The Supervision of Convict Gangs in New South Wales 1788-1830

Despite its significance as a mechanism for controlling and extracting productivity from a workforce, the nature and character of convict supervision has been largely ignored by historians. To redress this neglect, this article establishes the character of the supervision of male convicts employed in government labour gangs. It is concluded that supervision was, until at least 1822, a critically important strategy for the extraction of labour effort from convict gangs and that it was rationally designed, systematically structured and effectively performed. After 1822 supervision was much more concerned with discipline and control although it was no less sophisticated or complex.