Prison Registers

The registers of local prisons, convict depots and convict prisons will also contain details of convicts, varying in level of detail, and can be consulted by referring to the Department of Justice, Prison Registers Series. For instance, the register of female convicts for Grangegorman female convict depot covering the period 11 July 1840 to 22 December 1853 (Prisons 1/9/7), contains 3,500 entries. (Grangegorman depot had opened in 1836 as the first exclusively female prison in the British Isles. It housed females with imprisonment sentences as well as those sentenced to transportation. The prison’s main function with respect to convicts was to provide employment training for them so that they might satisfy the ever increasing demands of the Australian authorities that they be fit to earn their living on arrival.) The register, an excellent source for statistical analysis, contains details of name, age, crime, sentence, location of conviction, marital status, literacy level, trade or occupation and number of previous convictions.