Romanticising the Past

So often we romanticise the past. There’s a great saying which goes “the older we get, the better we were” and it rings particularly true as we tell our grandkids tales from our own childhood. That’s romanticising the past in the recent past, but what of the early days of Australian history? Was it romantic?

We listen to tales of heroism, suffering, despair and triumphs but we don’t stop to think of what it was actually like to live through it all. I’m finding that lately when I visit websites concerning convicts of Australia I’m getting struck by a sense of unreality as to the real plight of the men and women concerned. It’s an intangible feeling I’m getting. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes me feel it, but I’m not sure I want our research to head that way.

The more research we do and the more facts we uncover, the less romantic the notion of being a convict becomes. Of course there are many amazing texts written on the true plight of the colony and digging just a bit deeper than Ancestry or Births, Deaths and Marriages, will give you a very fast lesson in facts, but does the average genealogist researcher go that deep? Are they content to just skim the cream off the coffee and not wonder about how the beans were actually made?

Do I get that feeling from genealogists who, to their credit, have websites which concentrate on their own families and furiously search to find the Royal Convict’s name at the top of the tree without really digging into their life? Or is it just that Australian history very rarely gets taught in schools in as much depth as it should be and so people don’t know what was going on in the colony at that time? Or is it that people have never existed outside their own comfort zone and had to suffer deprivations and so can’t portray that in their information?

I don’t know. I’m just throwing ideas around. I can’t say I’ve suffered to any degree in comparison to what my convict ancestors did and so I wonder if my own writing is lending itself toward the romantic notion of the oppressed uprising to battle the oppressor and not to the gut wrenching hopelessness and depravity that was in fact their reality. I hope not. I’m slapping my typing fingers now to remind myself not to do that.

As Australians our past generations considered convict blood a ‘stain’ on the family name. That attitude has been shirked off in more recent times and is now being replaced by a glorification of the colony and the inhabitants in the rush to claim convicts as our heritage.

I came across this article in a newspaper as I researched a convict ancestor and had to share it because this is what the reality was.

“In our leading article on rationing and clothing the convicts, we forgot one subject of importance as regards public decorum. A convict died the other day on the Liverpool Road; and neither his master, nor the coroner, nor the constable, would at first bury him. Hence, the body lay exposed to the heat, till the flies, &c, and decay, rendered it so much an object of disgust and horror, the jury could not do their duty to their satisfaction. A few boards were at length begged from Clegg. Kennedy gave a few nails and raps of his hammer, and thus this wretched outcast of society, after bestowing many years of sweat and toil on the colony, was carried away, to be buried, more like a felon than an honest faithful servant. We think a General Order ought to be issued, regulating the decent burial of poor convicts, either by the Police or their masters. Convicts are Englishmen-sometimes they are good Christians, ‘and are carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.’“ (from The Monitor 20th January 1827 page 2)

I’d love to know what you think about this too. Are we becoming too romantic with our past?