Convict police and the enforcement of British order: Policing the rum economy in early New South Wales

Published date01 June 2020
DOI10.1177/0004865819896398
Date01 June 2020
AuthorMatthew Allen
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Convict police and the
enforcement of British
order: Policing the rum
economy in early
New South Wales
Matthew Allen
School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New
England, Armidale, Australia
Abstract
Among the many peculiarities of early New South Wales was the absence of a police force to
manage a population largely composed of convicted criminals. Instead, the early Governors
were forced to employ trusted convicts and ex-convicts to act as watchmen and constables
and police their fellows. This article explores the history of these neglected convict police in
the context of the contemporary development of modern policing in the British world.
Using a case-study of a crack-down on illicit distilling under Governor King in 1805–1806,
I demonstrate that the convict police were both surprisingly effective and prone to corrup-
tion, reflecting the legacy of British policing traditions and the influence of reformist ideas.
Keywords
Alcohol, convicts, distillation, New South Wales, police
Date received: 9 October 2019; accepted: 26 November 2019
Introduction
In March 1799, Henry Kable, the Chief Constable of the new town of Sydney,
was accused of involvement in operating an unlawful still. Owen McNanamy was
found operating the still by three Constables, William Waller, James Spooner and
Corresponding author:
Matthew Allen, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, New South
Wales 2351, Australia.
Email: matthew.allen@une.edu.au
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(2) 248–264
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865819896398
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William Hollis, who seized the apparatus and liquor – the quality of which was later
tasted by the magistrates and declared to be ‘good’ – and admitted to running the still
for the past 10 months.
1
But in order to escape punishment, McNanamy alleged that
Kable had encouraged him in the business, providing him with materials to build the
apparatus, ‘cautioning him as to concealment of the worm [the condensing coil of the
still] ...[and] giving [him] notice to put the apparatus out of the way when he was
coming to search’. Interrogated by the bench, Kable did not dispute the essential
facts but claimed ‘that he did not conceive at the time that he was altogether acting
contrary to the Governor’s order, rather supposing that an order of so long standing
had been in some respects suspended from certain circumstances’. Acknowledging his
apology, and taking into consideration that he had paid a fair price of 45 shillings per
gallon for the liquor, the bench ‘dismissed the business with a reprimand’.
2
Kable had f‌irst arrived in New South Wales as a convict, sentenced to 14 years
transportation for burglary in 1783, and f‌inally embarked on the Friendship which
arrived in 1788 as part of the First Fleet (Hainsworth, 1967; Kercher, 1996; Neal,
1991). He is well known to Australian historians as one of the f‌irst litigants in
New South Wales, but his career as an off‌icer of the law is less familiar. Soon after
his arrival, Kable was recognised as trustworthy by Governor Phillip and appointed to a
series of increasingly responsible off‌icial positions: an overseer of other convicts, then a
night watchman, then a constable, then gaoler and f‌inally chief constable. Though the
record does not survive, he must have received a pardon from the Governor during this
period, and he was certainly rewarded with land grants at Petersham.
3
He remained
Chief Constable until 1802 despite his involvement in distilling, but in May that year he
was dismissed from off‌ice for ‘having behaved ill in the execution of his duty’ – in this
instance, a breach of the Port Orders which forbade purchasing goods from a visiting
vessel without an off‌icial permit.
4
Perhaps tellingly, this was also an episode in which his
commercial interests took precedence over the rules he was supposed to enforce.
Kable’s undistinguished off‌icial career is highly revealing about both the rum econ-
omy and the problem of policing in early colonial New South Wales.
5
The ‘certain
circumstances’ to which he elusively referred were doubtless the rampant f‌louting of
off‌icial attempts to control alcohol which Kable was perfectly positioned to know
about. Indeed, he was actively involved in the legal liquor trade, having been granted
a publican’s license from at least 1798, for ‘The Ramping House’, a license the bench
also failed to revoke in March 1799.
6
While alcohol in general and spirits in particular
were subject to more regulation than any other substance in the colony, these regula-
tions were frequently ignored. A combination of legal ambiguities, political conf‌lict,
commercial opportunism and the failings of the colonial police meant that the
Governor’s orders on this subject were endlessly repeated and only sporadically
enforced. In particular, the ban on distillation was constantly and wilfully f‌louted by
the colonists. Jeremy Bentham in a critique of the penal colony as a f‌lawed rival to his
proposed panopticon, observed this failure of colonial authority noting wryly: ‘[f]or
preventing the erections of stills, orders upon orders have all along been issued. But
the publication of each subsequent order is a pretty suff‌icient evidence of the ineff‌icacy
of all preceding ones’ (Bentham, 1802, p. 72).
Bentham’s observation says as much about the challenge of policing as it does about
the rum economy of early New South Wales. The unique system of government by
Allen 249

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