Parkhurst apprentices

The Parkhurst apprentices were juvenile prisoners from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, sentenced to "transportation beyond the seas" and transported to Australia and New Zealand between 1842 and 1852. Either before leaving England [Gill (2004), page 1: "Once in the colony, they were pardoned on two conditions..." ] or on arrival at their destination [Statham (1981), page 6" "... these boys had received conditional pardons prior to leaving England..." ] , they were pardoned on the conditions that they be "apprenticed" to local employers, and that they not return to England during the term of their sentence. In the ten years between 1842 and 1852 nearly 1500 boys aged from twelve to eighteen were transported to Australia and New Zealand from Parkhurst Prison.

Parkhurst apprentices in Western Australia

Early in 1839, Governor of Western Australia John Hutt received from the Colonial Office a circular asking if the colony would be prepared to accept juvenile prisoners who had first been reformed in "penitentiaries especially adapted for the purpose of their education and reformation". After seeking comment from the Western Australian Agricultural Society, Hutt responded that "The Majority of the Community would not object to boys not above 15 years of age...." but that the labour market could not support more than 30 boys per year.

Between 1842 and 1849, Western Australia accepted 234 Parkhurst apprentices, all males aged between 10 and 21 years. As Western Australia was not then a penal colony, contemporary documents scrupulously avoided referring to the youths as "convicts", and most historians have maintained the distinction. An opposing view, held for example by Gill (2004), is that the Parkhurst apprentices were convicts, and that their apprenticeship constituted convict assignment.

Parkhurst apprentices were employed by a broad cross-section of Western Australia's businessmen and officials, including many of the colony's ruling class. Among the long list of Parkhurst apprentice employers were Governor Andrew Clarke, Frederick Irwin, George Fletcher Moore, Anthony O'Grady Lefroy, William Locke Brockman, Thomas Brown, George Walpole Leake, Walter Padbury, Stephen Stanley Parker, Rosendo Salvado and George Shenton Sr.

The assimilation of Parkhurst apprentices played an important role in the later acceptance of convicts in Western Australia.

List of ships

List of ships that brought Parkhurst apprentices to Australia and New Zealand

References

Further reading

*Gill, Andrew (2004). "Convict assignment in Western Australia: The Parkhurst 'Apprentices' 1842–1851". Blatellae Books, Maylands, Western Australia. ISBN 0-9593472-6-7.
*Statham, Pamela (1981). "Why Convicts I: An economic analysis of colonial attitudes to the introduction of convicts" in Stannage, C. T. (ed) (1981), "Studies in Western Australian History IV: Convictism in Western Australia", University of Western Australia.
*cite web | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2003 | url = http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/park.html | title = Parkhurst Boys 1842-1862 | format = | work = Convicts to Australia | publisher = Perth Dead Persons' Society | accessdate = 2006-12-18