Moreton Bay by F.W. Mole — Read

Sir Ralph Darling, who fought with the 31st Regiment under Sir John Moore in the expedition of 1808 that ended at Corunna, succeeded Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane as Governor of New South Wales, a territory which extended from Bass Strait in the south to Torres Strait in the north, and took over the administration of that vast and little known area. When he was not involved in an acrimonious controversy with the independent Press of the new colony over freer political and judicial institutions, emancipists, licensing measures, and stamp duties, Sir Ralph Darling's activities found vent in the direction of promulgating new land laws, opening up good roads, establishing a postal service, and encouraging exploration. More than any other Governor he was credited with the opening up of Moreton Bay district by the encouragement of its commandant, Captain Lannigan, and also by encouraging exploration which led to the discovery of the Darling Downs by Allan Cunningham and the tracing of the Brisbane River to its head by Major Edmund Lockyer. But his best service to the colony was the reorganisation of the administrative departments, and in this connection in a dispatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies he urged the desirability of sending out more female convicts as wives for convicts who had been given tickets-of-leave or for those who were assigned to settlers. At Moreton Bay there were then no female convicts. In 1823 Governor Brisbane developed a scheme by which Port Macquarie would be the prison for those guilty of first grave offences, Moreton Bay for runaways from the former, and Norfolk Island as the final hell of convict degradation. But Governor Darling was not desirous of retaining the settlement at Port Macquarie. In his opinion it was a hindrance to the development of its rich hinterland by free men, and he desired to leave it open for free colonisation.

To this end he withdrew the lesser criminals from Port Macquarie to serve in road gangs, and the incorrigible remnant he sent to Moreton Bay. Subsequently the re-convicted women who had been formerly sent to Port Macquarie were sent further north to Moreton Bay. Earl Bathurst approved of Governor Darling's recommendation to send out to New South Wales more female convicts to help to populate the spacious territory, and as a result the hulks in the Thames and in the harbours of Portsmouth and Chatham were emptied of their female prisoners. There were, however, at the time not enough females in the hulks and prisons in England to form a human cargo for transportation, so the streets of London were combed by the police, who gathered up all the strumpets, drabs, cut-purses, and ladies of easy virtue that they could lay their hands on and shanghaied them on board a transport for deportation.