When the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Cove in January 1788, there were close to fifty children on board - some were convicts themselves, some were the children of marines, and others the babies born to convict women during the long journey from Plymouth.
In this book, Robert Holden describes the lives of these forgotten young colonists: their grim existence in the slums of London, their astonishing experiences in its courts and prisons and their uncertain future in their strange new home.
Among them were the nine-year-old chimneysweep John Hudson, sentenced at the Old Bailey for burglary, thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Hayward who was the youngest girl convict on the Fleet, and Henry Kable Jr, whose own story of rescue and transportation was headline news in Britain in 1787.
In his extraordinary book, Robert Holden describes late eighteenth-century practices of childbirth and mothering, the traditional role of the midwife and the increasing importance of the surgeon. In giving these orphans of history a voice Holden not only tells a fascinating story but fills a vast gap in our understanding of the early European history of Australia.
