Upcoming Live shows www.brucefummey.co.uk/shows.aspx Another Colonial journey ua-cam.com/video/0pW-V84wAz8/v-deo.html Buy me coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/ScottishBruce
Bruce, like many, you fall into the dichotomy of the Gaelic language being Scottish vs. English being, well, English, which means we now have the stupidity of such things as Gaelic road markings and signage in places the likes of Edinburgh, where the language never prevailed (other Brythonic/Brittonic brands of Celtic were available). Why is Scots, as a language, now ignored? We know Scots and English diverged around the time of Chaucer, but whilst the former is usually seen as a rough common vernacular slang dialect, rather than a language in its own right, the latter is treated as an inviolable masterpiece. And, at the same time we should perhaps, from a linguistic point of view, refer to the Anglo-Frisians rather than Anglo-Saxons. Both Oor Wullie and the Broons would recognise a broon coo: you might enjoy these: ua-cam.com/video/cZY7iF4Wc9I/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/brTMWgE-m6w/v-deo.html
Bruce there is a book written by Deborah Swiss called The Tin Ticket about a young scottish girl transported to van diemans land to the female factory.
Thank you Bruce for telling the Tasmanian female convict story. The Female Factory is indeed an excellent place to visit. As a proud 7th-generation Tasmanian with 9 known convicts in my family tree, it's really important to me that their stories are remembered. My Scottish ancestor was an opportunistic and foolish 18 year old who stole to buy a winter coat, I have two other young teenage girls who were living rough on the streets in London, another widowed Irish mother accepted stolen goods during the Irish famine to feed her family, etc. My convict ancestors all committed crimes of poverty. The breaking up of their families and sending these poor souls to other side of the world, was a disgrace. But overall, I do believe (with the exception of one of my convict ancestors) they ended up living better lives than if they had remained in the UK.
There are similar stories of this in my family history too...thank you for sharing..peace and love from a native of Limavady now an adopted son of Birkenhead...E...
Hello! I don't know why I got no notification about your note until now - it appears you commented ages ago! I just wanted to thank you for your recommendation regarding the records site. I'd never heard of it before, so until now it's not been a resource. No matter the amount of scrolling, it would be brilliant if we could find ought about these folk who seemingly disappeared. Just answers would be great, but to feel these family members, who had lives, names, and hopes - stolen from them - and to honor and remember them would feel like closing a wound. But, wouldn't it be mental to find any survived, and we've family somewhere in the U.S. or Australia; even elsewhere?! Anyway, thanks so much for the link and the information about it!
Brought a tear to my eye. This reminds me of what the Athenians said in the dialogue with the Melians: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". It has always been and continues to be that way.
Thanks for another lovely video, Bruce. :) My mom used to tell me about Kilkenny and Aberdeen when she was trying to conjure something heartful to pass on to me. I think she struggled to do so. I wish I could show her your videos!! She would find them SO FASCINATING omg
Glad you did this Bruce. Every convict story is absolutely appalling and traumatic, but you are right, that the women did it much tougher because of children they had brought with them or were forced on them after they arrived. A shocking shocking history 😥😥😠😠.
This really strikes a chord...a debt of gratitude to you ,sir ,this evoked ,a past that many Irish share too..thank you for sharing this with us all ❤😢...peace and love from the music metropolis of Merseyside aka Ukraine on the river mersey for Eurovision...where,s Lulu when you need her...only kidding...E....
Great video. The general view of convicts in Australia is that were mostly petty criminals from poverty and political prisoners used to build a colony. Living in Annandale (that may sound familiar 😊) , Sydney, everywhere are signs of Scottish legacy …and the convict system.
That was the entire point, transportation was a liberal/reformist project, at least at the beginning. The view was that if people remained in the corrupting influence of poverty in the cities they would fall into more crime and raise their kids in poverty and crime so you would never be able to escape your fate. The reformers believed that if the people who had fallen into crimes of necessity and poverty could escape from criminal influences and get the chance to restart their lives with good honest toil and the chance to own land they could escape that fate. Of course then hanging/flogging brigade also wanted criminal districts broken up and the trade conglomerates also wanted manpower in the new world to build up the trade network. Hardcore criminals still got executed. Of course its also the liberal reformers who came up with eugenics and child transportation in the 20th century so good intentions dont always get good results.
My third great Uncle was the Royal Navy Surgeon on board the prison ship Tory in 1846, and was responsible for the prisoners care and dicipline, his diary is available online and makes an interesting read. I still have his portrait and another relation has his sword.
Let's go Bruce, keep it up! I am a Dutch-Canadian, with not a lick of Scot in me. However, your videos have helped me deepen my understanding of Canada and the strong Scottish heritage my wonderful country has! Did you know we have our own dialect of Scots Gaelic in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes?
The amount of stories you could tell are endless. Cape Breton and the East Coast are a treasure trove of history, but further inland, many other provinces have their own Scottish heritage, you can even check out the Canadian Highlands and our own peat bogs(muskeg) and perhaps you will realize why we like our red and black plaid so much.
I'm doing live shows in Canada in 2024. Shows in Halifax, Annapolis, New Glasgow, Moncton, Montreal, Perth , Ottawa, Toronto, Fergus, Seaforth, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. Most of the details are here www.brucefummey.co.uk/shows.aspx
Its tragic for anyone who has a hard life, but we only live once and have to make our life as pleasant as we can for eachother. the Past is the past Brucie. Best of luck me old mucker.
I've visited this women's factory in Hobart and was told by a tour guide that the water the women and their children drank was contaminated by an upstream leather processing factory. No wonder so many children died. So sad.
Bruce, thank you for telling a story that needs to be remembered. Sadly, much of our history is forgotten which in turn means we are doomed to repeat it.
Many more Scots came free to Australia in the latter half of the 19th century after the Highland clearances than had come earlier as convicts. Scottish families on both my mother's and father's sides arrived as free settlers in the 1860s and 70s. I am also however descended from a First Fleeter, who arrived in 1788 at age 14 as a convict from London. (English side of the family dragging us down of course! 😂) More Scots came as "10 pound Poms" in the 1950s and 60s. My children's grandmother is one of these; she has never returned to Scotland.
