OldnCrusty wrote on Jul 15
th, 2014 at 6:53pm:
aquascoot wrote on Jul 15
th, 2014 at 6:38pm:
i call everyone mate and i have never had a homosexual urge in my life.
i suspect this is true of about 90% of suburban males.
i cant speak for inner city trendies and green voters
Ignore the troll.
Laugh till you cry is just a sad racist troll - just an empty head with a smart mouth and a racist agenda.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks". Olde Saulte has become very defensive about this issue.
http://www.illawarraqinfo.com/page17.htm"... CONVICTS AND COLONIES
Australia did not attract serious attention from Britain until it lost the American War Of Independence in 1783.
Between the years 1680 and 1780, the population of England doubled, with the Industrial Revolution bringing hordes of people into its cities. With no social security, the resulting slums and urban poverty led to an epidemic of crime. By 1770, over 200 separate offences had been made eligible for the death penalty.
Transportation of convicts to America for use as indentured labour was believed a more humane alternative to the problem and a solution to clearing the nation's overcrowded jails.
Following Captain James Cook's claiming of Australia as a British possession, the decision was made to direct the flow of convicts Down Under through the establishment of a colony in New South Wales.
The First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson to found what would become Sydney in 1788, and a second settlement on the southern island of Tasmania was established in 1803 - reserved for repeat offenders and the worst criminals.
From the early 18th Century, the United Kingdom developed its own distinct underground gay subculture, with men gathering secretly in so-called "Molly houses" - illegal bars and taverns that were the precursors of modern gay bars.
Molly culture was closely associated with cross-dressing and drag, and rather than seeking out 'rough trade', most Mollies seemed to have preferred other effeminate men as partners. Of course, when civil society found out about the existence of the Molly houses, they were outraged, and a vigorous police crackdown ensued.
When Mollies were arrested and thrown into London's floating prison hulks, they would have encountered an entirely darker kind of male-to-male sexuality - prison rape and sex traded for protection and favours.
During the First and Second Fleet, little effort was made to segregate the young and vulnerable from the older men, and with prisoners sleeping six to each tiny cell, it's not hard to imagine what must have gone on. Later fleets corrected this problem - placing the younger men and teens in separated lodging.
The term Molly has been found in early accounts from the colony while others commented on the unseemliness of a certain class of convict - young men who gave themselves feminine nicknames and wore their hair in women's styles. With only 189 women convicts amongst the 1,373 British to land at Port Jackson, both would have found themselves in considerable demand - and this gender imbalance would not be corrected for many decades.
Lesbianism among female convicts, kept mostly segregated from the males, is also recorded, but was viewed simply as a curiosity - girl-on-girl action not being viewed as real sex at the time.
These early days of the colony seem to have included a fairly lax attitude to male homosexuality. Although it's first governor, Arthur Phillip, stated the only two offences deserving death were murder and sodomy, the first trial for such a crime did not occur until 1796 and that penalty was not prescribed. Phillip even went so far as to say that sodomites should be given to cannibals to be eaten, writing, "I would wish to confine the criminal until an opportunity offered of delivering him to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him. The dread of this will operate much stronger than the fear of death."
Despite this, the first recorded execution for a homosexual act did not occur until 1828, when Alexander Brown, chief officer on the whaling ship Royal Sovereign, and crewmember Richard Lister were ordered to hang by the neck by a Sydney court. Lister was given a last minute reprieve and deported from the colony, but Brown did not fair so well.
Gay convicts lucky enough to be sent to Norfolk Island (an otherwise notoriously harsh and remote penal settlement) during the rule of the prison reformer Alexander Maconochie, led a much different life. On an island known for its food shortages and harsh punishments, Maconochie instituted a regime based on reward and tolerance rather than cruelty.
According to Robert Stuart, a magistrate who visited the island during Maconochie's rule, it was common for convicts to live together as couples - referring to each other as "husband and wife", and there may have been well over 100 such pairs on the island at any one time. Stuart observed, "These parties manifest as much eagerness for the society of each other as members of the opposite sex." Under Maconochie, convicts caught having sex still faced flogging but, compared to the rest of the British Empire, the punishment was mild.