Most of the children living at the Queen’s Orphan Schools were ‘orphaned’ not by the death of their parents, but by the state. Their childhoods were blighted by a legal system that shipped some 75,000 prisoners from Britain and its empire, to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) on the other side of the world.
Convict transportation broke families apart. Many children were left behind when their mothers boarded the convict ships, but some 2000 shared the voyage into exile, only to be separated once they set foot on foreign land.
Thousands of children were born in