Like the notion that people from the clearances came freely. If they had not been cleared then perhaps Scotland would now have rightfully double thenumber of people here now. This was the way to clear the rest of the people over time. It probably worked out better for them not to be in the UK anyway. It has been so bad here that Scotland's population has dropped from 20% of the UK to now only 8%, with now such low birth rates we depend in inward migration to grow at all.
Can’t be doing with people who portray themselves as victims when they weren’t even alive back then . The whole of the Uk is suffering right now with this cost of living crisis we’re all in it together.
@@alecblunden8615the Irish were deliberately starved by the English going and taking all their other crops! Disgusting I don't know about the Scottish potato famine have never heard of this before
Bruce, have you done a series on the Scottish Enlightenment? If you are looking for ideas, I’d love to hear stories about this and the people of this time. Stories about the different towns and cities could be interesting. Such Campbelltown and how it went from whiskey capital of the world to nix when the USA prohibition happened.
There was a woman who went to the same school I used to go to, and one day she stole a horse and went on the run, when she was caught in 1792 and was sent to Australia with a sentence of 7 years It must have been horrible. Afterwards she became quite successful out there and was on the old $20 Australian bill.
I was really P...ed-off when they changed from the old paper money to the plastic stuff. The old $10 bill had the colonial architect Francis Greenway on it. The only (to the best of my knowledge) convicted forger ever to make it onto the legal tender of any country. Most countries have REAL crims on their loot - political figures! 😜😁
You must be talking about Mary Reibey. She was born in England but it sounds like maybe the grandmother who raised her was Scottish. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Reibey
The so-called British government also took children from DR Barnard homes sent them to Canada Australia South Africa children where also sent to Australia in the sixtees not that long ago .great video
The government is voted in by the people for the people in Britain s case voted in by the people But Not For The People look what they are doing now just a mess
You are a truly excellent story teller. All the best for a successful tour. Unfortunately I can’t make your September date but hope to see you live sometime in the future 🌞
As far as we can tell my husband's first American ancestor was transported to the US in the clearances as an indentured servant. My sister-in-law tried for years to connect him to 3 brothers who mustered out of a regiment after the revolution but could never quite make it. Apparently, none were lettered and ended up with 2 different spellings of the name, though noted as brothers. I suspect the gap is due to an escape. The original may have minded his manners for a while and then eloped from Georgia into what was then Virginia, later becoming West Virginia, because hills and hollows looked like home! Things were different for men.
Ta Bruce - always good value, these: well-presented, researched, and made human. I've members of my past family - two women, one with wain in tow - who were transported within a year of each other: one toward the Americas, the other (with the child) toward Australia. I say 'toward' in both cases because we've no record of any of them post-embarcation. The family have always believed the three died before arrival at either location. We know the childless one was arrested in Carlisle for thieving food - transported for a first (at least, first recorded) offense. The other was transported for having a child out of wedlock! No criminal (well, as what we'd consider criminal the now) act(s) whatsoever! Women of the period (and prior and post, of course) barely had a chance! I'm glad to hear of at least one who had some semblance of a "free" life or ersatz success after that hell.
Good morning Bruce. Whilst watching this I realised how we think of the colonies. I grew up with the jokes about Aussies being convicts but the attitude towards the Americans was different, almost as if they were voluntary settlers, which may of been the case in later days. South Africa, Canada and New Zealand were hardly mentioned, but I guess there must of also been some transpotation to those countries? Around this time next month, whilst you are on the other side of the World, I will be in Auld Reekie for a nine day trip, staying down the Dalkieth Road area and haunting Milnes.
NZ never took convicts, the US stopped taking them from the UK at the time of the War of Independence, not sure about South Africa or Canada and one Australian colony (Adelaide and South Australia) never took convicts. Most convicts sent to Australia chose to stay after they finished their term.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Sentenced to Life meant 14 to 21 years most of the time. Exceptional behaviour saw the sentence reduced. One of my ancestors served the full 21 years.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Not quite. Convicts were sentenced for various terms - the most common was 7 years, but 14 and 20 year terms, in addition to life, were also known. However, unless a convict received a pardon life meant life, and to return to Britain from life sentence was a death sentence (which is a plot point in one of Charles Dickens’ novels - too much of a spoiler to say which one). However after a certain period of time into their term (2 years in the case of a 7 year term) a convict could gain their ticket of leave. This meant the convict could hire themselves out and be paid for their labour. The next step could be a conditional pardon. This would have applied to longer sentences such as 20 years and life. A conditional pardon meant the convict was free, but only within the colony. It was only when their term expired or they were given a full pardon were convicts free to return to Britain. A fun, or not so fun fact at the time, was that when the First Fleet sailed, someone forgot to include the court records with the fleet. So quite a few convicts’ terms expired either on the voyage out or within the first 2 years of the settlement. Quite a few tried to tell the Governor or the leaders of the colony their term was up, but without the records to verify they were kept in servitude until the records arrived with the Second Fleet.
This is now called land gentrification where the poor are ousted and the millionares build luxury apartments in place of the originals old homes. Wonder if it had such a term back then?
Wow what a great story. Dad flipping sad though. Things were tough in those days. I've traced my family back to Aberdeenshire and the Keith's of the area. Marshal College 👍 ✌️🎭⚖️🧩🏴
In American Sign Language, Australia is signed by motioning as if you're picking up some thing and then throwing it away from you with your hands not your alarms… You can Google it. But basically it's referencing how convicts were picked up and then thrown (away) into a whole new place.
Well this was a surprise, I am Tasmanian and have quite a few transported convict ancestors. The conditions were so appalling, how we survived I don't know. It's interesting that being allowed to serve out your sentence working as a convict domestic servant for free-settler people was thought of as one of the better options. I don't know too many details but I have always presumed being stuck out on one of the colonial properties, particularly during the frontier wars would have been pretty hellish. Bruce, I hope you enjoyed visiting Nipaluna/Hobart :-)
Frank Sinatra was in his Glasgow Hotel after a very sucessful concert at Ibrox Stadium the previous night. His assistant told him, that he was going to have to cancel his last Scottish date of his UK tour because the Ferry was in for emergency repairs at Gourock. Raging with anger "I have never cancelled a show in my life" Sort it out now............. FLY ME TO DUNOON !!!!!!
