 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Emancipist" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(November 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Anemancipist was aconvict sentenced and transported under theconvict system toAustralia, who had been given a conditional or absolute pardon. The term was also used to refer to those convicts whose sentences had expired, and might sometimes be used of free settlers who supported full civil rights for emancipated convicts.[1]
An emancipist was free to own land and was no longer subject topenal servitude. An emancipist could be released from their sentence for good behaviour, diligent work or the expiration of their sentence. One limitation placed upon emancipists with a conditional pardon – a ticket-of-leave – was that they were not allowed to leave the Australian colonies. This limitation did not apply to former convicts whose terms of servitude had expired, or who had been unconditionally pardoned, and more than half of all male convicts did leave the Australian colonies on the expiration of their sentence [it was more difficult for female emancipists to leave, as they had fewer opportunities of "working their passage" away from the colonies].
TheExclusives (who included many free settlers, civil servants and military officers) often shunned the society of emancipists, and considered them to be little more than criminals. When GovernorLachlan Macquarie invited emancipists to social functions atGovernment House, for example, many military officers refused to attend.
Macquarie (Governor from 1810 to 1821) insisted that emancipated convicts be treated as social equals and, very conscious of the critical shortage of skills in the young colony, appointed emancipists with talent to official positions. Among these appointments wereFrancis Greenway as colonial architect and Dr.William Redfern as colonial surgeon. He scandalised settler opinion by appointing another emancipist,Andrew Thompson, as a magistrate.
John Irving (or Irven, Irwin, or Ervin) was Australia's first emancipist. Irving was asurgeon convicted oflarceny on 6 March 1784. He was sentenced to "seven years beyond the seas," and sent on one of theFirst Fleet transports in 1788. After exhibiting a willing readiness to assist with his exceptional surgical skills, he was emancipated by GovernorArthur Phillip on 28 February 1790, and worked thereafter as an assistant surgeon. On 14 July 1792, Irving'sWarrant of Emancipation was received in England and acknowledged byHenry Dundas, the Secretary of State.[2]