Crime and Marriage in Times of Crisis: Irish Convict Women in Nineteenth-Century Tasmania

Tasmania was established in the nineteenth century as a large open-air prison. The constant supervision of convicts under sentence produced a wealth of information on the life-courses of convicts. Using an interdisciplinary mixed methods approach, the patterns of crime and marriage are studied for 2,793 Irish convict women who were transported to Tasmania between 1840 and 1853. This thesis shows the importance of access, value, and desire for marriage. Moreover, the character of both men and women are found to have an impact on recidivism in Tasmania.