Hang the convicts: capital punishment and the reaffirmation of South Australia's foundation principles

Abstract

There exists a curious commonality amongst those sentenced to death in the first twenty-five years of European settlement in South Australia. Of the thirty hangings conducted, twenty-two were Indigenous persons and seven ... were former or escaped convicts; it took some eighteen years before a free settler of European origin was hanged for a crime. In this article we examine the reasons why the hangman visited former or escaped convicts more than any other group. It is now well established that all Australian colonies experienced a growing abhorrence of convicts and the convict past, a revulsion that coalesced around the anti-transportation campaigns and which reflected and were shaped by an increasing mood for self-governance and sovereignty. However, in South Australia this phobia was particularly acute, because the colony prided itself on being convict free.