My convict ancestors mostly arrived in the 1790s (with one on the First Fleet). I think the conditions were harsher, but less brutal. They were harsher as they had to establish the colony and the one on the First Fleet very nearly starved. But in the earliest years the convicts, soldiers who guarded them and the officers were all in it together. Governor Philip made sure everyone had the same rations. When the rations were cut they were all cut equally- free and convict. When he cut them again he reduced the convicts’ workload. There were places of secondary punishment- which were hell, but I think the harshness on the environment and need to survive probably meant the authorities could not treat the convicts too brutally. However, interestingly the colonies stopped being places of dread as time went on, particularly after gold was discovered in the 1850s
Bruce, during your Tassie trip, I hope you became acquainted with the Tasmanian Devils, particularly at feeding time. I only mention this to illustrate what it must have been like that first night in Tasmania, Free or prisoner. Months at sea, in a land you've probably never even heard of, only to be awakened by a noise that fails all description, emanating from the wild. Musta been sphincter quivering to say the least.
Scottish Transportation actually began in 1652 with Cromwell sending Scots Prisoners from 1650 Battle of Dunbar,1651 Inverkeithing and Worcester to the US Colonies and from 1655 to Jamaica and later to Barbados.Charles 2nd from 1666 sent his Covenanter Enemies there as well.
Geoff. My ancestor received "transportation for life" in 1681. When my Aussie friend refers to us as "dreadful Americans", I remind her that I would have been Australian if my ancestor had ended up on a different transport ship and then I laugh and laugh and laugh.
Just sayin' how much I love your Tubes. I'm a convict descendant, but my Scots were bounty immigrant's. They got free passage because their lands were cleared, but conditions were still crowded and harsh.
I hope you visited Sarah Island whilst in Tassie, an absolute travesty in history and such an important tale to tell (and many Scottish connections too)
Ah well, good excuse to get back to Tassie. You won't regret going to the West Coast wilderness and Strahan area, it's stunning country, Sarah Island was literally hell inside a paradise. Recommend going in summer time, winter is too bloody cold for my liking (though it does drive home how bleak it would have been for the convicts). Love your work mate!
Another great story. As you tell your stories many of which contain brutal conquests and destruction, I often wonder why people were so mean to other people throughout history around the world......what were they thinking?!? and why? I know, I know, land, power, prestige etc...but was all that worth the death and destruction of millions? Hypothetically asking because it has never stopped. So sad Just thinking out loud.
People who were rich and white believed they were chosen by God. That everyone who did not live and see the world as them were inferior. Inferiority = can bectreated anyway we like as we need to "educate" their inferiority out of them. Brutality and battery best way to break and reform them to your will. Just look at how they break horses. Same mentality. Eugenics at the heart of it. Seething filth underneath, pretending to be holy and sanctimonious when they themselves committed more atrocities than the people being "reformed" and it still goes on today.
Nice one good you covered this they moved in to buildings already built just like the ones in Edinburgh and ail over the world 100 years before their first quarry was operational, was all the transported all secret master masons to knock that level of craftmanship without materials? its a x file but its there documented
So many of the people who governed the early Australian and Tasmanian colonies were also of the worst, most vicious and corrupt kind. Royal Navy officers of that time were shocked at the punishments handed out which far exceeded the harsh discipline on warships.
As hard as life was for those transported it was far better than the alternative. Most convicts has their sentences commuted to transportation from hanging. There was a mandatory sentence of hanging if you stole anything over the value of 20 shillings and a silk handkerchief could be worth much more than that. I'm not saying it was right but it was just the way things were. The other option was a term on prison ships docked in rivers up and down the British Isles...they were a living hell. Ask yourself this, Was life worse in the colonies as a convict with a chance of a life of freedom after their term or a life living in the slums of Britain? I hope you had a chance to visit Port Arthur while you were here, that's a real eye opener.
So affecting to me, as a woman to think about such a situation. The "nursery"...oh God what a place it must have been. Absolutely horrifying to think of the trauma suffered there by the children of the convicts. I would do anything for my child and to think of her being covered in lice and sh*t and who knows what else and not being able to do anything about it turns my stomach. And who knows how many of the women became pregnant due to rape either before or during imprisonment?
Quite a few female convicts became pregnant during their incarceration. Their masters were never punished, but they were. The authorities also married off the convict women and I believe there was little choice in the matter for the convicts. My great-great-grandmother was 17 when she arrived in Tasmania and 2 years later while still under sentence she married a former convict in his 50s who was her master. She tried to leave him many times and he even reported her and sent her back to the female prison. She eventually had four children with him and he finally left her and she ended up in a new relationship with my great-great-grandfather. But after 3 children with my great-great-grandfather who was a good man, she left him and ended up on the streets for the next ten years before dying in jail. Hers is the most utterly tragic story I have ever come across. she had become an alcoholic and I expect she had serious mental heath problems. I know she was living on the streets in Covent Garden when she was just 15, and presumably even earlier. How did that even happen? Tough, tough times.
Wonderful story but an awful subject. My family connection to Scotland is John MacBean, captured at the Battle of Dunbar, put in chains and sent to the American Colonies and sold in Boston along with four others to another Scot business man in New Hampshire. His story from there was more the "American Dream" after his release from Servitude. Perhaps you have heard of L.L.Bean? In New England you can't swing a cat without hitting a (Mac) Bean..... (if that's your idea of a good time).
The book"Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson details how a man was kidnapped and sent to South Carolina to be sold at the slave auction in a earlier time when England could ship their prisoners to America.
According to the Australian Historian, Micheal Cannon, even First Offenders, (females of breeding age,) were at one point automatically sentenced to transportation, not only in an attempt to balance the genders, but also as a means of controlling the sodomy of young boys by the older male convicts. If a convict woman bcame pregnant, she was often sent to the treadmill, the side effect of which was massive vaginal haemorragh! (SP?) When this practice was frowned upon, a "sympathetic" magistrate ordered sheeting to be erected so as not to offend the sensibilities of the respectable public. What???
Nasty, but soon Scots would be paying the passage for their kin to come over. Places like Wyoming, sheep were a Scottish business and the need for Highland Hearders great. Free or cheap land a bonus. That ended with WW2 and many ranches switched to cattle, Angus of course.
What dreadful things happen when imagination and empathy fails in those of power; to look at fellow people as lesser beings . But look at the strength of those who survive. Well, at least we are beyond that now. Apart from boat people.
You are the most informed, entertaining, extemporaneous speaker of any subject who I have ever witnessed! However, in the 30+ years that I have known of Scotland, and the Scottish diaspora in the United States, and was drawn to admire Robert Burns and all of the pageantry of Scots ex-pats at Highland Games, not a breath about this very dreadful aspect of the British/Scots program of Transportation of these women. But it was dreadful enough that in a culture with so much poverty, and piety about Jesus Christ, no Christian charity was extended for the destitution of the people sent out under what ever pretense of Criminal Justice they practiced. Islam is only a bit more vulgar, cutting off hands of thieves, and stoning people caught having sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thank God none of that punishment exists in Buddhist Thailand. P. S. How do I pay for a coffee from Thailand when I can't pay for my RBWF Membership dues? Sgt. Brill, USAF (Ret)
That was christian charity. At least for an era that believed in tough love. The original idea was that criminals would be punished publicly and violently to keep the rest scared on a moral path. Judicial reformers had decided this was pointless and didnt work, their new idea was that transportation would allow people to escape inner cit poverty and its crimes and start a new life in a new country. Putting them in prison would be a tax burden on hard working citizens, this was thought to be a better solution for everyone.
@@Albanach-je1nk Posted without context, which means I do not know to what you are referring? There is no connection with Burma, now called its original name, Myanmar. Burmese government and Thai have nothing in common. Even their Buddhism is different, like the Japanese and Chinese Buddhism, and so on. For factual documentation of Thai legal and Justice system, consult available sources, if that is what you mean?
My God! I have been to Maquarie Harbour, & seen the Prison the convicts built, & all of this is because they were poor? I am an Australian with my roots on my mothers side is French 🇫🇷 & Irish 🍀, & my dad was an American, but my last name is Spencer, & that's English ! Crazy.
I would hope this video was a righteous and witty take-down of the bus and train services in Scotland, but I know enough to know it's not that. If nothing else, a lot of us hors Alba got a hearty transfusion or two of you lot through the centuries, to our enduring benefit. Scottish flowers grow heartily in every soil. ❤
That Banks fella was also responsible for convincing the Admiralty to send the Bounty to Tahiti for breadfruit. Frankly I think this character was far too influential for my like.
Upcoming Live shows www.brucefummey.co.uk/shows.aspx
Another Colonial journey ua-cam.com/video/0pW-V84wAz8/v-deo.html
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Bruce, like many, you fall into the dichotomy of the Gaelic language being Scottish vs. English being, well, English, which means we now have the stupidity of such things as Gaelic road markings and signage in places the likes of Edinburgh, where the language never prevailed (other Brythonic/Brittonic brands of Celtic were available). Why is Scots, as a language, now ignored? We know Scots and English diverged around the time of Chaucer, but whilst the former is usually seen as a rough common vernacular slang dialect, rather than a language in its own right, the latter is treated as an inviolable masterpiece.
And, at the same time we should perhaps, from a linguistic point of view, refer to the Anglo-Frisians rather than Anglo-Saxons.
Both Oor Wullie and the Broons would recognise a broon coo: you might enjoy these:
ua-cam.com/video/cZY7iF4Wc9I/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/brTMWgE-m6w/v-deo.html
Bruce there is a book written by Deborah Swiss called The Tin Ticket about a young scottish girl transported to van diemans land to the female factory.
Thank you Bruce for telling the Tasmanian female convict story. The Female Factory is indeed an excellent place to visit. As a proud 7th-generation Tasmanian with 9 known convicts in my family tree, it's really important to me that their stories are remembered. My Scottish ancestor was an opportunistic and foolish 18 year old who stole to buy a winter coat, I have two other young teenage girls who were living rough on the streets in London, another widowed Irish mother accepted stolen goods during the Irish famine to feed her family, etc. My convict ancestors all committed crimes of poverty. The breaking up of their families and sending these poor souls to other side of the world, was a disgrace. But overall, I do believe (with the exception of one of my convict ancestors) they ended up living better lives than if they had remained in the UK.
There are similar stories of this in my family history too...thank you for sharing..peace and love from a native of Limavady now an adopted son of Birkenhead...E...
Read The Tin Ticket has a scottish girl being transported to van diemans land
Hello! I don't know why I got no notification about your note until now - it appears you commented ages ago! I just wanted to thank you for your recommendation regarding the records site. I'd never heard of it before, so until now it's not been a resource. No matter the amount of scrolling, it would be brilliant if we could find ought about these folk who seemingly disappeared. Just answers would be great, but to feel these family members, who had lives, names, and hopes - stolen from them - and to honor and remember them would feel like closing a wound. But, wouldn't it be mental to find any survived, and we've family somewhere in the U.S. or Australia; even elsewhere?! Anyway, thanks so much for the link and the information about it!
@@mattdawson6627 Good luck with your searching.
@@carokat1111 Thank you!
Brought a tear to my eye. This reminds me of what the Athenians said in the dialogue with the Melians: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". It has always been and continues to be that way.
😢
Ever considered that it hasn't "always" been that way?
Don't know if I could've lived through that horror. Sobering tale. Thanks Bruce, you know how to shake the soul.
always look forward to this
Thank you for enlightening all with these stories.
A'reyt Bruce. A sad tale, but a well thought out and presented video. Once again, better than TV.
True....
Your presentation, research, reveals a horrific unknown story.
I'm pleased as a Tasmanian you went to Hobart and are telling the story of our ancestors and our descent
It was my pleasure
Good stuff. Shared.
