Macquarie's Distribution Lists

This dataset is based on transcriptions of what we are calling the ‘distribution lists’, dating from 1814 to 1822, which are scattered through the New South Wales Colonial Secretary’s copies of out-letters. They are lists of some of the convicts freshly disembarked from 76 convict ships that arrived in those years. Signed by William Hutchinson, the Principal Superintendent of Convicts, the lists were transmitted with letters from the Colonial Secretary to a small number of magistrates outside of Sydney, mostly for ‘general distribution’ among local settlers, or, in some cases, for distribution to named employees. There are batches also of men and women being sent to public institutions, notably the Parramatta Female Factory and (from October 1819) the new agricultural establishment at Emu Plains on the Nepean River. <br>
Our transcriptions list almost 5,500 individuals from across 71 documents, accounting for roughly 30% of all convicts who arrived in Port Jackson during this period. The names have been linked to our (separate) Directory of convict arrivals, with our unique identifier number and identification summary (or ‘convict stub’) of each individual added here. At least 12 individuals are listed twice, and 303 individuals have not been matched, frequently because there were multiple individuals of the same name arriving on a voyage who cannot be distinguished in this document (although further triangulation across our record sets may in future clarify some of those identities).<br>
The transcriptions are expected to yield valuable insights into the allocation of freshly-arrived workers outside of Sydney, at a time when the distribution of convict labour was increasingly controversial. We have therefore supplemented the transcriptions with data on occupation and age as stated by the individual convicts on the (recent) arrival and recorded in the convict ‘indents’. The dataset is pertinent to research undertaken for the Australian Research Council-Discovery Project, Enquiring Into Empire (DP180100537), and has been compiled by staff, students and associates involved in the University of New England’s Convict History Research Collective <https://blog.une.edu.au/convicthistory/> who are using digital techniques to reconstruct assignment and labour trends in the colony of New South Wales in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

本数据集基于我们称之为"分发清单"的转录文本，这些文本可追溯至1814年至1822年，散见于新南威尔士州殖民秘书的外发信件副本中。清单收录了当年抵达的76艘罪犯运输船（convict ship）上刚下船的部分罪犯。本清单由时任首席罪犯监管官的威廉·哈钦森（William Hutchinson）签署，随殖民秘书的信函一同发送至悉尼以外的少数治安法官，主要用于在当地定居者中"统一分发"，部分情况下则用于分发给指定雇员。此外，还有多批男女罪犯被送往公共机构，其中尤以帕拉马塔女子工厂（Parramatta Female Factory）为甚，以及1819年10月起启用的位于内皮尔河（Nepean River）的埃穆平原（Emu Plains）新式农业机构。<br>本次转录共从71份档案中整理出近5500名罪犯，约占同期抵达杰克逊港（Port Jackson）的罪犯总数的30%。我们已将这些姓名与独立编制的《罪犯抵达名册》（Directory of convict arrivals）进行关联，并为每位罪犯添加了专属标识编号及身份摘要（或称"罪犯档案卡"，convict stub）。至少有12名罪犯被重复记录，另有303名罪犯未能完成身份匹配。此类匹配失败多源于单次航行中出现多名同名罪犯，无法仅凭本文件加以区分（尽管未来通过对多套档案的交叉验证，或可厘清其中部分身份）。<br>这批转录文本有望为悉尼以外地区新增劳工的分配情况提供宝贵研究视角——彼时，罪犯劳动力的分配问题正日益引发争议。因此，我们补充了罪犯抵达时自述的职业与年龄信息，此类数据源自罪犯"入境登记表"（convict indents）。本数据集与澳大利亚研究理事会（Australian Research Council）"探索帝国"（Enquiring Into Empire，项目编号DP180100537）的相关研究高度相关，由新英格兰大学罪犯历史研究集体的教职员工、学生及合作人员编制完成，该团队正借助数字技术还原19世纪早期新南威尔士殖民地的罪犯分配与劳动力趋势，相关集体主页为<https://blog.une.edu.au/convicthistory/>。