Tickets of leave and pardons

This is one of a series of pieces that may or may not ever see the light of day in a book: it is more likely than not that I will be self-publishing my Colonial Concerns, from which this is taken, as an e-book: it turned into a huge opus (a quarter of a million words of Australian history) that frightens print publishers. If and when the e-book happens, I will edit this to indicate where it can be obtained. In the interim, this is available to students of all ages, complete with sources. Some of this text also appears in my Five Mile Press book, Not Your Usual Bushrangers, (2015).

Convicts were given sentences of seven years, 14 years or life, but there were ways to get free before that time, and there were ways that a sentence could be extended. The well-behaved and obedient convict could hope for advancement and a degree of freedom.

On the other hand, the sulky, disobedient or lazy convict could expect punishment. It was the “carrot and stick” model. Sadly, convicts found the model more the sort of thing that donkeys encountered, where the carrot is dangled on a stick attached to the donkey. As it moved forward, so did the carrot, so the reward was always out of reach.

There were stages for an assigned convict. Step 1 was a ticket of leave, which gave the prisoner, while still technically a prisoner, the right to live free and earn wages, or to work in a trade or to start a farm, but only within a particular district. A format for a ticket of leave was published in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1806, after this introduction:

THOSE Male and Female Prisoners who remain under Sentence of the Law, and have been indulged with Permission to get their own maintenance on Tickets of Leave, and who have not appeared according to the Order of the 8th instant, will be put to Government Labour if they do not give their Names in on or before the 31st instant, when Tickets of Leave, according to the following form, will be given to those whom the Governor may consider deserving a continuance of that indulgence:

Spaces to be filled in on the printed form included name, the English court the person was sentenced at, the ship he or she was transported in, the date on which the sentence expired, and the date of issue. The tickets were all numbered.

Over the years, the system evolved, but a set of proposed rules for granting a ticket-of-leave, published in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1826 will give you a sense of the uphill battle that convicts faced, and how the struggle was used to set them against the bushrangers.

Basically, a prisoner sentenced to 7 years’ transportation had to serve four years with one master, or five years with two masters. A prisoner sentenced to 14 years must have served six years with one master; eight years with two; or ten years three masters. A lifer needed to have served eight years with one master; ten years with two; or twelve years with three.

There were safety nets of a sort. Where a change of service was not due to any fault of the convict (for example, the death or departure of the master from the colony), this first requirement could be worked around. Prisoners assigned to “government work” were treated as if they had been assigned to a master.

Informers and villain-catchers could jump the queue. A convict who caught two runaways who had been absent not less than forty-eight hours; or one recognised bushranger or felon; or one who turned in a receiver of stolen property, gained a credit of six months’ faithful service. Several captures might even be enough to produce an instant ticket.

Convicts seeking a ticket had to apply to the nearest Bench of Magistrates at stated periods. Character references were required, but only from the local magistrates If the prisoner’s master thought the prisoner undeserving, he could say so, but there was no longer requirement for a master to certify the prisoner as deserving.

Tickets applied to a single district, the one covered by the bench of magistrates granting it, and ticket holders were to be mustered, either quarterly or half-yearly by the nearest Magistrate. The Governor’s permission was required for any ticket holder wanting to move to another district. Magistrates could, however, give passes to allow travel out of the district for up to one month.

Ticket holders who caught runaways, or bushrangers, or gave information leading to the conviction of receivers of stolen property, or of persons harbouring prisoners, were to be rewarded by an extension of their tickets to two or more districts.

Ticket holders had to attend church every Sunday if they lived within four or five miles of a place of divine worship and offenders could lose their tickets. Even if you managed to win your ticket, there were many, many ways to lose it again, as we can see from a surviving list of cancellations.

 In one 1841 list of cancellations, there were eleven cases of drunkenness, two of drunk and immoral conduct and one each of being drunk and disorderly and being drunk and assaulting a constable. Another gave rum to a prisoner, while two forged letters saying that their wives had died in England, documents that would have allowed them to marry in Australia. Others stole horses, went missing, gave shelter to bushrangers or escaped prisoners, or were found to have been involved in assault, or improper or disorderly conduct.

The second step was a conditional pardon, which made the convict free, but not allowed to return to England or Ireland. A ticket of leave holder could get a conditional pardon after six years, but only after furnishing “… the most satisfactory testimonials of uninterrupted good conduct for a period of six years …” from the date of his ticket.

Absolute pardons allowed the former prisoner to leave Australia, though these pardons were usually only granted after an act that their fellow prisoners would regard as treachery. There were all sorts of requirements in the way of gaining that reward.

By 1813, the demand for conditional pardons was so high that Governor Macquarie announced in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser that applications for pardons would only be accepted on the first Monday in December. Each application had to be accompanied by certificates of good character from the local clergyman and principal magistrates.

That wasn’t the end of the story: in 1816, Governor Macquarie wanted a lot of public works completed: the colony needed roads, bridges, churches and public buildings, so he announced that there would be no tickets of leave granted that year, because all the convicts were needed for public service.

Of course, if the governor decided to reward a convict who delivered up one or more bushrangers, that was still a choice he was free to make, but there was only one way out of the penal system — obedience. Life as a convict was far from pleasant.