Thanks for another lovely video, Bruce. :) My mom used to tell me about Kilkenny and Aberdeen when she was trying to conjure something heartful to pass on to me. I think she struggled to do so. I wish I could show her your videos!! She would find them SO FASCINATING omg
I absolutely love that you have so many great stories about women. This was powerful and sad. Women have come a long way ❤
A good book to read about the first transports to Australia is A Commonwealth of thieves by Tom Keneally , good vid , 😊
Glad you did this Bruce. Every convict story is absolutely appalling and traumatic, but you are right, that the women did it much tougher because of children they had brought with them or were forced on them after they arrived. A shocking shocking history 😥😥😠😠.
This really strikes a chord...a debt of gratitude to you ,sir ,this evoked ,a past that many Irish share too..thank you for sharing this with us all ❤😢...peace and love from the music metropolis of Merseyside aka Ukraine on the river mersey for Eurovision...where,s Lulu when you need her...only kidding...E....
Thanks for bringing it to life. x
You're welcome
Shocking history of a system/ government that carried out such heavy punishments for relatively little.
South of the border there were the Bloody Code where you could be hung for virtually everything.
Such a sad story. Horrifying how humans can treat other humans. 😢
I agree but it happens in all kinds of societies. Not just human societies.
Honor and Respect 🪶
Greetings from Saint Augustine
Unceded Timucua Territory
You bring it to life. Tears to my eyes. The inhumanity of humans. . Calcated cruelty.
😢
Great video. The general view of convicts in Australia is that were mostly petty criminals from poverty and political prisoners used to build a colony. Living in Annandale (that may sound familiar 😊) , Sydney, everywhere are signs of Scottish legacy …and the convict system.
That was the entire point, transportation was a liberal/reformist project, at least at the beginning.
The view was that if people remained in the corrupting influence of poverty in the cities they would fall into more crime and raise their kids in poverty and crime so you would never be able to escape your fate.
The reformers believed that if the people who had fallen into crimes of necessity and poverty could escape from criminal influences and get the chance to restart their lives with good honest toil and the chance to own land they could escape that fate.
Of course then hanging/flogging brigade also wanted criminal districts broken up and the trade conglomerates also wanted manpower in the new world to build up the trade network.
Hardcore criminals still got executed.
Of course its also the liberal reformers who came up with eugenics and child transportation in the 20th century so good intentions dont always get good results.
I am stunned by this
They nowhere say it, but it was of course slavery and worse. A slave at least had a monetary value and therefore was treated better.
my family arrived 1804 in oz from the highlands
My third great Uncle was the Royal Navy Surgeon on board the prison ship Tory in 1846, and was responsible for the prisoners care and dicipline, his diary is available online and makes an interesting read. I still have his portrait and another relation has his sword.
Where would one get a copy of his diary?
@@scottishhellcat It was available online from the Royal Navy historical records :)
What was your uncle's name?
Let's go Bruce, keep it up! I am a Dutch-Canadian, with not a lick of Scot in me. However, your videos have helped me deepen my understanding of Canada and the strong Scottish heritage my wonderful country has! Did you know we have our own dialect of Scots Gaelic in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes?
I need to come there to film videos and perform live shows next year
The amount of stories you could tell are endless. Cape Breton and the East Coast are a treasure trove of history, but further inland, many other provinces have their own Scottish heritage, you can even check out the Canadian Highlands and our own peat bogs(muskeg) and perhaps you will realize why we like our red and black plaid so much.
I'm doing live shows in Canada in 2024. Shows in Halifax, Annapolis, New Glasgow, Moncton, Montreal, Perth , Ottawa, Toronto, Fergus, Seaforth, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. Most of the details are here www.brucefummey.co.uk/shows.aspx
Its tragic for anyone who has a hard life, but we only live once and have to make our life as pleasant as we can for eachother. the Past is the past Brucie. Best of luck me old mucker.
A great but sad and tragic story. Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure
@🏴Scotland History Tours w/Bruce Fummey
inntinneach, brònach agus brònach
I've visited this women's factory in Hobart and was told by a tour guide that the water the women and their children drank was contaminated by an upstream leather processing factory. No wonder so many children died. So sad.
Typhoid and typhus spread by the lice were the main killers.
No it wasn't, I'm a Hobartian and there was never a leather processing place upstream. There's a brewery though..
Considering that at the time leather was manufactured using human urine and dog sh!te then if true that’s absolutely horrendous.
Bruce, thank you for telling a story that needs to be remembered. Sadly, much of our history is forgotten which in turn means we are doomed to repeat it.
i thank you Bruce,
for reminding me of ancestors i thank without you reminding.
thank you Bruce.
Totally thought this was gonna be about Dundee busses
Hahahahah!
💔🙏🌟 Thank you Bruce
Many more Scots came free to Australia in the latter half of the 19th century after the Highland clearances than had come earlier as convicts. Scottish families on both my mother's and father's sides arrived as free settlers in the 1860s and 70s.
I am also however descended from a First Fleeter, who arrived in 1788 at age 14 as a convict from London. (English side of the family dragging us down of course! 😂)
More Scots came as "10 pound Poms" in the 1950s and 60s. My children's grandmother is one of these; she has never returned to Scotland.
Like the notion that people from the clearances came freely. If they had not been cleared then perhaps Scotland would now have rightfully double thenumber of people here now. This was the way to clear the rest of the people over time. It probably worked out better for them not to be in the UK anyway. It has been so bad here that Scotland's population has dropped from 20% of the UK to now only 8%, with now such low birth rates we depend in inward migration to grow at all.
Thanks for this post 📫 💕
You're welcome
Well done, Lord Bruce!! Who knows what common practices today will be deemed abhorrent in two centuries from now?!
True
What's worse is that it's often overlooked, or ignored along with the Scottish potato famine.
Regarding the potato famine, you will just have to hone your "victimhood" skills, like the Irish.
What also is over looked is there was one in England aswell 🙂
@@richardjohnston3359 Don't tell the Irish.Anything that distracts from them must be prejudice.
