On arrival in the penal colony, Van Diemen\u2019s Land, convict exiles were grilled about their offending histories, occupations and family ties while their bodies were inspected for distinguishing characteristics. The resulting convict indents thus preserved the penal state\u2019s biographical record on each offender with snatches of their responses to interrogation. Unwittingly, however, the authorities also captured an alternative form of personal testimony by transcribing the tattoos with which many convicts had adorned their bodies.<\/p>\n
This paper proposes a method of \u2018intimate reading\u2019 using multiple record linkage to decode the symbolic and emotional worlds of the convicted via their tattoos. Immersive reading of this kind can help us reconstruct the agency and sensibility of those who have left few traces of personal testimony but whose behaviour was captured in abstract information garnered by officialdom. The paper focuses on convict men sentenced at Great Yarmouth in the 1830s and 1840s, and argues their elaborate tattoos spectacularly depicted the men they felt themselves to be. As in the sign of the Hope and Anchor that many convicts wore, tattoos anchored the Yarmouth men in the life they had known \u2013 their loved ones, trade, sports and passions \u2013 as they entered an unknown land.<\/p>\n
Dr Helen Rogers is Reader in Nineteenth-Century Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, and the author of the blog Conviction: Stories From a Nineteenth-Century Prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On arrival in the penal colony, Van Diemen\u2019s Land, convict exiles were grilled about their offending histories, occupations and family ties while their bodies were inspected for distinguishing characteristics. The resulting convict indents thus preserved the penal state\u2019s biographical record on each offender with snatches of their responses to interrogation. Unwittingly, however, the authorities also […] Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-lunchtime-seminars"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}