Control of convicts

In the period after 1788, those sentenced for whatever crime in England and Ireland were appalled by the thought of transportation to the distant and unknown place called New South Wales. As the Colony became more settled in the 1800s, and some of the early convicts became prosperous settlers the fear of transportation to Australia lessoned. By the 1820s as Banks and Bottomley have written in William Curtin: Two Convicts," the threat of banishment to penal settlements in more isolated parts of the Colony was seen to be losing its impact on lawbreakers, miscreants and non-conformers."

The penal settlement at Coal River (Newcastle) was closed in 1822 because convicts had found that they could make their way back to Sydney and its environs if they escaped. The rugged, mountainous region in between was not any impediment when the desire was strong. Some of the results of the escape of convicts from places like Coal River are outlined in the next sections.

Governor Darling decided that as there were a number of convicts considered unsuitable for assignment to settlers the best way of employing them was to form them into Road Gangs and send the Road Gangs to work in the remote parts of the colony building roads. Iron Gangs were formed as a means of secondary punishment. There were two types of leg irons, referred to as light and heavy leg irons. As many convicts in light leg Irons managed to escape, the government ordered blacksmiths manufacture heavy leg irons. Heavy leg irons made with a broad collar that could not be bashed out of shape and slipped off.