Can’t be doing with people who portray themselves as victims when they weren’t even alive back then . The whole of the Uk is suffering right now with this cost of living crisis we’re all in it together.
@@alecblunden8615the Irish were deliberately starved by the English going and taking all their other crops! Disgusting I don't know about the Scottish potato famine have never heard of this before
How’d you find a sunny day in Aberdeen? Some trickery going on there I think!
I really liked this piece of history. Thank you for making this video.
You're welcome
Bruce, have you done a series on the Scottish Enlightenment? If you are looking for ideas, I’d love to hear stories about this and the people of this time. Stories about the different towns and cities could be interesting. Such Campbelltown and how it went from whiskey capital of the world to nix when the USA prohibition happened.
ua-cam.com/video/tG8uQSSHG-w/v-deo.html
That was really interesting could be made into a film💚
There was a woman who went to the same school I used to go to, and one day she stole a horse and went on the run, when she was caught in 1792 and was sent to Australia with a sentence of 7 years It must have been horrible. Afterwards she became quite successful out there and was on the old $20 Australian bill.
I was really P...ed-off when they changed from the old paper money to the plastic stuff. The old $10 bill had the colonial architect Francis Greenway on it. The only (to the best of my knowledge) convicted forger ever to make it onto the legal tender of any country. Most countries have REAL crims on their loot - political figures! 😜😁
You must be talking about Mary Reibey. She was born in England but it sounds like maybe the grandmother who raised her was Scottish. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Reibey
Morning Bruce from Wallace and The Bruce
Bloody hell I’ve been looking for these stories - brilliant - I must get to Aberdeen next time
OUTSTANDIND VIDEO OF COURSE THIS IS WHAT WENT ON GREAT CREDIT TO YOU .THOUSANDS OF FINE WEMON WERE SHIPPED OUT OF IRELAND AS WELL .AND MEN .
This upsets me so much! Thankfully we have the human rights act today.
Yep, when the Chinese arrive we can wave that under their noses to ensure they behave themselves. 🤔🙄
My 4x great grandad was transported to Tasmania. He never seen his family again. His wife and children remained in Scotland (where i am from).
The so-called British government also took children from DR Barnard homes sent them to Canada Australia South Africa children where also sent to Australia in the sixtees not that long ago .great video
Oranges and Sunshine! 😱🙄
What is "so called" about the British Government?
The government is voted in by the people for the people in Britain s case voted in by the people But Not For The People look what they are doing now just a mess
@@Perthshire
I would imagine you are either English or American
@@Albanach-je1nk neither. I am a Scot
Fit like bruce
You are a truly excellent story teller. All the best for a successful tour. Unfortunately I can’t make your September date but hope to see you live sometime in the future 🌞
Thanks Ray, here are a list of current dates and more to be added soon www.brucefummey.co.uk/shows.aspx
I'm Havoc Duncan. We lost at Culloden. We won at Gettysburgh. I am not grieved at our banishment.
My Scottish Ancestors lost at Culloden, lost at Gettysburg, but won at Fredericksburg. I'm just glad that they lived long enough for me to be here
On my television, the word jail was displayed as gaol. 😅
💜🛐💜
thank you Bruce
You're welcome
As far as we can tell my husband's first American ancestor was transported to the US in the clearances as an indentured servant. My sister-in-law tried for years to connect him to 3 brothers who mustered out of a regiment after the revolution but could never quite make it. Apparently, none were lettered and ended up with 2 different spellings of the name, though noted as brothers. I suspect the gap is due to an escape. The original may have minded his manners for a while and then eloped from Georgia into what was then Virginia, later becoming West Virginia, because hills and hollows looked like home! Things were different for men.
Ta Bruce - always good value, these: well-presented, researched, and made human. I've members of my past family - two women, one with wain in tow - who were transported within a year of each other: one toward the Americas, the other (with the child) toward Australia. I say 'toward' in both cases because we've no record of any of them post-embarcation. The family have always believed the three died before arrival at either location.
We know the childless one was arrested in Carlisle for thieving food - transported for a first (at least, first recorded) offense.
The other was transported for having a child out of wedlock! No criminal (well, as what we'd consider criminal the now) act(s) whatsoever!
Women of the period (and prior and post, of course) barely had a chance! I'm glad to hear of at least one who had some semblance of a "free" life or ersatz success after that hell.
😢
What a powerful story.
Brilliant
Good morning Bruce. Whilst watching this I realised how we think of the colonies. I grew up with the jokes about Aussies being convicts but the attitude towards the Americans was different, almost as if they were voluntary settlers, which may of been the case in later days.
South Africa, Canada and New Zealand were hardly mentioned, but I guess there must of also been some transpotation to those countries?
Around this time next month, whilst you are on the other side of the World, I will be in Auld Reekie for a nine day trip, staying down the Dalkieth Road area and haunting Milnes.
NZ never took convicts, the US stopped taking them from the UK at the time of the War of Independence, not sure about South Africa or Canada and one Australian colony (Adelaide and South Australia) never took convicts. Most convicts sent to Australia chose to stay after they finished their term.
"Sentenced to life" translated to seven years in the colony. After that convicts could return to the UK if they wished.
@@VanillaMacaron551 All true. Also, I believe if they were Lifers they were never allowed to return even if they got their Conditional Pardons.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Sentenced to Life meant 14 to 21 years most of the time. Exceptional behaviour saw the sentence reduced. One of my ancestors served the full 21 years.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Not quite. Convicts were sentenced for various terms - the most common was 7 years, but 14 and 20 year terms, in addition to life, were also known. However, unless a convict received a pardon life meant life, and to return to Britain from life sentence was a death sentence (which is a plot point in one of Charles Dickens’ novels - too much of a spoiler to say which one).
However after a certain period of time into their term (2 years in the case of a 7 year term) a convict could gain their ticket of leave. This meant the convict could hire themselves out and be paid for their labour.
The next step could be a conditional pardon. This would have applied to longer sentences such as 20 years and life. A conditional pardon meant the convict was free, but only within the colony.
