Information about all the people who were executed in VDL/Tasmania 1804-1946
The Impossible Contract A young man arrives in Van Diemen’s Land. Within weeks he is sent to a distant paddock to watch a flock of sheep. He has no dog, no weapon, and no experience with livestock — he is a casual labourer from East Stonehouse, Plymouth, a busy maritime Read more
Norfolk Island — a brief timeline ~1200 CE: People from Polynesia were the first to inhabit Norfolk Island, arriving around 1200 CE. By the time the British arrived in 1788 the Polynesians had gone. 6 March 1788 – 15 February 1814: First Settlement. The British established Norfolk Island as an Read more
When the British established a penal colony at Sullivan’s Cove in 1804, they brought with them not just convicts and soldiers, but the full apparatus of British criminal justice — including its most visible instruments of punishment and deterrence. Among the first structures erected in the new settlement were the Read more
On the morning of Wednesday 16 April 1834, a young man named Joseph Greenwood was hanged in Hobart Town. He went to the scaffold with his back not yet healed from the 100 lashes he had received less than a month before. The wounds, one newspaper reported, were still uncicatrised Read more