Norfolk Island, Major Joseph Anderson, Commandant
Joseph Jocelyn Anderson, born in Sutherland 1st July 1790. Died in Melbourne 18th July 1877. The photo shows him in later life as a Lieut. Colonel.
Notes below amended from an article published in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966
In 1834 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, appointed Anderson to the command of Norfolk Island, where the convicts had, on January 15th, staged an unsuccessful revolt. He was commandant of the island from March 1834 to February 1839. Among his first duties was the investigation of the revolt and on 22 and 23 September 1834 twenty-nine convicts were sentenced to death and thirteen of the twenty-nine were executed. See: www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15685595956/in/photost...
In his Recollections of a Peninsula Veteran (London, 1913, available as an ebook) he claimed that under his administration corporal punishments ranged from 50 to 300 lashes, averaging 70 to 75 cases a year, as against 1000 cases a year under his predecessor, Colonel James Morisset. The island was quiet under his administration, and Bourke attributed the tranquillity to Anderson's 'humane but firm and vigilant superintendence'. Rev. Thomas Atkins, Church of England chaplain on the island from November 1836 to January 1837, did not share Bourke's opinion; he considered Anderson unfitted for his post, and in communications to the governor and in his Reminiscences he charged Anderson with cruelties, fraud and gross abuses of his position for financial gain, observing that Anderson 'could embrace as a brother and hate as a fiend'.
Robert Hughes in the Norfolk Island chapter of "The Fatal Shore" relates that Anderson: "Once gave five men 1,500 lashes before breakfast. Prisoners could run up heavy punishment records, like William Riley's during two years in heavy irons after the mutiny. 1,000 lashes, eleven months' solitary and three months' jail in two years." "Anderson extracted harsh extremes of labour from the prisoners, labour was aimed at punishment, not production. Anderson had malingerers flogged, but sometimes sick men came up for a flogging too, and died. A prisoned named Barrett, gravely weakened by dysentery was sentenced to 200 lashes; he collapsed and died after the first 50." Tim Causer's withering review of "Dark Paradise" by Robert Macklin states that the grotesque punishment of men like William Riley should be taken as exceptional: only a handful suffered such astonishing treatment and, at most ‘only’ a quarter of the 6,458 men detained at Norfolk Island were flogged. He also describes "The Fatal Shore" as being of "frequently questionable accuracy"
Anderson was a builder too and his architectural memorials, two of the finest examples of Georgian Military architecture in the Southern Hemispheres, are the 1835 Commissariat Store and the 1836 New Military Barracks, on both of which he had a convict mason chisel his name.
www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15455983960/in/photost... and www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15617840066/in/photost...
Anderson was replaced as commandant in February 1839 by Thomas Bunbury. Bunbury was confident in his ability to manage the hardened convicts under his command and wrote that he could not understand why "a villain who has been guilty of every enormity, should feel shame at having his back scratched with the cat-o-nine-tails when he felt none for his atrocious crimes." He also claimed that "if a man is too sick to work he is too sick to eat" and claimed that the queue at the hospital was halved. Although his punishments were harsh, he replaced hand hoeing with ploughs, rewarded good behaviour with improved jobs and gave older convicts lighter work.
He did however earn the ire of the soldiers on the island by ordering the destruction of huts built on the small gardens they kept for their own use and for trafficking with the convicts. The soldiers mutinied, a warship was sent to restore peace and Bunbury was recalled in July 1839.
Norfolk Island, Major Joseph Anderson, Commandant
Joseph Jocelyn Anderson, born in Sutherland 1st July 1790. Died in Melbourne 18th July 1877. The photo shows him in later life as a Lieut. Colonel.
Notes below amended from an article published in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966
In 1834 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, appointed Anderson to the command of Norfolk Island, where the convicts had, on January 15th, staged an unsuccessful revolt. He was commandant of the island from March 1834 to February 1839. Among his first duties was the investigation of the revolt and on 22 and 23 September 1834 twenty-nine convicts were sentenced to death and thirteen of the twenty-nine were executed. See: www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15685595956/in/photost...
In his Recollections of a Peninsula Veteran (London, 1913, available as an ebook) he claimed that under his administration corporal punishments ranged from 50 to 300 lashes, averaging 70 to 75 cases a year, as against 1000 cases a year under his predecessor, Colonel James Morisset. The island was quiet under his administration, and Bourke attributed the tranquillity to Anderson's 'humane but firm and vigilant superintendence'. Rev. Thomas Atkins, Church of England chaplain on the island from November 1836 to January 1837, did not share Bourke's opinion; he considered Anderson unfitted for his post, and in communications to the governor and in his Reminiscences he charged Anderson with cruelties, fraud and gross abuses of his position for financial gain, observing that Anderson 'could embrace as a brother and hate as a fiend'.
Robert Hughes in the Norfolk Island chapter of "The Fatal Shore" relates that Anderson: "Once gave five men 1,500 lashes before breakfast. Prisoners could run up heavy punishment records, like William Riley's during two years in heavy irons after the mutiny. 1,000 lashes, eleven months' solitary and three months' jail in two years." "Anderson extracted harsh extremes of labour from the prisoners, labour was aimed at punishment, not production. Anderson had malingerers flogged, but sometimes sick men came up for a flogging too, and died. A prisoned named Barrett, gravely weakened by dysentery was sentenced to 200 lashes; he collapsed and died after the first 50." Tim Causer's withering review of "Dark Paradise" by Robert Macklin states that the grotesque punishment of men like William Riley should be taken as exceptional: only a handful suffered such astonishing treatment and, at most ‘only’ a quarter of the 6,458 men detained at Norfolk Island were flogged. He also describes "The Fatal Shore" as being of "frequently questionable accuracy"
Anderson was a builder too and his architectural memorials, two of the finest examples of Georgian Military architecture in the Southern Hemispheres, are the 1835 Commissariat Store and the 1836 New Military Barracks, on both of which he had a convict mason chisel his name.
www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15455983960/in/photost... and www.flickr.com/photos/30593522@N05/15617840066/in/photost...
Anderson was replaced as commandant in February 1839 by Thomas Bunbury. Bunbury was confident in his ability to manage the hardened convicts under his command and wrote that he could not understand why "a villain who has been guilty of every enormity, should feel shame at having his back scratched with the cat-o-nine-tails when he felt none for his atrocious crimes." He also claimed that "if a man is too sick to work he is too sick to eat" and claimed that the queue at the hospital was halved. Although his punishments were harsh, he replaced hand hoeing with ploughs, rewarded good behaviour with improved jobs and gave older convicts lighter work.
He did however earn the ire of the soldiers on the island by ordering the destruction of huts built on the small gardens they kept for their own use and for trafficking with the convicts. The soldiers mutinied, a warship was sent to restore peace and Bunbury was recalled in July 1839.