Page #15
Added 2022-07-29 23:03:53 +0000 UTCThe flashback continues.
This has nothing to do with the plot or young Jack here, because it is definitely not THAT sort of comic. But it's wild to think back on this time and realize how even the concept of adulthood was wildly different. Boys as young as nine years old were sent to Port Arthur as punishment (an estimated 10-20% of convicts shipped to Australia in general was between 10 to 14 years old) where they were for the first time at least separated from the regular prison population in their own little environment across the bay at Puer Point, but often it just ended up being a lifelong pipeline from Puer Point and then across the water to Port Arthur. Hobart Town Council justified condemning those so young on the grounds that they were “very young, and as there is reason to believe, very depraved and difficult to manage, perhaps more so than grown men”. as opposed to more modern perspectives on youth being generally innocent.
The Commandant of Point Puer, William Champ, in 1834 described Point Puer as “a wretched, bleak barren spot without water, wood for fuel, or an inch of soil…”. (I'll note on my visit I found it quite beautiful, but y'know, it wasn't quite as brutal a trip)
