ABSTRACT
Henry Vincent continued his harsh regime on the island, facing further charges of brutality in 1846, from which he was exonerated. With the colony suffering major labour shortages and needing Aboriginal workers on the mainland, Governor Fitzgerald closed the prison in 1849 and used the superintendent’s cottage as his summer residence. When the colony began accepting British convicts from 1850, the labour shortage slowly eased. At the same time, pastoral expansion intensified Indigenous resistance, making the government anxious to deter crimes such as sheep stealing and to assert the primacy of British law over Indigenous law. Governor Kennedy reopened the island prison in 1855 and re-appointed Vincent as superintendent. These were years of prison development; at Vincent’s instigation, a large new prison building known as the Quod was erected in 1864, which, being confining, unsanitary, often overcrowded, and cold, was especially hated by prisoners. At the same time, a new governor’s residence was completed and would be used by governors for decades to come. Vincent retired in 1866 and died in 1869. A link between his public and private violence is suggested by Louisa Vincent’s successful petition for a judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty, and there was further public exposure of his decades of domestic violence and abuse during a court case over his will in 1870.
