'They cannot be worse': Van Diemen's Land and the Bigge enquiry, 1820

Descriptions of Van Diemen's Land in about 1820 tended to see it as perhaps quirky but a well-functioning community  – West's History of Tasmania,  Jeffreys' and Evans' books, Macquarie's report of his visit.

Witnesses giving evidence  to John Bigge in his 1820 enquiry describe  a community riven with crime, corruption, drunkenness, incompetence, smuggling, sheepstealing,  immorality, quarrels – as the Rev. John Youl said of Launceston's ex-convict community, 'They cannot be worse'. What was the colony really like?

Alison Alexander holds a PhD in History and has written 37 books, mainly about Tasmania. Many were commissioned histories of Tasmanian institutions and people, and she has also written about Tasmania's convict stigma, Jane Franklin, Patricia Giles, Marie Bjelke-Petersen, Tasmania as utopia, and the battle to end convict transportation.

Image: John Thomas Bigge, 1819 / watercolour portrait by Thomas Uwins, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales