Surviving the Silence

Convicted of stealing a coat in 1832, Benjamin Stanton was sentenced to seven years transportation to Van Diemen's Land. He spent twelve months on the prison hulk, 'Euryalus' and then another four months on the convict transport ship 'Isabella' before arriving in Hobart Town on the 14th of November 1833. In January 1834 Benjamin was one of the first sixty-eight boys to be incarcerated at Point Puer, across the bay from Point Arthur, where a Boys' Reformatory was being established. His years at Point Puer with its deprivations, misbehaviour and severe punishments are examined in detail. With further offences, Benjamin Stanton managed to stretch his original seven years transportation to sixteen years' incarceration at Point Puer, Port Arthur and on a Hobart Town chain gang, before eventually receiving a Governor's pardon in 1849. As a thirty-year-old he left Tasmania and settled in Geelong, Victoria where he took a common law wife and had two sons, Benjamin, and George. Both these boys had large families with intriguing histories of their own. Eventually one of George's daughters, Roseanna Stanton, gave birth to her fourth illegitimate son, Charles William, in 1908. That boy became Charles William Hopkins who was my father.