Love and Marriage in Convict Australia

Two decades after the colony of New South Wales was established, Governor Lachlan Macquarie considered the future of the colony to be at risk of moral degeneration.  Cohabitation, or couples living together outside the married state, was seen as ‘highly injurious to the interests of society’, and Macquarie was keen to rectify the situation by encouraging marriage amongst the population, both convict and free.

For convicts, marriage was strictly controlled by the state, and convicts required permission before they could legally marry.  During the time of Governor Ralph Darling (1825-1831), controls were tightened and a convict’s master or mistress, plus a clergyman, had to approve the marriage before the couple could apply for permission from the Governor.

In many cases permission was refused, most commonly because the woman was considered to already be married.  It had been thought that married women would be better treated in the colony, so some women convicts falsely declared themselves married when disembarking in Sydney.  When they later wanted to marry in the colony, they were refused permission.

Transportation often resulted in the separation of married couples, and it was difficult (although not impossible) for couples to reunite – either by the spouse travelling out to the colonies or the freed convict returning to Britain.  While it was held that ‘seven years separation by water’ entitled a person to remarry, doing so with the knowledge that the first spouse was still alive could result in a charge of bigamy, and the Solicitor General advised in 1841 that such couples ‘remarried at their own peril’.

Once the Governor had granted a convict permission to marry, the marriage was announced by reading the marriage banns.  A clergyman would announce the marriage three times, allowing any parties with an objection to the union time to come forward.  If no objection was made, the couple then married.  If a convict was still bonded at the time of their marriage they still had to remain in service until they were finally declared free.