Pure Minds,Pure Bodies,Pure Lips: Religious Ideology and the Juvenile Convict Institutions at Carters' Barracks and Point Puer

During the transportation period, Britain sent 25,000 convict boys to Australia. While the proportion of juveniles was fairly low for the first thirty years, by the mid‐1820s increasing numbers were sent, with the growing argument that transportation might affect a reformation amongst the boys. Religious ideology was central to that argument. Institutions were built in Sydney and Port Arthur where boys would be taught to read, work, and fear God. This article considers the interrelationship between the authorities, the clergy, and the boys at Carters' Barracks and Point Puer, suggesting that religion and religious penal practices created dynamic points of interaction. When it came to being “reformed,” the boys were anything but passive recipients. Religious penal practice was far more than just an instrument of the hegemonic powers. Instead, it was a dynamic discursive and political space characterised at different times by resistance, compliance, and subversion of the areas of learning, cleanliness, and language. This article therefore considers not merely the religious practices of the penal institutions but also the varied manner in which the boys responded to those practices.