Feel free to dip into it and discover some of the social history of the Campbell Town police district in Van Diemen's Land [Tasmania, Australia] in the 1830s. In some ways this is a regional social history with a particular theme; in other ways it is micro-research into a particular local population of people - workers and their employers - who inhabited a small district over a short period of time.

It looks at the convict workers who were transported to Van Diemen's Land from British and Irish jails to become the colony's first working class. They were young men and women between the ages of 18 - 26 and most had work skills that could be used in the colony.

Those who were assigned to work in Campbell Town police district were working as convict police, government tradesmen building bridges and roads, farm labourers working for the middle class sheep and grain farmers of the district, and female and some male domestic servants who were needed to work in the middle class homes of the settlers. As well, male convicts who were sentenced to punishment gangs for minor misdemeanours did the rough labouring in bridge and road gangs.