record is one of the entries in the British convict transportation registers 1787-1867 database compiled by State Library of Queensland from British Home Office (HO) records which are available on microfilm as part of the Australian Joint Copying Pro |
| Original Source | Great Britain. Home Office |
| Compiled By | State Library of Queensland |
| Database Source | British convict transportation registers 1787-1867 database |
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Convict Notes
FOOTNOTE 2: Cornelius Barrett was transported a second time, in 1867, to Western Australia. See his bio at https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/barrett/cornelius/72570.
Roscoe, Katy (2018), "Convicts and the sea: the naval influence on Gibraltar Convict Establishment" at https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk
OTHER REFERENCES: Edgar, W. (Bill) (2018), “The precarious voyage of her majesty’s convict ship ‘Nile’ to the Swan River colony, late 1857 – and the unexpected aftermath.” The Great Circle, 40(1), 20–43.
FOOTNOTE: ARREST & COMMITTAL: 21 January, 1862: Aged 31, he was committed to stand trial by the Police Court, Worship Street. 27 January, 1862: Convicted at the Old Bailey, called Cornelius Barratt, aged 31, plasterer, along with John Gouldbourn/e and John Thomas, of a felony -- having in their possession a mould for coining. Each was sentenced to 5 years' penal servitude (England & Wales, Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 for Cornelius Barratt; England; Middlesex; 1862). Former Metropolitan police inspector, and Mint employee, James Brennan/Brannan, told the court "both prisoners had been before convicted; that Gouldbourne had only been out of prison six weeks; that Barrett belonged to a gang who, on one occasion, were so determined to rescue a prisoner, that they cut the harness of a cab used by the officers; that he was also a deserter, and the associate of thieves." (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) --0--
22 February, 1866: Cornelius Barratt was granted a "prison licence"/Ticket of Leave #17932 (Digital Panopticon; UK Licences for Parole of Male Convicts 1853-1925; Record ID tlmTNA/CCC/2B/PCOM3/01466242). He would have earned this licence by virtue of his "exemplary" behaviour in the previous 32 months. --00--
June, 1863: The Adelaide arrived at Gibraltar. Gibraltar and Bermuda were also listed public works stations (and the second stage in the penal process). On Gibraltar, as “convicts worked together with free men on the dockyards, lines between them became blurred. Convicts, like seamen, were ‘easily recognised’ by ‘their swarthy, weather beaten complexions…[and] muscular well-knit frames’. The discipline on the penal settlement was also influenced by the naval department, who superintended part of the works. In the 1840s, for example, convicts were provided ‘a half gill of rum’ at 11 AM and 5PM, which they drank from a trough. This mirrored the daily allowance of diluted rum, known as grog, to Royal Naval seamen in the Victorian era. Convicts were also allowed to use part of their earnings, to buy goods, usually tobacco, which they were allowed to smoke in the evening in the barracks. Though official correspondence cited health reasons for grog allowance, it seems likely that the convict authorities feared insubordination if they were banned from drinking and smoking, which were provided to the sappers and dockyard workers whom they worked alongside…. In 1854, the acting overseer stated that “half of the offences were committed when the men were excited by rum”. For more serious offences, convicts were flogged with a ‘cat o’nine tails’ whip against the ‘flogging mast’, and during an investigation Dr William Baly concluded that the whip which was used was an old naval cat, which was ‘much heavier than any now used in the government prison and hulks at home, or in the army.’” (Roscoe, 2018). Cornelius Barratt served 32 months 3 days on Gibraltar, working as a mason; his behaviour was listed as "exemplary" (https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/life?id=obpdef1-110-18461123). This means he would have been there at the height of a cholera epidemic that struck Gibraltar in 1865. Lawrence Sawchuck, Lianne Tripp and Michelle Mohan (2010, pp214-215) say the convict population was hardest hit as a result of several factors including the prisoners’ mental state (many convicts had been away from home for some time, leaving them open to a depressive state that it was believed was a “greater pre-disposer to cholera than the premonitory diarrhoea”), the linkage of a lack of appetite to depression, and malnourishment -- although the latter "has not been associated with increased susceptibility to cholera per se, under-nutrition can lead to a weakened immune system, which, in turn, can leave one more prone to choleric infection". Eight weeks after the initial outbreak on Gibraltar on September 6, "cholera struck the Convict Station. The lapse of time between the cases that occurred among the troops and those in the Convict Station reflects their isolation from the rest of the population. Although there was a lag in the appearance of cholera among the convicts, the epidemic manifested itself by a rapid and dramatic rise in mortality that exceeded that found in the other resident groups. The Convict Station represented not only a physical site of incarceration but also a place that forced inmates to coexist in a complex web of vulnerabilities. The penal landscape was a high-risk environment, both of an epidemiological nature (e.g., potential exposure to infectious diseases) and from a social perspective (e.g., depression and idleness). The enhanced state of vulnerability among the convicts during this epidemic can readily be seen by comparing the attack percentage for each of the resident groups where the attack proportion is the number of individuals who contracted cholera weighted by the population at risk. Using this proxy measure of vulnerability, the attack percentage indicated that the convicts were significantly more susceptible to cholera at 9.1%, than either the civilians at 5.3% and the military at 3.3%... In the 1866 medical report, it was noted that the more time spent in prison was related to a higher chance of dying if infected with cholera during the epidemic of 1865. Cases in men who were incarcerated for 4 to 6 years had 50% cholera mortality, whereas cases for men that had been brought in with the last draft only had 25% mortality. As to the overall expression of mortality during the epidemic, a comparison of the deaths attributable to cholera serves to demonstrate how devastating the epidemic was, as the crude mortality rate among the convicts stood at 6.4%, as opposed to 2.7% and 2.0% for the civilians and military groups, respectively." --0--
20 May, 1863: Cornelius Barrett was sent from Portsmouth prison to embark on the Adelaide for transportation to Gibraltar. By this time, he had served 1 year 3 months 24 days of his 5 year term (UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951 for Cornelius Barratt; Portsmouth Prison; Register of Prisoners; labelled as 1881-1882). --0--
TRANSPORTATION TO GIBRALTAR: 13 May, 1863: The convict ship Adelaide was cleared, with cargo, for Gibraltar and Ceylon, according to newspaper reports. --0-- 16 May, 1863 -- from the Chatham News, p4: "Convicts. — On Wednesday morning [13 May] the Adder embarked at Prince’s Bridges a large party of convicts from the St. Mary’s Prison [Chatham prison], and steamed up the Nore, where the convicts were transferred to the convict-ship Adelaide for conveyance to Gibraltar to be employed upon the Government works in progress that place. --0--
6 May, 1863: Cornelius Barrett/Barratt was visited in jail by his brother. His behaviour at Portsmouth was listed as "indifferent" (UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951 for Cornelius Barratt; Portsmouth Prison; Register of Prisoners; labelled as 1881-1882). --0--
17 September, 1862: He was transferred to Portsmouth prison, Cumberland Street, Portsmouth -- inmate #7765 (UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951 for Cornelius Barratt; Portsmouth Prison; Register of Prisoners; labelled as 1881-1882). --0--