Launceston Historical Society: Alistair Scott

Alistair Scott presents:

Urchin Convicts: The Point Puer Boys in Van Diemen’s Land

Alistair’s talk will provide a brief history of the Point Puer Boys Establishment and describe the treatment of the boys held there. He will discuss the later lives of some of the boys after they gained their freedom, and follow the extraordinary life of one boy, Thomas Loveday.

Point Puer, across the bay from Port Arthur, today stands deserted, with stone ruins scattered across the headland pointing to an earlier era. Few people now visit the headland but between 1834 and 1849, Point Puer was home to over two thousand boys transported to Van Diemen’s Land from Britain.

At Point Puer, these urchin convicts – from impoverished backgrounds and convicted of petty crimes – were to be reformed and turned into ‘useful and worthy members of the Colony’. For many of the boys, however, Point Puer became a place of unrelenting punishment and maltreatment. For some, their time at Point Puer became a death sentence – one in thirty died at the establishment.

The boys who survived Point Puer faced an uncertain future; released into the colony semi-skilled at best, they were confronted by an unwelcoming society anxious to put its convict origins behind it. Some succeeded in establishing themselves in the colony, living quiet and unobtrusive lives, but most struggled to integrate into colonial society and reoffended.

About the presenters:

Alistair Scott was born and raised in northern Tasmania. He is a former journalist, ministerial adviser and public servant, and is a past general manager of natural and cultural heritage with the Tasmanian Government. Alistair gained a PhD in 2022 after completing a thesis on the life courses of the boy convicts held at Point Puer between 1834 and 1849. His book, Urchin Convicts: The Point Puer boys in Van Diemen’s Land (Forty South Publishing), was released last year.