It was only when their term expired or they were given a full pardon were convicts free to return to Britain. A fun, or not so fun fact at the time, was that when the First Fleet sailed, someone forgot to include the court records with the fleet. So quite a few convicts’ terms expired either on the voyage out or within the first 2 years of the settlement.
Quite a few tried to tell the Governor or the leaders of the colony their term was up, but without the records to verify they were kept in servitude until the records arrived with the Second Fleet.
This is now called land gentrification where the poor are ousted and the millionares build luxury apartments in place of the originals old homes. Wonder if it had such a term back then?
Clearances, perhaps.
Wow what a great story. Dad flipping sad though. Things were tough in those days. I've traced my family back to Aberdeenshire and the Keith's of the area. Marshal College 👍 ✌️🎭⚖️🧩🏴
Walsh...convict...& Scottish land clearances descendant... & Proud of it...👍🇦🇺
In American Sign Language, Australia is signed by motioning as if you're picking up some thing and then throwing it away from you with your hands not your alarms… You can Google it. But basically it's referencing how convicts were picked up and then thrown (away) into a whole new place.
In Australian rhyming slang , Americans are referd to as septics. 😂 septic tanks rhymes with ....
Well this was a surprise, I am Tasmanian and have quite a few transported convict ancestors. The conditions were so appalling, how we survived I don't know. It's interesting that being allowed to serve out your sentence working as a convict domestic servant for free-settler people was thought of as one of the better options. I don't know too many details but I have always presumed being stuck out on one of the colonial properties, particularly during the frontier wars would have been pretty hellish. Bruce, I hope you enjoyed visiting Nipaluna/Hobart :-)
Frank Sinatra was in his Glasgow Hotel after a very sucessful concert at Ibrox Stadium the previous night.
His assistant told him, that he was going to have to cancel his last Scottish date of his UK tour because the Ferry was in for emergency repairs at Gourock.
Raging with anger "I have never cancelled a show in my life"
Sort it out now.............
FLY ME TO DUNOON !!!!!!
My convict ancestors mostly arrived in the 1790s (with one on the First Fleet). I think the conditions were harsher, but less brutal. They were harsher as they had to establish the colony and the one on the First Fleet very nearly starved. But in the earliest years the convicts, soldiers who guarded them and the officers were all in it together.
Governor Philip made sure everyone had the same rations. When the rations were cut they were all cut equally- free and convict. When he cut them again he reduced the convicts’ workload. There were places of secondary punishment- which were hell, but I think the harshness on the environment and need to survive probably meant the authorities could not treat the convicts too brutally.
However, interestingly the colonies stopped being places of dread as time went on, particularly after gold was discovered in the 1850s
Would be cool to see Abit of the gold rush history here in Oz. Good to see you here none the less. On ya m8👍
Aye maybe next time I visit I'll find some Scottish connection and make a trip
I transported myself voluntarily to the 'Deen, from t'other end of England. Remind me never to nick a silk handkerchief...
🤣
A prime example of corporate and state. Todays world
Bruce, during your Tassie trip, I hope you became acquainted with the Tasmanian Devils, particularly at feeding time.
I only mention this to illustrate what it must have been like that first night in Tasmania, Free or prisoner.
Months at sea, in a land you've probably never even heard of, only to be awakened by a noise that fails all description, emanating from the wild.
Musta been sphincter quivering to say the least.
Unnerving
Scottish Transportation actually began in 1652 with Cromwell sending Scots Prisoners from 1650 Battle of Dunbar,1651 Inverkeithing and Worcester to the US Colonies and from 1655 to Jamaica and later to Barbados.Charles 2nd from 1666 sent his Covenanter Enemies there as well.
Geoff. My ancestor received "transportation for life" in 1681. When my Aussie friend refers to us as "dreadful Americans", I remind her that I would have been Australian if my ancestor had ended up on a different transport ship and then I laugh and laugh and laugh.
Pity the Tollbooth was not open Bruce, it is claustrophobic, full of tiny rooms and very atmospheric.
Just sayin' how much I love your Tubes. I'm a convict descendant, but my Scots were bounty immigrant's. They got free passage because their lands were cleared, but conditions were still crowded and harsh.
The delicious act of irony now is that Ozzie deports its crims to NZ
Only the Unzud ones.
@@VanillaMacaron551 aww gummon
Descendant of a transported person still living in Australia today giving this video applause 🎉
Brilliant
I hope you visited Sarah Island whilst in Tassie, an absolute travesty in history and such an important tale to tell (and many Scottish connections too)
Sorry. I've logged it away for my next visit though
Ah well, good excuse to get back to Tassie. You won't regret going to the West Coast wilderness and Strahan area, it's stunning country, Sarah Island was literally hell inside a paradise. Recommend going in summer time, winter is too bloody cold for my liking (though it does drive home how bleak it would have been for the convicts).
Love your work mate!
Thus, in Englush, one says Public Transport and Americans say Public Transportation.
Another great story. As you tell your stories many of which contain brutal conquests and destruction, I often wonder why people were so mean to other people throughout history around the world......what were they thinking?!? and why? I know, I know, land, power, prestige etc...but was all that worth the death and destruction of millions? Hypothetically asking because it has never stopped. So sad Just thinking out loud.
I'm afraid you can use the present.
@@bernedicte5860 I know, it just goes on and on and on. Makes no sense.
😢
People who were rich and white believed they were chosen by God. That everyone who did not live and see the world as them were inferior. Inferiority = can bectreated anyway we like as we need to "educate" their inferiority out of them. Brutality and battery best way to break and reform them to your will. Just look at how they break horses. Same mentality. Eugenics at the heart of it. Seething filth underneath, pretending to be holy and sanctimonious when they themselves committed more atrocities than the people being "reformed" and it still goes on today.
Both sides of my family came to United States that way. Funny who's number one now❤❤
I think you may have ideas above your station
Nice one good you covered this they moved in to buildings already built just like the ones in Edinburgh and ail over the world 100 years before their first quarry was operational, was all the transported all secret master masons to knock that level of craftmanship without materials? its a x file but its there documented
Lord let us learn from our history.
