Citation
Richmond Street Life: The lives of Emancipists, Paupers and Settlers, Richmond Tasmania 1870-1900. Peter MacFie 1998. https://petermacfiehistorian.net.au/publications/richmond-street-life/
Outline
The life of Richmond, Tasmania, taken from the Richmond Police Records between 1870 and 1900 and focussing on the tramps and trackers – mostly the ex-convicts and the homeless and the harsh treatment they received at the hands of the magistrates compared to other residents.
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Excerpt from Introduction
Richmond police charge books reveal an insight into the social life of Richmond in the late Victorian era. Attitudes to former convicts, many of them destitute, of employers to employees (under the restrictive Masters to Servants Act), of so-called mates, toward woman and to children are all revealed.
The period was typified by contrasts in poverty and wealth.
Homeless men and women – and children – called either tramps or, by my old friend Alf King who first got me into this historical game, as ‘trackers’. The centre of their life was the streets, byways and, if they could afford it, one of the three hotels – the Bridge Inn, Lennox Arms and Prince of Wales Hotel. Alcoholism was the main immediate cause of law breaking; but the poverty behind their lives is harder to grasp.
A forgotten characteristic of the era is the use of aliases or pseudonyms – nick names – part of a great Australian tradition.
The prudery of the Victorian era also comes across, as children are sentenced for stealing fruit, and for letting off fire crackers.
Another noticeable trait is the unequal treatment between emancipists and free born. Even when charged with trivial offences, former prisoners were treated harshly by Richmond magistrates
The lives of two street people, both emancipists, Kitty Dixon and Tommy Shaw, remembered by Alf King (b 1896), illustrate the period.[1] A third local identity, Mary Crawley, also transported, remembered by other Richmond locals, managed to keep above the law by acquiring a small cottage and living to 102 years old, dying in 1916. But like Kitty Dixon, Mary was Irish born, smoked a clay pipe and she had also begun life by living ‘on the town.’
[1] Richmond- POL 582, AOT.