Hobart town society, 1855-1895

Abstract

This is a study of the development of social institutions in the capital city of a colony which had been granted self-government. The period began with the city the administrative centre for a British penal settlement and ended with it becoming dominated by the influence of rival larger cities, thereby losing much of its independent, individual character. The constitutional events by which the transition was formalized were, at the beginning, the withdrawal of British Imperial government, and, at the end, the Federation of the Australian colonies. It is a study in urban history because it is concerned only with the people who operated within the urban milieu, yet many of the city institutions served important colonial functions since the urban and capital city roles were seldom clearly distinguished by administrators. At first many people were obsessed by the need to leave behind the idiosyncrasies of the penal settlement but, with the succession of generations, attention switched to a muted competition between the prospering lower middle class workers and the settled interests of the upper middle class elite. The growth of indigenous cultural activity accompanied the emergence of an educated and prosperous native born generation. The direction of social, cultural and economic change was dominated to some extent by external events, but even more by an acute crisis in the population structure cased by the dwindling of the immigration of both convicts and free settlers, so that there was a serious gap in the population age structure between the adults and the very young. The lack of young adults accounted for many local deficiencies before the children of the eighteen fifties matured. Economic changes in Hobart Town from the gold rushes till the great strikes are briefly described as also are: the city's industrial structure; the nature of the workforce; the movements in real wages and the distribution of income throughout the community; the changes in birth and death rates and associated changes in the population structure; the extent of religious affiliation and the role of denominations as social institutions; the penetration of education within the community; and the functions of civic and colonial institutions affecting the quality of life in the city whilst it was a sovereign capital city. Show more