So many of the people who governed the early Australian and Tasmanian colonies were also of the worst, most vicious and corrupt kind. Royal Navy officers of that time were shocked at the punishments handed out which far exceeded the harsh discipline on warships.
As hard as life was for those transported it was far better than the alternative. Most convicts has their sentences commuted to transportation from hanging. There was a mandatory sentence of hanging if you stole anything over the value of 20 shillings and a silk handkerchief could be worth much more than that. I'm not saying it was right but it was just the way things were. The other option was a term on prison ships docked in rivers up and down the British Isles...they were a living hell.
Ask yourself this, Was life worse in the colonies as a convict with a chance of a life of freedom after their term or a life living in the slums of Britain?
I hope you had a chance to visit Port Arthur while you were here, that's a real eye opener.
Good vid,Bruce,but that immediate West African link(2:20) is a real doozy ! 😮
So affecting to me, as a woman to think about such a situation. The "nursery"...oh God what a place it must have been. Absolutely horrifying to think of the trauma suffered there by the children of the convicts. I would do anything for my child and to think of her being covered in lice and sh*t and who knows what else and not being able to do anything about it turns my stomach. And who knows how many of the women became pregnant due to rape either before or during imprisonment?
Quite a few female convicts became pregnant during their incarceration. Their masters were never punished, but they were. The authorities also married off the convict women and I believe there was little choice in the matter for the convicts. My great-great-grandmother was 17 when she arrived in Tasmania and 2 years later while still under sentence she married a former convict in his 50s who was her master. She tried to leave him many times and he even reported her and sent her back to the female prison. She eventually had four children with him and he finally left her and she ended up in a new relationship with my great-great-grandfather. But after 3 children with my great-great-grandfather who was a good man, she left him and ended up on the streets for the next ten years before dying in jail. Hers is the most utterly tragic story I have ever come across. she had become an alcoholic and I expect she had serious mental heath problems. I know she was living on the streets in Covent Garden when she was just 15, and presumably even earlier. How did that even happen? Tough, tough times.
@@carokat1111 Oh wow. Thank you for sharing that story. It's so terrible but so important to remember what has happened, so we don't repeat it.
Wonderful story but an awful subject. My family connection to Scotland is John MacBean, captured at the Battle of Dunbar, put in chains and sent to the American Colonies and sold in Boston along with four others to another Scot business man in New Hampshire. His story from there was more the "American Dream" after his release from Servitude.
Perhaps you have heard of L.L.Bean? In New England you can't swing a cat without hitting a (Mac) Bean..... (if that's your idea of a good time).
I was régional cat swinging champion three years in a row
The book"Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson details how a man was kidnapped and sent to South Carolina to be sold at the slave auction in a earlier time when England could ship their prisoners to America.
According to the Australian Historian, Micheal Cannon, even First Offenders, (females of breeding age,) were at one point automatically sentenced to transportation, not only in an attempt to balance the genders, but also as a means of controlling the sodomy of young boys by the older male convicts. If a convict woman bcame pregnant, she was often sent to the treadmill, the side effect of which was massive vaginal haemorragh! (SP?) When this practice was frowned upon, a "sympathetic" magistrate ordered sheeting to be erected so as not to offend the sensibilities of the respectable public. What???
🥺
And all after the act of union..
Nasty, but soon Scots would be paying the passage for their kin to come over. Places like Wyoming, sheep were a Scottish business and the need for Highland Hearders great. Free or cheap land a bonus. That ended with WW2 and many ranches switched to cattle, Angus of course.
What dreadful things happen when imagination and empathy fails in those of power; to look at fellow people as lesser beings .
But look at the strength of those who survive.
Well, at least we are beyond that now.
Apart from boat people.
Aye, I m no sure we're beyond it at all
Yes we did
You are the most informed, entertaining, extemporaneous speaker of any subject who I have ever witnessed! However, in the 30+ years that I have known of Scotland, and the Scottish diaspora in the United States, and was drawn to admire Robert Burns and all of the pageantry of Scots ex-pats at Highland Games, not a breath about this very dreadful aspect of the British/Scots program of Transportation of these women. But it was dreadful enough that in a culture with so much poverty, and piety about Jesus Christ, no Christian charity was extended for the destitution of the people sent out under what ever pretense of Criminal Justice they practiced. Islam is only a bit more vulgar, cutting off hands of thieves, and stoning people caught having sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thank God none of that punishment exists in Buddhist Thailand. P. S. How do I pay for a coffee from Thailand when I can't pay for my RBWF Membership dues? Sgt. Brill, USAF (Ret)
That was christian charity. At least for an era that believed in tough love.
The original idea was that criminals would be punished publicly and violently to keep the rest scared on a moral path.
Judicial reformers had decided this was pointless and didnt work, their new idea was that transportation would allow people to escape inner cit poverty and its crimes and start a new life in a new country.
Putting them in prison would be a tax burden on hard working citizens, this was thought to be a better solution for everyone.
What about Budist Burma ???
@@Albanach-je1nk Posted without context, which means I do not know to what you are referring? There is no connection with Burma, now called its original name, Myanmar. Burmese government and Thai have nothing in common. Even their Buddhism is different, like the Japanese and Chinese Buddhism, and so on. For factual documentation of Thai legal and Justice system, consult available sources, if that is what you mean?
🕊
My God! I have been to Maquarie Harbour, & seen the Prison the convicts built, & all of this is because they were poor? I am an Australian with my roots on my mothers side is French 🇫🇷 & Irish 🍀, & my dad was an American, but my last name is Spencer, & that's English ! Crazy.
Yet we still put these monsters on a throne.
Incredible that they survived the horendous sea journey let alone abusive incarceration 😢
I would hope this video was a righteous and witty take-down of the bus and train services in Scotland, but I know enough to know it's not that.
If nothing else, a lot of us hors Alba got a hearty transfusion or two of you lot through the centuries, to our enduring benefit. Scottish flowers grow heartily in every soil. ❤
That Banks fella was also responsible for convincing the Admiralty to send the Bounty to Tahiti for breadfruit. Frankly I think this character was far too influential for my like.
😅